By
You may have heard about Google’s intent to distrust Symantec certificates. But you might not know what that actually means for your organization. Ultimately, you will have to find, replace, and validate all certificates in your organization that chain up to a Symantec root. And you’ll have to do it all sooner than later, before your websites are flagged as untrusted.
Here’s how we got to this point. On 23 March 2017, Google staff software engineer Ryan Sleevi announced that the Chrome team had observed a "series of failures by Symantec Corporation to properly validate certificates." The mis-issuance originally involved just 127 certificates issued by Symantec, an American software security company which also manages its own Certificate Authority (CA). However, further investigation revealed that the failures applied to at least 30,000 certificates.
Google responded by proposing "an incremental distrust, spanning a series of Google Chrome releases, of all currently-trusted Symantec-issued certificates, requiring they be revalidated and replaced." Users will have until 15 March 2018 to replace any Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates issued by Symantec prior to 1 June 2016. They can do so by purchasing a new certificate from the Norton anti-virus software provider or from another reputable CA.
How will this impact your organization? Kevin Bocek, vice president of security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi, thinks that's easier said than done for some organizations. As he wrote in a blog post:
"This is a giant wake-up call for every business. Most organizations don’t have the agility required to move, add or change certificates, keys or CAs in response to external issues like this one. The best possible outcome is that businesses will realize they are going to have to figure out how to deal with not just this issue, but other issues like it. The only other alternative is to be victimized by these events."
Organizations wishing to meet Chrome's demands must have the ability to find every installation of all certificates that chain up to Symantec. That means they will need to locate certificates from potentially dozens of CAs from which they've purchased a digital certificate. Such a process would consume significant time and resources if performed manually.
Fortunately, companies can save themselves unnecessary effort using Venafi Cloud. The solution provides customers with a list of Symantec-issued certificates as well as the installation locations of all electronic documents that chain up to a Symantec root certificate. With this knowledge, organizations can begin requesting replacement certificates manually, or they can configure Venafi Cloud to automate the replacement certificate issuance process through Venafi's integrations with SaltStack, Docker, or Terraform DevOps. Whichever replacement method they choose, enterprises will spare themselves potential downtime, associated brand damage, and lost revenue.
For more information on how to find and replace Symantec certificates before Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox start issuing security errors, please download this free report
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur elit.
Thank you for subscription
Scroll to the bottom to accept
VENAFI CLOUD SERVICE
*** IMPORTANT ***
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE CONTINUING WITH REGISTRATION AND/OR ACTIVATION OF THE VENAFI CLOUD SERVICE (“SERVICE”).
This is a legal agreement between the end user (“You”) and Venafi, Inc. ("Venafi" or “our”). BY ACCEPTING THIS AGREEMENT, EITHER BY CLICKING A BOX INDICATING YOUR ACCEPTANCE AND/OR ACTIVATING AND USING THE VENAFI CLOUD SERVICE FOR WHICH YOU HAVE REGISTERED, YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU ARE ENTERING INTO THIS AGREEMENT ON BEHALF OF A COMPANY OR OTHER LEGAL ENTITY, YOU REPRESENT THAT YOU HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO BIND SUCH ENTITY AND ITS AFFILIATES TO THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, IN WHICH CASE THE TERMS "YOU" OR "YOUR" SHALL REFER TO SUCH ENTITY AND ITS AFFILIATES. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE SUCH AUTHORITY, OR IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, YOU MUST NOT ACCEPT THIS AGREEMENT AND MAY NOT USE THE SERVICE.
You shall not access the Service if You are Our competitor or if you are acting as a representative or agent of a competitor, except with Our prior written consent. In addition, You shall not access the Service for purposes of monitoring its availability, performance or functionality, or for any other benchmarking or competitive purposes, and you shall not perform security vulnerability assessments or penetration tests without the express written consent of Venafi.
This Agreement was last updated on April 12, 2017. It is effective between You and Venafi as of the date of Your accepting this Agreement.
The Venafi Cloud Service includes two separate services that are operated by Venafi as software as a service, each of which is separately licensed pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Agreement and each of which is considered a Service under this Agreement: the Venafi Cloud Risk Assessment Service or the Venafi Cloud for DevOps Service. Your right to use either Service is dependent on the Service for which You have registered with Venafi to use.
This License is effective until terminated as set forth herein or the License Term expires and is not otherwise renewed by the parties. Venafi may terminate this Agreement and/or the License at any time with or without written notice to You if You fail to comply with any term or condition of this Agreement or if Venafi ceases to make the Service available to end users. You may terminate this Agreement at any time on written notice to Venafi. Upon any termination or expiration of this Agreement or the License, You agree to cease all use of the Service if the License is not otherwise renewed or reinstated. Upon termination, Venafi may also enforce any rights provided by law. The provisions of this Agreement that protect the proprietary rights of Venafi will continue in force after termination.
This Agreement shall be governed by, and any arbitration hereunder shall apply, the laws of the State of Utah, excluding (a) its conflicts of laws principles; (b) the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods; (c) the 1974 Convention on the Limitation Period in the International Sale of Goods; and (d) the Protocol amending the 1974 Convention, done at Vienna April 11, 1980.
In the meantime, please explore more of our solutions
In the meantime, please explore more of our solutions
This site uses cookies to offer you a better experience. If you do not want us to use cookies, please update your browser settings accordingly. Find out more on how we use cookies.