SSL / TLS
SSL certificate monitoring
SSL monitoring means regularly checking a domain's HTTPS certificate to know its expiry date and be alerted before it becomes invalid. LOXUp does it for you and warns your team ahead of time, for example 15 days before the deadline.
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What is SSL monitoring?
An SSL certificate (technically TLS today) proves your domain's identity and encrypts exchanges with your visitors. It has a start date and an end date of validity. SSL monitoring checks this certificate from the outside, as a browser would, and calculates the number of days remaining.
Why do certificates expire?
Certificates deliberately have a limited lifetime, to reduce risk in case of compromise. Renewal is therefore a recurring operation, and every renewal is an opportunity for an oversight or a failure:
- automatic renewal interrupted after a server migration or a DNS change;
- a forgotten subdomain, never included in the automation;
- the person who installed the certificate has left, expiry date unknown;
- provider reminders sent to an email address that is no longer read.
What are the consequences of an expired certificate?
- Browsers display a full-screen security warning: most visitors leave.
- Mobile apps and API clients refuse the connection.
- Payments, forms and integrations fail.
- Your brand image suffers, even after the fix.
Also read: Why an expired SSL certificate drives your visitors away.
How does LOXUp alert you?
- You add your domains to LOXUp.
- LOXUp regularly checks each certificate and shows the days remaining before expiry.
- As the deadline approaches (for example 15 days before), an alert is sent by email, SMS (WinSMS Tunisia) and push notification to all the authorised contacts on your team.
Combine SSL monitoring with HTTP, TCP and Ping availability monitoring to cover the two most common causes of an unreachable website.
Glossary
- SSL
- Secure Sockets Layer: the former protocol for encrypting web traffic. The term is still commonly used to refer to certificates and HTTPS.
- TLS
- Transport Layer Security: the modern successor to SSL, which actually encrypts HTTPS connections today.
- Certificate
- A file issued by a certificate authority that proves a domain's identity and makes it possible to establish an encrypted connection. It has a start date and an end date of validity.
- Expiry
- The date after which a certificate is no longer considered valid: browsers then display a security warning.
- HTTP
- The web protocol. An HTTP check sends a request to a URL and verifies that the server responds correctly.
Stop finding out about an expired certificate from a customer.
Add your websites, servers and certificates to LOXUp and get an alert by email, SMS or push notification as soon as a problem appears.