Aug 4, 2023

Atlas TLS ICA Rotations

Introduction

GlobalSign will start rotating our Atlas TLS CAs on a scheduled basis to promote good ecosystem security and agility. Historically, we have set up CAs and used them for many years, but there are many reasons to reduce this time interval. By reducing the length of time CAs are used, we achieve the following benefits:

• We limit the number of certificates issued by a single CA and it's corresponding private key which limits impact if there is an integrity, compliance or security issue with the CA.
• We reduce the size of CRLs which increases validation performance.
• We train our customer base to expect and plan for immediate CA replacements which increases crypto agility.
• Starting in 2022, GlobalSign Atlas TLS CAs will be updated every quarter, on the second Tuesday of the quarter at 10:30-11:00 UTC

Impact and recommendations:

• Customers should always be prepared to accept new CAs when installing new TLS certificates. The issuing CA is available in the API and should be used when downloading the certificate so that the current CA is always provisioned with the issued certificate.  
• Customers MUST not do public key pinning to CA certificates, and we highly discourage public key pinning at all, as that defeats the purpose of crypto agility.
• We encourage customers to follow agile practices for Issuing CAs and always download and install the provided ICA when obtaining new certificates.
• Please subscribe to GlobalSign's Status page for important updates here - https://status.globalsign.com/