Security Expert Bruce Schneier recently pointed to a joint project to create a new certificate authority that lets everyone get basic certificates for their domain through a simple process.
The idea would include not only free, but automatic, secure, transparent, open, and cooperative.
The service, called Let’s Encrypt, is set to launch in the summer of 2015.
The reason for the delay is that the service wants to leverage new standards. The most notable is ACME(Automated Certificate Management Environment). The idea is that the Certificate Authority communicates with the web server and the two work together to prove ownership and download the certificate, as well as handle configuration and renewal.
Now, considering how much of a chore certificates are right now, the standard, even outside of Lets Encrypt, would save a lot of anguish. Once the server has proven that it is the server of record for that domain, it can handle everything.
There’s more to it then that, and certainly, there are still risks, but we’ll see what these people come up with by the time the ACME standard is finalized.