Renew Expired SSL

What to do if an SSL Certificate has expired

Don’t panic, either, but don’t sit around and wait.

It is now popular for websites to use security certificates even though they don’t handle confidential and sensitive details. SSL certificates are commonly used because they can increase the trustworthiness of a website in the viewers’ eyes, especially as they give the websites the gold or green padlock that indicates protection. In addition, even search engines rank secure websites above those without an SSL certification.

All SSL certificates however come with an expiry date. Such free SSL certificates last from 30 to 90 days. And they can purchase paid SSL certificates for up to three years. Regardless of the period, everything inevitably expire.

Which happens on expiry of SSL certificate? Want to renew expired protection certificate? Read on to get answers to all those and more questions!

Even if my SSL certificate expires?

Users will generally begin to get renewal updates about 60 days before the SSL certificate expires. When you don’t get the emails, though, and your SSL certificate expires, you’ll lose your website’s padlock sign and your Google Chrome could start flashing the “Not Safe” sign next to the address bar.

When Expires SSL Certificate

Both SSL certificates are hard-coded and have an expiry date. That is why the dates on an existing SSL certificate can not be extended. As such, when people say “renew” SSL, they really just mean purchasing a new SSL certificate but use the same account information for the same domain or web site. Once the expiration period is up, the certificate must be “renewed” by acquiring and installing a new one.

How to Renew Security Certificate that Expired?

  1. Generate a new CSR (Certificate Signing Request). This only has to be done if you use a Windows, Tomcat, or Java-based server, or if you have changed your business details since previous SSL purchase. For Apache servers, generation of CSR is not necessary.
  2. Go to your existing account and select the Renew SSL link.
  3. From the products page, select the SSL certificate you want to renew.
  4. If you don’t get the Renew page, you can simply select the necessary product and then sign into your account when asked to generate CSR. (If you purchased the SSL certificate from a reseller, contact that specific reseller.)
  5. Once your renewal request is approved, the certificate will be sent to your email address.
  6. Install your renewed certificate and verify it. You should do this before you uninstall the previous certificate. That will ensure that your site is never left without security.
  7. Create a backup of the old certificate (in case something goes wrong) and uninstall it from your website.

The process shouldn’t take too long. Domain Validated Certificates can be renewed within a few minutes. Organization Validation and Extended Validation Certificates can take one or two days for renewal.