Cloudflare to Create Its Own Certification Center and Launch TLS Issuance

The company Cloudflare announced plans to launch its own public certification center and provide TLS certificates for sites for free. The company has submitted applications to add its own root keys to the trust programs of Chrome, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla. To ensure compatibility with old operating systems and devices, Cloudflare has signed an agreement to purchase an existing root certificate from GlobalSign, which has been supported by browsers since 2012.

The company explained that the initiative is aimed at reducing the risks of dependence on a limited number of suppliers. Currently, about 40% of the automated issuance market is occupied by the non-profit certification center Let's Encrypt, which generates around 10 million certificates per day for more than 500 million resources. A failure of a major player can create difficulties in accessing millions of sites, so the market needs a comparable alternative.

The issuance and renewal of certificates will be automated through the ACME protocol with support for the ACME Renewal Information standard. The exact dates of the full launch, the company has not yet disclosed, waiting for approval in the root trust programs. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2027, Cloudflare plans to start issuing post-quantum certificates based on Merkle trees (MTC).