Even Apple Forgets to Renew SSL Certificate Sometimes
As we all know, having the proper SSL certificate in place to protect your visitors' data and your data is too crucial in doing business online these days. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for some people to remember that they need to be renewed - even to a large corporations apparently. Over at MacWorld, they have a write-up about Apple forgetting to renew their SSL, as a result for an annoying error message to appear for users who tried to access some of their websites.
The forgotten server was swscan.apple.com, which quite a few people connect to when they're trying to run software updates from the Mac App Store. The message they received was simple, but can quickly lead to a loss of trust - even for a company like Apple that is doing so well currently. Here's the possible message:
"An Error has occurred. The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be 'swscan.apple.com which could put your confidential information at risk."
For some reason that's not been explained yet, the SSL certificate was issued from 22 May 2012 to 24 May 2014 - some are confused by the extra two days. A few hours later, Apple fixed the problem by renewing their SSL certificate. However, as you might imagine, the internet went gaga with the news, snickering and laughing while posting to popular forums and social media sites around the world.
Some of the comments at the MacWorld forum are priceless:
"Apple needs to design an app where people can jot down a list of things they need to remember, with an option to add alerts when they become due. Could call it Reminders or something similar" (testcard)
"Rumour has it that fixing this will be Dr Dre's first assignment" (Robert.Walter)
Here's the thing - if something like this can happen to a company like Apple which has a lot of resources, what's to stop it from happening to your business? If it does, the chances are high that it's going to cause a lot more trouble than the momentary blip that Apple faced. All joking aside, renewing an SSL certificate is as important as renewing a domain name or webserver.
We don't need to wait until we experience the same trouble in our business. Renew directly the SSL certificate as this is more important to get the data security you need.important to get the data security you need.
The forgotten server was swscan.apple.com, which quite a few people connect to when they're trying to run software updates from the Mac App Store. The message they received was simple, but can quickly lead to a loss of trust - even for a company like Apple that is doing so well currently. Here's the possible message:
"An Error has occurred. The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be 'swscan.apple.com which could put your confidential information at risk."
For some reason that's not been explained yet, the SSL certificate was issued from 22 May 2012 to 24 May 2014 - some are confused by the extra two days. A few hours later, Apple fixed the problem by renewing their SSL certificate. However, as you might imagine, the internet went gaga with the news, snickering and laughing while posting to popular forums and social media sites around the world.
Some of the comments at the MacWorld forum are priceless:
"Apple needs to design an app where people can jot down a list of things they need to remember, with an option to add alerts when they become due. Could call it Reminders or something similar" (testcard)
"Rumour has it that fixing this will be Dr Dre's first assignment" (Robert.Walter)
Here's the thing - if something like this can happen to a company like Apple which has a lot of resources, what's to stop it from happening to your business? If it does, the chances are high that it's going to cause a lot more trouble than the momentary blip that Apple faced. All joking aside, renewing an SSL certificate is as important as renewing a domain name or webserver.
We don't need to wait until we experience the same trouble in our business. Renew directly the SSL certificate as this is more important to get the data security you need.important to get the data security you need.
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