It seems that no one is immune to letting an SSL certificate expire. Not even VeriSign, the largest provider of SSL certificates. On January 23rd, 2009, VeriSign forgot to renew an SSL certificate for pip.verisignlabs.com.

Though this isn't the first big company to forget to renew an SSL certificate (Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and the BBB have all let certificates expire), it is the first known SSL certificate provider to do so and the biggest provider of them all.

SSL certificate expiration can be a problem for anyone. SSL Shopper tries to help with this by allowing expiration reminder emails to be sent for particular certificates (just enter the domain name on the certificate into the SSL Checker and click the Reind Me button) but bigger companies may need to use some kind of certificate lifetime management solution like Venafi's Server Encryption Manager, or Entrust's Certificate Management Service .

Originally posted on Sun Jan 25, 2009

