Change log: 2023

We updated the process for reissuing SSL/TLS certificates in CertCentral. Now, if certificate revocations are required after reissuing your certificate, we do the following:

Learn more about reissuing an SSL/TLS certificate

Background

When reissuing an SSL/TLS certificate, some changes may require DigiCert to revoke the original certificate and any reissues and duplicates, for example, removing a domain. In CertCentral, we warn you when a change will revoke your certificates.

We're pleased to announce several enhancements to the API workflows for requesting and reissuing Secure Email (S/MIME) certificates:

We are happy to announce we improved the verified contact approval process for approving EV TSL/SSL certificate orders in CertCentral. We updated the Order details page to make completing the verified contact approval step easier on your pending EV TLS certificate requests.

Improvements:

Background

Before DigiCert can issue an EV TLS/SSL certificate, a verified contact representing the organization included on the certificate must approve the pending certificate request (new, reissue, and new).

Previously, there was a lack of verified contact transparency on these pending requests:

See for yourself

Resources

Resend the verified contact approval email

In the CertCentral Services API, we added a new API endpoint for deleting an organization from your CertCentral account. For examples and usage details, visit the API reference: Delete organization.

On December 7, 2023, at 09:00 MST (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will optimize our certificate databases to improve our service's uptime. As part of the database optimization process, expired certificate data older than 14 months will be unavailable from December 7, 2023, at 09:00 MST (16:00 UTC) to January 22, 2024 (approximately 37 days).

We are happy to announce that we have improved the organization management workflow.

Want to remove an organization from your account that you can never validate because of a typo or misspelling? Want to remove a deprecated organization from your account?

Now, when you need to delete an organization from your CertCentral account, you can. Go to the Organizations page and use the Delete organization feature to delete one or multiple organizations simultaneously.

Previously, you could only deactivate organizations. The Deactivate organization feature allows you to block certificate issuance for an organization until it’s activated. However, the deactivated organization remains in your account.

Items to note about deleting organizations

See for yourself

Resources

On December 6, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (17:00 UTC), CertCentral will no longer support existing TLS certificate automation profiles or ACME Directory URLs configured for 4- to 6-year Multi-year Plans. Automation requests that use these retiring automation profiles or ACME Directory URLs will fail.

Background

On October 31, 2023, DigiCert stopped selling new 4- to 6-year Multi-year Plans. Automation and ACME customers configured for 4- to 6-year orders have until December 6 to reconfigure their existing automation profiles and ACME clients to use 1- to 3-year orders instead.

Automation profiles

Starting on December 6, existing automation profiles configured for 4 to 6 years of coverage will show an Action needed status and automation requests for these profiles will fail. To avoid outages, you must reconfigure these automation profiles before December 6 to have a coverage length of 1 to 3 years.

To reconfigure automation profiles in the CertCentral console:

To use the API to reconfigure automation profiles:

ACME clients

Starting on December 6, existing ACME Directory URLs for 4 to 6 years of coverage will no longer work. To avoid outages, you must reconfigure any third-party ACME clients that use these retiring credentials to use a replacement ACME Directory URL for 1 to 3 years of coverage.Third-party ACME integration

Consult the documentation for your third-party ACME client for help reconfiguring it. For example, the Certbot documentation is found at https://eff-certbot.readthedocs.io

You can use any ACME Directory URL for 1 to 3 years of coverage to continue requesting certificates with your third-party ACME clients. If you don't already have a suitable replacement ACME Directory URL in your CertCentral account, create a new one to use.

To create an ACME Directory URL in the CertCentral console:

To use the API to create an ACME Directory URL:

We are happy to announce that we added the One-time password email verification authentication method to our two-factor authentication requirements in CertCentral.

One-time password email verification authentication method

By default, CertCentral requires you to use your credentials (username and password) and a one-time password (OTP app) to access your account. Now, you can also add OTP email verification as a one-time password (OTP) requirement.

After you enter your credentials, CertCentral sends a temporary password to the email address in your CertCentral account Profile Settings. To access your account, enter the temporary passcode in the verification email.

See our CertCentral two-factor authentication guide.

To make it easier to plan your certificate-related tasks, DigiCert has scheduled our 2024 maintenance windows in advance.

We keep these pages up to date with the latest maintenance schedule information:

With customers worldwide, we understand there is no "best time" for everyone. However, after reviewing the data on customer usage, we selected times that would impact the fewest amount of our customers.

On December 4, 2023, at 09:00 MST (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will optimize our certificate databases to improve our service's uptime.

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on December 2, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MST (16:00 – 18:00 UTC).

Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

What can I do?

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on December 2, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (December 3, 2023, 05:00 – 07:00 UTC).

Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

What can I do?

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

We are happy to announce that we improved the process for creating, viewing, and updating your two-factor authentication requirements in CertCentral. See our CertCentral two-factor authentication guide.

New layout and organization of rules and settings

We updated the layout, moving to a tab-style page structure to make it easier to create, view, and update the two-factor authentication requirements for your CertCentral users. Now, when you visit the Authentication settings page (in the left main menu, go to Settings > Authentication Settings), instead of scrolling to find information, you can select what you want to view:

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on November 4, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC).

Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on November 4, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (October 8, 2023, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC).

Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

On October 31, 2023, DigiCert will no longer sell 4 – 6-year Multi-year Plans for TLS and VMC certificates. We will continue to offer 1, 2, and 3-year Multi-year Plans.

How does this affect me?

For those with existing 4, 5, and 6-year Multi-year Plans, this change does not affect your coverage. You can continue to reissue and duplicate issue certificates for your Multi-year Plan until it expires.

For example, if you purchased a 5-year Multi-year Plan on April 1, 2023, you have coverage until April 1, 2028.

What if I use the CertCentral Services API?

If you use the CertCentral Services API to create 4, 5, and 6-year orders for TLS/SSL or Verified Mark certificates, you need to update your API integrations and remove the 4, 5, and 6-year coverage options from your Multi-year Plan integrations.

For more information, see End of 4 - 6-year Multi-year Plans.

What if I use certificate lifecycle automation tools with 4, 5, and 6-year Multi-year Plans?

Starting on October 31, you can no longer create new automation profiles or ACME Directory URLs for a certificate coverage length of 4 to 6 years. To avoid outages, you have until December 6, 2023 to reconfigure any existing automation profiles or third-party ACME clients that use a 4 to 6 year coverage length to instead use a new coverage length of 1 to 3 years.

What happens when I need to renew my Multi-year Plan?

When it’s time to renew your Multi-year Plan, you can renew it as a 1, 2, or 3-year Multi-year Plan.

Why will DigiCert stop selling 4, 5, and 6-year Multi-year Plans?

We are optimizing our infrastructure to support new and improved e-commerce experiences. Removing these Multi-year Plan options helps us streamline existing product lines into a cleaner, more intuitive shopping environment.

We’re happy to announce that you can now receive CertCentral webhook notifications in Slack!

When you integrate CertCentral webhooks with Slack, your webhook sends notifications to a channel in your Slack workspace. These notifications have the same triggers and data as standard webhook events, and Slack presents the information as human-readable text instead of raw JSON.

Learn more: Get webhook notifications in Slack

On October 17, 2023, at approximately 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will replace the Norton site seal image with our DigiCert site seal image wherever it appears on websites secured by Secure Site or Secure Site Pro TLS certificates. Additionally, we will remove the option to use and download the Norton site seal from CertCentral.

We are happy to announce that we improved the domain management workflow in CertCentral.

Want to remove a domain from your account that you can never validate because it has a typo? Want to remove all the subdomains of a base domain?

Now, when you need to delete a domain from your CertCentral account, you can. Go to the Domains page and use the Delete domain feature to delete one or multiple domains simultaneously.

Previously, you could only deactivate domains. The Deactivate domain feature allows you to block certificate issuance for a domain until it’s activated. However, the deactivated domain remains in your account.

Items to note about deleting domains:

See for yourself

Resources

In the CertCentral Services API, we added a new API endpoint for deleting a domain from your CertCentral account. For examples and usage details, visit the API reference: Delete domain.

In the CertCentral Services API, we added new functionality to the Update order status API endpoint. Now, if you use the Services API to manage certificate request approvals, you can use the Update order status endpoint to cancel reissue requests that are pending admin approval. Before, this endpoint could only cancel reissues after an administrator approved the request.

For example, the order 12345 has a pending request to reissue the certificate on the order. You can use this cURL request to both cancel the reissue and reject the request:

curl -X PUT \
  'https://www.digicert.com/services/v2/order/certificate/12345/status' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'X-DC-DEVKEY: {{api_key}}' \
  --data-raw '{
    "status": "canceled",
    "note": "Reissue canceled"
}'

When you submit this request:

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on October 7, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC). Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

What can I do?

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on October 7, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (October 8, 2023, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC). Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

What can I do?

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

With the recent industry changes to S/MIME certificates, we updated our client certificate requests form, making it easier to include the required information to get your certificate.

Now, when you request one of the certificates listed below, you will see two options under Certificate to Request(s):

Affected certificates: Premium, Email Security Plus, and Digital Signature Plus.

See for yourself:

To learn more, see Order your client certificate.

On August 29, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert updated our public Secure Email (S/MIME) certificate issuance process to comply with the CA/Browser Forum's new Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly‐Trusted S/MIME Certificates.

Industry changes now place certificates used to sign, verify, encrypt, or decrypt email into three categories:

Our Premium, Email Security Plus, and Digital Signature Plus certificates are in the sponsor-validated category. Thus, you can only enter your email address or name as the common name on the certificate.

Learn more about the New industry requirements for public Secure Email (S/MIME) certificates.

Some DigiCert services will be down for 60 minutes during scheduled maintenance on September 9, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (September 10, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC).

Document Trust Manager PrimoSign signing service maintenance-related downtime

The Document Trust Manager maintenance starts at 22:00 MDT (04:00 UTC). At this time, the PrimoSign signing service will be down for up to 60 minutes.

Affected services

On September 5, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will only issue public TLS certificates with the BasicConstraints extension set to critical per new industry requirements. Going forward, we will stop supporting the BasicConstraints extension's noncritical setting in public TLS certificate profiles.

Why is DigiCert making this BasicConstraints extension change?

To comply with industry changes mandated by the root program, all certificate authorities (CAs), such as DigiCert, must stop allowing users to set the BasicConstraints extension to noncritical in public TLS certificates.

For more details about the compliance changes affecting the BasicConstraints extension in certificate profiles, see the CA/Browser Forum's Ballot SC62v2-Certificate profiles update.

On September 5, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will stop issuing individual validation TLS certificates. This means you can no longer get an organization validation (OV) TLS certificate with a person's name in the subject field.

Affected certificates:

Why will DigiCert stop issuing individual validation TLS certificates?

To comply with industry changes mandated by the root program, DigiCert will only issue OV TLS certificates with an organization name in the subject field. For more details about the compliance changes affecting the individual validation TLS certificates, see the CA/Browser Forum's Ballot SC62v2-Certificate profiles update.

Some DigiCert services will be down for 90 minutes during scheduled maintenance on September 2, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC).

Document Trust Manager's PrimoSign signing service  maintenance-related downtime

The DigiCert​​®​​ Document Trust Manager maintenance starts at 09:00 MDT (15:00 UTC). At that time, the PrimoSign signing service will be down for up to 90 minutes.

Affected services:

What can I do?

Plan accordingly

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

On August 29, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will make the changes listed below to our public Secure Email (S/MIME) certificate issuance process to comply with the CA/Brower Forum's new Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly‐Trusted S/MIME Certificates.

These changes will apply to all newly issued certificates containing the emailProtectionextentedKeyUsage and at least one email address. If you can use your certificate to sign, verify, encrypt, or decrypt email, then your new, reissued, and renewed certificates will be affected by these new industry requirements starting August 29, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC).

On August 29, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will no longer include the email addresses in the subject field when issuing Document Signing certificates.

Starting August 29:

The following certificates are affected by this change:

Why will DigiCert start issuing Document Signing certificates without the email address in the subject?

We are making this change to align with upcoming industry changes affecting the issuance and management of publicly trusted secure email (S/MIME) certificates.

Starting August 29, under the new S/MIME certificate requirements, a document signing certificate must undergo a new validation process for digitally signing emails. DigiCert's Document Signing certificates do not include this validation process and, therefore, can no longer include email addresses and be used to sign emails after August 29.

How do these changes affect my Document Singing certificates?

What can I do?

In CertCentral, we updated our OV TLS, EV TLS, code signing, and document signing certificate request forms. Now, we will only include the Comments to Administrator field when the approval step is enabled for the user making the request.

This field allows you to provide additional information to the person approving the request. When an order skips the approval step, the field no longer serves its purpose.

Background

By default, CertCentral accounts are configured for one-step certificate request approvals. An account administrator must approve a certificate request before DigiCert can process the order (validating the organization, etc.).

However, on the Preferences page (go to Settings > Preferences), in the Certificate Requests section, you can remove the approval step from the OV and EV TLS, code signing, and document signing certificate issuance workflows for your CertCentral administrators and managers. Even with skip approval enabled, you must still approve requests submitted by standard users, limited users, and finance managers.

Learn more about removing the approval step.

On August 15, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will stop supporting the following key usage extensions in public TLS certificates:

Note that these key usage extensions are not included in public TLS certificates by default.

Why is DigiCert making these key usage extension changes?

To comply with industry changes mandated by the root program, all certificate authorities (CAs), such as DigiCert, must stop allowing users to include these key usage extensions in public TLS certificates: data encipherment and non-repudiation.

For more details about the compliance changes affecting key usage extensions in certificate profiles, see the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly‐Trusted Certificates, Section 7.1.2.7.10.

How does this affect me?

Do you currently use these key usage extensions in your public TLS certificates?

What if I need to include the data encipherment or non-repudiation key usage extensions in my TLS certificates after August 15?

You can use private TLS certificates. The root-program key usage extension change does not apply to private TLS certificates. If private TLS certificates will meet your needs, contact your account manager to make sure the correct Private root CA hierarchy is available for your account.

How does this affect my existing certificates that include these key extensions?

Your existing certificates are not affected by this change. However, if you reissue or duplicate issue a certificate with one of these key usage extensions after August 15, we will remove the data encipherment or non-repudiation extension before we reissue the certificate.

How does this affect my API integration?

In the Services API, order requests for public TLS certificates that specify a certificate.profile_option of data_encipherment, non_repudiation, or non_repudiation_and_data_enciph will return a 400 error with an error code value of profile_option_not_allowed.

Update your API integration and remove these profile options from your public TLS certificate requests by August 15, 2023.

On August 15, 2023, DigiCert will upgrade our support plans to provide you with a better, more customizable experience. These plans are scalable and backed by our technical experts to ensure your success.

New plans:

Starting August 8 at approximately 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), when you order a client certificate containing the emailProtection extentedKeyUsage and at least one email address, we will automatically submit the organization included in the order for SMIME organization prevalidation. When you visit the organization's details page, you will see a pending validation for SMIME – SMIME Organization Validation.

Affected client certificates:

This change also affects orders submitted via the CertCentral Services API. To learn more about organization prevalidation, see our Submit an organization for prevalidation instructions.

Why is DigiCert submitting these organizations for SMIME prevalidation?

As part of the new requirements for public Secure Email (S/MIME) certificates, certificate authorities (CAs), such as DigiCert, must validate the organization included in a certificate containing the emailProtection extentedKeyUsage and at least one email address for S/MIME validation before we can issue the certificate.

DigiCert will submit organizations included in these types of certificate requests for SMIME organization prevalidation starting August 8 to prepare for these new requirements.

How does this affect my client certificate process?

The pending SMIME organization validation does not prevent your client certificates from being issued at this time. Until we update our process, for client certificates containing the emailProtection extentedKeyUsage and at least one email address, DigiCert will continue to require OV - Normal Organization Validation to validate the organization included in the certificate.

Then starting August 29, 2023, DigiCert must validate the organization included in these client certificates for the new SMIME organization validation before we can issue them.

CertCentral webhooks now support the option to include the certificate chain in certificate_issued events for public and private TLS/SSL certificates.

Now, you can get your issued TLS certificate in the same webhook event that notifies you the certificate is ready. Before, you needed to trigger a callback API request to download the certificate from CertCentral.

Example certificate_issued event with certificate chain:

{
  "event": "certificate_issued",
  "data": {
    "order_id": 1234,
    "certificate_id": 1234,
    "certificate_chain": [
      {
        "subject_common_name": "example.com",
        "pem": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\r\nMII...\r\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----\r\n"
      },
      {
        "subject_common_name": "DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1",
        "pem": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\r\nMII...\r\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----\r\n"
      },
      {
        "subject_common_name": "DigiCert Global Root G2",
        "pem": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\r\nMII...\r\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----\r\n"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Learn how to include the certificate chain in certificate_issued events: Customize certificate issued events.

In the CertCentral Services API, we updated the Subaccount order info API endpoint to return the name and id of the issuing CA certificate for the primary certificate on the order. This data is returned in the ca_cert object in the certificate section of the JSON response.

Example JSON response with ca_cert object, truncated for brevity:

{
  "certificate": {
    "ca_cert": {
      "id": "A937018B9FAF6CC2",
      "name": "DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1"
    },
    ...
  },
  ...
}

In the CertCentral Services API, we updated the List subaccount products API endpoint to return details about the product shims configured for the subaccount.

Now, the List subaccount products API endpoint returns these parameters:

Example JSON response, truncated for brevity:

{
  "currency": "JPY",
  "pricing_method": "custom",
  "balance_negative_limit": "-1",
  "products": [
    {
      "product_name_id": "ssl_dv_geotrust_flex",
      "product_name": "GeoTrust DV SSL",
      "product_shim_map": [
        {
          "product_name_id": "ssl_dv_geotrust",
          "product_name": "GeoTrust Standard DV"
        }
      ],
    },
    {
      "product_name_id": "ssl_securesite_flex",
      "product_name": "Secure Site OV",
      "product_shim_map": [
        {
          "product_name_id": "ssl_plus",
          "product_name": "Standard SSL"
        },
        {
          "product_name_id": "ssl_securesite",
          "product_name": "Secure Site SSL"
        }
      ],
    },
    ...
  ],
  "is_product_shim_enabled": true
}

Some DigiCert services will be down for up to 30 minutes, while others may experience interruptions during scheduled maintenance on August 5, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC).

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on August 5, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (August 6, 2023, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC). Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

What can I do?

Plan accordingly:

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

In CertCentral, we added a new validation type to the organization prevalidation workflow, SMIME – SMIME Organization Validation. Starting August 29, 2023, DigiCert must validate the organization included in Secure Email (S/MIME) certificates with the new validation type, SMIME – SMIME Organization Validation, before we can issue the certificate. To learn more about organization prevalidation, see our Submit an organization for prevalidation instructions.

Why is DigiCert adding SMIME – SMIME Organization Validation?

As part of the new requirements for public Secure Email (S/MIME) certificates, certificate authorities (CAs), such as DigiCert, must validate the organization included in a Secure Email certificate for S/MIME validation before we can issue the certificate.

How does this affect my client certificate process?

DigiCert will continue to require OV - Normal Organization Validation to validate the organization included in a Secure Email (S/MIME) certificate until we update our process on August 29, 2023. Then, we will require the organization included in a Secure Email certificate to be validated for the new SMIME – SMIME Organization Validation.

In the CertCentral Services API, for client certificate orders, we updated the Order info API endpoint to return data describing the type of organization validation DigiCert will use for client certificates after August 29.

Background

The Order info API endpoint returns a product object with information about the type of certificate on the order. For certificates that require organization validation, the product object includes parameters describing the type of organization validation used for the product:

After today's update, for client certificates that require organization validation, these fields return values associated with SMIME Organization Validation. For example:

{
... 
   "product": {
        "csr_required": false,
        "name": "Premium",
        "name_id": "client_premium",
        "type": "client_certificate",
        "validation_description": "SMIME Organization Validation",
        "validation_name": "SMIME",
        "validation_type": "smime"
    },
...
}

Before, these fields returned values associated with Normal Organization Validation. For example:

{
... 
   "product": {
        "csr_required": false,
        "name": "Premium",
        "name_id": "client_premium",
        "type": "client_certificate",
        "validation_type": "ov",
        "validation_name": "OV",
        "validation_description": "Normal Organization Validation",
    },
...
}

How does this affect my API client integration?

If you use the Order info API endpoint to retrieve validation information from the product object, make sure your integration can handle the new validation type values for client certificates.

Otherwise, this change is compatible with existing workflows for validating organizations and requesting client certificates:

Stay informed about updates to client certificate API workflows

As we update our systems to comply with the new Secure Email (S/MIME) baseline requirements, we will continue updating Services API workflows for managing S/MIME certificates in CertCentral. Visit our developer portal for a comprehensive list of these changes: Services API updates for client certificate certificate workflows. Make sure to save this page and check it frequently, as we will update this article as new information becomes available.

In the CertCentral Services API, we updated the Email site seal API endpoint. Now, when emailing site seal code, you can choose who receives the email by including the optional parameter recipient_email in your request. If omitted, DigiCert emails the site seal to the authenticated user (the user that owns the API key in the request).

Example cURL request:

curl 'https://www.digicert.com/services/v2/order/certificate/{{order_id}}/site-seal/email-seal' \
--header 'X-DC-DEVKEY: {{api_key}}' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
  "recipient_email": "john.doe@example.com"
}'

For more information, visit the API reference documentation: Email site seal.

We updated the CertCentral Services API documentation to describe how to create an organization and submit it for validation with a single API request. Learn more: Create organization.

On July 11, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will fix an issue causing the Order info API endpoint to return unexpected verified_contacts data. We will restore the Order info response to its original behavior and stop returning verified_contacts inside the organization object.

To get verified contacts for an organization, use the Organization endpoints:

{
  ...
  "organization": {
    "id": 12345,
    "name": "Example Organization, LLC",
    "display_name": "Example Organization, LLC",
    "is_active": true,
    "city": "Saratoga Springs",
    "state": "Utah",
    "country": "us",
    "telephone": "555-555-5555",
    "verified_contacts": [
      {
        "id": 1234,
        "user_id": "5678",
        "name": "John Doe",
        "first_name": "John",
        "last_name": "Doe",
        "job_title": "Developer",
        "telephone": "555-555-5555",
        "email": "john.doe@example.com"
      }
    ]
  },
  ...
}  

{
  ...
  "organization": {
    "id": 12345,
    "name": "Example Organization, LLC",
    "display_name": "Example Organization, LLC",
    "is_active": true,
    "city": "Saratoga Springs",
    "state": "Utah",
    "country": "us",
    "telephone": "555-555-5555",
  },
  ...
}   

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on July 8, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (July 9, 2023, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC). Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on July 8, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC). Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

In the CertCentral Services API, we added a new endpoint that you can use to update the order-level organization and technical contact for existing certificate orders.

Use the new endpoint to perform these operations:

For usage information, parameter descriptions, and example requests, visit the API reference: Update organization and technical contact for an order.

CertCentral admins can now establish an organization-wide setting for users to follow when requesting client certificates. The options are:

Some DigiCert services will experience service delays and performance degradation during scheduled maintenance on June 3, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (June 4, 2023, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC).

Infrastructure maintenance-related service delay and performance degradation

The infrastructure maintenance starts at 22:00 MDT (04:00 UTC). Then for approximately 10 minutes, the services listed below will experience service delays and performance degradation that affect:

API notes

Expect interruptions if you use the APIs for immediate certificate issuance and automated tasks.

What can I do?

Plan accordingly:

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

Some DigiCert services will be down for up to 60 minutes during scheduled maintenance on June 3, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC).

DigiCert ONE infrastructure maintenance-related downtime

The DigiCert ONE infrastructure maintenance starts at 09:00 MDT (15:00 UTC). At that time, DigiCert ONE Netherlands and Switzerland instances, along with access to their managers, services, and APIs, will be down for up to 60 minutes.

API note

What can I do?

Plan accordingly:

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

Starting on June 1, 2023, at 00:00 UTC, industry standards will require private keys for code signing certificates to be stored on hardware certified as FIPS 140 Level 2, Common Criteria EAL 4+, or equivalent.

CertCentral supports webhook notifications when a certificate is issued or revoked.

You can now receive notifications for certificate events without regularly querying the Orders API for certificate status. Your external application (listener) can wait to receive notification that the certificates are ready, then send a callback request to download the certificate or programmatically alert the certificate owner.

Learn more: CertCentral webhooks

We are happy to announce that you can now add custom secret keys to CertCentral webhooks. With secret keys, you can ensure the authenticity of webhook events, enhancing the security of your webhook listener.

How webhook secret keys work

When creating or updating a webhook, you can choose to add a custom secret key. If a webhook has a secret key, webhook events include the secret key value in the custom request header X-WEBHOOK-KEY.

To prevent your webhook listener from processing invalid events, configure the endpoint for your webhook listener to validate the X-WEBHOOK-KEY value for each event it receives.

Learn more:

In the CertCentral Services API, we updated the request body for creating an Encryption Everywhere DV order to stop using the use_auth_key parameter. Now, DigiCert always ignores the use_auth_key parameter in your requests to create an Encryption Everywhere DV order.

On May 16, 2023, at 10:00 AM MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will change the default behavior for DV TLS/SSL orders in CertCentral accounts using AuthKeys.

Starting May 16, DV TLS certificate orders and reissues created with the CertCentral Services API will always use a default value of false for the use_auth_key request parameter.

After this change, to validate domains on a DV order or reissue using AuthKey request tokens, you must include the use_auth_key parameter with a true value in the body of your certificate request:

{
  ...
  "use_auth_key": true
  ...
}

To give API clients more control over the contacts assigned to new and renewal orders, we updated the CertCentral Services API to support order-level organization contacts.

Now, when requesting or renewing a certificate, you can assign an organization and technical contact directly to the order instead of using the contacts assigned to the organization on the request. If you do, DigiCert creates the order using the order-level contacts. The organization and technical contact for the organization remain unchanged.

To submit an order-level organization and technical contact with your order, include the organization_contact and technical_contact objects at the root of your JSON request body. If omitted, DigiCert uses the organization and technical contact assigned to the organization on the order.

Example JSON request

{
  "certificate": {
    "common_name": "example.net",
    "csr": "<csr>"
  },
  "organization_contact": {
    "first_name": "Jane",
    "last_name": "Doe",
    "job_title": "Manager",
    "telephone": "555-555-5555",
    "email": "jane.doe@example.com"
  },
  "technical_contact": {
    "first_name": "John",
    "last_name": "Doe",
    "job_title": "Site Reliability Engineer",
    "telephone": "555-555-5556",
    "email": "john.doe@example.com"
  },
  "organization": {
    "id": <organization_id>
  },
  "order_validity": {
    "years": 6
  },
  "payment_method": "balance"
}

Supported products

The API supports the option to add an order-level organization contact for all certificates that require an organization contact.

DigiCert will perform scheduled maintenance on May 6, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (May 7, 2023, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC).

Although we have redundancies to protect your services, some DigiCert services may be unavailable during this time.

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

Some DigiCert services will be down for up to 60 minutes during scheduled maintenance on May 6, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC).

DigiCert ONE infrastructure-related maintenance downtime

The DigiCert ONE infrastructure-related maintenance starts at 15:00 UTC. At that time, DigiCert ONE Netherland and Switzerland instances, along with access to their managers, services, and APIs, will be down for up to 60 minutes.

API notes

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

We are happy to announce that DigiCert is now offering enhanced Secure Email Certificates (S/MIME) at two levels, Secure Email for Individual and Secure Email for Business.

These certificates offer:

Secure Email for Individual is automatically validated and quick to generate – you can begin using your certificate within minutes.

Secure Email for Business includes an extra level of validation, authenticating your organization as an email sender, and includes support options.

To add these certificates to your CertCentral account, select Secure email certificates on the request page.

Don’t see Secure Email for Individual and Secure Email for Business in your account? Contact your account manager or DigiCert Support.

We updated the Issued filter in the Order Status search feature on the CertCentral Orders page to only return your issued certificates. Previously, the issued filter returned issued, renewed, expired, and reissue pending orders in the search results, making it difficult to find only your issued certificates.

See for yourself

How the Order Status filter work

When using the Order Status search feature, you can only use one filter at a time. See the table below for information on the results that each filter returns in its search.

For multiple status searches, leave the Order Status search as Unfiltered and download a CSV file. You can also use the Reports library to build a custom report (in the left main menu, go to Reports).

We improved how the API returns data when using the endpoint to edit domains on pending OV or EV orders and reissues. After this change, when editing domains on a pending OV or EV order:

Before this change, successful requests to edit domains on pending OV or EV orders and reissues returned a response status code of 204 No Content. The response did not include any data, even if the request created new domains in your account.

Example response for a successful call to edit domains on a pending OV or EV order:

{
  "domains": [
    {
      "id": 4069862,
      "name": "example.org",
      "dns_name": "example.org",
      "dcv_token": {
        "token": "<random_value>",
        "expiration_date": "2023-04-29T22:52:24+00:00"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": 4069862,
      "name": "example.org",
      "dns_name": "subdomain.example.org",
      "dcv_token": {
        "token": "<random_value>",
        "expiration_date": "2023-04-29T22:52:24+00:00"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": 4069862,
      "name": "example.org",
      "dns_name": "another.subdomain.example.org",
      "dcv_token": {
        "token": "<random_value>",
        "expiration_date": "2023-04-29T22:52:24+00:00"
      }
    }
  ]
}

In this example, every domain (dns_name) on the order is submitted for validation under the scope of the base domain example.org. This means each object in the domains array returns the name and id for example.org.

Learn more: Edit domains on a pending order or reissue

Some DigiCert services will be down or experience delayed responses for up to 10 minutes during scheduled maintenance on April 8, 2023, 22:00 – 24:00 MDT (April 9, 04:00 – 06:00 UTC).

Infrastructure-related maintenance downtime

The infrastructure-related maintenance starts at 22:05 MDT (04:05 UTC). At that time, the services listed below will be down for up to 10 minutes.

Affected services

Certificate Issuing Service (CIS) and CertCentral Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP)

CertCentral certificate issuance

QuoVadis® TrustLink® certificate issuance

Direct Cert Portal certificate issuance

PKI Platform 8 new domain and organization validation

Some DigiCert services will be down for up to 10 minutes during scheduled maintenance on April 8, 2023, 09:00 – 11:00 MDT (15:00 – 17:00 UTC).

CertCentral Infrastructure-related maintenance downtime

The infrastructure-related maintenance starts at 10:05 MDT (16:05 UTC). At that time, CertCentral certificate issuance may be down or experience delayed response for up to 10 minutes.

Items to note:

We are happy to announce that CertCentral now allows you to add a valued added tax (VAT)* number to all your transactions, such as purchasing a certificate and depositing funds. DigiCert will append the VAT number supplied as a reference on payment records. Remember that if you do not provide your VAT number, your orders may include unexpected taxes that would have been excluded had you provided the VAT ID number.

You can add a VAT number to your account or division. When requesting a certificate, depositing funds, and creating a purchase order, you can use the account or division VAT number or add a custom VAT number that applies to that transaction only. The VAT number appears on your invoice/receipts and purchase orders (POs).

In the CertCentral Services API, we updated the Order validation status API to return a new response parameter for domains pending validation: dns_name_validations[].name_scope.

The name_scope parameter returns the domain you must validate to prove control over the domain on the certificate order. This is useful when you need to validate a domain on the certificate by completing a DCV check for either the base domain or for a subdomain between the FQDN and base domain.

For example:

{
  ...
  "dns_name_validations": [
    {
      "name_scope": "sub.example.com",
      "status": "unapproved",
      "method": "email",
      "dns_names": [
        "sub.example.com"
      ],
      "base_domain": "example.com"
    }
  ]
  ...
}

Notes:

On March 28, 2023, at 10:00 MDT (16:00 UTC), DigiCert will fix a bug with the Order validation status API endpoint. This bug causes the API to return different values for DV TLS orders versus OV and EV TLS orders in the dns_name_validations[].dns_names array.

Starting March 28, the dns_name_validations[].dns_names array in the Order validation status API response will always contain the exact FQDN associated with the given validation details.

This fix standardizes what is returned for DV, OV, and EV TLS orders in the dns_name_validations[].dns_names array. It also aligns the API behavior with the description of the dns_names array in the API documentation.

Currently:

{
  ...
  "dns_name_validations": [
    {
      "status": "unapproved",
      "method": "email",
      "dns_names": [
        "example.net"
      ],
      "base_domain": "example.net"
    },
    {
      "status": "unapproved",
      "method": "email",
      "dns_names": [
        "example.org"
      ],
      "base_domain": "example.org"
    }
  ]
  ...
}

{
  ...
  "dns_name_validations": [
    {
      "status": "unapproved",
      "method": "email",
      "dns_names": [
        "sub.example.net"
      ],
      "base_domain": "example.net"
    },
    {
      "status": "unapproved",
      "method": "email",
      "dns_names": [
        "sub.example.org"
      ],
      "base_domain": "example.org"
    }
  ]
  ...
}

We updated the individual domain validation process (often referred to as domain prevalidation) to improve how we display the domain’s domain control validation (DCV) method.

Note that before, we always showed the last submitted DVC method. This wasn’t very clear for customers whose last submitted DCV method was different from the last method used to validate the domain.

Now, when a domain is pending validation or revalidation, we show the last submitted DCV method (in other words, the method currently being used to validate the domain). After you validate the domain, we show the DCV method last used to complete the validation.

We added the dcv_approval_method parameter to the Domain info API response. This parameter returns the DCV method used to complete the most recent DCV check for the domain.

We only return the dcv_approval_method parameter when the request URL contains ?include_dcv=true.

Learn more about the Domain info API endpoint.

On March 8, 2023, at 10:00 MST (17:00 UTC), DigiCert will begin updating the default public issuance of TLS/SSL certificates to our second-generation (G2) root and intermediate CA (ICA) certificate hierarchies. See our DigiCert root and intermediate CA certificate updates 2023 knowledge base article for more information.

Some DigiCert services will be down for approximately 5 minutes during scheduled Europe maintenance on March 4, 2023, 09:00 - 11:00 MST (16:00 - 18:00).

QuoVadis platform maintenance-related downtime

During the two-hour maintenance window, QuoVadisQ platform services will be down for approximately 5 minutes while we do some infrastructure-related maintenance that requires server restarts.

Services will be restored as soon as the maintenance is completed.

We are happy to announce that DigiCert has added two new features to our Verified Mark Certificates:

To support VMC file hosting and government marks in API integrations, we made several additive enhancements to the endpoints for managing VMC orders.

We are happy to announce that we have improved the verified contact selection process when ordering EV SSL/TLS, Code Signing, and EV Code Signing certificates.

Now when you select an organization with existing verified contacts, you can see if a contact is validated (green check mark) or pending validation (yellow timer). Before, you could not see the validation status for the organization’s verified contacts.

Example: Pending and validated verified contacts

We are happy to announce that DigiCert now recognizes three more intellectual property offices for verifying the logo for your VMC certificate. These offices are in Denmark, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and Switzerland.

New approved trademark offices:

Other approved trademark offices:

On February 15, 2023, at 08:00 MST (15:00 UTC), DigiCert will assign new dedicated IP addresses to several DigiCert services.

For more details about these IP addresses, see our New Dedicated IP Addresses knowledge base article.

If you have questions or need help, contact your account manager or DigiCert Support.

We are happy to announce that we’ve reimplemented the RSS Feed for the CertCentral® Change log. You can find the new change log feed here: https://docs.digicert.com/en/certcentral/change-log.rss.

RSS feed items to note

RSS feed reader tips

We are happy to announce that we updated the Prove control over your domain popup window for pending OV and EV TLS certificate orders, making it easier to see what you need to do to complete the domain validation for all domains included on your certificate.

Now, when you select a domain control validation (DCV) method, you can see basic instructions for completing the domain validation along with a link to more detailed instructions on our product documentation website.

Changes to note:

• Basic instruction improvements for each DCV method

  • Better formatting

  • Easy to scan

• Order token improvements

  • Quickly identify the order token to use for all token-based DCV methods

  • See the token expiration date

• Token generation improvement

  • Automatic token generation replaces the token generation feature

  • DigiCert automatically generates a new token when the old one expires

See for yourself

1. In the left main menu, go to Certificates > Orders.

2. On the Orders page, locate and select the order number of a pending OV or EV certificate order.

3. On the OV or EV certificate’s Order details page, under What do I need to do, select the domain name link.

Improved Prove control over your domain popup window

We updated the CertCentral Services API to return the expiration date for order-level DCV random values.

Now, when you submit a request to the Get order DCV random value or  Change order DCV method API endpoints, the response includes the expiration date (expiration_date) of the random value:

{
   "dcv-random_value": "fjqr7th5ds",
   "expiration_date": "2023-02-24T16:25:52+00:00"
}

Some DigiCert services will be down for up to 10 minutes during scheduled Europe maintenance on February 4, 2023, 09:00 - 11:00 MST (16:00 - 18:00)

QuoVadis platform maintenance-related downtime

During the two-hour maintenance window, QuoVadis platform services will be down for up to 10 minutes in total while we do some infrastructure-related maintenance that requires service restarts: 5 minutes for a monthly patching restart and 5 minutes for a database restart.

To improve security and better integrate with current Single Sign-On technology, DigiCert now supports SSO federation through Open ID Connect (OIDC).

We are happy to announce that we added Verified Mark Certificates (VMCs) to the available products for Guest URLs for CertCentral Enterprise and CertCentral Partner.

Previously, you had to add someone to your account before they could order a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC). Now, you can create a Guest URL that allows a person to order a VMC without needing to be a user in your account.

See for yourself

1. In your CertCentral account, in the left menu, go to Account > Guest Access.

2. On the Guest Access page, in the Guest URLs section, select the Add Guest URL link.

3. In the Add Guest URL popup window, in the Allowed products field, search for and select Verified Mark Certificate.

We fixed a bug that prevented pending verified contacts from being displayed on the Organization details page. Note that after we validated a contact, they were automatically added to the page (i.e., you could see the “validated” verified contacts but not those pending validation).

Now when you submit a verified contact for validation, they appear in the Verified Contacts section along with the pending validation types: EV, EV CS, or CS.

We are happy to announce that you can now set the domain validation scope when reissuing your TLS/SSL certificates.

On the TLS/SSL certificate reissue forms, we added a DCV scope dropdown that allows you to set the domain validation scope to use when validating the domains on your reissued certificate: validate base domains or validate exact domain names. This setting makes it easier to see the default domain validation scope you will use to validate the domains when reissuing your certificate and update the scope if needed.

On January 16, we will rename Legacy order # in CertCentral. We will change the name to Alternate order # to better align with the API and the purpose of this second order number.

Starting January 16

Before January 16

To make it easier to find information about updates to CertCentral and the CertCentral APIs, we improved the structure of the CertCentral change log. Now, DigiCert publishes all CertCentral change log entries to a single page with these sections:

With the new structure, you can use Control + F (Windows) or Command + F (Mac) to search the entire catalogue of entries on this page for the information you need.

We fixed a bug that prevented standard and limited users from viewing the Expiring DigiCert Certificates widget on the Dashboard and the expiring certificate and order alerts on the Orders page. It also prevented them from viewing the Expiring Certificates page.

Now, when standard and limited users sign in to their CertCentral account, they see:

Some DigiCert services will be down for up to 120 minutes during scheduled maintenance on January 7, 2023.

DigiCert is happy to announce that we updated the Order details page for pending EV and standard code signing certificate orders.

To make it easier to see what you need to do and what DigiCert needs to do to issue your EV and standard code signing certificates, we added two new sections to the Certificate status section of the Order details page:

We are happy to announce that you can now set the domain validation scope when ordering a new TLS/SSL certificate.

On the TLS/SSL certificate request forms, we added a DCV scope dropdown that allows you to set the domain validation scope to use when validating the domains on your certificate: validate base domains or validate exact domain names. This setting makes it easier to see the default domain validation scope you will use to validate the domains on your certificate and update the scope if needed.

We are happy to announce that you can now set the domain validation scope when ordering or reissuing a TLS/SSL certificate with the Services API. Use the certificate_dcv_scope parameter to define the domain validation scope for the order, overriding the domain validation scope setting for the account.

The certificate_dcv_scope parameter accepts these values:

{
  ...
  "skip_approval": true,
  "dcv_method": "dns-txt-token",
  "certificate_dcv_scope": "base_domain",
  ...
}