It’s been nearly four years since we began working with Comodo to make the entire internet safer and more secure. Thanks to that partnership SSL adoption on cPanel servers is higher than ever before.
With cPanel & WHM version 56 we introduced the Market Provider, and began adding Comodo-signed hostname SSLs to cPanel & WHM servers. In version 58 we added AutoSSL to install those same free SSLs on all hosted domains automatically. With version 60 we both enabled AutoSSL by default on new servers and gave server administrators the option to enable it after the upgrade. The Market Provider and AutoSSL have each been a hugely popular. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
SSL By the Numbers
We issued our very first Comodo-backed SSL in February, and then only 181 in March. In April the Market Provider and Free Hostname SSL certificates were starting to hit live servers, and we started to see the uptick. The real jumps, though, started once AutoSSL was released in version 58, which included Comodo’s free 90 day SSLs as well. In version 60 we added AutoSSL to the Feature Showcase and have seen an incredible response. In the last 16 days we have issued over 3.5 Million SSL certificates.
The Comodo team has been working hard to keep up with demand, and since March 1st we have issued over 5.2 million SSL certificates. Thanks to them, that number is climbing every second. We are issuing new SSL certificates at a rate of approximately 240,000 per day. That’s 10,000 new certificates per hour, or 166 certificates a minute. We could not have anticipated the demand that we’ve seen, and are incredibly grateful to the Comodo team for their commitment to our shared goal: securing traffic across the internet.
Up Next: Remove Non-SSL Support for cPanel Services
The success of AutoSSL has been exciting, but we’re just getting started. Version 60 introduced wildcard SSL support to the Market Provider, and we are still planning to add OV and EV support as well. As more domains are secured by AutoSSL, it becomes clear what the next step in our journey should be: drop support for cPanel & WHM’s services on insecure ports. To be clear, our plan for this only involves removing insecure connections for cPanel services; we won’t touch the LAMP stack. One of the many decisions to be made along the way is whether or not to include proxy-subdomain support. Make sure to vote on the feature request site, if that is important to you!
What other concerns do you have for us? Would SSL-only access to cPanel, WHM, Webmail, and Web Disk cause you problems? Find me on Twitter, comment below, or send me an email and let me know what you think!
