PKI Today 2026: Three Horses, Five Carts, Zero Slack
Everyone wants to tell you the post-quantum story as one horse, one cart, one tidy road to 2030. It isn't. There are three horses, they're all pulling at once, they're hitched to five different carts, and at least two of them are dragging the same cart in slightly different directions. That's why Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), from management to planning for future efforts feels heavier now even though nothing in your environment technically broke. The horses are our deadlines, and they don't coordinate. One is certificate validity collapsing from 398 days toward 47. One is Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) mandates, every major regulator setting its own pace around the year 2030. One is the FIPS-140-2 sunset, quietly invalidating cryptographic modules you're still running (I'm also going to lean in on this horse analogy way too much, you're welcome). Survivable, any one of them. But none of them checked the other two's calendar. Ballot: The 47-day Certificate Countdown The first horse is named Ballot, and it's the one already at a gallop. In April 2025 the CA/Browser Forum passed ballot SC-081v3, scheduling a reduction in maximum certificate lifetime from 398 days down to 47 by 2029 [1]. The schedule: 200 days as of March 15, 2026 (done) 100 days in 2027 47 days in 2029, with domain-validation reuse collapsing to 10 days That last step is the one that bites: a certificate you touched once a year becomes one you touch roughly eight times a year, multiplied by every public or regulated certificate in an inventory you haven't finished counting. Treat 2029 as the deadline and you've misread the schedule. The 2027 step to 100 days is where manual renewal breaks for most enterprises [2], and the market isn't waiting for the mandate either: Let's Encrypt has committed to a 45-day default by 2028, ahead of the industry timeline [3]. This is a now problem wearing a 2029 disguise. Reckoning: The Global Post-Quantum Cryptographic Timeline The second horse, called Reckoning, broke out running this year. US Executive Order 14412, signed June 22 2026, turned years of post-quantum draft guidance into enforceable federal deadlines [4]. High-value and high-impact systems must complete key-establishment migration to NIST-approved algorithms by the end of 2030, with digital-signature migration following by the end of 2031, and contractors are pulled to a 2030 line through the acquisition rules [4]. This isn't an American story alone. Every major regulatory bloc is running its own version of the same clock, non-exhaustively: EU: national roadmaps due end of 2026, high-risk systems migrated by 2030, full transition by 2035 [5] Australia: classical asymmetric cryptography retired entirely by end of 2030 [6] Canada: CCCS is running its own migration guidance on a parallel track, distinct from the NIST/CNSA baseline The mandates differ in mechanism and pace, but they converge on the same decade. Sunset: FIPS 140-2's Expiration Date The third horse is the quietest, which is exactly why it catches people. On September 21 2026, NIST's Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) moves FIPS 140-2 validations to its historical list, and a module on that list can no longer be procured to satisfy a federal cryptographic requirement [7]. Nothing about the module changes on that date. What changes is whether you are allowed to keep buying it. If your compliance story rests on a 140-2 certificate, that validation expires before either of the other two horses finishes its run. The replacement path runs through 140-3, and through providers that haven't finished validating their post-quantum primitives. We name this horse Sunset. The Pale Horse: CRQC's Unscheduled Arrival There is a fourth horse, and it's the reason the other three feel so urgent. Ballot's window collapse has the CA/Browser Forum cracking the whip; the Reckoning has regulators on different continents setting the pace; Sunset has a time window stamped on it by the CMVP. Somebody scheduled all three. Nobody scheduled the fourth. It rides last, and you already know the verse. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was CRQC. Note: I'm pretty sure that's how the passage goes. The cryptographic relevant quantum computer (CRQC), it's the only thing on this page that never filed a transition timeline. You can't plan against its arrival date because it does not have one, which is exactly why the move is to start now instead of when it becomes obvious: by the time it is obvious, the broken thing is the math underneath everything you already shipped. Name the three and you have named the horses. The carts are the actual work efforts they tow behind them: Discovery: Finding the cryptography you can't currently see Automation: Issuance because manual renewal will be a death sentence Multi-CA: Running more than one certificate authority (CA) whether you wanted to or not PQC Deployment (including Hybrid): Deploying new quantum-resistant algorithms defined by your federal mandates PQC Cost: Surviving what those algorithms do to revocation and certificate size The trouble is that the horses don't line up one per cart. Ballot drags both discovery and automation. Reckoning is hitched to our PQC algorithm choices and our CA strategy and your deployment sequencing all at once. Sunset pulls on the same algorithm cart from the other side, because the modules you're forced onto are the ones still validating the new primitives. Pull hard on any one rein and you'll tighten three other traces you weren't watching. Note: A harness trace is what connects the horse to the cart. So this isn't a roadmap in the do-these-seven-things-in-order sense, because the work does not queue that cleanly. It's a map of which force is pulling which part of your estate, where they overlap, and what you can do about it, one dependency harness at a time. And every harness shares a single starting line. The horses do not agree on a deadline, and none of the work they demand is even possible until we know where our cryptography actually lives. Which is the part almost nobody has done. That's where this article series starts: not with algorithms or ballots, but with the unglamorous inventory every regulator quietly assumes you've already finished. From there we follow the path forward, one horse and one cart at a time. Analogy over. But we're just getting started with this article series. References [1] CA/Browser Forum. Ballot SC-081v3 (TLS certificate lifetime reduction), passed April 2025. Maximum validity 398 → 200 days (15 March 2026) → 100 days (2027) → 47 days (2029); DCV reuse window to 10 days. [2] Understanding the Risk Scale: 6-month SSL/TLS Validity Starts March 15, 2026. [3] Let's Encrypt. Decreasing Certificate Lifetimes to 45 Days. [4] Executive Order 14412, signed June 22, 2026. whitehouse.gov. Key-establishment migration end-2030, digital-signature migration end-2031; contractor pull-forward via acquisition rules. (FR Doc 2026-12909, Vol. 91 No. 121, 25 June 2026.) [5] EU NIS Cooperation Group. A Coordinated Implementation Roadmap for the Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography, June 2025. National plans end-2026, high-risk systems 2030, full transition 2035. [6] Australian Signals Directorate. Information Security Manual (ISM): ceasing traditional asymmetric cryptography targeted for end of 2030. [7] NIST Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). FIPS 140-2 validations moved to the historical list effective September 21, 2026.
SSL & persistence configurations from qkview or UCS files
Is there any quick way to extract (into, for example, an Excel file) the following configuration details from qkview or UCS files? 1. list of SSL certificates, including: - SSL certificate expiration status / dates - which virtual servers or SSL profiles are using each SSL certificate 2. list of persistence configurations
What Certificates should be where? GSLB Trust Certificates vs Device Trusted Certificates
Hi All, My setup consists of two DC's with Two GTM's (Active/Standby) and Two LTM's (Active/Standby) in each DC. Within the GSLB Trusted Certificate Store, there are certs for each others devices, which I believe is the correct setup. (Each device has 8 certs, of its other devices)… However I am not sure about what should be in the "System - Certificate Management - Device Certificate Management - Device Trust Certificates store. (This is a bit of a mess, some devices have each others, some don't etc. Would like to have this cleaned up. For ease of description will refer to items as the following : - DC1GTMA - DC1 Active GTM DC1GTMS - DC1 Standby GTM DC1LTMA - DC1 Active LTM DC1LTMS - DC1 Standby LTM DC2GTMA - DC2 Active GTM DC2GTMS - DC2 Standby GTM DC2LTMA - DC2 Active LTM DC2LTMS - DC2 Standby LTM The four GTM's are in a device sync group "DNS - Settings - GSLB - General"...so when you make a change on one GTM, its replicated across all of them. Would this come under IQUERY and thus come under the GSLB Trusted Certificate store, or is this under the Device Trust Store? Hope the above makes sense. Thanks
Problem with C3D - Client Certificate Constrained Delegation
Hi all, We have been using C3D in a public facing web app several years now having no issues. Clients use their certificates from many different CAs to login into the app and when somebody has a certificate from a different CA we add that CA to a list of trusted and allowed CAs that users can use certificates to log in form. The internal CA that we use to forge client certificates and pass them to the node uses sha256RSA as sign algorithm and sha256 as hash signature algorithm. We had to add a new allowed CA that client will use certificates to connect from but uses sha512ECDSA as sign algorithm and sha512 as hash signature algorithm and when someone uses a client certificate of this CA to try to connect to our application TLS connection breaks with "Alert (Level: Fatal, Description: Handshake Failure)" ¿Has anyone enncountered a similar issue? Thank you.INFORM: Entrust CA will be untrusted in Chrome after Oct 31, 2024
If you manage certs from Entrust in your environment, this will impact your Google Chrome users, so intermediate certs will likely need to be bundled to handle this in your clientssl profiles OR if you control all the clients you can assure that explicit trust in the clients is enabled for Entrust CAs. Google details on the situation
Unable to login with Certificate Manager local user
I've created a local user account with the Certificate Manager role on All partitions - and have enabled tmsh access. However, when I attempt to login with this account - either GUI or SSH - I am receiving a login failed message. We don't have any password enforcement in place and access restrictions are tied to the RFC1918 address space, so that is not coming into play. We have remote auth (TACACS) enabled with fallback to local and other local accounts are able to login successfully. Thoughts? Version: 17.1.1.2 Username - cert-mgr Role - Certificate Manager Partition: All Terminal Access: tmsh Wed Sep 11 10:51:20 CDT 2024 cert-mgr 0-0 httpd(pam_audit): User=cert-mgr tty=(unknown) host=x.x.x.x failed to login after 1 attempts (start="Wed Sep 11 10:51:18 2024" end="Wed Sep 11 10:51:20 2024").: Wed Sep 11 11:00:20 CDT 2024 cert-mgr 0-0 httpd(pam_audit): User=cert-mgr tty=(unknown) host=x.x.x.x failed to login after 1 attempts (start="Wed Sep 11 11:00:18 2024" end="Wed Sep 11 11:00:20 2024").:
Create a CSR and Key using the BigIP LTM GUI when renewing a certificate
Hi, I use the F5 Bigip LTM to create CSR's and Keys. I submit the CSR to our public CA to obtain the Certificate and then import the generated certificate to the F5. I use the F5 Certificate Management GUI as a database for all of our Public Certificates (as they are all in use in our SSL profiles). All this is good, however after 13 months when it is time to renew the certificate, I use the F5 GUI to renew the CSR. The problem is that the GUI does not allow me to create a new key when using the "Renew" option. I could use other command line tools for this, but it would be easier to manage in the F5 GUI. Does anyone know if there is a way to renew a certificate from the F5 GUI and have it create a new Key? For example click on "System / Certificate Management". Then click on a Public CA Certificate and click "Renew". Fill out the required fields and have it generate a new key. Any advice is appreciated.
