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Celebrating Ten Years of Encrypting the Web with Let’s Encrypt

Ten years ago, the web was a very different place. Most websites didn’t use HTTPS to protect your data. As a result, snoops could read emails or even take over accounts by stealing cookies . But a group of determined researchers and technologists from EFF and the University of Michigan were dreaming of a better world: one where every web page you visited was protected from spying and interference. Meanwhile, another group at Mozilla was working on the same dream. Those dreams led to the creation of Let’s Encrypt and tools like EFF’s Certbot, which simplify protecting websites and make browsing the web safer for everyone.  

There was one big obstacle: to deploy HTTPS and protect a website, the people running that website needed to buy and install a certificate from a certificate authority. Price was a big barrier to getting more websites on HTTPS, but the complexity of installing certificates was an even bigger one.   

In 2013, the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) was founded , which would soon become the home of Let’s Encrypt, a certificate authority founded to help encrypt the Web. Let’s Encrypt was radical in that it provided certificates for free to anyone with a website. Let’s Encrypt also introduced a way to automate away the risk and drudgery of manually issuing and installing certificates. With the new ACME protocol , anyone with a website could run software (like EFF’s Certbot ) that combine d the steps of getting a certificate and correctly installing it.  

In the time since, Let’s Encrypt and Certbot have been a huge success, with over 250 million active certificates protecting hundreds of millions of websites.

This is a huge benefit to everyone’s online security and privacy. When you visit a website that uses HTTPS, your data is protected by encryption in transit, so nobody but you and the website operator gets to see it. That also prevents snoops from making a copy of your login cookies and taking over accounts.

The most important measure of Let’s Encrypt’s and Certbot’s successes is how much of people’s daily web browsing uses HTTPS. According to Firefox data, 78% of pages loaded use HTTPS. That’s tremendously improved from 27% in 2013 when Let’s Encrypt was founded. There’s still a lot of work to be done to get to 100%. We hope you’ll join EFF and Let’s Encrypt in celebrating the successes of ten years encrypting the web, and the anticipation of future growth and safety online.  

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Certbot Is Now on 4 Million Servers, Maintaining Over 31 Million Websites

EFF’s Certbot is now installed on over 4 million web servers, where it’s used to maintain HTTPS certificates for more than 31 million websites. The recent achievement of these milestones helps show the success of the project and the important role it plays in the infrastructure of a secure...

Should Caddy and Traefik Replace Certbot?

Can free and open source software projects like Caddy and Traefik eventually replace EFF’s Certbot ? Although Certbot continues to be developed, we think tools like these help offer a promising path forward in the further development of a secure and encrypted web. For some users, tools like...

Privacy Isn't Dead. Far From It.

Welcome! The fact that you’re reading this means that you probably care deeply about the issue of privacy, which warms our hearts. Unfortunately, even though you care about privacy, or perhaps because you care so much about it, you may feel that there's not much you (or anyone) can really...

The Last Mile of Encrypting the Web: 2023 Year in Review

At the start of 2023, we sunsetted the HTTPS Everywhere web extension. It encrypted browser communications with websites and made sure users benefited from the protection of HTTPS wherever possible. HTTPS Everywhere ended because all major browsers now offer the functionality to make HTTPS the default. This is due to...

EFF Launches the Tor University Challenge

SAN FRANCISCO—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Tuesday launched the Tor University Challenge , a campaign urging higher education institutions to support free, anonymous speech by running a Tor network relay. Universities answering this call to defend private access to an uncensored web will receive prizes while helping...

Tell the UK’s House of Lords: Protect End-to-End Encryption in the Online Safety Bill

Private communication is a basic, universal right. In the online world, the best tool we have to defend this right is end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption ensures that governments, tech companies, social media platforms, and other groups cannot view or access our private messages, the pictures we share with family and...

eIDAS 2.0 Sets a Dangerous Precedent for Web Security

The Council of the European Union this week adopted new language for regulations governing internet systems that may put the security of your browser at greater risk.The new language affects the EU’s electronic identification, authentication and trust services (eIDAS) rules, which are supposed to enable secure online transactions across countries...

Let's Encrypt Wins Levchin Prize For Work On Internet Security

SAN FRANCISCO—Let’s Encrypt—a project of the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), which is supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other sponsors—won the prestigious international Levchin Prize for significant contributions to real-world cryptography.Let’s Encrypt is part of the effort to encrypt the entire internet as a...

What the Duck? Why an EU Proposal to Require "QWACs" Will Hurt Internet Security

It's become easier over the years for websites to improve their security, thanks to tools that allow more people to automate and easily set-up secure measures for web applications and the services they provide. A proposed amendment to Article 45 in the EU’s Digital Identity Framework...

We Encrypted the Web: 2021 Year in Review

In 2010 , EFF launched its campaign to encrypt the entire web —that is, move all websites from non-secure HTTP to the more secure HTTPS protocol. Over 10 years later, 2021 has brought us even closer to achieving that goal. With various measurement sources reporting over 90% of...

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Divvi Up: A privacy respecting telemetry service

Take a look at this divvi up demo using docker software and the command line., enforcing privacy at internet scale.

Divvi Up can preserve user privacy while also collecting the application metrics needed to make product decisions.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla uses Divvi Up to collect metrics from users while preserving their privacy. Learn more about Divvi Up & Firefox.

Horizontal uses Divvi Up to collect telemetry in their sensitive applications at the intersection of technology, human rights, and justice. Learn more about Horizontal & Divvi Up.

Federated Machine Learning

Federated Learning is an emerging field of AI/ML and Divvi Up can help preserve user privacy when application developers train their models.

Flower Divvi Up Integration

A team of researchers sponsored by NLNet have built a prototype integrating Flower with Divvi Up's distributed secure aggregation system. Learn more about Flower & Divvi Up.

BUILT UPON AN EMERGING STANDARD

Always open source.

All components of the Divvi Up system are open source and available on GitHub . Further, the core protocol, Distributed Aggregation Protocol (DAP) , is on a path to become an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard co-developed by Internet Security Research Group (ISRG, best known known for Let's Encrypt), Cloudflare, and Mozilla.

Divvi Up is built and operated by the Internet Security Research Group , the same nonprofit behind Let's Encrypt , the world's largest Certificate Authority providing free TLS certificates to 430 million websites.

Contact Our Team

If you have a use case for Divvi Up contact our team to learn more about a paid pilot or pricing on our production environments.

Privacy, Enforced by Technology

How divvi up works, a user-generated metric.

Divvi Up works for any data that can be collected across a population, like telemetry, survey results, or many other scaled metrics collection use cases.

Divide the metric

Metrics are fed into a library where they’re divided into two shares (Divvied Up!). The shares are then encrypted locally, before any data leaves the device.

Two non-colluding servers

With two separate servers, each with only a partial share, it's impossible to deduce the whole metric. After validating the input, each server performs additional de-identification and aggregation.

Combine aggregates

Each server sends its partial aggregate metric to a collector, which finalizes the privacy-preserving computation of a wide array of aggregation functions (not just sum).

Anonymized insight

App owners gain access to a useful array of aggregate metrics to better understand their application or how users interact with it.

Cryptographically-guaranteed privacy

Produce insights while protecting privacy.

Divvi Up makes it possible to gain insights about your population of users without compromising individual privacy. Mitigate compliance risks, eliminate the need to store PII for telemetry, and respect your users’ privacy.

Internet Security Research Group

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Why does let's encrypt issue SSL certificates to fraudulent sites

The purpose of a certificate is to provide assurance to the web user community that the site in question is secure and valid.

I have found yet another fraudulent web site in which Let's Encrypt issued a certificate - https://insightcreditunion.life/pc.html .

My prior topic on this subject was quickly closed with (basically) the excuse that Let's Encrypt isn't in the business of revoking certificates of fraudulent sites.

This is contradictory to the whole purpose of the service you all are supposed to be providing.

Additionally, I've seen other posts in this community where someone has had the same issue I'm posting about, and it seems many in the community agree with Let's Encrypt's position.

In effect, Let's Encrypt is providing a false sense of security to web users. The exact opposite of the actual job of an SSL certificate authority.

That's a misunderstanding of what a DV certificate provides.

You would help the "web user community" by helping educate them on what a certificate actually provides. And, educate on tools they can use to avoid fraudulent sites. Things like Safe Browsing options in browsers or extensions that do similar.

Here's a quote from the Let's Encrypt policy

Let’s Encrypt is going to be issuing Domain Validation (DV) certificates. On a technical level, a DV certificate asserts that a public key belongs to a domain – it says nothing else about a site’s content or who runs it. DV certificates do not include any information about a website’s reputation, real-world identity, or safety. However, many people believe the mere presence of DV certificate ought to connote at least some of these things. Treating a DV certificate as a kind of “seal of approval” for a site’s content is problematic for several reasons.

The full policy is at this link

The only thing that a certificate assures is that your connection is private (as in, no one else hears what you say). You can have a private conversation with the devil* itself too. Does that make their words trustworthy, secure and valid?

*Replace devil with whatever evil entity you believe in (any religious entity, the IRS...).

This is not specific to Let's Encrypt: This applies to all other certificate authorities as well. No one provides more than a very simple assertion of an identity. Anyone claiming that certificates attest anything about trustworthiness is either clueless or outright lying.

I recommend reading Let's Encrypt's actual principles and mission statement. It probably isn't what you seem to think it is.

The purpose of a CA isn't to allow for "trust" in the sense that you think it is, or to validate that a web site is "good" or even "legal". Its purpose is purely infrastructure to allow for web browsers to know that the site they think they're connecting to is actually the name they think they are. There are plenty of good organizations trying to prevent Bad Things on the Internet, and many of them are working to solve the problems you see. It's just not the job of the CA part of running the Internet.

Interesting. I find the concept of a domain validation certificate troubling. Most users who take the trouble of viewing certificate information are not clear on this. After all, the browser states clearly that the connection is secure and the certificate is valid. This is misleading at best. In fact, if you browse the certificate details, nowhere does it indicate that these are domain validation certificates and should be trusted accordingly.

To make matters worse, if one were to do a "whois" on these sites, you'll find that their registry name is redacted for privacy.

It seems to me that if these domain validation certificates and/or private registry names were prohibited, there would be a significant reduction in fraud on the internet.

Also, "Bad Things on the Internet" is pretty subjective. That's a good reason not to delegate filtering.

This web site does not supply ownership information.

True. Browsers generally hide the information, basically trying to make TLS the norm and only flagging something that isn't encrypted at all. And people digging into certificate information may not know the meaning of what they're looking at, no. But that's a pretty small minority of users.

Yes. Definitely one challenge is that the problems that a "secure" connection and valid certificate solve, aren't the problems that most users care or think about. (In part because it's just basic infrastructure of getting the user to the site in their address bar, kind of like DNS.)

The kinds of problems of "the site with this domain name isn't trustworthy " tend to be solved by browsers having separate lists and heuristics. That's why we recommending reporting "bad" sites to those programs, and maybe to their hosting providers and such. They're the ones who have the power to help protect users. And they're much more effective than trying to put something in the advanced certificate details which are meaningless technobabble to most users.

Well, even an Organization Validated certificate that has an organization name doesn't really mean that it should be trusted more. It's easy in many jurisdictions to create a "real" organization with any name one wants. And knowing the name of an organization one is connecting to might mean something, but doesn't mean that it's really trustworthy (or that the server is only running code intended by the organization, if an organization got hacked themselves).

Maybe , but it just might be an increase in shell company names, and a decrease in regular people being able to just communicate anonymously (especially people under authoritative oppressive governments). Certainly it's a tradeoff, but the general consensus is that it's better for The Internet to allow for more access, with separate protections to try to help prevent Bad Things.)

When someone browses to a fraudulent site that has a similar URL, and looks and feels exactly like the actual site, the DV certificate does nothing to let them know that they are not on the site they think they are.

Neither do EV or OV certificates. There are examples of both issued to companies that are not the ones you expect.

On the other hand, extreme automation is the only reason Let's Encrypt can offer DV certificates for free. You cannot automate OV or EV.

No, it does not. It offers an encrypted connection between the user and the site. This is very valuable. People using open wifi systems, for example, won't have their data snooped.

Yes, bad actors cause trouble. It is frustrating. But much is needed to handle that. There is no single magic answer.

Here you're hitting the nail right on the head! The CONNECTION is secure. That's it. That's all. The CONNECTION is secure.

A browser and a certificate do not claim anything else. Not about the website, not about the content. Just about the connection.

In the past, there were things like "EV certificates" ( Extended Validation Certificate - Wikipedia ), but Google Chrome as well as Mozilla Firefox decided 4 years ago that they wouldn't continue with EV indicators already ( Chrome and Firefox Removing EV Certificate Indicators | Decipher ).

So even the certificates that did claim something more about the website itself have practically been removed from the web ecosystem. They still exist, but browsers don't mark them as extra secure or something similar as they did in the past.

The people just have to realise the purpose of a TLS certificate (securing the CONNECTION) and that with a TLS certificate you can securely transfer your credit card details to a scammer or transfer your identity information to a phishing website securely. That's all there is to it.

The CA/B forum sets the rules for certificate issuance and use. If you have any issues with how certificates are issued, or would like to see them changed, you should contact them.

Google and Microsoft already provide APIs to flag malicious websites. They operate with a budget measured in billions, and have a broad view of the Internet.

How would Let's Encrypt (or any CA) know any reported sites are malicious? It could be a competitor trying to knock my website offline during a busy time of year. Could I sue the CA for damages?

Maybe my website is legal in one country, but illegal in another? Not every CA is American, and I could just obtain a certificate elsewhere.

The point is, the CA is not the proper layer to address these issues.

That brings up the question(s): Shouldn't DNS providers stop resolving domains that are fraudulent? And thus: Shouldn't hosting companies stop hosting sites that are fraudulent? Why stop there?: Shouldn't the entire Internet stop the transmission of fraudulent activity?

[Why focus only on the CA?]

I'll turn the question back at you: why should a certificate authority police the content of sites that use its certificates? Because that's what you're asking them to do.

The CA is one layer in the equation. As it stands my complaint to the registrar resulted in the malicious site being taken down. So that's probably the more appropriate direction to take as they provide an abuse outlet.

My 83 year old mother was a victim. As I tracked down the fraudulent site the first thing I looked at was the certificate. My thought was that a CA shouldn't issue a certificate to a criminals. I still think there should be a way to have it known who these criminals are and have every layer of security involved so the chances of them repeating what they do are minimalized to the nth degree.

A common (though incorrect, IMO) belief. But where does it end?

• In Germany, last I knew, it was a crime to deny the Holocaust.
• In North Korea, it's a crime punishable by death to mock the Crazy Fat Man.

Examples could be multiplied, but I think these are enough for now. Should LE refuse to issue a cert to such sites? And how would they know of the content? What if the content changes after the cert is issued?

The fundamental error is in believing that the cert validates something that it does not. The cert verifies that its holder has demonstrated control over the name(s) on the cert--that's it. That's all it has ever meant, and it's all it can ever mean. It has never meant anything with respect to the bona fides of the cert holder.

You should know that Let's Encrypt is a very small nonprofit with around 30 employees. I don't know how you suggest they should be doing that while issuing 3.5 million certificates per day. Let's Encrypt Stats - Let's Encrypt

We understand what you're saying. But blocking issuance to these websites is incredibly expensive, and revoking certs after the fact is not very effective.

I'm not certain, but I think you could even get a certificate using Tor to communicate to the ACME server. Or use a VPN.

When required by the authorities, I believe LE would hand over things like IP addresses used, but chances are this wouldn't help the investigation. Unless the scammers were dumb enough to get a cert using their home connection. (Usually the webserver itself is used and you already know that IP address.)

In fact, Let's Encrypt publishes Legal Transparency Reports saying how often they are legally required to give authorities data. Compared to the number of certificates out there, it's a really small number.

In a "perfect world" all people would be "good". And in the rare case where someone wasn't, any of the "good" would have the power to prevent them from doing anything "bad" [by any means].

In this world, we can't take the power of judge, jury, and executioner into our own hands. It is NOT within the power of the CA to execute a certificate for the reason you mention.

Office of the CIO

Guidelines for data classification.

The purpose of this guideline is to establish a framework for classifying institutional data based on its level of sensitivity, value, and criticality to the university as required by the university's Information Security Policy. Classification of data will aid in determining baseline security controls for the protection of data.

This policy applies to all faculty, staff, students, and third-party agents of the university and any other university affiliate authorized to access institutional data. In particular, this guideline applies to those who are responsible for classifying and protecting institutional data, as defined by Information Security Roles and Responsibilities .

Note : This Guideline applies to all operational and research data.

Definitions

The definitions below are for use within the Guidelines for Data Classification. An affiliate is anyone associated with the university, including students, staff, faculty, emeritus faculty, and any sponsored guests. Most individuals affiliated with the university have an Andrew userID.

Confidential data is a generalized term typically representing data classified as restricted according to the data classification scheme defined in this guideline. This term is often used interchangeably with sensitive data.

A data steward is a senior-level employee of the university who oversees the lifecycle of one or more sets of institutional data. See the   Information Security Roles and Responsibilities   for more information.

Institutional data is defined as all data owned or licensed by the university. 

Non-public information is defined as any information that is classified as private or restricted information according to the data classification scheme defined in this guideline.

Sensitive data is a generalized term typically representing data classified as restricted according to the data classification scheme defined in this guideline. This term is often used interchangeably with confidential data.

Data Classification

Data classification, in the context of information security, is the classification of data based on its level of sensitivity and the impact to the university should that data be disclosed, altered, or destroyed without authorization. Data classification helps determine what baseline security controls are appropriate for safeguarding that data. All institutional data should be classified into one of four sensitivity levels or classifications:

Classification of data should be performed by an appropriate data steward. Data stewards are senior-level university employees who govern the lifecycle of one or more sets of institutional data. See Information Security Roles and Responsibilities for more information on the data steward role and associated responsibilities.

Visit the Data Classification Workflow for a process on how to classify data.

Data Collections

Data stewards may wish to assign a single classification to a collection of data that is common in purpose or function. When classifying a data collection, the most restrictive classification of any of the individual data elements should be used. For example, if a data collection consists of a student's name, CMU email address, and social security number, the data collection should be classified as restricted even though the student's name and CMU email address may be considered public information.

Reclassification

Periodically, it is important to reevaluate the classification of institutional data to ensure the assigned classification is still appropriate based on changes to legal and contractual obligations as well as changes in the use of the data or its value to the university. This evaluation should be conducted by the appropriate data steward. Conducting an evaluation on an annual basis is encouraged; however, the data steward should determine what frequency is most appropriate based on available resources. If a data steward determines that the classification of a certain data set has changed, an analysis of security controls should be performed to determine whether existing controls are consistent with the new classification. If gaps are found in existing security controls, they should be corrected in a timely manner, commensurate with the level of risk presented by the gaps.

Calculating Classification

The goal of information security, as stated in the university's Information Security Policy, is to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of institutional data. Data classification reflects the level of impact to the university if confidentiality, integrity, or availability is compromised.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect quantitative system for calculating the classification of a particular data element. In some situations, the appropriate classification may be more obvious, such as when federal laws require the university to protect certain types of data (e.g., personally identifiable information). If the appropriate classification is not inherently obvious, consider each security objective using the following table as a guide. It is an excerpt from  Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) publication 199 , published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which discusses the categorization of information and information systems.

As the total potential impact on the university increases from low to high, data classification should become more restrictive, moving from public to restricted . If an appropriate classification is still unclear after considering these points, contact the Information Security Office for assistance.

Appendix A: Predefined Types of Restricted Information

The Information Security Office and the Office of General Counsel have defined several types of Restricted data based on state and federal regulatory requirements. This list does not encompass all types of restricted data. Predefined types of restricted information are defined as follows:

• Data Classification Workflow [pdf]
• Data Classification Workflow [text version]
• Data Stewardship Council
• Information Security Office
• Roles and Responsiblities

Revision History

Internet Security Research Group

Digital infrastructure for a more secure and privacy-respecting world. Read all about our nonprofit work this year in our 2023 Annual Report .

From our Blog

Intent to end ocsp service.

Moving to a more privacy-respecting and efficient method of checking certificate revocation.

Kristin Berdan joins ISRG as new General Counsel

Join us in welcoming Kristin Berdan to the ISRG team as our new General Counsel.

White House, Craig Newmark Support Memory Safe Software

Growing attention on the solvability of memory safety.

ISRG Projects

Free tls certificates.

Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority. More than 450 million websites around the world use Let's Encrypt certificates to provide security and privacy to their visitors.

Memory Safety for Critical Infrastructure

Prossimo is an effort to move the Internet's security-sensitive software infrastructure to memory safe code. We provide strategic planning, facilitation, and communication to bring memory safety to high impact projects.

Privacy Preserving Application Telemetry

Divvi Up is a privacy preserving telemetry service. It enables application owners to gain insights into a user base while respecting users' individual privacy, eliminating the need to store PII for telemetry, and mitigating compliance risks.

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Products and Services

Cisco Secure Firewall

Do you have a firewall fit for today's challenges.

Does it harmonize your network, workload, and application security? Does it protect apps and employees in your hybrid or multicloud environment? Make sure you're covered.

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Cisco AI Assistant for Security demo

With workers, data, and offices located across the country and around the world, your firewall must be ready for anything. Secure Firewall helps you plan, prioritize, close gaps, and recover from disaster—stronger.

Lean on AI that simplifies policy management

Streamlining workflows. Finding misconfigurations. Auto-generating rules. With thousands of policies to manage and threats pouring in, Cisco AI Assistant saves time by simplifying how you manage firewall policy.

Achieve superior visibility

Regain visibility and control of your encrypted traffic and application environments. See more and detect more with Cisco Talos, while leveraging billions of signals across your infrastructure with security resilience.

Drive efficiency at scale

Secure Firewall supports advanced clustering, high availability, and multi-instance capabilities, enabling you to bring scalability, reliability, and productivity across your teams and hybrid network environments.

Make zero trust practical

Secure Firewall makes a zero-trust posture achievable and cost-effective with network, microsegmentation, and app security integrations. Automate access and anticipate what comes next.

Find the ideal firewall for your business

1000 Series

Best for smaller businesses and branch offices.

1200 Series

Advanced security for distributed enterprise branches in a compact, high-performing form factor.

3100 Series

Enhanced for medium-sized enterprises, with the flexibility to grow in the future.

4200 Series

Experience faster threat detection with greater visibility and the agility to safeguard large enterprise data center and campus networks.

9300 Series

Optimized for service providers and high-performance data centers.

Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual

Virtual firewalls for consistent policies across physical, cloud, and hyperconverged environments.

Secure Firewall ISA3000

Rugged design for manufacturing, industrial, and operational technology environments.

Secure WAF and bot protection

Enhance application security and resilience for today’s digital enterprise with Secure WAF and bot protection.

DDoS protection

Defend against attacks that flood your network with traffic, impacting access to apps and business-critical services.

Why migrate?

Level up your security posture with the latest capabilities for unified network and workload micro-segmentation protection.

Experience Firewall Management Center in action

See how you can centralize and simplify your firewall admin and intrusion prevention. With visibility across ever-changing and global networks, you can manage modern applications and malware outbreaks in real time.

Get 3 vital protections in a single step

You don't have to trade security for productivity. The Cisco Security Step-Up promotion deploys three powerful lines of defense that are simple, secure, and resilient for your business. Defend every critical attack vector–email, web traffic, and user credentials—in one easy step.

Explore the evolution of network security

We asked hundreds of IT and security professionals how they’re managing threats and using firewall in the face of AI, cloud complexity, and more. Here’s how they’re meeting those challenges.

Cisco Community: Connect with peers and experts

Cisco Community is your destination for product advice, a place to foster connections and share your knowledge.

Find the latest content and resources to help you learn more about Cisco Secure Firewall.

Add value to security solutions

Cisco Security Enterprise Agreement

Instant savings

Experience security software buying flexibility with one easy-to-manage agreement.

Services for security

Let the experts secure your business

Get more from your investments and enable constant vigilance to protect your organization.

Customer stories and insights

Powering fuel providers.

Ampol's global business includes refineries, fueling stations, and corporate offices. The company's infrastructure and retail operations are protected and connected with Cisco technology.

Ampol Limited

Reducing cybersecurity risk

A zero-trust approach to security protects the privacy of patients' personal data at this Ohio children's hospital.

Dayton Children’s

Better wireless access and security

A Texas school district turned to Cisco technology to bring ubiquitous, reliable wireless access to students while assuring proactive network monitoring capabilities.

Protecting networks and assets

A Michigan-based credit union protects the digital security of its hybrid workforce, customers, and assets with help from Cisco.

Lake Trust Credit Union

Boosting visibility and security

This Indiana university provides reliable and safe network access with Cisco's unified security ecosystem as its foundation for zero trust.

Marian University

The NFL relies on Cisco

From the draft to Super Bowl Sunday, the NFL relies on Cisco to protect billions of devices, endpoints, and users from cyber threats. What does that look like on game day? Watch the video on the story page to find out.

National Football League

Share your experience. Create a safer digital world.

Join us in shaping the future of cybersecurity and creating a safer digital world, one story at a time.

Simple, visible, and unified

Unify security across your high-performing data centers, providing superior visibility and efficiency. Then watch it work with ease.

Celebrating 10 Years of Building a Better Internet

Looking back at our accomplishments. looking ahead to many more years of building a brighter internet..

It’s hard to believe 10 years have passed since Eric Rescorla, Alex Halderman, Peter Eckersley and I founded ISRG as a nonprofit home for public benefit digital infrastructure. We had an ambitious vision, but couldn’t have known then the extent to which that vision would become shared and leveraged by so much of the Internet. We wanted to take this moment to highlight the people and organizations that have helped make our impact possible, and share a bit about where we’re heading for the next ten years.

“ISRG has significantly enhanced the security and privacy of the Internet for users all over the world, through its Let’s Encrypt certificate authority. Today, we almost take for granted that websites will use HTTPS to protect our interactions…Let’s Encrypt was a game-changer for Internet security.”

“Congratulations to ISRG on its tenth anniversary and for the growth of its Let's Encrypt program. As the Internet increases in importance to our daily lives, security has become essential and ISRG is a vital part of providing it.”

“We want to see privacy preserving metrics used everywhere, by default, not just for metrics that are considered to be sensitive. Sometimes metrics can reveal personal information even if they don't appear to be sensitive.”

“The people at ISRG have been helping protect the Internet for over ten years, and continue to protect us all. They're a necessary part of #CyberCivilDefense and national security.”

“EFF is so proud that we had a role in creating and fostering ISRG. We have been delighted to see it grow into such a strong and vital organization. Quite simply, Let’s Encrypt has improved the safety and security of everyone who relies on the internet. Not many organizations can say that, much less ones that are only 10 years old. We’re proud and we know our friend Peter Eckersley – who we all lost too soon – would be proud too. Cheers and congratulations!”

“Paramount to ensuring the Internet continues to be the most fundamental tool to connect, learn, and express, is the notion that the Web be free and open, safe and privacy-respecting.”

“Thanks to the ISRG's efforts, the internet is becoming a safer place for everyone… ISRG has shown its commitment to its mission by initiating new projects like Prossimo and Divvi Up, which focus on enhancing user privacy and the security of digital communications beyond just encryption. These projects are a testament to the organization’s dedication to making the internet a safer place for all of us. We should all be grateful for the work done by this amazing team and the progress they have made in securing the internet.”

“Creating a new kind of certificate authority that gives out free certificates was a crazy idea…we had to prove that the economics would work, and there was no way to do that except to just build it.”

“Vision combined with execution can make a big impact in the world, and ISRG has done just that!”

“By democratizing SSL certificates, Let's Encrypt has played an essential role in creating more safety and privacy on the web. Kudos!”

“We have supported Let's Encrypt since the very beginning. It is very valuable and important that nowadays any website can be equipped with an SSL certificate free of charge.”

“The certificate system is a great example of an Internet infrastructure that puts to use real world trust relationships towards a functioning technical trust ‘anchor.’ Billions of people access the Internet with less censorship and surveillance because Let's Encrypt hastened the adoption of web security measures by making certificates easy to obtain.”

A look back at highlights from our first 10 years

Isrg founded.

ISRG was founded in May of 2013 by Josh Aas and Eric Rescorla as a home for public benefit digital infrastructure. Josh and Eric were later joined by Alex Halderman and Peter Eckersley, who were at the time developing a protocol for automatically issuing and renewing certificates. These combined efforts were the genesis of Let’s Encrypt. The four started ISRG as a nonprofit, hoping that nonprofit governance requirements would keep the organization transparent and reliable in the long term.ISRG was founded thanks in part to early sponsors and partners Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Akamai, Cisco, and the University of Michigan.

Let’s Encrypt Project Launched

After two years of hard work, ISRG launched its flagship project Let’s Encrypt in 2015. Let’s Encrypt was designed to be a free, open, and transparent Certificate Authority. Announced in 2014, the CA issued its first certificate on September 14th, 2015, and started providing public service on December 3rd of the same year.

1 Billionth Let’s Encrypt Certificate Issued

In late February 2020, Let’s Encrypt issued its billionth TLS certificate. This monumental number represented the new age of Internet security that ISRG and Let’s Encrypt helped usher in. By November 2020, 84% of page loads used HTTPS globally.

Prossimo Launched

Around the same time as the issuance of our billionth certificate in 2020, the ISRG team decided it was time to tackle another significant Internet security threat: memory safety. This project, later named Prossimo, took its first steps when collaborating with maintainer Daniel Stenberg to add options to build curl with memory safe HTTP and TLS libraries.

Divvi Up Launched

In 2020, ISRG partnered with Apple, Google, National Institutes of Health, and The MITRE Corporation on the Exposure Notification Private Analytics (ENPA), a service that enables privacy-preserving metrics collection from Covid-19 exposure notification apps. This work helped to kick off the ISRG Prio services project, which was renamed Divvi Up in 2021. Divvi Up joined Prossimo and Let’s Encrypt as ISRG’s third project, focusing on the development of a privacy-respecting metrics collection service.

Let’s Encrypt Receives Levchin Prize

On April 13, 2022, the Real World Crypto steering committee presented the Max Levchin Prize for Real-World Cryptography to Let’s Encrypt in recognition of the project’s role in developing a more secure Web through the distribution of free and easy to use TLS certificates. ISRG is honored to share this award with past winners like the Tor Project, Ralph Merkle, and Eric Rescorla.

Prossimo Supports Rust Merge into Linux kernel

Support for Rust was merged into the Linux kernel in late 2022. This was the product of years of hard work led by developer Miguel Ojeda, who completed this milestone with support from Prossimo’s Rust for Linux initiative. Though this marked just the beginning for a more memory safe kernel, it was an important first step in building a more secure Web.

What’s in store for the next 10 years

Technology continues to evolve and change at a rapid clip and is becoming ever more enmeshed in our lives and those of our children, friends, colleagues, and loved ones. This trend isn't likely to change any time soon, from healthcare increasingly reliant on Internet connected medical devices, to education using more apps and online learning tools, to the countless other sectors and areas of life all relying more and more on data and technology. For all of these uses, security and privacy can't be forgotten or ignored. As we look toward the next decade of ISRG (and beyond!), we commit to continuing our mission to reduce the financial, technological, and educational barrier to secure communications over the Internet, in whatever form that might take.

“One of the nation's preeminent internet security and privacy organizations, the Internet Security Research Group is increasing web security at scale, making the internet safer for the people and communities most at risk of harmful surveillance. From Let's Encrypt to Divvi Up, for 10 years ISRG has been a standard bearer for reducing inequality in the digital age. ISRG has made enormous contributions to building a privacy-respecting internet, which is crucial for free expression. The Ford Foundation is proud to support their path-breaking efforts.”

“ISRG's impact has been profound and foundational to the future of the Internet. Directly addressing the deeper long term problems of the Internet as a non profit is an incredible act of bravery and selflessness that benefits all of us. ISRG is doing the work to rebuild the underpinnings of the Internet so they are strong and resilient. We can build even bigger, greater things on that foundation”

“I'm excited by a group that has long-term thinking on what we can have an impact on in five or 10 years. For better or worse, a lot of software is focused on the next release or the imminent security bugs. But the kind of long-term thinking in which you start the project thinking you will have an impact in 10 years—it is so rare to have that kind of thinking.”

“Good infrastructure [including digital] can create a fairer and more just society. It uplifts everyone by being accessible to all. In short, it ensures equality of opportunity. Of course, we don't know how the future will look. But we do have the power to start building the world we deserve.”

Impact made possible 100% through charitable contributions

We're incredibly grateful to the many thousands of supporters who have made our work possible over the last ten years—by making a case for corporate sponsorship, giving through DAFs, or making individual donations. Thanks to their generosity, we've changed the Internet for nearly everyone using it. With ongoing support, we'll continue to do just that as it evolves.

As long as there's the Internet, our work will be needed. Your support will allow us to continue adapting and responding to help ensure the Web is a brighter, more secure place for all of us long into the future.

Help celebrate our anniversary and support our impact.

Make a donation.

Your gift of any size helps fund our impact around the world.

Become a Sponsor

More than 100 organizations sponsor ISRG to fund our projects.

Thank you to the organizations helping celebrate this milestone by sponsoring our tenth anniversary.

And thank you to our longtime sponsors and donors