We have completed the migration from the 20+ legacy Symantec public TLS systems to our award-winning DigiCert CertCentral®, enabling the shutdown of legacy TLS issuing systems. This multi-year project started after DigiCert’s acquisition of Symantec in 2017, when we migrated to new data centers, hardware and software, in connection with scaling the operations to support the Symantec certificate volume. The shutdown simplifies the DigiCert issuance process by refactoring core systems, like our validation and CA systems, and shutting off systems that were created a long time ago.

Moving to CertCentral will provide improved compliance and an enhanced user experience by offering high-performance certificate management and automation protocols, including ACME and validation management. DigiCert continues to modernize PKI and establish our technology in new, state-of-the-art data centers.

During 2020, DigiCert focused on deprecating legacy systems from both Symantec and DigiCert. The shutdown included the DigiCert retail, partner and enterprise systems, and the Symantec retail, mid-market and partner systems. The Symantec shutdown included the legacy systems used to support the Symantec, Geotrust and Thawte brands. We are finishing the shutdown of the Symantec Enterprise system, which will be turned off on Jan.18.

On top of the system shutdowns, we deployed our new validation system, a replacement CA and a new key ceremony process. These improvements streamlined operations of the CA and eliminated manual processes throughout DigiCert. We still have work to do during 2021 to further enhance our validation manager and validation process.

With the customer migration to our CertCentral platform essentially complete, customers and partners of DigiCert, Geotrust and Thawte brands will enjoy improved processes, faster validation and issuance, and improved visibility into their certificate landscape. We will accelerate innovation with a strong focus on continually adding to our automation offerings. This will give them greater agility in their certificate management operations to address industry changes such as shorter certificate lifetimes.

This is a significant milestone in our goal to improve compliance and accelerate the adoption of industry improvements. The new systems are designed to be easily modified with agility in mind, to ensure DigiCert can respond quickly to industry changes and security developments. Our UX team has worked tirelessly to make even the look and feel of the systems feed into the security offering.

Migrating multiple systems to one public TLS certificate manager has required a committed effort. DigiCert Engineering went to great lengths to align databases and upgrade operational scale to include ocsp and related services. Our sales and product staff worked across the globe with customers and partners to ensure we captured their requirements and addressed their certificate management concerns. All of this was done to advance our vision of providing the best global technology with regional initiatives and teams, to offer a local touch, with CertCentral currently available in 11 languages.

Migrating legacy systems to CertCentral lets us direct our resources away from maintaining multiple older systems and toward innovation. The migration bolsters our continuous creation of new offerings for our customers and partners through CertCentral. These include more customizable validation, better validation options and enhanced automation controls that support the different TLS and Code Signing certificate use cases.

The upgrade to CertCentral moves the industry forward by supporting a better set of web PKI operations. We’re excited about what’s in store for the year ahead. DigiCert is more committed than ever to drive innovation and best practices, with the goal of improving online security for all users.