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Director Of Communications At Let’s Encrypt Discusses The Future Of The Project

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October 19, 2016

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Let’s Encrypt first launched earlier this year and has quickly become a leader in the SSL marketplace. The project is a free and open-source certificate authority provided by the Internet Security Research Group which aims to encrypt 100 percent of the web.

We contacted the Director of Communications at Let’s Encrypt, Sarah Gran to see how the project is doing and what the future holds.

The project has been moving steadily forward.

According to Gran, along with WordPress.com and Bit.ly, hosting companies have also utilized the project.

“On a more technical note, a recent milestone was our acceptance into Mozilla’s root program, a significant step in being able to rely on our own root and to be trusted independently,” Gran said. “Overall, we hear a lot of affirmation that we are filling an important need in the market.”

Since its launch, 10.5 million certificates have been issued — 5.3 million of which are active and span over 8 million websites. Let’s Encrypt has quickly seized the SSL market. According to W3tech, it is currently used by 3 percent of all websites, and by the looks of it won’t be slowing down any time soon.

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Image via W3Tech
The team has been able to handle the certificate load well and have already added new features like full IPv6 support and improved rate limiting.
“We’ve continued to support and grow our community, from subscribers to client developers and hosting providers. We’ve continued to communicate about our organization and what we’re doing with a high degree of transparency,” Gran said.
So what does this progress mean for the future of the project? Before the launch, 39.5 percent of traffic was encrypted. That number is up to 46 percent and growing quickly.
“Our goal is to get to a 100 percent encrypted Web experience for all users. That’s much of the motivation to make our service free – it enables us to serve the long tail of the websites that may lack the funds or technical expertise to otherwise secure their communications,” Gran said.

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