When signing in to a Microsoft site this evening I received a security warning from Firefox. Strange, I was convinced the site was genuine and I had not followed a spoofed phishing link to get there. How could this be?

I chose to continue using the “Add exception” button to get to the screen where I could see the certificate details. Nothing wrong with the certificate issue, path and so on, except that it expired a few hours ago at 18:26 GMT:

This certificate is not actually for live.com that runs the logon part of the process, but profile.microsoft.com which looks after the other parts of the page which wrap round this. So, not vital but likely to cause much confusion and FUD until they get a new certificate to fix the problem.

Do you know when your certificates expire? And all your different domain names? What about other vital contracts which would stop you doing business if they expired suddenly? How do you manage all of these; is it a central business policy or does it just come down to one overworked IT Manager’s Outlook calendar?

Securing data from web-based applications is just an aspect of keeping information safe. In this context, an encryption framework will do the trick of keeping sensitive data confidential. And this is where Secure Socket Layer and Transport Layer Security come into play, along with Apache. When it comes down to bridging open source technology with its proprietary Windows operating system, Microsoft has used Port25 as a source of resources, and illustrative examples involve Windows and Linux technical analyses such as Recovering Data from Windows systems by using Linux and Active Directory and Linux Identity Management.

Keeping in with this trajectory, the Redmond company has now made available yet another resources, this time focused on the integration of Apache with SSL on Windows. “Often SSL or TLS is required to secure data from web applications. (more…)