As 2025 races to a close, you’ll see several predictions about AI agents, quantum computing, and other frontier innovations. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about solving these challenges, too. But there’s a quieter, less flashy countdown underway, one that will determine whether organizations can even reach the cutting edge.
TLS certificates—the machine identities used to prove machines are who they say they are—will begin expiring twice as fast in March 2026. Lifespans will drop from 398 days to 200 days. It sounds like a minor technical adjustment, but it will impact every business, government, and institution that conducts business online.
That is to say … everyone.
Teams that haven’t automated their TLS certificate lifecycle management (CLM) will soon face more frequent outages, operational disruptions, and degraded customer experiences. And halving lifespans means twice as many businesses could get knocked offline in a couple of months.
Certificate-related outages are already a frequently recurring problem with the current 398-day maximum validity period. In fact, CyberArk research shows that 67% of organizations experience them monthly. But unlike the latest malware, zero-day, or nation-state attack, TLS certificate management is something we can—and must—solve for today.
No business is immune, and this is a risk unlike anything else you, your board, and your business have faced before. Just how big is the problem, what does the future look like, and how should you think about your business case in 2026 and beyond? Let’s dive in.
Big tech mandates and the future of TLS certificate lifespans
At the start of the year, I predicted that companies and browsers like Microsoft, Apple, and Google would move to shorten the maximum validity period of public TLS certificates. In April, that prediction became reality.
A few months later, I wrote about the “three Vs” of machine identity mayhem: volume, variety, and velocity. While velocity is shaping up to be the front-page headline for 2026, the other two aren’t far behind. And they will only compound as TLS lifespans continue to shrink.
Think of 2026 as “Level Two” of that arcade, where certificates MUST respawn in half the time, or it’s GAME OVER. If your team is still managing renewals by hand, such as tracking cycles in spreadsheets, you’re in for an endless game of Whack-A-Cert.
Certificate lifecycle management: The “OG level” challenge to beat
A single certificate may be small, but when it expires, it can trigger a chain reaction. Machines stop talking, systems stall, and fallout can spread fast. Certificate management is the original governance challenge for machines—the “OG level” every other digital system depends on. Fail to pass that level, and you can’t hope to keep up with today’s pace of innovation.
Many teams already struggle under today’s 398-day lifespans. Cut them to 200 days, and workloads double. Cut them again to 100, then to 47, and you’re trapped in an endless loop of consequences that compound every cycle.
The real-world impact of TLS certificate outages
There are countless ways expired TLS certificates can ripple through daily life, but let’s focus on one person—Zoe—and her one very bad day.
08:14 a.m. | Gate C13
Zoe’s flight to Zurich is already running behind. Suddenly, the airline app freezes mid-refresh, and the kiosk flashes with a bright red connection error. She shrugs, figuring it’s a Wi-Fi glitch. Then the boarding screens for the entire airline go dark. A gate agent announces a “technical issue.” Phones come out. Everyone else sees the same frozen app.
08:32 a.m. | Ripple one
Her travel insurance email pings with an automated claim form. Except that link won’t load. “502 bad gateway,” it says. When she tries again, it still doesn’t work. And now her banking app throws a warning: “This page can’t be verified.” She gives up, closing one error window after another.
09:27 a.m. | Ripple two
Card payments at the terminal coffee shop are down. The cashier apologizes, saying they can only accept cash. Across the concourse, ATMs display maintenance screens. News tickers above them flicker with headlines about “temporary trading interruptions.” Zoe exhales, half-laughing, “Must be one of those days.”
10:46 a.m. | Ripple three
An email from her rideshare app says her trip history is unavailable due to “partner API downtime.” Moments later, the hospital where she works—where she’s traveling to—sends an outage notice of its own. Internal dashboards go offline. Telemedicine appointments get delayed. Zoe stares at her phone as the digital world around her just…buffers.
12:08 p.m. | Chain reaction
By noon, flights are canceled, payments freeze, and newsfeeds clog—system after system falters because businesses didn’t prepare for shorter TLS certificate lifespans or couldn’t track them well enough to adapt. The same invisible systems that make daily life seamless can also bring it to a stop.
By late afternoon, most services crawl back online, and life goes on, but the next morning, somewhere else, maybe on a much grander scale, the cycle starts again.
This fictional day illustrates how a single overlooked certificate can cascade into widespread disruption—impacting travel, finance, healthcare, and the daily systems we rely on. It’s a reminder that what feels like a minor technical detail can ripple through every part of modern life.
Will certificate outages come in a tsunami?
Now, the day described above is just one dramatized example. In reality, not all these outages will arrive in a spectacular, headline-breaking wave.
They’ll be more of a quiet ripple. Slow. Global. Relentless, rolling outages that bring individual businesses to a halt.
But the causes—and the patterns—relative to TLS are predictable. And preventable.
We’ve seen them before:
- Visibility gaps: Spreadsheets don’t scale against exponential certificate growth.
- Ownership confusion: No one knows who’s responsible until it breaks—and by then, triage feels like a five-alarm fire.
- Human error and latency: People simply can’t renew thousands of identities by hand, not at the speed machines require.
Without automation, outages will become recurring incidents, a low-grade hum of preventable disruption.
How certificate lifecycle management automation breaks the cycle
TLS certificates aren’t glamorous, but they’re critical, and automating their lifecycles is the difference between teams stuck in Whack-A-Cert mode and teams that stay ahead of it.
Automated CLM helps you discover and monitor every certificate, map ownership, renew before expiration, and enforce policies and certificate attributes at machine speed. Teams using automation reclaim thousands of engineering hours and see measurable gains in uptime and release velocity, not to mention happier customers.
Automation also bridges today’s TLS crunch with tomorrow’s frontiers:
- Accelerated cloud operations: By driving CLM automation, you can give cloud and platform teams the speed they need, while keeping your business safe.
- Quantum readiness: Short-lived, auto-renewing certificates make it easier to swap cryptographic algorithms when viable quantum computers become available.
Together, these capabilities turn certificate management from a reactive chore into a strategic advantage. By automating now, you’re not just avoiding outages—you’re building resilience for an AI-driven, post-quantum future. The sooner you start, the less time you’ll spend playing catch-up.
March 2026 marks the first TLS certificate stress test
As certificate lifespans drop to 200 days, we’ll see teams that don’t automate facing more TLS certificate outages, forever stuck in a loop of renewals. And it’ll only get worse as lifespans drop again in 2027. However, those who do automate will treat the change as a forcing function. A chance to build faster, better, and safer systems.
Don’t get stuck playing Whack-A-Cert endlessly. Automate your certificates today, because the clock’s already running, and you want to be ready before Level Two loads.
As the clock ticks toward shorter TLS lifespans, the difference between disruption and resilience will come down to how quickly teams embrace automation. The next level is loading—will your organization be ready to play?
Kevin Bocek is senior vice president of innovation at CyberArk.
Get ready for shorter TLS lifespans
- How will shorter TLS lifespans impact your business? Use CyberArk’s TLS Certificate Renewal Impact Calculator to find out how many renewals you can expect during each phase of the new mandate, as well as estimated operational hours and staffing needs.
- 🎧 Advance to the next round: Kevin Bocek shares practical guidance for automating renewals and preventing certificate outages on the Security Matters podcast episode “Zero trust, zero chill: Securing machine identity.”
