A Complete Guide to SSL/TLS & mTLS Certificate Management

On December 26, 2025, the SSL certificates for Bazel, Google's open-source build tool, expired, leading to a significant outage due to the complexity and scale of certificate management at Google. The incident underscores the critical importance of effective SSL/TLS certificate management, which involves issuing, deploying, tracking, and renewing certificates to maintain secure communications. At large scales, manual management becomes impractical, necessitating automated tools to handle the volume and complexity of certificates across various services, including internal and public-facing systems. The challenges in certificate management include ensuring visibility, ownership, distribution, notifications, and governance, which, if not managed properly, can lead to security gaps or operational failures, as demonstrated by Bazel's thirteen-hour outage. The text highlights the need for centralized management systems like Infisical, which offer automated issuance, renewal, and monitoring to prevent surprise expiries and enforce governance across all certificates, ensuring secure and seamless operations.

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