Certificate validity periods
When you order an advanced certificate, you can select the following values for the Certificate validity period:
- 1 year (soon to be deprecated)
- 3 months
- 1 month
- 2 weeks
Benefits of shorter validity periods
Cloudflare only issues certificates with validity periods of three months or less for two reasons.
First, shorter-lived certificates limit the damage from key compromise and mistaken issuance. Any compromised key material will be valid for a shorter period of time.
Second, shorter certificates encourage automation. The more frequently you have to do a task, the more likely you will want to automate it. Automation also means that you are less likely to let a certificate expire in production or give a person access to key material.
For more details on the benefits of shorter validity periods, refer to our blog post introducing Advanced Certificate Manager.