Your SSL (Secure Socket Layers) certificate is more important than most people know. Research has shown that most users will take the browsers advice and leave your site for a competitor if they get a warning about an invalid or expired SSL certificate or certificate chain. SSL errors happen to everyone; even Google has fallen victim to an expired certificate. As staff and responsibilities change, SSL certificates fall off the radar, but with Uptrends, you can keep your SSL information in one place and receive alerts about expiration dates and changes to your certificate.
What is monitored?
Besides setting up an impending expiration warning alarm, you can track all or any of the certificate values:
- Common name
- Organization
- Organizational unit
- Serial number
- Fingerprint
- Issued by common name
- Issued by organization
- Issued by organizational unit
If any of those values change on your site’s certificate (a possible symptom of a hack), Uptrends issues an alert.
Alert and error messages
Here are the messages you’ll see once your SSL certificate is about to expire;
- SSL certificate will expire soon: This is a generic error message based on the number of days you set in the Main tab of your SSL monitor. When the date of your certificate meets the value set in this field, you’ll see this message under the Errors overview dashboard or in places where errors are grouped together. field under the
Under your SSL monitor > Monitor logs and Alert logs dashboard, you’ll find more specific alert messages showing the number of days left before your certificate expires;
- SSL certificate will expire in 1 day
- SSL certificate will expire in less than 1 day
- SSL certificate will expire in x days: The x represents the actual number of days in numerical format for when the SSL certificate expires. If, for example, there are only 45 days left, the alert message will show as: SSL certificate will expire in 45 days.
How do you set up an SSL certificate monitor?
Setting up your SSL certificate monitor is similar to setting up a web page monitor. If you need help with the basics of setting up your monitors, the knowledge base article Adding a monitor can show you how. To set up an SSL certificate monitor:
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Click the + button in the menu
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In the pop-up dialog Select a monitor type, first click the monitor type SSL Certificate and then click the
button.
The new monitor is created and you will be in the monitor configuration screen. -
Give your monitor a Name.
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Set the Check interval. Your check interval is the time between the end of one check and the start of the next.
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Enter the URL of the domain name that the SSL Certificate is used for, in the URL field.
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Fill in your SSL Certificate details in the appropriate fields, including: Common Name, Organization, Organizational Unit, Serial Number, Fingerprint, Issued by Common Name, By Organization, By Organizational Unit, and your Expiration Warning Days. This information should be readily available from your SSL Certificate issuer.
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Once you are satisfied with the configuration of your new monitor, click on the
button.
With this basic setup, Uptrends will monitor your SSL certificate expiration date, monitor your certificate (and its certificate chain) for any changes, and alert you to any availability issues. You can also monitor the page for load time and basic authentication using the Error conditions tab and the Advanced tab. Explore the knowledge base article monitor settings for more information.