I think the bigger answer is certificate vendors won't stop using the term.
"Somehow" is doing a lot work in that sentence.
Operationally, there's no difference between the security procedures and requirements that a for-profit or a non-profit CA must adhere to.
[1]: https://sslmate.com/resources/certificate_authority_failures
While I don't get the cynicism in this case, you would agree supporting a secure web is in the public interest, right?
There is a sea of difference between something like Google/Facebook/TikTok and Let’s Encrypt/the Linux Foundation/FSF/etc. I can only assume you can’t see that difference if you have spent no time reading about these things, but I would encourage you to. This stuff is important especially if you get to make security decisions for any kind of product.
I think this concern is reflects a misunderstanding of how the security of the WebPKI works. Specifically, any CA can issue certificates for your domain whether you are their customer or not. What that means is that if CA #1 is compromised but you choose CA #2, CA #1 can still be used to attack connections to your domain.
The situation is slightly worse if the CA you actually use is compromised because the main defense we have against misissuance is Certificate Transparency, and it's easier to detect that a certificate was issued by a CA you don't use than that too many certificates were issued by a CA you do use, but it's just slightly easier.
The bottom line here is that if you are worried about some group of CAs being compromised, then using a different CA doesn't help you much.
Of course the (more secure?) alternative would be to generate self-signed certs, but for customer-facing sites that's a big UX problem.
Well, you can choose to do whatever you want, but given that you're posting to a public forum, it would be helpful if you actually explained your reasoning.
> Of course the (more secure?) alternative would be to generate self-signed certs, but for customer-facing sites that's a big UX problem.
It's not just a big UX problem, it's a big security problem, because the customers have no way of knowing if your certificate is actually valid.
It's exceedingly clear that's not going to happen, and I think we all know why. Good reminder to anyone that anyone can just post here. Including people that logic-lessly think that paying a shitty third party that probably has a bad track record is somehow better than using LE. Like, this isn't a serious conversation?
What does this mean in practice? Do you remove the free providers from your OS & browser trust stores? Does this mean you get warnings every time you visit a site that uses LetsEncrypt (and other free providers)?
So, 1-year certs and renew 60 days out, send out new fingerprint and at 30 days, we would occasionally swap it in and out as brownout with replacement at 15 days.
We have already indicated when it drops to 100 days, we will swap to automation and no longer communicate when changes will occur. Account Managers are already getting push back from customers. It's possible we will continue using Digicert because they seem to promise that Intermediate certs won't rotate unlike Let's Encrypt which rotates them more frequently which is better security practice. So Enterprise customers will cert pin to Intermediate instead.