Linda Ikechukwu

Manage, configure, and inspect all of your certificate authority provisioners in one place

'Provisioners' are crucial to how the Smallstep Platform works, and a faint understanding of what they are and do, is required to effectively use the Smallstep platform and open-source tools to issue and manage certificates.

ACME EAB—What Is It, and How Do We Use It at Smallstep?

By Linda Ikechukwu

We've just added EAB to our ACME server. EAB adds more security and control to the process of automating certificate management actions for machines and services using the ACME protocol. Read on to find out what this means for you as a Smallstep user.

5 Infrastructure Security Advancements You May Have Missed in 2022

By Linda Ikechukwu

Apple MDA, GitHub OIDC, systemd-creds, Passkeys, and Identity-Aware Proxies: Here's a look at some infrastructure security advancements that caught our attention in 2022.

3 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Public CAs for Internal Infrastructures

By Linda Ikechukwu

Public web certificate authorities like Let's Encrypt were not designed to support internal use cases. What you need is a private certificate authority.

The deal with Registration Authorities, and what they do for you with Smallstep Certificate Manager

By Linda Ikechukwu

We’ve launched an ACME Registration Authority quickstart guide to help you easily automate certificate issuance and renewal to endpoints within walled-off networks. Read up on Registration Authorities and why may need them.

SSH vs. X.509 Certificates

By Linda Ikechukwu

Although SSH certificates are the most secure way to regulate SSH access, they are underutilised. They're also frequently confused with X.509 (aka TLS) certificates. This article explains what SSH certificates are, why you should be using them, and how they differ from their more popular X.509 counterparts.