Mike Maxey

Welcome to Smallstep Certificate Manager

Today is the first step in the Certificate Manager journey. We delivered the core platform to make users successful and are excited to see what you will do with it.

2020 Certificate Management Survey Results

By Mike Maxey

Internal PKI continues to be essential but struggles with modern practices. But don't worry, there is hope.

🤦‍♂️ Facepalm Lesson One: The Delayed Aha Moment

By Mike Maxey

What became clear in our product-led research is that we made a few mishaps. And there was one in particular that we wanted to fix ASAP. A series of go-to-market learnings and mishaps from smallstep.

Prove you are not human -- Take the ACME Challenge

By Mike Maxey

Automating internet security with the Let’s Encrypt certificate authority has led to the massive acceleration of safe web browsing. As we roll out ACME protocol support and give away some free hoodies, we want to thank Let’s Encrypt and the IETF for making it all possible.

Run your own private CA & ACME server using step-ca

By Mike Maxey

With today's release (v0.13.0), you can now use ACME to get certificates from step-ca. ACME (RFC8555) is the protocol that Let's Encrypt uses to automate certificate management for websites. ACME radically simplifies the deployment of TLS and HTTPS by letting you obtain certificates automatically, without human interaction.

Trust Anchors In Modern Systems; Don’t Overlook The Bottom Turtle

By Mike Maxey

This issue is a discussion about the trust anchor and dependencies of systems. While a clever turtle reference often satisfies the room, getting a real answer to this question is fundamental to modern security practices.

Great Minds Really Do Think Alike! No really, they do!

By Mike Maxey

Great Minds Really Do Think Alike! I found an inarguable topic in the most unlikely of places, deep in the conversations between cyber-security experts.

Traffic, Bridge Tolls, and Secure Browsing - How Automation Secures The Internet

By Mike Maxey

In this post, we will explore how successful public internet practices provide a set of instructions for how the industry should be thinking about securing internal systems. The second edition of the Modern Security for Leaders series.

Instincts, Fast Cars, and Modern Security - Why I Joined smallstep

By Mike Maxey

smallstep’s vision is centered on modernizing security practices using the best available technology to solve security challenges. Now you’re probably saying (as I was at this point), there are hundreds of companies out there spending billions of dollars on modernizing practices. How much market is really left for a scrappy startup? Turns out a lot!