Cloudflare plans public certificate authority with post-quantum support

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) announced plans to launch a public Certificate Authority (CA) that will issue digital certificates supporting both traditional encryption and post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs), according to a company statement.

As part of the effort, Cloudflare has agreed to acquire publicly trusted Root CA key material from GlobalSign, a transaction expected to close within two months, subject to customary closing conditions. The company has also applied for inclusion in the root programs operated by Chrome, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla.

Cloudflare said it will begin issuing classical certificates after completing the browser root program application and acceptance process. Production MTC issuance is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027.

The new CA is designed to support legacy devices that no longer receive software updates, using the acquired root certificate to enable immediate recognition of Cloudflare-issued certificates on older hardware. The company said site owners will be able to manage both classic TLS certificates and MTCs within a single system.

Cloudflare said the CA will include a live public health dashboard, automated certificate renewal signaling based on RFC 9773, and reproducible code builds. MTCs, co-authored by Cloudflare as an IETF draft specification, use lightweight proofs to verify certificate logging without transmitting large post-quantum signatures with each connection.

"Twelve years ago, Cloudflare made encryption free and automatic for millions of websites. Today, we're taking the next step by building an open, transparent and reliable Certificate Authority for the entire Internet," said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare.

Cloudflare previously launched Universal SSL in 2014, which the company said doubled encrypted web traffic overnight by offering free TLS certificates to millions of websites.

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