Home/Glossary/Certificate Transparency (CT)

Certificate Transparency (CT)

A public logging system that records all SSL/TLS certificates, enabling detection of misissued or malicious certificates.

PKI & CertificatesAlso called: "ct logs", "certificate monitoring"

CT logs create an append-only, cryptographically verified record of every certificate issued.

Benefits for security

Detect rogue certificates issued for your domains.
Monitor for typosquatting and phishing attempts.
Verify CAs are following proper issuance procedures.
Meet browser requirements (Chrome, Safari require CT logging).

How to use CT logs

Monitor crt.sh or Censys for your domain names.
Set up alerts for new certificate issuance.
Validate certificates have SCTs (Signed Certificate Timestamps).

Related Tools

View all articles

📄

SLA Monitoring: How to Track, Report, and Actually Meet Your Uptime Commitments

Promising 99.9% uptime is easy. Proving it is harder. A practical guide to SLA monitoring — what to measure, how to track it, and what to do when you miss.

Read article →

📄

Load Balancing Compared: Cloudflare vs AWS ELB vs Azure Front Door vs Google Cloud Load Balancing

A deep technical comparison of load balancing across Cloudflare, AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Front Door, and Google Cloud Load Balancing — covering global vs regional architectures, health checking, SSL termination, and pricing.

Read article →

Wildcard vs SAN Certificates: Which SSL Certificate Type Do You Need?

Compare wildcard and SAN (Subject Alternative Name) certificates to choose the right SSL/TLS certificate for your infrastructure. Understand security trade-offs, cost considerations, and use cases for each type.

Read article →

Let's Encrypt Complete Guide: Free SSL/TLS Certificates with Certbot & ACME

Master Let's Encrypt with this comprehensive guide covering Certbot installation, HTTP-01 and DNS-01 challenges, wildcard certificates, automated renewal, DNS provider integrations, troubleshooting, and rate limits.

Read article →