OPEN PORT

Open Port Event

Josh Aas, Executive Director of Let's Encrypt, joined us for a session on internet security, sharing his insights and experiences of creating a nonprofit organization with the vision to make a secure internet attainable for everybody.

In just five years, Let's Encrypt helped increase the share of HTTPS requests from less than 39% to over 85%. In his interview, Josh explained both the technical specifics of a Certificate Authority as well as the moral dilemmas that can arise. He shared with us how once while coping with bugs that could potentially cause security breaches, he had to at the same time weigh the consequences of revoking 3 million certificates and potentially cause the shut-down of several domains. We also learned about crucial choices Let's Encrypt had to take to achieve a solution that would change millions of websites' behavior within a limited time frame. According to Josh, success depends not necessarily on finding a new solution but using existing approaches to make them easily usable and accessible. Many of us left his evening genuinely inspired and felt that every one of us can change the internet for the better - you just have to set your mind to it.