Building a certificate authority for the whole Internet

Cloudflare announced its intention to become a public certificate authority (CA), applying for inclusion in major root programs (Chrome, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla) and acquiring an established root from GlobalSign to ensure immediate device compatibility. The company plans to issue free certificates and become one of the first CAs to offer post-quantum resistant certificates, though it will not begin issuing certificates immediately. This move represents Cloudflare's next step in expanding encryption across the internet following its Universal SSL initiative from 2014.