cert-governance · severity medium

Certificate crypto

Share of certificates using a weak key or signature (SHA-1, or a sub-2048-bit RSA key).

Measured every Wednesday · last updated

How it is measured

Tier 2; key type and size, plus signature algorithm. Denominator: has_web.

Why it matters

The "not everything is broken" control — a near-solved problem, published because a dispassionate source reports the good news too.

Limits of this measurement

the rule must key on the algorithm, not the number. < 2048 bits is weak only for RSA; EC keys are strong at 256/384/521 bits, and the signature_algorithm field describes the issuer's signature, not the subject key. Getting this wrong produced a false 30% weak rate before it was fixed — the canonical example of a wrong-rule bug in this project.

The base rate

Two independent populations. The global, domain-anchored figure is unbiased; the company-anchored figures are built by matching company names to domains and skew toward more digitally-mature firms. Both are published, so the gap is visible.

Global (all domains) 0.38% fail · n=13,196
strong: 99.62%weak: 0.38%
France companies 0.73% fail · n=545
strong: 99.27%weak: 0.73%
UK companies 0.31% fail · n=1,943
strong: 99.69%weak: 0.31%
Norway companies 0% fail · n=778
strong: 100%
strong · 100%

By company size band

Company-anchored cuts (national registries with a size proxy), split by size band. Right-hand figure is the share not meeting the control.

France
micron=146
strong: 98.63%weak: 1.37%
1.37%
smalln=164
strong: 100%
0%
mediumn=128
strong: 98.44%weak: 1.56%
1.56%
largen=107
strong: 100%
0%
UK
micron=184
strong: 100%
0%
smalln=721
strong: 99.72%weak: 0.28%
0.28%
medium/largen=736
strong: 99.86%weak: 0.14%
0.14%
dormantn=147
strong: 98.64%weak: 1.36%
1.36%
no-accountsn=155
strong: 99.35%weak: 0.65%
0.65%
Norway
micron=223
strong: 100%
0%
smalln=197
strong: 100%
0%
mediumn=218
strong: 100%
0%
largen=140
strong: 100%
0%

Every segment

Pick one to see the citable answer for a company like yours, with its trend and methodology.

Show the remaining 61 segments

Slices below 100 measured members are withheld rather than shown with a wide interval — an absent country or issuer means too little data, not zero failures. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Machine-readable data per segment: append .json or .csv to its URL.