What is OCSP Stapling and How to Use It?

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A valid SSL certificate signed by a trusted certificate authority is now mandatory for all websites. If your certificate has expired or been revoked, browsers will no longer trust it. Browsers use the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) to determine the validity of your SSL certificate. However, the original OCSP has several shortcomings that OCSP stapling successfully overcomes.

In this article, you will learn what OCSP stapling is, how it works, and why it is important for SSL management and infrastructure.

Table of contents

What is OCSP?
What is OCSP Stapling?
How OCSP Stapling Works
What are the benefits of OCSP stapling?
What are the limitations of OCSP Stapling?
Which browsers support OCSP stapling?
How to check if OCSP stapling is enabled on your server?
How to enable OCSP stapling?
What is OCSP?
Simply put, OCSP is a way for your device (mobile or desktop) to check whether the digital certificate used by a website is valid.

SSL certificates ensure the security of websites mobile app development service and online transactions by verifying their identity and encrypting the data exchanged between users' browsers and the site's servers. However, all trusted certificates have an expiration date. Moreover, they can be revoked during critical security incidents and are no longer trusted.

This is where OCSP comes in. When you visit a site that uses HTTPS, your browser checks the site's certificate authority (CA) to make sure the certificate is still valid.

This process happens in the background, and if the certificate is no longer valid, your browser will display a warning message to alert you to potential security risks.




What is OCSP Stapling?
OCSP stapling is a technology that improves the performance and security of the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) check that a web browser performs to validate a site's SSL certificate.

With OCSP stapling, the website server receives the OCSP response from the CA and “staples” it with the SSL certificate during the SSL handshake. The stapled response is then sent to the browser along with the certificate, eliminating the need for the browser to perform a separate OCSP check.

What is OCSP Must-Staple?
OCSP Must-Staple is a security extension that can be added to an SSL certificate to ensure that the certificate status is checked each time a website is visited. When the OCSP Must-Staple option is enabled on a certificate, the website server is required to provide the OCSP stapler to the client each time it receives an SSL certificate.

If the server cannot get a valid response when checking the certificate status, the site will not load. This will help prevent attackers from using revoked certificates to impersonate sites or intercept sensitive data.