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Azure Active Directory Certificate Rollover Occurring August 15
Microsoft has scheduled its next Azure Active Directory certificate rollover to take place on Monday, Aug. 15, 2016.
These rollovers, in which new security certificates are issued by Microsoft, happen approximately every six weeks for those using the Azure AD service to secure access to their applications. Microsoft on Monday announced a specific date for the rollover event, which hadn't been publicized previously.
The Aug. 15 date is actually a postponement from a planned May rollover release. Microsoft delayed to give organizations more time. Problems can occur after certificate rollovers if an application isn't configured to "automatically update the certificate from the metadata," Microsoft explained in its announcement.
The rollover won't be a big deal for organizations, provided that their applications are following Microsoft's best practices for addressing security tokens. Similarly, applications housed in the Azure AD App Gallery won't be affected by the rollover. Those applications already have the logic built into them to update automatically when the new certificates arrive.
Microsoft also suggested there won't be any issues with "on-premises applications published via Application Proxy" and "applications in Azure Active Directory B2C [business-to-consumer"] tenants."
Organizations should review their applications to check how they handle key rollovers, including native client applications and Web applications, according to Microsoft's announcement. Microsoft provided a bunch of scripts to perform these kinds of checks in this Azure article.
Organizations experiencing "unusual behaviors" after the certificate rollover should contact Azure Support, Microsoft's announcement suggested.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.