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MAKING HTTPS REDIRECTS EASY WITH IBM NS1 CONNECT

Automation


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June 14, 2024 By Ben Ball 3 min read

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HTTPS is now the standard for application and website traffic on the internet.
Over 85% of websites now use HTTPS by default—it’s to the point where a standard
HTTP request now seems suspicious. 

This is great for the security of the internet, but it’s a huge pain for the
website and application teams that are managing HTTPS records. It was easy to
move HTTP records around with a simple URL redirect. HTTPS redirects, on the
other hand, require changing the URL and the related SSL security certificate.

That extra step has proven to be quite a hassle, mostly because authoritative
DNS and security certificates are usually managed in separate systems with no
automation or integrations between them. Whenever you want to update an HTTPS
record, you have to toggle between two places to make sure that everything is
configured correctly.

“System” might actually be a generous term for how most companies approach SSL
certificate management for HTTPS records. The reality is that most companies do
it in a shared spreadsheet of some kind. The dangers of this approach are
obvious: duplicate certificates, missed connections between certificates and URL
records and general lack of alignment.

Here at IBM®, we’ve consistently heard about the challenge of HTTPS redirects
from our NS1 Connect® customers. They want an easy button for this complicated
process. They want to abandon SSL certificate spreadsheets and manage everything
using the DNS portal (or Terraform playbooks, or API calls) where their primary
focus lies.


INTRODUCING HTTPS REDIRECTS IN IBM NS1 CONNECT

We’re pleased to roll out HTTPS redirects as a standard feature for enterprise
customers of our NS1 Connect-managed DNS product. Now you can manage URL
redirects, DNS records and SSL certificates in a single place. We’ve used this
opportunity to improve the entire URL redirects part of our SaaS platform,
making it even easier to use. As with every NS1 Connect feature, HTTPS redirects
is also available through our powerful API.

With the new HTTPS redirects feature, you can automatically attach SSL or TLS
certificates through an integration with Let’s Encrypt to URL redirects and DNS
records right in the NS1 Connect portal.

IBM NS1 Connect also makes it easy to configure HTTPS records once and have them
populate across your DNS architecture. HTTPS redirects configured using NS1 as
the primary DNS service will automatically flow to secondary DNS providers
through a DNS zone transfer mechanism.

Does IBM NS1 Connect import or export lists of HTTPS redirects? Yes! We make it
easy. You can import a CSV file of URLs you want to redirect and export CSV
files of current redirected domains.

We’re also bringing together a bunch of relevant data so you can track the
performance of redirected domains and ensure that connections are flowing
smoothly. The raw analytics logs are available with data points like IP
addresses, country, browser type and more. You’ll also be able to see statistics
on number of redirects per URL, number of redirects per country and broken
redirects that require fixing.


BUSINESS IMPACT OF DISJOINTED HTTPS REDIRECTS

While on the surface managing redirects can seem like a minor operational
challenge, it actually comes with some significant consequences for the agility
and flexibility of businesses. Here are a few use cases:

Take for example a website migration—something pretty much every business has
recently done or is planning to do. If your website records are run through
HTTPS (which most are), the cut-over process to a new site becomes a
complicated, drawn-out procedure. Matching SSL certificates to URL redirects and
DNS records can turn that change into a weeks-long-phased ordeal where a lot can
go wrong with missed connections and 404 errors.

So-called “parked” domains also present an HTTPS redirects challenge. If your
business owns a bunch of similarly spelled domain names or common errors like
“.co” or “.om”, the web server or nameservers you direct those domains to can
change frequently. Implementing those changes at a mass level can be a huge
resource drain without a way to easily attach SSL certificates to URL redirects
and DNS records at scale.

Marketing and sales landing pages are yet another issue for HTTPS redirects. The
easy-to-remember URL that you feature on an advertisement is probably an HTTP
address that needs to redirect to a secure HTTPS record. The locations of those
pages and the URLs involved are constantly changing on the fly as marketing
campaigns adjust to customer activity and end-user experience metrics. Managing
those changes at scale with the short-fuse timing of a dynamic sales campaign
can be a huge challenge if you’re an internal service provider trying to work
with an SSL spreadsheet alongside your DNS management system.

Webinar: Simplifying HTTPs redirects with IBM NS1 Connect Existing NS1 Connect
customers can add HTTPs redirects to their account




TAGS

automation | IBM NS1 Connect
Ben Ball
Senior Director, Product Marketing
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