As a developer or systems administrator, you’re probably used to SSHing into servers with key pairs. What if I told you there is a better and more secure way to manage SSH access? Think SSH certificates (And no, they’re not the same as TLS certificates)

For most people, their knowledge of certificates lies within the confines of the X.509 digital certificates format — also known as TLS/SSL certificates — used by browsers to enable HTTPS. However, the X.509 certificate is not the only digital certificate format that exists; there is also the less-popular SSH certificate format created by OpenSSH.