Microsoft Root Authority certificate expiring

Question

Hi All,

I found all computers and servers in my company has a certificate with name Microsoft Root Authority will be expire on December 30th,2020. I am trying to figure out if we need to renew it or not, but the cert name is generic and I couldn't find much clue from internet. Anyone comes across this?

The certificate is under Trusted Root Certification Authorities\Certificates, If I check, it was issued by Microsoft Root Authority, and issued to Microsoft Root Authority, valid from 1/9/1997 to 12/30/2020, it is intended for All issuance policies and All application policies. It doesn't matter which version of OS, every computer and server has that. I can't find the cert from root certificate authority server in my environment. So I would guess this could be a cert for legacy purpose and created from Microsoft but not too sure.

Below is what in issuer section:

CN = Microsoft Root Authority
OU = Microsoft Corporation
OU = Copyright (c) 1997 Microsoft Corp.

It would be great if anyone could tell me that this is for, and how to renew it if needed.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi,
These trusted root certificates are required for the operating system to run correctly.
Because removal of the following certificates may limit functionality of the operating system or may cause the computer to fail, you should not remove them.
Just keep them in the computers. We don't need to renew them.
For more details ,you can refer to :
Required trusted root certificates