Spring Boot The driver could not establish a secure connection to SQL Server by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption

I am trying to query a local SQL Server using the following application.properties file:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:sqlserver://somesqlservername;databaseName=somedbanme
spring.datasource.username=someusername
spring.datasource.password=somepass

And the following code to access the db with jdbc:

@RestController
public class UserController {
    @Autowired
    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    
    @GetMapping(value="/User")
    public User getUser(@RequestParam BigInteger id) {
        String sql = "SOME SQL QUERY";
        User user = (User) jdbcTemplate.query(sql, BeanPropertyRowMapper.newInstance(User.class));
        return user;
    }
}

The following error occurs when i invoke the service:

com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: The driver could not establish a secure connection to SQL Server by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. Error: "PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target". ClientConnectionId:8f7627f2-78cf-4479-89fe-9eba6f7be4a5