Security is the buzzword in the Internet world. Customers refrain from visiting unsecure websites, where their personal details and sensitive information could be at a high risk. To deal with security issues, it is important to have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate to secure your website. Now you must be wondering: what is an SSL certificate? Well, SSL is a standard technology that establishes an encrypted link between a client and a server, which may be a mail server, web browser, web server, or mail client.
SSL is the Internet industry's security standard. Upon installation on a server, SSL activates https protocol as well as the padlock icon, digitally binding a cryptographic key to the website details and allowing secure connections from a web server to a browser. As a security standard, SSL secures sensitive information, including data transfer, credit card details, financial transactions, and login information. Today, the term SSL is associated with security so much that SSL certificates are increasingly being used by social media sites as well to secure customer information by encrypting communications between the server and the website visitor's computer.
A website must have a dedicated IP address and an SSL certificate installed on the server in order to use a secure socket layer. It is also important that visitors to your site use the latest version of web browser.
SSL Certificates bind a host / server / domain name with the company name and location before initiating secure sessions with browsers. Once installed, the website can be connected over https://www.example.com, so that the server can set up a secure connection with the browser, securing the web traffic between the web server and browser. When a visitor comes to your website, the browser will show visible trust indicators, telling that the site has a website security certificate.
Normally, data is sent in plain text between web server and browser, which makes it vulnerable to cyber theft. For anybody with hostile intentions, this data can be easily intercepted and used for another purpose. As a security protocol, SSL encrypts the data being shared between the browser and server, making it impossible for an attacker to intercept or use it.
An SSL certificate has come to be associated with online security, with its trust indicators giving customers the confidence that yours is a secure platform. SSL secured websites begin with https and padlock icon, which is a sign of security.
Secure certificates are available in different forms, including:
