SSL Certificate (HTTPS)

 

 What is SSL certificate?

• SSL certificate for secure connections. This is a global standerd security technology that enables encryption communication between your and a web browser and web server.
• SSL is the original name of the cryptographic protocol for authenticating and encrypting communications over a network. Officially, SSL was replaced by an updated protocol called TLS some time ago. 

SSL Encrypts Sensitive Information

The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can access it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. This protects it from hackers and identity thieves.

There are three main reasons why using an SSL Certificate on your website is important

1. Security
   
   Using an SSL Certificate will encrypt data between a users browser and your web server and vice versa.
   
   The information sent between a web server and browser goes through many different devices such as routers, switches, proxy servers etc. and if any of these devices have been hacked then your information could be copied and read.
   
   By using an SSL certificate you enable the encryption of the data and this means that no one can see the information if they intercept it en-route.
2. Trust
   
   If your website visitors see that padlock in the browser address bar it shows them your site is using encrypted data.
   
   For sites like eCommerce sites where financial transactions occur this is a way to show your users that you care about their security and privacy.
   
   Even for blogs, having an SSL Certificate and therefore showingthe padlock in browsers reassures visitors that you are ‘security aware’ and that just helps them trust you.
3. Speed
   
   There is a technical thing called HTTP/2 which is an improved way for browsers and web servers to talk to each other.
   
   If your website is configured to take advantage of HTTP/2 it can help make your website faster.
   
   Normally when a browser shows a webpage it has to ask the web server for the HTML, this is what you see when you right click and choose view page source. Then for every image, style sheet and script the web page uses the browser has to ask the web server for each one individually.
   
   All of these individual requests for things you see on a web page take time. HTTP/2 allows a website to send everything to the browser in go so speeds things up.
   
   For HTTP/2 to work both the web server and the website need to be configured to use HTTP/2 for there to be any speed increase.

Types of SSL  certificate 

• Extended Validation Certificates (EV SSL)
• Organization Validated Certificates (OV SSL)
• Domain Validated Certificates (DV SSL)
• Wildcard SSL Certificate.
• Multi-Domain SSL Certificate (MDC)
• Unified Communications Certificate (UCC)

You can get SSL certificate from various Websites 

•       SSL.com
•       Namecheap
  
•       The SSL store
  
•       GoDaddy