When you buy any product online and provide credit card details or personal information, it will travel from your web browsers (client) to vendor’s web server (host). Now it is very important for vendor to protect this data from hackers. SSL certificates are providing this protection.
Secure Sockets Layer is the standard technology that offers encrypted connection between host and client. SSL is an online industry standard used by numbers of websites to protect the data of their online transactions with customers. You must have seen websites-using https:// in their URL bar during payment processing.
Here SSL can helps in establishing trust with your customers by providing security of their data.
Theatrically it seems very simple but practically, it is bit complex to implement the secure environment for eshop. To provide encrypted data transfer from browser to web-server, you must have to install valid SSL certificate on your server. To activate SSL on web server, you will have to complete a series of steps recommended by CA (certificate authority).
Then server generates two different cryptographic keys, one is public key, which is not a secret key and placed in Certificate Singing Request (CSR) that is basic file containing details of certificate buyer. Once you generated CSR, you will have to submit them to CA who verifies your details.
Once the detail is verified, CA issues certificate that need to be installed on your web server. After successfully completion of installation process, your web server will be able to match your certificate with your private key. Your website visitors will then be able to establish secure connection between website and web server.
There are different types of SSL certificate offered by CA but most of them should contain the name of company, domain name, address, city and other important details in certificate. This information provides assurance of authority and validity of business and gain trust from customers.
It is very important for website owner to keep their SSL valid as web browsers throws error when they establish an SSL connection with website to check whether the certificate is not expired, has been issued by a trusted authority and is being used for the correct website.
In next series, we will explain different types of SSL certificate and their benefits for website owners and customers. This will help you to choose the one which best suited your eCommerce website.
