If you have an online business and hope to make your fortune selling online, then a little green padlock better be next to your web address. Having Secure Sockets Layer, (SSL) certified website means your customers can be sure their personal information is not being captured by hackers and identity thieves. There are several levels of SSL certificates, but even the most basic offers protection for online business success.
How Does It Work?
When you sell online, your customers enter personal and sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and other information on your website. This information is passed from computer to computer through a network until it reaches the destination server. At any one of the intermediary computers, someone could conceivable see and take your customer’s private information.
If your site has an SSL certificate, your customers will know immediately by looking at your web address and have the confidence to share their personal information to get the product or service you offer.
SSL Certification
SSL is the standard security technology that establishes an encrypted link between a browser and a web server. It ensures that all the data that passes between the two is private and integral. With SSL certification security, from a professional service, your site can have the same encryption protection that is used by the top corporations for a much lower fee. There are several levels of certification starting with the most affordable hosting solution to ensure your site is protected. You will have domain validation, compatibility with most browsers and authentication of your website.
Two SSL Certificate Primary Functions
The two main SSL functions are authentication of your website identity to your customers as well as to visiting browsers and encryption, which is the technical process that supports SSL certification. It means it protects your customer’s private information such as credit card numbers and account numbers and passwords and allows data to be securely transferred between several computer networks. It masks data so any unauthorized source is not able to intercept it or read it. The highest standard of encryption in the industry is 256-bit encryption.
How Do Your Customers Know They Are Protected?
Your website will have HTTPS, which is the secure version of HTTP at the front of the web address. It will also have the browser padlock symbol and a secured site seal from your hosting company.
The highest level of SSL certification turns your browser bar green whenever a customer opens your website on Internet Explorer and Firefox and gives a green padlock on Google Chrome.
You can also get protection for subdomains if your website has several domains for different areas of your website.
Who Needs the Highest Protection?
All businesses that include ecommerce require essential SSL certification. There are higher levels of protection, but extended validation is mainly necessary for Limited Liability Companies or corporations, unincorporated businesses and sole proprietorship businesses, government organizations and NGOs and International Treaty Organizations.
If you haven’t uploaded your ecommerce website yet, you should look in to SSL certification before you start. If your website is already up and running, do not wait another minute, but get SSL certification as soon as possible. You never know how many customers you lost because they hurried away from an unsecured site.
