When a user is looking into your website, the data is taken by the user from your server to his web browser. This pathway is a place where your data can be attacked and hacked. Secure Socket Layer is the encryption that links between your website server and the user’s browser. SSL ensures that the data passed between them remain private and safe from attack.
This kind of secure environment creates trust in potential customers as they feel confident that their data will be safe throughout the website. SSL certificates have a pair of keys – a public and a private key – working together to establish an encrypted connection. The “Subject” in the certificate will be the identity of the website owner.
SSL certificate can be obtained by following a series of steps:
Create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on your server. You will now get your private and public keys on your server. Send the CSR data file to the SSL Certificate authority(CA) and that would become your public key. CA then creates a data structure to match your private key, without actually getting access to your private key. Your private key is safe with you and CA can never access it.
Once the SSL certificate is received, install it on your server, along with an intermediate certificate that establishes the credibility of your SSL Certificate to CA’s root certificate. Each server has its own procedure for installing and testing your certificate.
How does SSL certificate keep user data safe?
As the user opens the website, the web browser tries to connect to it using SSL, asking the web server to identify itself.
The web server responds by sending the browser a copy of the SSL Certificate, which is then checked by the browser.
If the browser finds the SSL certificate to be a trusted one, it sends a message to the web server.
The server then sends a digitally signed acknowledgement to start an SSL encrypted session with the website. When the websites are encrypted with SSL certificate, they start with “https” instead of “http”.
Thus there is a safe exchange of data between the browser and the server, ensuring that the user’s data like credit card number remain safe.
The presence of SSL certificate is beneficial in many ways:
An SSL certificate is always digitally signed by a trusted CA, ensuring the credibility of the SSL certificate. This is because a company must comply with the security and authentication standards established by browsers and must also be audited against them to be the member of the Trusted Root CA store.
SSL certificate also ensures that the organization’s identity is verified by a third party. The browser is programmed to trust the CA and thus the browser also trusts the organization’s identity, ensuring that the website is secure and the user can safely enter the website and his personal information.
Personal information of the user usually include information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, login credentials, etc. This kind of information is safe from attack by a hacker through the path between browser and the server. Without SSL certificate, the attacker is likely to get such confidential information and can use them to rob the user of his money.
SSL also acts as a security protocol that determines the variables of the encryption for both the link and the data being transmitted.
SSL Certificate enables establishing a secure connection so that the browser is able to interact with secured web servers using the SSL protocol. A protocol describes how algorithms should be used.
