Important Tips Before Purchasing An SSL Certificate

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is important when personal details, sensitive data or confidential data is being transferred using internet. In order to secure it from being misused by third party or hacker, we need an extra layer of security- SSL. To provide internet security, the data being shared between a server and a browser is encrypted before sharing thus remains safe from being accessed by wrong person or misused by any third party.

Typically an SSL Certificate will contain your domain name, your company name, your address, your city, your state and your country. It will also contain the expiration date of the Certificate and details of the CA responsible for the issuance of the Certificate. When a browser connects to a secure site it will retrieve the site’s SSL Certificates and check that it has not expired, has been issued by a Certification Authority the browser trusts, and is being used by the website for which it has been issued. If it fails on any one of these checks the browser will display a warning to the end user letting them know that the site is not secured by SSL.

Why do we need SSL Certificate?

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.

There are certain things that should be kept in mind before acquiring SSL Certificate:

Which SSL to opt for: There are dedicated SSL as well as Shared SSL. Shared SSLs are normally free of cost, no support service and link is not that secure. Whereas, Dedicated SSLs have good support service and cost money but is completely owned by one user only, thus is highly recommended for e-commerce sites.

Encryption level: Depending upon purpose of SSL certificate, there is an availability of various level of encryption. For example: For blogs, level of security required is less than that of any e-commerce sites. So before accruing SSL certificate, one should be aware of the level of encryption.

From whom: There are quite a number of companies that sell SSL certificates but are these companies reliable or trustworthy? I would suggest to go for a good brand or CA (Certificate Authorities), especially, when we are talking about security of e-commerce sites.

IP address: SSL is linked to an IP address to provide security to domain/site. So it becomes very important to have a dedicated IP address in order to secure it a 100%. Although SSL certificate can be used in a shared environment as well.

Tenure: Minimum tenure for validation of SSL certificate is one year. But it depends upon requirement, service and cost, which one would suit you the most.