SSL Site Security | What You Don't Know Might Hurt Your Customers!

Are you familiar with SSL site security? If your website is not protected with an SSL, you are vulnerable to threats such as sidejacking, compromise of sensitive data, and malware attacks. These are things you will definitely want to avoid not only for yourself, but your customers as well.

If you are not prepared and do not think having an SSL security certification is important, the following reasons might change your mind:

The cost of losing sensitive data is pricier than purchasing the SSL certificate. The SSL will help protect information such as logins and passwords, including credit card information. Having this will help encrypt your customers sensitive data.
Ensures your customers can trust your website. The SSL can guarantee the trustworthiness of the site your clients are on by being a verified business and proves you are who you say you are through the verification procedures.

No website is too small to be hacked!

There are different types of SSL certificates available

High Assurance Certificate– Two things must be verified before you can have a high assurance certificate: ownership of the domain name and valid business registration. Both must be verified so visitors can be sure that you are who you say you are. This certificate can take a couple hours to a few days to be issued.
Low Assurance/Domain– Validated Certificate- This is a certificate that only includes your domain name, not your business or organization name. Authorities can automatically verify that you own the domain name by sending an email to the email address on the domain’s WHOIS record. They are instant and cheaper, but they provide less security and assurance to your customers.
EV (Extended Validation) Certificate– This is a new type of certificate that is designed to prevent phishing attacks. Phishing attacks are attacks that specifically target credit card information, usernames, and passwords. This certificate can take a few days to a few weeks to receive but it gives an even greater assurance to customers than the high assurance certificate by making the address bar green.
Wildcard Certificate– This certificate can secure an unlimited number of first level sub domains on a signal domain name.
Chain Certificate, Intermediate Certificate, Root Certificate– Certificate authorities issue certificates in the form of a tree structure. The root certificate is the top-most certificate in the tree. All certificates after the root certificate gain the trustworthiness of the root certificate. Any certificate in between your certificate and the root certificate is the chain or intermediate certificate. These must be installed to the web server along with the primary certificate for you web site so the browsers can link the certificate to a trusted authority.
Warranty– A warranty is what you get when you purchase a SSL Certificate. But, it can be misleading. It is not a warranty to the purchaser but rather to the end users who use the site. If the purchaser turned out to be a fraud and a customer loses money because the certificate authority didn’t properly validate you, the certificate authority would compensate the customer. This almost never happens, though. Therefore, it is not very important how big the warranty is when you buy the certificate.
Scalable SSL Certificate– Every certificate authority now issues a scalable certificate. These can be used at low, normal, or high encryption rates.

HTTPS sites will help ranking on Google, because Google loves security.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a cryptographic protocol designed to keep communication safe over the Internet. An SSL certificate is a digitally signed file issued for a particular domain name/domain names. Besides the domain name, the certificate also contains the issuer signature, serial number, expiration date, etc. To enable a secure connection and protect important information, an SSL certificate file should be installed on the server. Once the SSL installation is completed, you can securely access your service via HTTPS or any other SSL protocols like FTPS, IMAPS, POP3S, SMTPS, NNTPS, LDAPS, etc. (www.namecheap.com)

Want to learn more about SSL certificates and website security? Give us a call or contact us, we’d love to make sure your website is secure!