Understanding the Importance of SSL Certificates

What Are SSL Certificates and How Are They Useful:
A Short Introduction to the concept of SSL

Before we discuss anything else – what is SSL? SSL (and TLS) is a protocol that ensures more privacy for your data when it goes over the Internet. Now, allow me to explain (and forgive me if the following the description is too much for some of you) – when data goes from its location to its request address, it goes over a wire similar to voice calls transmitted through your phone (the wiring and some other details differ, however how data travels is just as similar). If data would not be encrypted, there could be the risk of people eavesdropping, or even worse, tamper with the data transmitted.

This is why SSL protocols are generally recommended for all business, no matter if their data is sensitive or not – as a business, you surely would not want your data to be picked up by competition, would you? SSL actually means secure sockets layers and is basically some sort of encryption – this is what you need to remember, and understand.

As a customer, you will notice that a SSL session with a certain website begins at the point where a browser displays a gold lock in the address bar and the typical http:// changes to https://. Aside from this, your browser may send out a window asking you whether you accept the certain certificate or you reject it (by rejecting your SSL session is terminated, and you will most probably face a blank page). SSL certificates are most often used for web servers to ensure Internet security. SSL services are most popular due to mail services, which use IMAP, POP3 and SMTP for e-mailing security – all these are SSL certificates.

· Rapid SSL and its use

If you are a small company that does not operate with too much sensitive data on the online world, then Rapid SSL is the appropriate option for you. Why so? Because this can be used to secure multiple sub domains, and yet it has one single root install SSL certificate – not to mention the fact that it is cost efficient. Single Root SSL Certificate means that the visitor’s browser decides whether the website’s SSL certificate should be used or not (the browser will look at a list of trusted authorities – or in some cases it may ask the user directly whether they should accept the certificate or not).

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