Monday, May 30, 2011

All about SSL Certificates

by: Smit Mathur

The SSL Certificates is the means that will help the visitor to know that the website is offering foolproof and secured identity and there’s no way in which his information will be misused. Generally, there are two SSL certificates which are used for the website, namely, a signed certificate and the root certificate. Under the signed certificate, it would mean that authentic certificate authority like VeriSign has approved the validity of a particular website. By approving the validity of a particular website, the certificate authority is acknowledging that the website is perfectly safe for carrying out business transaction. However, the root certificate becomes applicable in case where the visitor completes an online transaction.


Things to Know about Secure SSL

There are different types of SSL certificates, and every certificate has its own features. Let’s take a quick look on various certificates and its respective features:

Dedicated Certificates –The Secure SSL are expensive to buy and require unique domain name, and therefore this reason it is not used with the multiple domain names and sub domains.

Shared Certificates – The certificates can be easily shared with other websites and are comparatively less expensive than Dedicated SSLs. One can use the shared SSL certificate of any other website with your business website. The name on the certificate represents the name of the owner who has the certificate. These certificates are usually offered by the e commerce web hosting companies.
Free SSL Certificate – The certificates are offered at negligible costs, and hence the term Free SSL certificate. The level of encryption in these certificates is not at par with Shared SSLs or Dedicated SSLs. In order to get the right level of encryption, it is very necessary that you get Free SSL certificate from reputed web hosting companies.

Wildcard SSL Certificate – The certificate is best match for the websites that use sub domains, and provide foolproof security to these domains. The certificate is sufficient enough to lend protection to web portal in a holistic manner.

In gist, if you are planning to choose the secure SSL services, it becomes very instrumental that you compare between different types of SSL certificates available and later shop on Internet at competitive prices. Make sure that you are not in a hurry while searching for bit numbers. While 128 bit is the standard industry encryption, you can also shop for higher encryption numbers for higher security. Some companies are also offering 58 bit encryption.