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Are you the owner of an e-commerce website? Would you
like to get your site SSL certified but are not sure of the exact use of
SSL Certificates? Then you should read on to get all the information you
need.
E-commerce has changed the way business is done, more and more people are turning to the
Internet for their purchase needs.
The increase in online transactions has led to the
need of ensuring data collected on the Internet is collected in a secure
fashion.
SSL Certificates are specifically designed for websites
that sell products or services online or need visitors to input their
sensitive data on the website.
An SSL Certificate on a website is usually a sign of the website following stringent
security measures where information and data management is concerned.
In the simplest of terms, if you are involved with any
kind of Internet based business an SSL Certificate is a must for your website.
It is likely that visitors to a website will only transact if an SSL
certificate exists.
SSL Certificates can also be used for various other
reasons. Corporate companies are using SSL Certificates for securing sharing
of files and other confidential and sensitive data over their intranet.
Such SSL Certificates are usually integrated with their VPN or extranet.
SSL Certificates can even be integrated with certain
types of files. For example it is possible to secure the Portable Document
Format (PDF) files with the help of
Adobe CDS SSL Certificates.
A short list of all the applications that support SSL
Certificates can be found below :
- HTTPS (Secured Web Pages)
- Web Mail
- IMAP
- SMTP (Outgoing E-Mail)
- Website Control Panel
- POP (Incoming Emails)
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
- VPN & Extranet
- Mobile Devices
The main objective of an SSL Certificate is to secure
and encrypt private information such as credit card details, phone numbers
and
addresses. This is done by encrypting
the data when it is entered into a form on a website. 128 Bit encryption is currently the standard
in use; however 256 Bit encryption is also growing in demand as it
is the strongest encryption available today.
When a website has an SSL Certificate integrated, its address
normally starts with https:// instead of the regular http://. The addition
of “s” indicates that the connection to the website’s server is now secure
and private data that is entered into the website can’t be read by anyone
except those authorized to read it.
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