Reg-Names

📌 Continuing our discussion on domain security, let's sort out what SSL certificates are, how they work, and what benefits they bring.

🔒 SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is a protocol that encrypts data transmission to and from your website. This way, it keeps your visitors' personal information private when they submit it on your website. This prevents third parties from intercepting any data passed between both sides. SSL certificates are vital for your customers' safety and your website's reputation.


➡️ How do users know a website has an SSL certificate and is thus secure?

In their browser, users will see a little padlock icon in the address bar to the left of the web address to indicate that the website is secure. Secure websites will also have their URLs start with "HTTPS://…" instead of "HTTP://…", the S standing for "secure."


➡️ What other benefits does an SSL certificate provide?

✅ Meeting PCI-DSS requirements

PCI-DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. If you receive online payments, your website must be PCI compliant. Having an SSL certificate is one of the 12 primary requirements set by the PCI. It is required by all credit card companies to protect their customers' credit card information during transactions. Do note, however, that only SSL certificates issued by trusted certificate authorities comply with PCI security standards.

✅ No warning alerts

From 2018 onwards, all the popular web browsers like Google Chrome & Firefox Mozilla flag websites that do not have a valid SSL certificate as "Not secure". This way, SSL has become pretty much mandatory for any website, as visitors may be scared away by alerts saying your site is not safe.

✅ Better search engine ranking

Websites secured with an SSL certificate are more likely to receive higher search engine rankings than websites without SSL protection, as confirmed by Google themselves. Mind you, having an SSL certificate does not magically boost your website on top of search results; make sure that you consider other important SEO factors as well.


➡️ What are the different types of SSL certificates?

◾️ By validation type:

• Domain Validated (DV) certificates — the simplest certificates that are issued automatically and only confirm the domain ownership.

• Organization Validated (OV) — in addition to domain ownership, validates the organization information included in the certificate such as name, city, country.

• Extended Validation (EV) — the highest level of validation. Before issuing a certificate, the certification authority carefully checks the organization, its legal existence, and its right to use the domain. EV-certificates are identified with the so-called "green bar" — a visual indicator of the site’s reliability.

◾️ By properties:

• Regular SSL certificates (DV, OV and EV) — provide encryption for one domain.

• Wildcard certificates — are issued when, in addition to the main domain, encryption must also be provided on all associated subdomains.

• Multi-Domain certificates (SAN certificates) — one certificate for several different domains located on one server.

• Certificates with IDN support — certificates that support non-ASCII characters.

◾️ By price:

• Free — self-signed certificates (suitable for internal use), and LetsEncrypt certificates (Wildcard LetsEncrypt, Multi-domain LetsEncrypt).

• All other certificates are paid.