Ever noticed a website with a green padlock icon in the address bar? Well, that simply means that your connection is secured and encrypted to the website you are visiting.
As per w3techs, Today, almost 65.5% of websites use SSL. It not only ensures information privacy but also builds trust among your audience.
What is SSL?
SSL stands for secure socket layer that is an internet protocol for establishing a secure connection between client and server. It was developed by Netscape in 1995. It is a predecessor of modern protocol TLS (Transport layer security).
How to Identify a site having SSL or not?
The websites having SSL have “https://” before their domain name with a green padlock icon where “s” means SSL. It can also have a brand name and even the country name before the domain URL in some cases. You can click on the lock icon to view details like certificate issuing authority/certificate authority.
How does It work?
SSL protocol works on public-private key pairs. In other words, It has a private and public key. These keys are together responsible for creating a secure and encrypted connection between server and web browsers.
To get it for your site, you need to make a certificate signing request (CSR) on your server. It will create public-private key pairs. Post that, you will have to send the created CSR data file to a trusted CA (Certificate Authority) that contains your public key. CA will create a data structure out of the CSR file you sent and will match it with your private key to verify.
Types of SSL
There are two criteria on which we can study SSL types: Number of domains and validation check.
Based on No. of domains:
1. Single domain SSL – As the name implies, It can be applied to a single domain only.
Example: https://thegeeksarena.com
2. Wildcard SSL – Wildcard SSL (*) is used for a domain and its subdomains.
Example: If the main domain like https://thegeeksarena.com and its subdomain say https://blog.thegeeksarena.com have a single SSL, that means they are using a wildcard domain.
3. Multi-domain SSL – It is used for multiple domains. In other words, two or more domains can have a single SSL embedded on their sites.
Example: If a single SSL is applied on https://google.com and https://youtube.com, that means they have purchased a multi-domain SSL.
Based on the validation check:
These certificates are based on how well a website is validated.
1. Domain validation certificate (DV) – It is the simplest type of SSL to obtain. To get this, you just need to prove that own the domain you have applied SSL for. Users will see a green padlock icon before the domain in the browser.
It offers a low level of security compared to other validation certificates, but if you are just a beginner, this might be the right choice for you.
2. Organization Validation certificate (OV) – It is more secured than DV and does not get issued as easy as DV. The certificate authority verifies your organization before issuing an OV certificate. Now as CA verifies the site and the owner itself, It can be considered more trusted. Your audience will see a green padlock along with your company or brand name before the domain.
3. Extended Validation certificate (EV) – It is issued after a complete background check by the CA. There are the most expensive to get but offer the highest level of security. You can identify an EV certificate enabled site which has a padlock icon with https, company name, and the operating country prepending domain.
Conclusion
Since there is a massive user base online, If you are a business or an individual and own a website of any kind, it’s very important to have SSL applied on your website. It not only builds user faith in you but makes your audience realize how serious you are about users’ data privacy and security. It’s a good practice to have SSL enabled on a website in the eyes of google. This does help to improve the overall SEO of your platform.
In the era of the digital age where the customer is king, we need to take care of our customers to grow and make it big. If you are managing an online platform, this is an important aspect to keep in mind and shouldn’t be ignored.
