With a company’s data and online reputation becoming more and more important in this day and age, the importance of security has scaled along with it.
As a result, SSL certificates have become a crucial tool for keeping all parties safe and confident in the reliability of a given website.
Before we dive deeper into this, let’s briefly talk about what even is a SSL certificate. It’s easy to say something is crucial to a site’s security, but meaningless if we don’t explain why.
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is a security protocol that creates an encrypted link between a web server and a web browser. A SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and enables an encrypted connection.
In less technical terms, imagine going into a doctor’s office. The first thing you do is scan the wall behind him to look at all his certificates. The “better” the certificate, the more confident you are. If you see he has a certificate for cardiology, you would consult him regarding your heart, but you wouldn’t consult him regarding your brain if he doesn’t have a certificate for neurology.
HTTPS stands for Hypertext transfer protocol secure and is the secure version of the HTTP protocol. In the normal HTTP protocol, the information between the browser and server are divided into data packets and then transferred, but are vulnerable to attacks.
However, HTTPS keeps the information confidential between authorized users only, so it’s very useful for things like logging into your account or using banking credentials in a financial platform.
Simply go into the cPanel of the domain you want to install your SSL certificate in. In this case, we’re picking our Turbo Web Hosted (a2europehosted.com) domain.
From your cPanel, scroll down until you find the Security heading.
You can see there’s an Autoinstall SSL and a SSL/TLS. In this case, we’re picking SSL/TLS.
Now simply pick the SSL you want installed and then click Save. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
For different scenarios, check out the KnowledgeBase here.
Depending on the nature of your website and business, you’ll probably want to consider getting a paid SSL certificate. A2 Hosting has a wide range of SSLs certificates available. We don’t want to overwhelm you with details and minutiae, so let’s just broadly discuss the different types of SSL certificates and which ones may be appropriate for you.
For websites that are not exposed to the public.
SSL certificates available are:
These are appropriate for sites that:
For websites that are exposed to the public, but the data is not sensitive.
SSL certificates available are:
These are appropriate for sites that:
For websites that are exposed to the public, but the data is sensitive and confidential. And requires the public’s trust that their data will not become exploited.
SSL certificates available are:
These are appropriate for sites that:
Wildcard SSL has some overlap with Advanced SSL, but the biggest and most obvious difference is that it provides multiple to unlimited sub-domains on a single SSL certificate.
As an example, a single wildcard certificate for https://*.wildcard.com will secure all these subdomains on the https://*.wildcard.com domain:
SSL certificates available are:
These are appropriate for sites that:
The biggest difference between a free and a paid SSL is that paid SSL comes with a warranty against data thefts and cybersecurity breaches.
For instance, A2 Hosting’s QuickSSL Premium from their Basic SSLs plan, offers a warranty of $500,000. While their True BusinessID TV from their Advanced SSLs plan, offers a warranty of $1,500,000.
If your website handles financial transactions, it’d be a good idea to get a paid SSL from one of the options we’ve already discussed.
SSL Certificates create confidence because they let the user know what security protocols you’re using and trust is created because they know your site is secure and safe to use.
If you don’t have a good SSL Certificate, browsers would not trust to go to your site, thereby costing you conversions. So it’s definitely worth doing.
And don’t forget, if you run into troubles, you can always get in touch with A2’s customer support.
