What is SSL?
SSL or Secure Sockets Layer is an abbreviation for “Secure Input Layer”. It is a protocol that establishes an encrypted and authenticated connection between a web browser and a web server. The goal is to keep all data exchanged between the web browser and the server secure and private. This makes it difficult or impossible for external parties to extract meaningful information from incoming traffic. Whenever a site requests a user’s personal information, such as payment information or email address, it must have an SSL certificate.
Have you ever wondered why some website addresses start with “http//” and others start with “https://”? The letter “s” at the end is used as an abbreviation of the word secure and represents security. It shows that the visited site is using a secure, encrypted connection, and it is confirmed with an SSL certificate. This layer of security is becoming more and more important for all websites, not just e-commerce.
What is SSL Used for?
The purpose of SSL is to protect your data privacy. It plays a very important role in protecting the privacy of your personal and card information, which you enter during shopping, especially on e-commerce sites. In the absence of SSL, malicious people who can access this information may harm you by making online payments from your card information on your behalf.
No bank or payment institution will provide a payment screen to a website without an SSL certificate. You must have at least 256-bit SSL certificate to be able to receive payment by credit or debit card on your site. SSL, which works with public key or asymmetric encryption methods depending on the situation, ensures that the communication between the user interacting with the site via a web browser and the site’s servers cannot be read by third parties who do not have the correct encryption key other than these two parties.
It is important that they use SSL on their sites other than e-commerce. Using an SSL certificate on a site where users can log in ensures that the information entered by the user is encrypted and transmitted.
Here’s what SSL will provide you as a website owner:
• Encryption: SSL, cross-browser, cross-server, application-to-browser, browser-to-server, etc. encrypts transactions.
• Authentication: Ensures that you are connecting to the correct server and operating on the correct server.
• Data integrity: Ensures that the requested and/or sent data reaches the required places.
Relationship Between SSL and TLS
When you get an SSL certificate, you set it to transfer data using HTTPS. These two technologies are a good match and you cannot use one without the other.
URLs precede either HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) or HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). This technique efficiently determines the way in which random data you send and receive is sent.
Difference Between SSL and TLS
SSL is the name of the first encryption protocol established to provide the identity of a server connecting over the open internet. This protocol was created in 1995 to enable e-commerce on the web. SSL 2.0 was the first version of the protocol to be used in production systems and soon replaced SSL 3.0. After version 3.0, standards institutions replaced SSL with a more advanced protocol called Transport Layer Security (TLS). However, up to this point the term SSL was the common phrase and thus remains the de facto name of TLS to this day.
How to Buy SSL Certificate?
The first thing to do for SSL certificate installation is to purchase an SSL certificate and then create a CSR (certificate signing request). You can buy your security certificate from various sites. Thanks to the CSR creation process, you can define both the server that will use your certificate and the domain names to which you will assign an SSL certificate.
As Dijital Gen, we have come to the end of our blog about SSL. We hope this article was helpful and explanatory for you. See you in our next article.
