<![CDATA[ProExe]]> <![CDATA[How quickly can I obtain a SSL certificate?]]> 36 hours. ]]> <![CDATA[What is an SSL Certificate?]]> SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and is noticed when you visit a website that begins with https://. The "s" in https:// means the site is secure - that is, the connection between your computer and the website server is encrypted.

With SSL certificates you can start conducting secure online transactions with confidence, quickly and cost-effectively. All of our SSL certificates enable up to 256-bit encryption and can be used to secure servers used for Web sites, intranets, extranets and other online applications.

An SSL Certificate can be thought of as a digital piece of paper that states who the SSL connection is being made with and some kind of "Certificate Authority (CA)," which is a third party that verifies the certificate information is accurate.

SSL Certificates can be self-signed or signed by a CA. If you self-sign a certificate, it will not be trusted by any web browsers or other SSL clients. That is because the entity who generated the certificate signed it themselves and basically said "this information is accurate, trust us!" This will result in a warning in your web browser or SSL client, but the SSL connection will still be created and will still be encrypted. For all intensive purposes, a self-signed certificate is just as good for encryption as a CA-signed one. 

A certificate that is signed by a CA is usually trusted by most, if not all, web browsers and SSL clients. This is because the SSL clients are preprogrammed to accept certificates provided by entities who have proven their trust (such as Verisign, Thawte, and GeoTrust, the top three CAs). Certificates provided by these CAs will not result in a warning in your web browser or SSL client and looks more professional.

The certificates are also verified against the domain and company the certificate was issued to. Therefore, if the SSL certificate of the new website you're trying to purchase a book from was issued by Verisign, you can feel confident that the company does exist and the domain belongs to that company.

]]> <![CDATA[What is SSL?]]> SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It is an mechanism to transfer information securely across the Internet. SSL will enable your customer's browser to connect to your web site and transparently negotiate a secure communication channel. Once this connection has been made, information, like credit card numbers, can be exchanged securely. 

Please note that SSL does not include software to process credit card transactions. Although you can securely receive credit card information through SSL, actual processing of the credit card will require a "Merchant Account" from an accredited financial institution.

]]> <![CDATA[What is the different between shared SSL and regular SSL?]]> Shared SSL means you use your Hosting Provider's SSL Certificate. This will usually result in something like https://yourname.example.com. The benefits are that they are generally free or inexpensive to use and require no maintenance on your part. The downside is that a visitor attempting to purchase a good or service from you may be turned off by the fact that they were referred to "an outside domain" to finish their transaction. Most of the time people do not mind (or notice).

A regular SSL Certificate means you purchased your own certificate for use with your own domain, for example https://secure.example.com. This benefit to this is that it looks more professional to your customers. The downside is annual costs and maintenance.

ProExe do not recommend shared SSL.

]]> <![CDATA[Why are my secure pages loading slower?]]> SSL pages are slower because of the overhead needed to encrypt and decrypt the data.

The web server must spend extra time encrypting the data before it is transmitted to your computer. Likewise, your computer must then decrypt the information. The same applies when you securely submit information from your computer to the Web server. All this requires your CPU and the Web server's CPU to work harder and therefore might cause pages to load more slowly.

]]> <![CDATA[Why do I get a warning that some items are insecure?]]> For a server to serve a page securely all items, including graphics, must be accessed using the https:// protocol. If you are receiving a message stating some items are insecure then you have at least one item that is being served unsecurely.

To find out which items are not secure, let the browser ignore the unsecure items and you will be able to see where most of the items are.

]]> <![CDATA[Why does my ecommerce website need SSL?]]> Customers in a shop can see who they are dealing with and can be sure that if something is wrong with their purchase, they'll have recourse to the shop manager or owner. But on the Internet, website visitors have no reliable way of knowing who owns the ecommerce site they are about to buy from. They are also exposed to all the security risks associated with sending data over an open network (the Internet).

When customers visit a website to make an online purchase, they want to know who they'll be paying and that the personal information they submit to the site cannot be intercepted. This is the purpose of an SSL digital certificate.

Use of SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and a digital certificate enable a web browser (your customer) to communicate securely with your website, assuring the customer of 3 things:

  1. That the website really is who it claims to be.
  2. That credit card numbers, etc are encrypted and cannot be intercepted. 
  3. That the data sent and received cannot be tampered with or forged.
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