The basic fundamental in any business is to build up a trustworthy reputation where your client feels secure. When you design a website, you aim at reaching to the heights which is only possible we are able to gain the trust to the potential customers.
How can you gain the customer’s trust?
Simple, by activating your SSL certificate. SSL or socket layer security is a technology that makes use of certain algorithm as a result only encrypted data is transferred between the server and the user. It ensures the safety and integrity of any sensitive or confidential data. It is basically utilized by many established websites for online transactions process.
You can buy SSL certificate from any reputed host company which provides you with an organizational validation or extended domain validation.
How does SSL certificate can be activated?
SSL activation is a tedious process which involves several steps.
When you activate your SSL certificate a certificate signing request is generated on your server.
As a consequence of the request you are provided with two cryptographic keys which are private key and public key.
Both public and private keys are an integral part of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. They both are used to decipher the encrypted message.
However, the private key is only shared with the key generator. Therefore, it is highly secure as only this key could decrypt the message sent by the customer.
On the contrary, public key is no secret with anyone. They can be used by anyone to encrypt the conversational data which is only meant to be read by the website owner.
Now, this public key is used along with the certificate signing request. Now this information is shared with the certification authority who verifies all the important data and keep your credibility before validating you with any clarification.
After you have passed this test your SSL certificate is made which matches your private key however during this procedure the privacy of your key is not invaded by the CA.
After this procedure your SSL certificate is activated on your website and the customer is notified of your security by the display of green padlock or green bar on your website depending on the type of certificate you have bought.
How this encryption actually works?
Usually encryption can be of two types. It can either be symmetric encryption or asymmetric encryption.
Symmetric encryption used only single key which is shared between the user and the server while the asymmetric encryption uses two keys to encrypt and decrypt the message.
In business websites, we generally make use of asymmetric key which is more secure when any confidential data have to be shared like social security number or credit card number.
So, let’s see how asymmetric encryption works.
- When the user tries to access any HTTPS website then it demands an SSL certificate.
- User is provided with the session key and public key. After the user finds the the validation if the server then it transmit message which is encrypted by the public key.
- Now, this cipher text is encrypted in a way that it could only be devoted by the server and with the use of only private key.
- Session key is a short lived key which is only used to encrypt message of that particular session.
In this way it is ensured that the data is only shared between the user and the server and no third party could gain access to it. Partly because they don’t have the secret key. As only secret key, here could decrypt the cipher code.
What is 128-bit and 256-bit encryption?
They are encryption method which are used under advanced encryption standard. They are generally utilized for the encryption of data which uses symmetric encryption. As this type of encryption are generally less secure due to involvement of single key.
Basically 128-bit and 256-bit describes the length in key encryption.
They are generally considered more secure and unbreakable way of encryption.
Why they are considered as most secure encryption method?
They are difficult to break because of their massive size. For example: 128-bit encryption means 2 raised to power 128 different combinations which would equal to some billions of combination which would be a hard nut to crack.
Where does the difference lie?
The 256-bit encryption is generally considered more secure form of encryption as it would require more number of years than any encryption method to break its cipher code.
With time, it is predicted that such a computer technology is being developed which would be able to break the 128-bit encryption code.
So, 256-bit encryption is comparatively safer option as it would require 10 raised to the power of 56 years to break its cipher text. Well, it’s better to be on the safer side.
Larger the bit number of any encryption more the difficulty level of breaking the code increases.
Therefore, if you want to add a layer of security to your data then I would advise you to for 256-bit encryption technique.
More Resources
What Is Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)?
