With the entire world moving towards the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality the security or rather I would say computer security is the main concern for many developers and people around the globe.
Now with everything available on the internet, website security plays a vital role internet. And one of those things that ensure this security is the SSL certificate.
SSL certificate is like the first and most tough wall in front of the hackers. It is very difficult to break this wall.
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer.
It is a certificate or a layer that gets installed on the website to protect it from hackers and middlemen.
SSL certificate is a structure in such a way that once they get installed on the website after that for every interaction with the site from browsers need authentication.
SSL certificate works on the principle of encryption used for the public key and private key authentication. SSL certificate always comes with the public key and private key.
Here the public is public means available to everyone, anybody can access it. While the private key is private with the owner only. Nobody has access to the private key of others, other than the owner itself.
Also Read – What is SSL?
As mention earlier SSL certificate has 2 keys. So whenever somebody uses public and sends the message to others with it, the message can visible to others but in the form of encrypted messages.
So even though others can see that message they cannot do anything about it. And when that message is received by the intended person it can be decrypted by that person’s private key.
Let us understand the process more deeply with the example.
Say you put some domain name that is the website’s name in the browser.
Then your browser converts that domain name into IP address and sends a request to show the information you needed to the server who hosted that IP address.
After receiving the request that the server first sends the SSL certificate associated with that IP address. When your browser received that certificate it first check it whether the certificate issued by the certificate authority it has registered with.
If yes, then the browser accepts the data from the server and say’s you that this website is secure.
After the process is completed when you need to send any data to the site your any data simply encrypted with the public key of the website so anybody can see it but in the form of the encrypted message so even though it is visible to everyone it is just some numbers and characters if any middle man gets hold to it.
So after sending the data with encryption from the website’s public, it is only decrypted by the website’s private key.
In this way, an SSL certificate establishes a secure path between the webserver and the browser.
But you must be thinking the process seems very lengthy, how come we get to open the website within a fraction of second after putting its name in the search bar?
Here we have to keep one thing in mind, SSL certificate authentication is nothing but two computers checking if both of them satisfy particular conditions or not.
But we do need more time to open some websites with a lack of those smooth connections with its webserver.
SSL certificates are of different types or rather we can say SSL validation takes place with different types according to the type of certificate a website has.
We know the Certificate Authority is the trusted Authorities who provided the SSL certificates. Certificate Authority is trusted by the web browsers and generally listed by the browser in their directories as the Certificate Authorities.
Certificates issued by those authorities only will be considered as valid ones by browsers.
These are the most basic types of SSL certificates. They are distributed at the individual level. Anybody with the website can get the Domain Validated SSL certificate.
The validation process for getting the certificate is very simple. Once the person owning the website send the request for getting an SSL certificate to the Certificate Authority, CA send an email to the website’s registered email. So if you own the site you own the email. After confirming the email the certificate is issued to the website.
The advantage of this certificate is that it gets issued very easily and requires less time. Certificates can get issued within 10 minutes. It is best for the person owning a site or a small business website owner. These certificates converted the protocol from HTTP to HTTPS.
These types are certificate is also used to increase the SEO of the site.
The disadvantage of this certificate is as it is issued to anyone cybercriminals can also use such certificates on their malicious site to make it more authenticate and secure.
Also Read – Cheap Domain Validated SSL Providers
This is more secure types of SSL than DV certificates. To gets, these certificates owners must need to prove the following things
The organization’s validity, that is whether the organization is valid or not.
Organization’s location to which (website) the certificates going to be issued that is a physical presence.
A website’s domain verification is also needed. That is whether the website actually belongs to that domain name or third person is trying to get the certificates in the name of that website.
Sometimes a verification call is also made by Certificate Authority to the organization’s official phone number to check its authenticity.
Advantages of Organizationally validated SSL certificates are they are more secure as the verification of organization is take place before giving a certificate to its site makes then legit and transparent.
The disadvantage for this certificate is they take days to get hence the organization is about to launch the site it has to wait for a certificate to get issued.
Also Read – Cheap OV SSL Certificate Providers
These certificates are the most secure one. The site having these certificatesis considered as a most secure site to do any transaction with. This type of certificate is generally issued to the website which includes the financial transaction generally e-commerce sites.
To issue this certificate CA thoroughly checks the organization, its identity, and every aspect of it.
An identity-check of the requester is also done by the CA. The document verification is also done by the Certificate Authority.
All the above verification done in the other two types of certificate is done and some additional verification is also done by CA.
The website which gets Extended Validation SSL certificates is trusted by CA itself. Which makes them most trusted for doing any transaction with them.
Also Read – Cheap EV SSL Certificate Providers
Conclusion
SSL certificates increase the security of the website by using the public key and private key authentication. If you are the website owner they SSL certificate is a must for you to show your user that they can trust you with their data and information.
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