Information about SSL certificates for business.

SSL Certificates were created to validate the genuineness of a web site because it is so easy to counterfeit a business on the web. In 1995, when they were invented, a standard SSL certificates provided adequate protection for consumers. SSL certificates secure your website and protect transactional data. Need a secure logon for your site or online store? SSL certificates must be signed by a trusted authority or more commonly known as Certificate Authorities (CA). CA’s confirm your identity by adding their signature to your SSL certs.SSL Certificates bind an identity to a pair of electronic keys that are used to encrypt and decipher digital information. A public key encrypts the information, whereas a private key decrypts the information.

Security remains a moving target, however, as researchers have also started to find weaknesses in SHA1. Although there are no attacks as advanced as those against MD5, it is likely that SHA1 will also be increasingly threatened by collision attacks as research in this area continues. Secure Sockets Layer, SSL, is the standard security technology for creating an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between our web server and your browser remains private and secure. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology protects your Web site and makes it easy for customers to trust you. SSL creates an encrypted link between a web server and a web browser to ensure that all data transmitted remains private and secure.

Certificates can be reissued as needed in development situations. Certs may need to be reissued when upgrading or changing server software or operating platform; if migrating your site from one server to another, or if an existing private key has been lost, destroyed or otherwise inadvertently overwritten. After re-validating cert information online, the new cert is issued immediately and is valid from the date of reissue until the original expiration date. Certificates are issued by certificate authorities (CAs), which are either trusted because they are a top-level, or root, authority or because they have been granted the ability to issue certificates by a root CA. All Web browsers maintain a list of trusted root certificate authorities as a way to verify certs issued by those CAs.

Web servers have been built to support it and web browsers have been built to use it. SSL provides the ability to secure customers transactions transparently without the customer having to do a thing! Web server certs (also known as secure server certificates or SSL certs) are required to initialize an SSL session.