SSL is abbreviation for Secure Socket Layer. It is a standard security technology. In other words, it’s a protocol designed to create an encrypted link/connection between a web server and a browser, which is not easy to hack. With the help of SSL, we can share our private information or sensitive information safely and securely via Internet. When we use internet for filling online forms and enter our personal details or do online shopping by using any e-commerce site, doing online banking, sharing credit card details; our main concern is to prevent our data from being hacked, modified or misused by any third party. We will prefer to share or transfer data through a secure link so that our data remains safe and integral. This is where security technology SSL takes over.
Need for SSL Connection
In normal cases, data is transferred or shared in simple text form, which gives advantage to hackers to misuse or modify it easily, which is a big security threat. To overcome this, SSL provides an encrypted link, which converts the data into non-readable form, and then this encrypted data is transferred between the server and the browser through secure link that nullifies the risk of data being hacked. To get this kind of security, all you need is SSL Certificate.
SSL Certificate
SSL certificate is small data file that contains data like organization name, country name, primary domain, sub-domains, expiration data, CA etc, which is provided by the owner of a website at the time of loading SSL certificate. In return, a single IP address is issued to that website, which in turn serves main domain as well as linked sub-domains. It means that it will not only provide internet security to main domain but also, to other sub-domains which are linked with the main domain.
It is important to know that every single browser can interact with secure web server; all it requires to have secure connection between the two is SSL Certificate, which can be easily downloaded from the internet by simply following the instructions and filling some details required.
How SSL Certificate provides security
SSL acts as a backbone of secure internet, without which data that travels around the world via internet cannot be protected from falling into wrong hands, as it travel from one server to another in simple text form, which can easily be hacked, modified or misused. When we use internet, we would prefer a secure connection before making any purchase or sharing our personal details. SSL ensures data security over internet.
SSL certificate has a pair of keys; one is a public key and another one is a private key. To establish secure/encrypted connection, these keys work together. This certificate also contains identity of the owner and in technical language it is known as SUBJECT. CSR (Certificate Signing Request) must be created to get a SSL certificate, which in return creates a set of keys (public and private key). Then CSR data file that contains public key is sent to CA (Certificate Authority). This data file is used for creating data structure to match private key but due to security reasons CA can never see the private key. Once the certificate is issued by CA, install it on your server. When installation of SSL certificate is complete, this server certificate is connected with CAs certificate in order to establish reliability and credibility of SSL certificate. It is important to buy SSL certificate from authorized or trusted Certificate Authority (CA) because most of browsers come with pre-installed list of trusted CAs and will only acknowledge them. So the user can trust the site with Comodo SSL certificate and can feel free to share private and sensitive information required by that particular site