A well-designed website is not enough when your website isn’t secure.
People are reluctant to share their personal information online because of cybercrimes, such as identity theft.
This is a problem if your business sells products or services, or needs your customers to make an account, all of which require entering sensitive data, like credit card information, contact number, and others.
If you want potential clients to divulge their personal information or create an account on your website, you need to gain their trust.
One way to do it is making your website secure. Thus, you need to use SSL certificate for website.
These certificates help protect your customers’ information, as well as your website.
You can get a paid or free SSL certificate on some free domain and hosting for 1 year.
If you want to know which and how to choose SSL certificate for website, you may want to read the following types of certificates:
Extended Validation Certificates (EV SSL)
One of the certificates that can boost the trust of your customers is the EV SSL.
It offers a top-notch level of safety and security against cyberattacks, like email fraud and phishing attacks.
When getting an EV SSL certificate, you need to pass a globally standardized and thorough identity verification process.
This process is a set of policies and principles ratified by the Certification Authority Browser Forum, also knowns as the CA/Browser Forum or the CA/B, which is responsible for defining standards that trusted certification authorities (CAs) and Delegated Third Parties must follow.
Going back, the verification process involves proving the entity issued the certificate with authority.
Moreover, the verification process also proves that your website has physical and operational existence, is legal, and has exclusive rights to use a domain.
The results in the form of verified identity information reflect within the certificate.
Thus, when visitors want to see your company’s identity information, they’ll need to view the certificate details.
Your visitors will know they’re safe to communicate and conduct financial transactions with you.
With an EV SSL certificate, you can assure your customers that your website is verified.
Organization Validated Certificates (OV SSL)
OV SSL validates an organization, business, or company, and encrypts sensitive information customers provide when transacting with the website.
The encryption is a powerful 256-bit and a 2048-bit signature.
An OV SSL seal indicates that your business assures that all information remains confidential.
Your site seal also indicates that your business is legitimate. As a result, it can increase your conversion rate because the seal boosts your customer’s confidence in sharing information with you.
But, before you can get such a certificate, you first need to submit the following documents to the CA:
- Third-party database list
- Bank statement
- Incorporation article
- Legal government license
- CA approved attestation letter
- Legal existence record
Upon submission, the CA will verify domain ownership before verifying your documents. Then, upon domain verification, the documents verification may take up to two to three days.
Domain Validated Certificates (DV SSL)
DV SSL certificates are an economical and lightning-fast way to secure non-e-commerce sites, blogs, personal websites, and other Internet testing domains.
Unlike EV SSL and OV SSL that require identity and documents verification, DV SSL doesn’t.
The validation of DV SSL is fully automated, and you’ll need to respond to a phone call or email. This is to prove that you’re the owner of the domain.
Not only are DV SSL certificates easy to get, but they’re also recognized by nearly all web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Google, and others.
Even mobile users can recognize DV SSL. This is advantageous because your customers can use your site with any browser.
However, one of the disadvantages of DV SSL is that it only offers necessary encryption.
Thus, hackers can poison your DNS servers, making your site vulnerable. This may compromise the trust of your customers, especially with financial transactions.
That’s why if your website is an e-commerce, you may want to opt for the other higher level of certificates, such as EV SSL.
Wildcard SSL Certificate
With multiple subdomain names (hosts), a wildcard SSL certificate can secure them. You can see a wildcard character (*) in the domain name field with this certificate.
For instance, a wildcard certificate for *.mydomainname.com could be used for www.mydomainname.com, store.mydomainname.com, mail.mydomainname.com, and another additional dub domain name.
You may want to use a wildcard SSL certificate if you want to secure a number of your subdomains with a single certificate.
To install the certificate on each additional server, you may need to copy your private key to each.
Doing this can save you a substantial amount when managing multiple certificates.
Instead of paying for an SSL certificate for individual sub-domains, you get to pay cheaper SSL certificate with a Wildcard SSL.
Before getting a wildcard SSL certificate, you may need to complete a certificate signing request (CSR).
This CSR allows you to place the wildcard character to the sub-domain you would like to secure.
Multi-Domain SSL Certificate (MDC)
Like a wildcard SSL certificate, a multi-domain SSL certificate secures all your domain names in one certificate.
This SSL certificate is also known as a unified communication certificate (UCC), or subject alternative name (SAN).
These certificates are available in EV validation, DV validation, and other levels of validation.
However, all domains will have the same level of validation.
What’s interesting is you can use it for various host names, whether they’re from the same domain or not.
Conclusion
Nowadays, SSL certificates are important for website owners. When you have an SSL certificate on your website, you’re showing that you value security. It secures your website, as well as your customers’ information. You can use this as leverage for customers to trust you, especially with financial transactions.
The more secure your website is, the more customers will trust you. As an overall result, you can earn more profits from your business.
Depending on your website’s purpose, you can either choose an EV or OV SSL certificate for a more secure option. If you have multiple domains, a wildcard or multi-domain SSL certificate may also be best than individual SSL certificates. If your website is more on blogging or doesn’t involve financial transactions, you may choose a DV SSL certificate. Hope this discussion about ssl certificate for website was useful to you.
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