Why is SSL Important?

Imagine you’re on a bus having a conversation about your sensitive financial data with your bank account manager, or chatting about personal details with a friend. Everything you say can easily be heard by anyone around you. This is how the Internet would look like without SSLs – it’s like you’re saying your bank account number, passwords, or secret love confessions out loud for all to hear. Sounds terrifying, right? An SSL certificate, in this context, would allow you to speak a language that can be understood only by you and the party to which you’re speaking. To the other “passengers” around you, however, it would sound like a white noise.

If you want your visitors’ data to be safe and secure, you need to make sure you have a trusted and valid SSL running on your servers. Otherwise, you’re putting your customers and service users in an insecure and risky position.

SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is an additional layer that ensures:

– Authentication. An SSL certificate proves that the connection being established is specifically with the party you intend. This is achieved by a strict validation process carried out by the Certificate Authority that issues the certificate.

– Confidentiality. Not a single byte of data exchanged over HTTPS (the secure protocol created by SSL validation/encryption) between you and the server can be eavesdropped upon due to strong algorithms used for encryption. So if an SSL is used during the connection, you know your data is fully protected.

– Integrity. SSL also ensures that none of the transmitted data is altered. SSL uses hashing algorithms which allow the parties verify that the information received is complete and intact.

SSL certificates are issued by Certification Authorities that verify the certificate applicant and ensure that they are issued to legitimate owners of domains.
SSL is widely used throughout the Internet for websites, emails, and other forms of connection. Currently, over 68% of traffic through Google Chrome browser is encrypted with SSL and 81 of 100 top sites use https:// as their default protocol.
If this isn’t enough for you to consider getting an SSL, take a look at the additional benefits of SSL certificates, aside from data protection:

● https:// in address bar

When SSL is enabled on a site, the connection is being established via HTTPS protocol instead of the standard HTTP. The “S” stands for “secure.”

● padlock sign

A properly configured SSL connection also displays a padlock sign next to the address bar in the browser. The padlock increases customer confidence and shows them that your site is a secure and safe place to do business.

● Better ranking in Search Engines

Google has officially prioritized SSL secured sites as of 2014, and beginning July 2018, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure.”

With that being said, all SSL users (even those that do not run an e-commerce website) will benefit from installing an SSL certificate and may get more organic search results in Google.

● Increased customer trust.

SSL is a great way to show your site visitors that you care about them and about security in general. The indicators we’ve described above are among the first elements a site visitor’s eye is focused on, because they appear even before the page is displayed.
Moreover, according to Comodo, the world’s leading certificate authority, “79% of online shoppers expect to see a trust mark displayed on a website’s home page,” and “ 38% of online shoppers will only make purchases through sites that include a trust mark.” A trust mark is a badge that site owners implement into the page code to show customers that the certificate installed is valid and their data is safe.
Comodo CA trust mark (TrustLogo) is dynamic and provides extended certificate information including the company details (if the certificate is OV or EV) and the warranty that protects transactions.
Here is the TrustLogo for our site (hover your cursor over the picture to see the details):

SSL certificates will eventually become a mandatory component for every web server due to future migration to HTTP/2 protocol. So we encourage you to consider all the benefits described above to protect your websites, servers, and customers before you’re faced with a major security issue.
You can check out our SSL certificates here. If you are unsure about choosing the correct SSL type or would like to find out more about the process, feel free to contact us via Live Chat or Ticket, or look up your question in our Knowledgebase.