Day 20: Secure Socket Layer or SSL, How Does It Affect Your Website?

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Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is an internet protocol that allows for secure data transfer between a user’s browser and the website they are visiting. SSL converts http:// to https://

There are three SSL certificate levels, and each one offers more details about the certificate’s owner than the previous one.

  1. Only server authorization is provided by domain validation in terms of organizational data.
  2. Some business authentication is offered through Organization Validation.
  3. Complete business authentication is offered via Extended Validation. Additionally, it activates a special visual signal that adds the name of the company to the address bar next to the URL.
How can you tell a website has Secure Socket Layer (SSL)?

Well, you can tell if a website has SSL enabled by checking to see if there is a padlock displayed on the address bar as shown in the image below.

Why is Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Important to Your Website?
  1. It provides encryption for our day-to-day communications between machines.
  2. It provides a means of authentication.
  3. Used to affirm identity.
  4. Gives a better search engine ranking.
  5. It improves client trust in your website.
How do you get or enable SSL?
  • You can use Let’s Encrypt, the best free certificate authority service established to help you get TLS and SSL for your website.
  • You can also get a paid SSL certificate from most domain and hosting providers.
How do I view if a website has an SSL Certificate in my Browser?

Mozilla Firefox

  • Use the shortcut key, ctrl + I
  • Click on Security
  • Click ‘View Certificate’

Chrome and Edge browsers

  • Use the shortcut key, ctrl + shift + I
  • Click on Security
  • Click ‘View Certificate’

It’s true enabling SSL gives your website a measure of security, but this does not in any way prevent motivated hackers from breaching your website. In future blog posts, we shall discuss possible attacks that can undermine the effectiveness of SSL and see ways we can make our websites safer and stronger.

Hope you enjoyed this blog post on SSL. Well, that will be all for the Day 20 post. Catch you in the next post 😉