Understanding Secure Sites and SSL Certificates

Internet security, secure sites and SSL certificates have become an increasingly common feature of the World Wide Web because of the steady increase in data volume. The importance of securing data has also increased with time because people can now store personal and financial information right on the Internet. People can send a variety of data, which can range from personal email to business contracts. When people send information through the Internet, they would like it to be protected. Because of this, a SSL protocol has been adopted in order to protect information that goes through the World Wide Web. This system has been incorporated to all network services that use TCP/IP to communicate between servers and clients.

The SSL protocol by Netscape to guarantee the security of transported data routed through HTTP, POP3, or LDAP application layers. SSL ensures that the connection between two points over a network is reliable. Basically, SSL can be used to protect transited data on networks. SSL is most widely used in HTTP server and client applications. Most HTTP servers can support and SSL session.

A secure website uses encryption in order to protect the confidentiality of Internet-based transactions. The most common protocol for Internet security is Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. SSL provides security for HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol), as well as other TCP/IP standards like IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).

Whenever you connect to a website using SSL, your browser will ask the server to authenticate itself in order to confirm the identity of the website you're trying to access. Cryptography will be used to confirm that a trusted certificate authority has been registered. VeriSign and Thawte are the most common certificate authorities. SSL can also authenticate individual computers. SSL will also encrypt all data that you send. This encryption will ensure that any type of eavesdropping or wiretapping is impossible. This is very important when you transfer confidential data through the Internet.

There are several ways to tell if a website is secure or not. The first way would be to look at the address bar. If the website's address starts with https, then it is a secure website. Another way to tell if a website is secure is to look for the padlock near the bottom of the Internet Explorer window. The padlock indicates that the website has a valid SSL certificate. You can view this certificate by double-clicking the padlock icon.