The increased access to the Internet in the world has made cybersecurity crucial than before. In the quest to make the web a safer place, companies like Google has encouraged multiple solutions to ward off the danger of cybercriminals. One of them is the Ssl Certificate, which has become a must for all website owners.

What is an SSL certificate?

Every website has a prefix to it which usually looks like – ‘http://’. When a website has an SSL Certificate, it becomes – ‘https://’, turns green in color and a lock sign appears alongside. SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a public key infrastructure using the RSA system of authentication and encryption through security certificates. The SSL protection ensures that all the data between the website server and the end-user browser passes privately and securely without the interference or snooping of any third party.

Two types of keys are used by the public key infrastructure to encrypt and decrypt the information exchange: The Public key and Private key. A Certificate Authority (CA) issues certificates that ensure secure access to data and are shared only with the specific server or domain.

In the beginning, it was used only for online payments and transactions, account logins and data transfers. But now, it has become the norm for each and every web page. People are increasingly becoming aware of the pros of surfing a webpage that has an SSL certificate. Thus, any business that does not have its website secured stand to lose potential customers.

In an endeavor to make the internet secured for everyone, Google began the ‘HTTPS Everywhere’ initiative in the year 2014; and because of such drives, the once expensive SSL certificate is available even for free today! Following issues can happen to the websites and businesses without an SSL protection:

1. Google

   From 2018 onwards, the search giant Google has decided to flag the websites that do not have an SSL certificate installed. Thus, a visitor trying to reach your website will first see a warning message instead of the homepage. That can truly diminish the trust of your website visitors and in time reduce the site hits, traffic.

2. Hackers

   It will be easy for the cybercriminals to break into your website and cause multiple problems like stealing crucial info, changing the look or content in it, putting malicious messages, taking full control of the website etc. all of it can severely damage your business prospects.

3. Account info & financial transactions

   If the cybercriminals end up stealing account info of website users, or any sensitive financial information like credit/debit card pins, transaction IDs, money from bank accounts etc. the website owners may face backlash or even court cases from the affected people. This could be even a bigger loss than point 2 above.

The post The value of an SSL certificate for your website appeared first on All In One Web Development Services.