The term SSL Certificate stands for Secure Socket Layer Certificate, and what it does is secure the information that passes through the website to the web server, like credit card details, Name, Address, Phone number etc.
This is actually an encryption technology that was originally created by Netscape in 1990’s. Day by day, SSL has become as the backbone of a secure Internet for Information travelling.
What SSL does is, it creates an encrypted connection between your visitors’ web browser and your web server so that information can pass through this route safely.
There’s usually more than two computer involved in the process of transferring information, from web browser to web server. More computers means more ‘Stops’ and more chance of getting the data leaked.
Thus SSL certificate encrypts the data so even if it gets leaked in the route, it’ll be meaningless to the stealer, without the decryption code. Simple!
SSL provides the most useful feature of keeping the sensitive information safe. It keeps the haters and criminals at bay. SSL mainly benefits the customer more as it protects their sensitive credit card information and personal information.
This certificate establishes trust into the mind of the visitor about the website as a SSL Certificated website shows ‘Secure’ written in green color in the browsers’ address bar.
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How a Customer Knows Your SSL Certification Status?
Customers visiting your site has many ways to know whether your website is SSL certified or not, ultimately if their information safe or not.
The most recognizable way of SSL is it replaces the “HTTP” protocol with “https”. It shows the word ‘secure’ written in green color, mostly prior to the URL. There’s also a green padlock icon that shows prior to the ‘secure’. (for chrome).
It usually shows only a padlock in safari. But one way or another, your customer will know whether your site is safe or not.
Today’s smart and savvy online shoppers are very gnarly and they know to look for these certification signs before they make any purchase and hand you over their credit card and other sensitive information.
Not having these signs can influence a huge lack of trust in their mind and as the stat shows, I can tell you that not having this is will make you leave a good amount of money on the table.
The Benefits of Having SSL
Many people, many website owner to be specific, keep asking this question, “Why do I need SSL? What will it do for me? Is it actually worth the cost? Is it really necessary?”, and questions similar to them.
Let me interpret the benefits of SSL and you yourself will understand if it is really necessary or if it is worth the cost and what it’ll do for you.
Encrypted Information, Means Secured Information Travel
The main function of SSL is information encryption for safe travelling of it. SSL encrypts information in a way so that only the intended parties can decrypt and understand it.
As I mentioned before, the information a user submits through internet forms passes through multiple computers before it reaches its final destination.
The more computer it goes through, the higher the chance is for any unwanted interferer to put their hand of your information.
SSL ensures that even if they can manage to interfere your sensitive information, they won’t be able to understand it.
An SSL certificate encrypts the information by inserting random characters into the original information, rendering it uninterpretable to anyone that doesn’t have the right encryption key.
So even if someone gets their hand on your information (actually your customers’ information), they won’t be able to read it thus it’ll be useless for them. This way your and your customers’ sensitive data stays safe and they’ll build a trust in you.
Authentication
You, as a website owner, want to make sure that all the information, including customer information on your site, reaches the right server without any interference.
Now, when you get an SSL certificate, a server certificate is also issued which is another type of protection layer. Acting as a mediator between browsers and SSL servers, this certificate shows that the SSL certificate provider can be trusted.
In the web browser, customers get an option to view these documents to make sure that the SSL certificate of your site is up to date and the webpage they’re seeing and about to enter information into, is actually yours, not an imitation.
SSL is Necessary For Accepting Credit Card Payments
If you want to take payments through credit cards, you must comply with the Payment Card Industry regulations.
A major concern of this legislation in SSL. To comply with the legislation, an online business must have an SSL certificate with proper encryption of at least 128-bit.
Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations verify that there an SSL certificate on your website that’s issued from a trusted source, which has the ability to ensure strong encryption, and provides a private and secure connection to any webpage of your website that needs customers to enter personal information like credit card number, name, address, phone number, postal code, birth date etc.
Without an SSL certificate that is able to meet PCI standards, you won’t be able to process payments through credit cards.
Provides Protection Against Phishing
The core process of phishing is imitating a webpage that a target is likely to trust and enter information into, and the stealer will get that information through the page.
The links to those fake imitated webpage are often sent through email which is usually disguised as advertisements or shipping confirmations.
Unsuspecting customers are likely to enter those links and land into those imitated web pages that might fool them, and enter credit card or other information to confirm the shipment.
Only light of hope to protect those customers is the SSL and URL. People that create these kinds of pages don’t get issued an SSL certificate usually.
So when those customers will see that the page they’re about to enter information into, is not secure, they’re likely to back off and inspect that page. In the process, they might see the URL which is not imitate-able by anyone and then they’ll understand it’s a fake page.
This way SSL can stop possible phishing.
Adds Brandability and Improves Customer Trust
A brand is all about taking care of every little thing and achieve dependability thus. Customers expect quality and the right thing done in every step by a brand. When it comes to securely handle customers’ information, SSL is the right thing to do.
Companies that issues SSL certificate often offers things like site seals and other images that creates an essence in customers mind that well-trusted encryption is in use and everything is secured.
This offers peace of mind to the customers and makes them believe that the brand cares about their privacy and their information is safe with them, as they process it. This gives added brand power to the company.
Better Position In Search Results
In this era of Google, almost everyone that wants to purchase something online tends to do a Google search. If you can show up to those people through Google, you have a good chance of getting more and more customers.
But Google will not show ‘just anyone’ up in the search result. They look into almost 200 factors before ranking a website up for a search term. SSL is a very important factor out of those 200.
Google cares about users’ privacy and they want the websites to do the same. SSL certificate gives an indication to Google that a website having so is safe for customers to put their information into. Thus, Google tends to rank them higher.
Now, to obtain a trusted SSL certificate, you have to go through an authorization process. Given the benefits, I think you will understand that the effort is worth it.
Operating without one influences lack in customer trust and makes it impossible to receive credit card payments.
Online shoppers today want to be ensured that their sensitive personal information is safe when they put in into somewhere, and SSL is the best way to provide them that security and peace of mind.
SSL Provides Trust To Your Clients
When You have SSL installed, you will have a lock icon or green bar on your browser to let your visitors know that their connection is secured. This indicates that they will trust your website to insert their credentials and payment informations without any hesitation and likely to buy more from You! This increases the trust!
Disadvantages of SSL, Are there any?
With so many advantages of SSL, why many webmasters still not uses it? You might be asking if there’s any disadvantage?
Well, there are some minor ones, but those definitely aren’t the reason behind many people not using SSL. The reason they don’t use it is many are in dark about SSL and still don’t know the advantages of SSL.
About the disadvantages of SSL, there are 2 of them in my opinion.
The first and obvious one is Cost. There’s a cost involved in the process of setting up SSL because the providers need to set up a trusted infrastructure and validate your identity.
Some of the SSL providers are very well known and thus they tend to charge a lot, which is overwhelmingly high for many people.
The solution to this problem is finding a provider that does the job in a reasonable price. Take our SSL Certificate Malaysia for example. We have a great setup for easy installation of SSL certificate on your website that meets every expectation of yours and our pricing starts from as low as 9.95$/year!
Another minor problem of SSL certificates is the performance. The performance of the website seems to decrease to a little extent after SSL installation.
That because the information needs to be encrypted once and decrypted once in the process of traveling. Thus it takes more server resources than the pre-SSL condition.
Though, this very little lag of performance are only seen in large websites as server resources tends to have its hand full most of the time, so any extra pressure influences minor lag.
But small to medium websites tend to have no decrease in performance due to SSL.
So, in my opinion, the so many advantages of SSL easily outweighs the minor disadvantages of it.
You Better Get an SSL in 2020, Because…
Google Chrome is a very popular internet browser worldwide and it’s continuously updating system from time to time. In their recent update, they’re planning to mark the website not having SSL as ‘Not secure’.
Previously, Chrome used to mark SSL certified websites as “Secure” with a green padlock, and not used to do anything or show anything about non-SSL sites.
Like this:
According to this post in google security blog, they’re now planning to mark non-ssl sites as “Not Secure!”.
Something like this:
Now, the bigger chunk of your visitors will not be comfortable browsing a site or inputting information into a site that shows ‘Not Secure!’ on the very top visible area.
This will definitely influence many visitors hit the back button and you’re going to loose a lot of potential customers, which you’ll not like I guess.
So even if you’re not convinced after so many advantages of SSL, you better still get it to not-loose the bigger chunk of your visitor/potential customer who will not like to land onto a ‘Not Secure’ website.
Where to Get an SSL Certificate in Malaysia?
The best place to get SSL certificate in Malaysia is GoGetSpace, I believe.
Reason? The best service at a very affordable price.
GoGetSpace has partnered with the top global SSL issuers, GeoTrust, Comodo SSL and Symantec, and bring their service at an affordable price for people in Malaysia.
GoGetSpace enables you to install SSL from this famous providers at a minimum price of only 9.95$/per year, that’s less than a dollar per month!
It also lets you get heavier packages if you need so.
I recommend checking out the GeoTrust SSL Certificate Packages, Comodo SSL Certificate Packages and Symantec SSL Certificate Packages.
Wrap Up:
Before wrapping up, I’d again suggest you get an SSL soon. if you don’t already have one. It’s going to make a greater impact in the coming days since a safe and secure internet is something we all want, and it starts with SSL.
SSL is like a responsibility of yours as a website owner since customers are trusting you with their personal information, so it becomes a responsibility for you to keep them secured.
As a website owner you stay secured with SSL and your customers’ get the peace of mind and ensurity. So why not?
