Category: SSL Certificates

How does an SSL certificate work?  An SSL certificate ensures safe, easy, and convenient Internet shopping. Once an Internet user enters a secure area — by entering credit card information, email address, or other personal data, for example — the shopping site’s SSL certificate enables the browser and Web server to build a secure, encrypted connection. The SSL “handshake” process, which establishes the secure session, takes place discreetly behind the scene without interrupting the consumer’s shopping experience. A “padlock” icon in the browser’s status bar and the “https://” prefix in the URL are the only visible indications of a secure…

Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols that provides security to data transfer over the Internet. SSL Certificates encrypts the segments of network connections at the Application Layer for the Transport Layer, using asymmetric cryptography for key exchange, symmetric encryption for privacy, and message authentication codes for message integrity. Several versions of the protocols are in widespread use in applications such as web browsing, electronic mail, Internet faxing, instant messaging and voice-over-IP (VoIP). TLS is an IETF standards track protocol, last updated in RFC 5246, and is based on the earlier SSL specifications…