With the advancement in technology over the last decade, people have started turning to the digital world for all their needs. Over the internet it’s possible to have tangibility with almost anything, as long as it’s made available. Many small businesses, writers, bloggers, journalists have to started to operate online as it provides more opportunities to interact with a larger audience base.
However even though the digital world makes life considerably easier for the masses, there’s a certain element of risk associated with it. There are some unsavory elements of society who like to disrupt and wreak havoc on it’s normal functioning. It’s important for website owners to safeguard the people visiting their website. The owners can take various steps in order to ensure this. One such way is to have an SSL certificate for your website.
Now a question might arise in your mind as to what exactly is an SSL certificate. Well to put it simply, an SSL certificate is a type of digital certificate which encrypts the data that passes back and forth between the user’s computer and the website and confirms the authenticity of the website.
When the server is able to successfully affirm the website’s authenticity it goes ahead and shares data through and encrypted link so as to ward off hackers from snooping around. This process is also known as a SSL handshake.
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a security protocol which provides encrypted transmission between the web server and web browser. Several versions of the SSL protocol have existed till now which had some sort of compromised security. Therefore a new version was created called TLS or Transport Layer Security which is used till date. But the original initials stuck and hence it is still called SSL.
Now that we have highlighted how an SSL certificate works, let us now look as to why it is integral for your website. Given below are a few reasons which will help you understand it’s importance:
Helps Increase Website SEO:
In 2014 Google announced their HTTPS everywhere initiative, by updating their algorithm. Essentially websites with an SSL certificate will be given higher priority and more boost as compared to ones without it. By seeing a green padlock symbol on the URL bar, visitors can be rest assured about your website’s security which in turn helps boost your website traffic.
This in turn affects your organic growth thus having an overall positive impact. This will help rank your website higher on the search index. Now who won’t love being the number one search result on Google’s search engine?
Protection From Cyberattacks:
When data is transferred between the website and server, there’s high chance that a hacker might piggyback this connection and try to steal data. Phishing and Man-in-the-middle attacks are some of the most common ways of doing this.
However with your connection protected by an SSL certificate, it becomes impossible for the hacker to carry out such tactics. With an SSL handshake in place, an encrypted connection is created which can securely transfer your data without any worries about hijacking. In Phishing attacks, the website is cloned in order to replicate it for pulling of scams. However with an SSL certificate such data remains protected thus protecting the integrity of your website.
Improves Customer’s Trust:
With your data protected from prying hackers, customer’s can be rest assured about their privacy being respected. When private data gets leaked from a website’s server it violates the consumer’s trust regarding your security practices.
However when an SSL certificate is deployed on your website, the green padlock symbol and the words HTTPS can help ease your customer’s anxiety. This causes them to be repeat visitors to your website as they can be rest assured that their data is safe and protected. This possibly also helps grow your business through word of the mouth interactions.
Helps Secure Your Data:
The main function of an SSL certificate is to first and foremost protect server-client communication. This helps encrypt all the data that is passed during the handshake. This is very integral when a website makes use of login systems, passwords, credit cards as such sensitive data in the wrong hands could be very bad. As the data is protected by 256-bit encryption, it becomes impossible for hackers to decipher it.
Authenticates Your Website’s Identity:
The secondary function of SSL certificates is to confirm a website’s authenticity as verifying the identity is an important part of website security protocols. Whenever an SSL certificate is to be installed, a validation process has to be passed which is audited by the Certificate Authority (CA). On successfully passing the process, a certificate is issued by the CA which helps verify your organization’s identity. This is similar to having your Instagram account verified, but instead of your profile it’s your website.
Helps In Regulatory Compliances:
According to norms set by the Payments Card Industry, short for PCI, a minimum of a 128-bit encryption SSL certificate is required for your website for you to have a payment system enabled. Having your SSL certificate obtained from a trusted and reputable source is also an important pre-requisite.
This is to ensure that credit cards details, addresses, banking information do not get leaked whenever a customer initiates a transaction. Proper security is required when carrying out transactions, lack of which may cause breach of confidential information.
As you can see, having an SSL certificate for your website is thee need of the hour. It provides you a competitional edge if your rival websites don’t use one. Google has stated that if two websites have the same search results, the one with an HTTPS protocol will be given higher priority. This in turn can help boost your business and make you more visible on the internet.
Having said this, we hope that you gained some valuable information from this post regarding the importance of SSL certificates for websites and that you incorporate them in to your own websites if you haven’t already done so.
If you require more security for your website then feel very free to contact us. We are here to help our clients and secure digital space.
