In today’s world and age cyber security is a big issue. Therefore, it is very important to build a secure website that protects all the confidential information and encrypts communication between the server and the person visiting the website.
SSL or Secure Sockets Layer Protocol is a standard for allowing a secure transition of personal and confidential information. SSL or Secure Certificate is known for providing security to a variety of websites. Obtaining SSL certification is not easy. One of the easiest ways of obtaining SSL certification is purchasing it from WP Engine or any other certificate provider. It is hassle free and allows easy access at a decided rate. SSL certification is of many types depending on the various requirements of the websites. SSL certifications can be either Domain Validated SSL or Extended Validated SSL depending on the purpose of the website. For obtaining the SSL certificate, having a dedicated IP address is also necessary. Customers can choose the required SSL accordingly and can make it shared SSL or dedicated SSL depending on the necessity. Therefore, for every Website Hosting Server SSL Web certification is very much important and necessary as far as security is concerned.
Over these years, the problem of security has risen to a great extent. Therefore, most of the commercial websites or bank websites are resorting to securing their websites and encrypting their transactions using SSL. Apart from that, stickers of “the website is safe” are also available from some certificate providers.
In a nutshell, SSL certification is very important and thus is gaining popularity.
Major Certificate Authorities
- Single Website SSL @ $62.99/Yr
- Multiple Website SSL @ $134.99/Yr
- Wildcard SSL @ $269.99/Yr
- Thawte SSL 123 @ $45.00/yr
- Thawte SSL Web Server with EV @ $156.50/Yr
- Thawte Wildcard SSL Certificate @ $349.00/Yr
- Secure Site @ $274.00/Yr
- Secure Site Pro with EV @ $1049.00/Yr
- Secure Site Wildcard @ $1582.67/Yr
- QuickSSL Premium @ $65.00/Yr
- True BusinessID with EV @ $149.00/Yr
- True BusinessID Wildcard @ $366.33/Yr
To implement HTTPS/ SSL on any website, following steps need to be performed.
1. Get an appropriate SSL Certificate-
In the first step, user is required to obtain an appropriate SSL Certificate & to obtain this, a Certificate Signing Request or CSR must be generated by user on their own web server. If user is having complete administrative privileges on their server, it can be created by themselves. But contact your hosting provider is recommended. After getting this encrypted CSR, purchased an appropriate SSL Certificate, from the reliable certificate providers.
2. Configure https on server-
Now user must ask their hosting provider to install SSL and configure https on his server.
3. http to https-
User is required to redirect all their old non-https links to https. This task can be performed manually if there is a small site. On viceversa, if site is big, following code is used in .htaccess file
In case of Apache
# For http to https
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{https} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
If user is using Nginx
server {
listen 80;
server_name yoast.com http://www.yoast.com;
return 301 https://yoast.com$request_uri;
}
4. Insecure elements to be removed from site-
Now remove all the elements which are considered as insecure from site either manually or with the help of certain tools. To check this, see if chrome is having a yellow coloured triangle with a grey padlock. If yes, insecure elements are still there,otherwise, a regular green lock is visible.
5. Add http Strict Transport Security Header-
To redirect http links to https on part of clients, add HSTS. For this used the following code.
Apache
# This forces all requests to be over https
Header set Strict-Transport-Security “max-age=31536000”
Nginx
# This forces all requests to be over https
add_header Strict-Transport-Security “max-age=31536000”;
6. Perform Test of SSL-
Qualys SSL test is used on site to perform a SSL test. It helps to know whether SSL is implemented on site and server properly or not and then verify it using webmaster tools.
Above process is quite simple and easy to follow. So, if HTTPS/ SSL implemeted on website, safe and secure transmission of information takes place between client and server and it leads to user satisfaction.
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