Typically you will find that all ECommerce websites have https on the address bar, just before the URL begins. Many browsers also display them in Green Color. To a layman it suggests that the website is secure. In this article we shall try to explore more about SSL.
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a commonly-used protocol for managing the security of a message transmission on the Internet.It ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. SSL is an industry standard and is used by millions of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers.
When a browser connects to a secure site it retrieves the site’s SSL Certificate and checks that it has not expired, it has been issued by a Certification Authority the browser trusts, and that it is being used by the website for which it has been issued. If it fails on any one of these checks the browser will display a warning to the end user letting them know that the site is not secured by SSL.
Developed by Netscape, SSL also gained the support of Microsoft and other Internet client/server developers as well and became the de facto standard of Security on Internet.
Typically an SSL Certificate contains the domain name, company name, address, city, state and country of website owner. It also contains the expiration date of the Certificate and details of the Certification Authority responsible for the issuance of the Certificate.
In technical terms Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a set of cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet. They use asymmetric cryptography for authentication and confidentiality of the key exchange, symmetric encryption for data/message confidentiality, and message authentication codes for message integrity and as a by-product message authentication. 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).
These days SSL is being succeeded by Transport Layer Security (TLS)