SSL Certificates have become an essential aspect of every website, email service, web app or just about data transmission via the internet. SSLs are no longer an optional afterthought. While there are several reasons to install SSLs, this brief article examines the most important reason to install an SSL Certificate on your website.
The most important reason to install an SSL Certificate on your website is Security. Security is critical for data transmission over the open internet. Whether you operate an e-commerce store or run a blog that accepts registration, every website needs an SSL Certificate to ensure that the transmitted information is not subject to interception.
Protect Privacy
Personal privacy has become very important on the internet. Laws like the European GDPR have ensured that website users’ privacy is no longer an afterthought.
Whichever type of website you run: Blog, Business, Portfolios, Event, Online Forum, Personal, Membership, Nonprofit, or Informational Websites, you need to protect the privacy of your users so long there’s a form on the website that supports interactivity. Forms are commonplace. Forms like contact forms, comments forms and the like – all collect personal data. It is thus essential that the transmission of the collected data from the user’s device to your web hosting server is encrypted before and during transmission. The data encryption is where an SSL certificate comes in.
Secure payment transmission
E-commerce websites must necessarily have an SSL Certificate as part of PCI Compliance.
PCI compliance implies that any company or organization that accepts, transmits, or stores the private data of cardholders is compliant with the various security measures outlined by the PCI Security Standard Council to ensure that the data is kept safe and confidential.
Encrypted transmission of payment information helps prevent man-in-the-middle and similar types of attacks that can compromise the payment process.
Every website that collects payment online directly or even through 3rd-party payment gateways is required to have an active SSL certificate on your e-commerce store at all times.
In the case of e-commerce, it is even more compelling to go for higher-end SSLs like EV SSLs as they offer more trust to the end-user that the entity behind the website is a legally registered one. The “EV” in “EV SSL” stands for Extended Validation.
Whichever type of SSL Certificate you wish to go for, you will find an option at Web4Africa. Established in 2002, Web4Africa is an ICANN Accredited Domain Name Registrar and Web Hosting firm that offers SSL Certificates, over 400 domain extensions, Web Hosting, Virtual Servers and Dedicated Servers to clients worldwide.
