Does My Website Need SSL?3 min read
November 13, 2020Secure Sockets Layer or SSL certificates are more important today than ever before. Not only do they provide the encryption layer that protects your website traffic, but they’re increasingly used as a metric by search engines when deciding what content to serve to users.
Does your site have a login for members, customers, patients, or staff? You need SSL to protect their access information (usernames and passwords).
Does your site have forms on it that gather sensitive information about your current or potential customers, clients, members, etc.? You need SSL to protect that information.
Do you sell products on your site? You need SSL to protect sensitive payment information.
What is SSL?
When a website session (visit) takes place, the web browser and the web server connect. An SSL encrypts that connection so that any exchanged information is protected and kept between only those two “parties.”
SSL Encrypts your data. The basic, underlying function of an SSL certificate is to encrypt data between your site visitors and the web server hosting your content. This is less important for serving a static image but so important for form submission and confidential details.
Currently, there’s no reason to be serving plain http:// traffic aside from old browsers, so our web developers strive for https:// as a default.
How Can I Tell if My Site Has SSL?
If you’re not sure that your site has SSL certification, check its url. It will show “https://” as part of the site’s domain display. Chrome browsers will mark http websites without secure SSL certificates as “not secure.” Your site visitors may see this as an alert.
Not having an SSL certification can decrease the confidence consumers have in your business and its ability to keep their sensitive information private.
How Do I Get an SSL Certificate?
As we mentioned, we make sure sites are SSL certified when we design and develop them, and if we host your site on our server.
SSL Certificates are also available for free if you’re willing to put in the legwork.
Our developers include SSL protection with all hosting plans and for most of them, it takes a small amount of time. Note: some SSL’s providing Extended Validation are only available from paid providers, but we get the same 2048-bit encryption a paid certification does with Let’s Encrypt.
We’re happy to discuss any concerns you have regarding SSL certification. Call us for a free consultation to learn more.
Secure Sockets Layer or SSL certificates are more important today than ever before. Not only do they provide the encryption layer that protects your website traffic, but they’re increasingly used as a metric by search engines when deciding what content to serve to users.
When a website session (visit) takes place, the web browser and the web server connect. An SSL encrypts that connection so that any exchanged information is protected and kept between only those two “parties.” SSL Encrypts your data. The basic, underlying function of an SSL certificate is to encrypt data between your site visitors and the web server hosting your content.
If you’re not sure that your site has SSL certification, check its url. It will show “https://” as part of the site’s domain display.
We make sure sites are SSL certified when we design and develop them and if we host your site on our server.
SSL Certificates are also available for free if you’re willing to put in the legwork. Our developers include SSL protection with all hosting plans and for most of them