9 Common Myths and Facts about SSL Certificate

Myths and Facts about an SSL Certificate

In a world where having an online presence is becoming a business necessity, many businesses have to transfer sensitive information over the internet, where there are numerous evolving threats of hacking, phishing, identity theft, and so on. Hence the need for a secure system to process and transfer data online!

Many steps could be taken to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information, and one of the most pertinent is a secure socket layer certificate called an SSL certificate. SSL certificates are a security protocol that creates a secure link between a client and a server. The data is transferred in encrypted form, which prevents misuse by anyone getting access.

However, many lies and myths are circulating on the internet about SSL certificates, some of which are genuine misunderstandings, while others are perpetrated by people with an interest in having more untrustworthy businesses with unsecured data lying around for easy access.

This article discloses some of those myths and confusion regarding SSL certificates.

Myth #1 – Self-Signed Certificates are Sufficient for All Purposes

Fact:

Self-signed certificates can be quite useful for in-house testing and pilot runs of your website. You don’t need to pay anyone for the registration, which is usually easy to create. You can create a self-signed certificate on the IIS version as well.

However, to be trusted by your customers, browsers, search engines, and other third parties, you need an SSL certificate from certificate authorities like Comodo, GeoTrust, and DigiCert.

At CheapSSLShop, We provide all types of SSL certificates at a lower price compared to CAs.

Myth # 2 – SSL Certificate is Too Complicated

Fact:

Well, the terms related to SSL certificates may seem daunting for beginners, but once you get the hang of them, they aren’t very complicated. When you purchase an SSL certificate from CheapSSLShop, you also get basic instructions about how to integrate it into your website.

The process is quite simple, and a web developer with basic programming knowledge can easily handle the implementation.

Even so, provide guidance for SSL configuration stepwise. Once you install SSL, you will have HTTPS and a green padlock on the address bar.

Myth # 3- SSL Confirmation Kills Page Speed

Fact:

To be completely accurate, there is a minuscule delay in rendering pages due to certificate overhead due to the handshake process. However, with the rise of HTTP/2, browsers can load web pages more quickly than HTTP sites. SSL accounts for less than 1% of the CPU load, which is around 10KB of memory per connection.

Even the SPDY protocol helps to retrieve multiple objects on the page with a single request; thus, it reduces overhead and increases the speed of a web page. Furthermore, the benefits of SSL security far outweigh the cost of a small delay.

Myth # 4 – SSL Certificate is only needed by large e-Commerce Websites

Fact:

Large corporations with an online presence need SSL certificates the most, since the greater the risk, the greater the need for security. However, even if you’re a small startup or a website that has no commercial interest and you exchange some sort of sensitive data over the internet, you do need to protect that information.

Furthermore, not only are there legal requirements for security for most types of websites but also the browsers would warn their users of potential threats to your website if you don’t have a proper SSL certificate and may even block access to your website in some instances.

Myth # 5 – Every Domain Needs a Separate SSL Certificate

Fact:

Not! While there are many different types of SSL certificates, you do not need to separately purchase a certificate for each of your Web pages or even for your different web domains.

You can get SSL certification for a single domain and for multiple subdomains (i.e., a wildcard certificate). You can even get a multi-domain SSL certificate (or SAN certificate) to cover all your various business domains and subdomains with a single certificate.

Myth # 6 – SSL Certificates are too costly

Fact:

No, the cost associated with purchasing an SSL certificate is not very high, as multiple providers like CheapSSLShop provide the same SSL certificate at the lowest price compared to certificate authorities.

And the cost of a certificate is peanuts when compared with the potential damages avoided. You can even get up to 1 year of validity for an SSL certificate for less than 10 dollars.

Moreover, the benefits you get in terms of customer trust are boundless.

Myth # 7 – You Only Need to Secure the Login Page(s)

Fact:

Cleary is a myth perpetrated by people with bad intentions! This is by no means a sufficient security measure. You do need to secure the login page(s), but also all other pages that may contain sensitive information about you and your users.

The security certificate used may vary for various types of pages, like your blog pages, the home page, contact us, etc. You may use the in-house self-signed SSL to save money for intranet servers, but for external servers, you should use an SSL certificate from a reputable CA.

Myth # 8 – SSL Doesn’t affect Your Search Engine Ranking

Fact:

The security of user data is one of the major factors in the algorithms of most search engines. No matter how much effort you put into your digital marketing, your search engine ranking can’t be optimized unless you have an SSL certificate that is recognized by the search engines as reliable.

Even if you manage to be placed on the second or third page of the search engine for your targeted keyword searches, you will seldom get clicked on by users. Because the top three search results are clicked on by more than 80% of users, After Google’s announcement, SSL will be considered a ranking factor by search engines.

Myth # 9 – SSL Certificate is the only Security Measure You Need

Fact:

Finally, this myth has been selected to slightly downplay the significance of SSL that we established in this article. Of course, an SSL certificate is a must-have for a successful and secure website. However, it is not the only measure you need to take.

Keeping the user’s data secure doesn’t only involve securing it during transfer. Data needs to be protected where it is stored as well. And that involves not only multi-layer protection in terms of technical security but also in terms of the physical security of the premises where it is kept.

SSL is a part of the solution, not the whole solution.

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