What & Why SSL is mandatory to your Website More Secure

Shaikot Kundu Akash
5 min readMay 5, 2021

Introduction

Secure Sockets Layer — this is what SSL refers. Basically it’s a protocol for securing communication on the Internet. SSL provides a way for enterprises to encrypt data before giving it to users. Mainly it prevent third parties from reading while it’s in transit.

Honestly speaking, everyone should have to understand of how secure connections on the internet works.

The target is to have anyone understand SSL’s importance. And i repat it’s very quickly argent to know about SSL, if you doing it wrong.

Overview

On the daily basis there have millions users transmit sensitive information over the internet. Most secure things like from bank statement to social security numbers. Transmitting unsecured data can result in a third party intercepting in the data, manipulating the data, or using the the theft of identity.

SSL & TLS protocols resolve this kind of issue to encrypted data when it leaves on the web server and decrypting it when arrives at it’s destination. Basically SSL is used for website, remote login, email and more.

What are SSL & TLS?

Secured Sockets Layer(SSL) and Transport Layer Security(TLS) ARE mechanism of transmitting data safely. SSL & TLS basically try to do two things on the web :

  • It’s varify that the browser is taking to the correct server or not. This is basically means verifying that the owner of the domain and the owner of the server are the same or not. This secure man-in-the-middle attacks. There’s no guarantee without it, you’re encrypting traffic to the right recipient. The SSL protocol is both outdated and insecure. It has since been replaced by TLS. Though the team “SSL” continuing to be used colloquially to refer to the general mechanism to protect transmitting data.
  • Encrypt & varify integrity of traffic between the server and browser.

SSL & TLS Versions

There is SSLv1, SSLv2, SSLv3, TLS 1, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.2. Wipes brow

What you need to know: Don’t support SSLv1, SSLv2 or SSLv3. Why? SSL 1 & 2 were deprecated long ago, so it’s a non issue. SSL 3 is vulnerable to several exploits, so disable it. If you’re going to only target the newest browsers, you can also drop support for TLS 1. Do some research about this.

How SSL Works

It works with the use of public cryptography key. Basically public cryptography uses two keys - a public and a private key to transmit secure data between two systems. These keys respectively encoding and decoding secure data which is so essential.

  1. User can connect to an SSL and enabled it’s service like a website.
  2. The user’s application requests the server’s public key in exchange for its own public key. This public key exchange provides ways for both parties to encrypt messages that only the other party can read.
  3. When the user sends a message to the server, the application uses the server’s public key to encrypt the message.
  4. The server receives the user’s message and decrypts it by using its private key. Messages sent back to the browser are encrypted in a similar way using a public key generated by the user’s application.

HSTS

HSTS is a HTTP header that states how long to continue using HTTPS for.
Sample HSTS header:

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=15724800

What you need to know:

Use it if you’re planning on supporting HTTPS forever. So use it. I got this info at senellingo.io

Benefits of SSL

SSL creates trust by providing a secure channel for users to communicate with online services.

Users are more confident in web services since they know their data is being transmitted safely.
Enterprises see higher customer retention and trust, since their customers are more confident in their ability to safeguard data.
Users and enterprises see fewer incidents of data theft since sensitive data is no longer at risk of being intercepted.

Getting started with SSL

The steps for enabling SSL is different for Apache, Nginx and IIS, but the process is the same. The first step is to choose a CA and the type of certificate. Certificates can be used for a single domain, for a domain with multiple subdomains, or for multiple domains. CAs may also request various levels of validation depending on the type of certificate, from checking the registered owner of the domain to requesting legal identification.

The next step is to generate a private key and the certificate signing request (CSR). CSRs are provided to the CA in exchange for an SSL certificate. CSRs contain information that will be used in the certificate such as the location of the organization, the domain name, and the email address of the administrator.

When the CA verifies the CSR, they will send the certificate along with several additional certificates. These additional certificates are known as intermediate certificates and are used to verify the certificate with the CA. (Intermediate certificates stand between the public web and the CA’s root certificate, which has to remain private.) Once these certificates are installed, the server is SSL-ready.

Is an SSL Certificate Mandatory?

In 2017, Google announced plans to flag all websites without SSL certificates. Online security has become a key necessity to any website. The reason is because of the increasing number of cyber breaches and insecurities that has left most websites in devastating situations. Google wants to correct this trend and it will require all websites to have an SSL certificate. So, if your website does not have an SSL certificate, then it is about time you should start thinking about acquiring one. Most web browsers such as Google and Mozilla have made it mandatory for all websites to be served with an HTTPS encryption. To make sure that this transition came to effect, the browsers developed a new security warning that will alert the website visitors whether or not their connection is secure.

Conclusion

If you se the increasing case of cyberattacks and security violation. You don’t have any choice but to be on the safe side. This is necessary to all you require an SSL certificate for the security all of your connections. Don’t waste your time to wait until it is too late. Start your plan for secure and encrypting your all websites with SSL certificate.

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