Is your website using SSL and why you should care?

Read the below blog to learn about Is your website using SSL and why you should care?

You can easily find out if any website is using SSL. Just look at top left of website address bar in your browser. If it says https and/or shows a nice lock then SSL is implemented. If it shows http or shows “Not secured” then it means SSL is not implemented.

The SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as a story

– King V sending messages to King W using a Pigeon. Message: “Gold is on it’s way and unlock using ABCD as key!”

– King H captures pigeon and reads the message and snatches Gold

– King W and V get smarter. They agree on a code language (encrypt message) only they can understand

– Now even if King H captures messages, he does not understand the message and theft is averted

– That is SSL simplified

– Just imagine that King W is your website and King V are your website visitors and King H is hacker

– If SSL is set up then millions of hackers in between can not decode the credit card number that visitors may provide

– But SSL does not necessarily stop a direct attack by King H on King W’s castle. That is a different problem where rules are changing every minute.

Where else SSL helps?

Perception:

1) website visitors get uncomfortable when they see “Not secured” messages. So it is better to have SSL.

2) Search ranking: we will never know exactly how Google ranks websites. But one of the criteria that is supposed to impact positively is having SSL.

Ask your IT Partner to set up SSL. If your IT partner can’t, we will be glad to help.

SSL certificate is available for free these days so your IT partner might be able to do this under $20 (Rs. 1500) as service charges if it is only one simple site.

Note that your developer might need to adjust .htaccess file like below:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]