A huge amount of sensitive information is sent over the internet every second of every day. How do you make sure your information is secure and other people aren’t intercepting your bank account information or Social Security Number? The short answer is encryption.

Many websites use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to keep your information secure. Before TLS, websites used a system called Secure Socket Layers (SSL). Even today, TLS and SSL are commonly combined as “SSL.” SSL keeps your information secure by using encryption keys to encode and decode the information you send and receive over the internet. Here’s what a key looks like:

  ac f9 5a bb b7 87 f0 68 f3 98 de 90 f5 d3 43 43 
  f0 39 3b 60 fc a6 eb 64 e0 5e 12 e8 b8 90 c3 f0 
  8e ec a4 12 e5 81 42 3e 1c 56 e3 60 32 88 12 26 
  87 37 6b 1c bf 13 67 4d 2c ae f3 98 1a 10 e6 97 
  0b 7b f0 f9 db f9 a1 41 b2 b0 09 36 ae b9 4f 2d 
  01 3a 52 85 d2 e0 c9 7b 4d 43 1f d6 a6 76 98 6e 
  40 4c a2 35 7b 52 37 93 a5 49 23 d1 1a bc a9 89 
  39 bc 30 e9 c6 b7 fd a9 27 12 b8 f5 81 97 d1 75 
  4c 31 dc 6d ae 00 d5 88 0a 11 5b 75 96 aa 97 12 
  b1 3b 42 47 1e 2b 18 a5 08 0b ad 1e ff ec fc 40 
  05 40 0f 2c bf f5 0c cb 06 e2 52 ca 39 06 18 b6 
  a7 47 c0 e7 ff 89 4d a3 c7 49 83 9a 2f 91 c9 a0 
  85 74 a8 d0 1a 4b bc 15 ad 64 18 53 4b 47 80 7b 
  f5 4e 0c 3d 88 ea e5 e8 84 30 e4 07 35 ba a4 43 
  79 c1 37 0e a2 dc 57 3f a9 de a9 d0 f9 8d bc 6c 
  e3 d0 fe 76 27 16 56 bb 14 bf 8f 90 a1 e5 13 f9

The whole explanation of how the key encryption works involves a lot of math, but the important takeaway is that SSL certificates make all this work. When you visit a website, your browser reads the site’s SSL certificate to make sure the site is legitimate. An SSL certificate is made up of a few different parts, including information about the website and a seal of approval from a certificate authority. A certificate authority is a third party vendor who is trusted to verify website identity. Liquid Web uses GlobalSign as the certificate authority for all the SSL certificates we set up.

Self-Signed SSL Certificates

If you don’t purchase an SSL from a certificate authority, your server generates its own certificate. This is called a self-signed certificate. There’s no way for your browser to ensure this self-signed certificate is legitimate.

If your server has a self-signed certificate, your browser will probably give you a warning when you try to log into cPanel, WHM, or Plesk. Self-signed certificates don’t necessarily mean that your web traffic is insecure. When you’re accessing your server, you know exactly what IP address you’re accessing. So, you can disregard these warnings. If this warning pops up when you were logging into your bank account, you should be more worried. When you see a self-signed certificate warning, always assess whether you trust the site or if they should have an SSL signed by a certificate authority.

You can either accept the self-signed certificates or install what’s called a service SSL certificate on your server.

You can tell if a website has an active SSL certificate if you see “https://” instead of “http://” in the URL bar in your web browser. Depending on the certificate authority, there might also be a little green lock graphic in the URL bar. SSL certificates are very important for ecommerce websites. If a website doesn’t have an SSL certificate, anyone with some technical knowledge can capture your credit card information.

Even though not every website needs an SSL certificate, many people install SSL certificates on their domains for peace of mind. Additionally, Google is now marking all sites without an SSL as unsecure, even if they aren’t collecting data. To make sure your users don’t encounter warnings or errors when viewing your site, you should have an SSL for every domain you host. There are a few steps involved, but it’s not difficult to install your own SSL certificate. If you’d like more information about the types of SSL Certificates there are to choose from, see our Knowledge Base article: Choosing an SSL Certificate.

Now that you have a basic understanding of how SSL works, you can learn about Ordering an SSL Certificate.

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