Posts Tagged ‘Wildcard SSL Certificates’

6
October
2010

SSL is something that everyone uses, but dealing with it is a rare occasion. SSL technology does everything for itself and hardly is there a need of a human involvement of any kind in a day-to-day affair. This naturally creates confusion when a problem arises. Here, I have tried to help SSL users with the few ailments that they often become a victim of.

SSL scuffle: This happens when you accidentally find out that your SSL Certificate has expired only after being informed on quite a few SSL errors as complained from the customers. I would say what makes this happen is the negligence and carelessness. You clearly receive the date of expiration on your SSL Certificate that gets back from the CA. Reminder emails can be filled and forgotten or may go unnoticed in the absence of a concerned person. The best you can do is to put your SSL’s expiry date in a personal space such as your Outlook or Google calendar.

Domain name mismatch: The nature of the problem is associated with whether your site shows up as “sitename.com” or “www.sitename.com.” The problem is not with the opening of the site with punching in a URL “www.sitename.com” for a domain that’s registered as “sitename.com” as you get an automatic HTTP 301 redirect to “sitename.com,” but the domain name consistency is needed for the functioning of your SSL Certificate. If you have taken your SSL Certificate for “www.sitename.com” and you link to “sitename.com,” SSL Certificate will not recognize it as the correct domain, except a Wildcard Certificate, and you will get an SSL warning. To avoid this from happening, make sure that you pick the fully qualified domain name in the field “common-name” while applying for an SSL.

Intermediate SSL Certificates: This is the perhaps the biggest confusion. It is a necessity now with most CAs to use the intermediate SSL Certificates. These are responsible for protecting your root CA key and also allow companies that have not gotten their root certificates into your browser to sell SSL Certificates. Well, each certificate authority may have several different intermediate certificates and you need to pick the right one. In order to make sure that you do this, test it using a validation tool from your certificate authority vendor.

24
July
2010

First of all, what’s a Wildcard SSL Certificate? It’s an SSL Certificate that secures a website URL along with its multiple sub-domains.

If you have a Wildcard SSL Certificate, you have………

  1. A website URL secured with its multiple process-specific sub-domains, such as your base domain *.myorganization.com with sub-domains like mail.myorganization.com and payment.myorganization.com.
  2. Cost saving, as you save on multiple single SSL Certificates for each sub-domain.
  3. An unlimited server license so that you use it on as many servers as you want (most SSL Certificates have license for just one physical server).
  4. Easy manageability and convenience as you don’t have to manage several separate SSL Certificates in overheads and renewal.

Ok, let’s now contrast Positive SSL Wildcard Certificate and Platinum SSL Wildcard Certificate.

Both will have the typical Wildcard SSL functionality as mentioned above. However, Platinum SSL Wildcard is a premium class which typically offers you full validation and high level of assurance with 2048-bit industry standard encryption strength available, as compared to 1024-bit industry standard encryption of Positive SSL Wildcard Certificate. On the similarities, both support 128/256 bit level encryption and have 99.3% browser compatibility.

With Positive Wildcard SSL Certificate, you have the advantage of instant issuance, no more paperwork, and low cost. You can avail a discount on multiyear purchase. It is equally trusted as more expensive certificates from RapidSSL and GeoTrust.

But, what’s the extra edge with Platinum is that you get $1,000,000 warranty, dedicated account manager, free HackerGuardian Vulnerability Scan, free corner of trust logo, and 24×7 phone support (for Positive SSL Wildcard that’s email and web support).