What Are SSL Certificates And How Do They Work?

SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer, a web security protocol developed to set up a secure connection between a web server and a browser. SSL has been approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which is an organized group of the Internet Society (ISOC), as an industry standard for any website needing to involve an exchange of users’ personal account details, particularly the Ecommerce websites.

SSL Certificates are issued by Certificate Authorities (CAs). The server asks for the digital certificate of the CA as soon as connectivity establishes between the browser and an SSL server. After server authentication of the SSL Certificate, it renders transmission of any private information, such as user name, password, and credit card data, secure. This happens due to data encryption. Each SSL Certificate consists of a pair of keys: a public key and a private key. The public key encrypts the information, and the private key decodes it. The private key is held only by the owner or the certificate holder, and the public key is available to any computer user. An online vendor having an SSL-secured website, thus, holds the private key for deciphering the data his customers send in encrypted form via the public key.

This is how step by step an SSL Certificate carries out the procedure of securing online transmission of the private or confidential information.

1. Browser asks for a secure page (a URL with the addition of “s” in the “http” is the demand, i.e. https://).
2. The web server responds by sending an authorized SSL Certificate (that has a public key) to the browser.
3. The browser sets about the validity and authentication of the certificate.
4. After verification, the entered user data gets encrypted in a random symmetric encryption key with the browser making use of the public key provided by the server. This key is then sent to the server that has the encrypted URL.
5. Upon receiving the encrypted key, the server deciphers it by making use of the private key.

SSL-encrypted personal information is extremely difficult to be cracked by anyone trying to hack or alter it while en route from the user’s browser to the dealer’s server. SSL Certificates of different kinds are available in the market to offer variable encryption strength to the buyers as per their needs.