Original article artwork about SSL certificates. Current US hosting-plan features and terms are linked below.
Shopping online causes concern among many customers for an understandable reason: none of us likes to leave our credit card details on a web page whose level of security is unclear.
Credit card fraud is plentiful, and this causes great concern among visitors who want to buy using online payment-processing services.
However, demand for buying products through online shopping grows from year to year, thanks to the security solutions offered on the web today.
Why use SSL and encrypt sensitive information?
The main reason we use SSL is to encrypt sensitive information "traveling" over the internet so that it can be read only by those for whom the information is intended.
This is very important because the sensitive information being sent passes through many computers and communication lines, and without encryption any eavesdropper along the way who is not part of the conversation could easily read information such as a credit card number, username and password, and more.
When information is encrypted with an SSL key, only the server or domain to which the information was sent can decrypt the information that was sent.
Site owners have understood the importance of security on websites because of the sensitive information that is going to be entered into them.
In order to conduct proper e-commerce without information breaches, standards were established that are intended to secure the information.
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is the accepted standard for transferring data securely over the internet. (Its predecessor was SSL.)
How it works:
- A TLS/SSL certificate works on the principle of a public key / private key.
- a public key shared between the server (the website) and the client, while the private key is kept only on the server (website) side.
- When sending a request to the server (the website), the browser encrypts the data using the public key, and this encryption can only be opened using the private key.
- The server receives the request, verifies that the information was received properly, decrypts it by combining the public and private keys (held by the server alone), and passes the information on to the application (WordPress, for example).
The role of encryption:
- Verifying that the server the visitor is connected to is indeed the right server.
- to create a secure communication channel, by encrypting the information transferred between the user and a website.
- to ensure that the information sent by the user reaches the website in full, without errors and without disruptions. If the server (the website) finds that there is some error in the information transmitted to it, it will automatically demand a retransmission from the visitor's browser.
- The role of TLS/SSL is purely to encrypt the communication, not to protect the data, as many tend to think.
The importance of encryption:
- Preventing unauthorized people / parties from reading the information transmitted between the client and the server. (Man In The Middle Attack)
- The option to place orders for products and services using credit cards.
- A safe option for entering / transferring sensitive information on the site, such as a credit card number, address, driver's license or ID number.
- Google states that it gives priority in the ranking score to sites that have a TLS/SSL certificate.
Again, Google states that it gives priority in the ranking score to sites that have a TLS/SSL certificate.
How do you get a TLS/SSL certificate?
First, as stated in the post title – uPress allows installing TLS/SSL certificates without limit, for all of its customers. and at no cost.
If you are not yet uPress customers, you are welcome to visit on the plans page and choose the hosting plan that suits you.
If you are a uPress customer:
After logging in to the admin panel you will notice that a new category has been added under the Security tab – TLS/SSL certificate, after entering the "Security" > click the button "Sending a certificate request".
The uPress team will perform a quick and professional installation of the TLS/SSL certificate on your WordPress site, and you will receive a notification immediately after the installation process is complete.
Original Hebrew uPress control panel. Follow the English instructions in this article; labels and positions may differ in the current interface.
In summary:
We hope this article helped you learn what the importance of a TLS/SSL certificate is for your WordPress site, how many benefits the certificate can provide you, how the encryption is carried out, and its role.
Our goal at uPress is to provide all of our customers with TLS/SSL certificates, and thus bring a safer internet, and in particular – more reliable and secure WordPress sites.
