As businesses are going online and entire databases are being maintained using online tools, the amount of data available to hack and breach has increased multifold, which has, in turn, increased the cases of cyber-attacks and hacking attempts by cybercriminals.
In today’s age, it is a given that a security feature is required to secure your data as well as your client’s data while the critical information is on the move, passing through world networks as it makes its way from one server to the browser of the user.
You are still contemplating whether an SSL certificate is required or not? Read along as we go through the numerous reasons why you absolutely must have an SSL certificate for your website.
Safety Tunnel For Data:
Just the way a helmet is necessary while riding a bike, to keep your head safe in case of a fall, an SSL certificate is needed to prevent your data from being misused in case of a breach. During a client and server communication, the data is prone to cyber-attacks throughout its journey beginning from the server and till it reaches the browser which requested the data.
It is necessary to protect the data, and hence, SSL helps encrypt this data to avoid the information from being stolen while it is being transmitted. Encryption becomes even more essential while dealing with sensitive customer or company information and credentials, including transactional details and other personal information.
As a website owner, the safety of information is your responsibility, which is precisely what SSL provides. Also using different variables of SSL certificates like Wildcard SSL, it is possible to secure the entire domain and subdomains of your website by issuing a single certificate, hence making it a cost-effective and efficient solution and curb potential risks.
Id Card For The Owner:
Authentication is another essential feature that SSL provides to the websites. There are many cases wherein users end up on fake sites that steal user credentials and other information that a user types while trying to log in and in turn misuses the data. Getting an SSL certificate authenticates your website and acts like an id card which assures users about the site is genuine. The process of getting an SSL certificate involves specific processes and identity checking procedures which verify the authenticity of the website and hence deem the website as safe and genuine for users.
Up Your Google Ranking Game:
Google uses SSL certification as one of the factors while ranking the websites on its search engine’s result page. The algorithm that Google uses to rank websites gives preferences to websites that are HTTPS-enabled, which means that those websites are considered secure.
In case your website is not SSL certified; in many cases, Google shows a pop up that marks your website as insecure. This, in turn, tends to reduce traffic on the website as users prefer a safe website over one that is marked unsafe.
Trust Is A Must:
Any website is successful because of its customers. One happy customer or visitor creates leads for many others, and as word of mouth spreads combined with good advertising, the traffic increases on the website.
Data breaches and other security issues that are not appropriately handled damage the image of the website and break the trust that the website shares with its customers. A website that is unsuccessful in safeguarding critical information of its users is spelling its doom.
To prevent this from happening, it is essential to get your site SSL certified and make your website trustworthy. To enhance the trust over the web, the EV SSL certificate is an essential type of certificate that shows company name in the address bar as well as a green padlock. Visitors will influence the site once you have the most authenticated EV SSL on your website.
PCI Compliance And Online Payments:
PCI is the abbreviation for the Payment Card Industry. To be able to receive payments, it is necessary to have a website that is certified by SSL as it is given as one of the primary requirements.
PCI compliance is required in the case if your website is collecting payment via any source. PCI needs proper encryption for the credentials of a credit card while it is in transit. Minimum 128-bit encryption is required in an SSL certificate to obey PCI compliance.
Ideal For Small Businesses:
SSL certificates are as essential for small businesses as for larger enterprises. Conducting cyber-attacks on smaller business enterprises is more comfortable as they do not invest as much as larger enterprises in cybersecurity hence appear to be easier targets.
Many of the small-scale businesses are unable to handle any such data breach and end up shutting down. Therefore, it is imperative for them to invest in SSL certification.
Website Speed:
Many of us believe that SSL slows down the speed of the website but, it improves the speed of a site. There is a specific website that measures HTTP and HTTPS enabled website speed. Moreover, the site ranking also has the influence of site speed.
The faster your website is, the more visitors will try to visit it and the search engine also prefers your site for higher ranking. With the addition of HTTP/2, the website with SSL certificate loads faster than HTTPS and standard HTTPS.
As for large businesses, the amount of data that they hold at stake is too large to take any risk regarding the safety and security of the information, making it extremely important to invest in SSL.
It takes years and years to build a reputation for your company and website and just one bad experience or incident to bring it all down; hence it is essential to be proactive and weary of the threats that lurk in this increasingly digitized world.
Wrapping Up:
The above article surely gives you reason enough to go for SSL certification. Be sure to get certified through a reliable company by reading reviews and customer experiences and prevent your company and customer data from being misused.
Multiple certificate authorities like DigiCert, Comodo, GlobalSign are there who carry diversified types of SSL certificates that suit mostly business requirements.
