What is SSL?
SSL is short for Secure Sockets Layer. The
SSL protocol was developed by Netscape and is supported by all popular web browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla, Internet
Explorer, Netscape, AOL and Opera. For SSL to work a SSL certificate issued by a Certification Authority must be
installed on the web server, SSL can then be used to encrypt the data transmitted (secure SSL transactions) between
a browser and webserver (and vice versa). Browsers indicate a SSL secured session by changing the http to https
and displaying a small padlock. Website visitors can click on the padlock to view the SSL certificate.
How do I know a site is secure? Things to look for:
HTTPS
Browsers can connect to web servers over http
and over https. Connecting over https involves you entering https:// before the domain name or URL and, providing
the webserver has a SSL certificate, the connection will be secured and encrypted.
128 bit SSL
128 bit SSL is also referred to as strong
SSL security. The 128 bit tells users that the size of the encryption key used to encrypt the data being passed
between a web browser and web server is 128 bits in size (mathematically this would be 2 to the power of 128).
Because the size of the 128 bit key is large it is computationally unfeasible to crack and hence is known as strong
SSL security.
