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Online Security FAQ
- What does SSL stand for?
- How do SSL Certificates work?
- Do SSL Certificates work with international domains?
What does SSL stand for?
The term SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer,” which is a communications protocol and predecessor to Transport Layer Security. SSL certificates secure communications over the Internet so your web browsing, email, and online purchases data transfers are kept safe from and fraud.
How do SSL Certificates Work?
The Web is an open network of computers, people, and data spanning the world. Information travels freely across the Internet in packets. In addition to unique content, each packet contains data that helps it reach its final destination.
Unfortunately, as these packets travel the Internet, they're vulnerable to interception by anyone who knows how to access them.
SSL Certificates work by encrypting data to protect it from thieves and hackers. SSL Certificates signed by official "Certificate Authorities" provide an added level of protection because they've passed a strict, third-party security review that validates the legitimacy of a person or business and the identity of the recipient. A Certificate Authority (CA) will not sign or issue a certificate unless the applicant passes this validation. For this reason, SSL Certificates signed by trusted CA's are considered superior to self-signed certificates, which do not provide this objective, third-party seal of trust.
SSL Certificates are vital to businesses that accept online customer credit card payments or transmit secure data like medical files or business documents across the web. Typically, businesses apply for a certificate to establish a trusted gateway between themselves and their customers and to protect them from becoming targets of hackers, identity thieves, and "phishing" scam artists.
Encryption
Signed SSL Certificates, like those provided by Dotster and its premium security partner, thawte, provide a high-level of encryption to protect information from misuse. They use a complex asymmetric encryption technique which utilizes two electronic keys—one to code the data and another to unlock or decipher the data.
A public key encrypts information. When a customer fills out an online registration and submits the information, this key tells his or her computer how to scramble the data so that it is encrypted and ready for transfer.
A private key unlocks encrypted information. This key is held confidentially by the owner of an SSL Certificate so that the data can be deciphered and read as it was originally entered. The private key is sent directly to the owner of the SSL Certificate, and it is typically kept in a secure location for the protection of customers.
The entire asymmetric encryption process makes it possible to verify someone's claim that they have the right to use a given key, helping to prevent the misuse of keys to impersonate other users. SSL Certificates ensure your communication is secure.
Dotster has chosen thawte as its security partner. thawte is a trusted CA chosen by hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide and has been innovating and delivering trusted services for more than a decade. thawte's digital certificates are used globally to secure servers, encrypt files and communication, and validate the authenticity of applications and digital code.
Do SSL Certificates work with international domains?
If you've secured an International Domain Name (an IDN), now you can buy security certificates to support
your websites!
thawte is the first and only Certification Authority to recognize and issue certificates that contain local language characters in all certificate fields. This means is that you can now buy an SSL123 Certificate, an SSL Web Server Certificate or an SGC SuperCert to secure the website you have hosted on an Internationalized Domain Name.
Not only will your secured Internationalized Domain content be reflected in the certificate details, but you can also obtain a Trusted Site Seal that also reflects your local language content.
For example, here's the content for a certificate issued to an IDN:
To view the encoded version of your domain, you can try our IDN conversion tool.
