What we did

February 2023 : SSL Certificatees and Protecting your site

This month we had a quick look at what defences are available from web hosting companies to help us protect our sites. The main one is the Secure Socket Layer or SSL certificate. These are now transport Layer Security (TSL) certificates but the SSL tag has stuck.

We had a look at some sites that described what a SSL certificate. In particular the Kaspersky the anti-virus site, and Hubspot blog

If you have ever wondered what the s stands for in HTTPS is the SSL certificate. Now Google is demanding that sites have a HTTPS or they downgrade the listing.

So how do you get an SSL. Most hosting companies will have a free SSL but you can pay for one. Installing the certificate is a relatively painless exercise at least from my hosting company. In C-Panel you go to security and find SSL/TSL. Click on that and it will guide through how to create your SSL Certificate. Here’s what it said on the top pf the page;

“SSL/TLS

The SSL/TLS Manager will allow you to generate SSL certificates, certificate signing requests, and private keys. These are all parts of using SSL to secure your website. SSL allows you to secure pages on your site so that information such as logins, credit card numbers, etc are sent encrypted instead of plain text. It is important to secure your site’s login areas, shopping areas, and other pages where sensitive information could be sent over the web.”

SSL Checker

We also had a look at how you can check a SSL certificate, we tried Digicert, and one in the SSL Shopper

They both have different takes on the information provided.

Finally we had a look at what the Hostgator site, a large hosting company had to say about website protection.
and looked at a video in bedded in the article.

Steve South
Web Design leader