People selling things over the Internet are generally known as ‘Merchants’. All the transactions that happen over the Internet are via Credit Cards, Bank Checks, MoneyGram or Internet Banking. When a series of transactions occur, it requires protection. You would ask: ‘protection from whom?’ The answer is protection from everyone who has access to this vital information. When you buy things over the Internet you provide the seller (in fact the interface program between your source of payment and the sellers account) with the details. This makes your account information vulnerable to others ill-intentions. The interface records the information and provides it to your bank once approved. When your bank approves the transaction the money is then transferred to the sellers account. For this entire process to go smoothly you would basically need to provide the bank details. Now a question would arise in your mind, is it safe to do these transactions over the Internet. The answer is YES.

What is the most crucial factor which assures and protects both the buyers & the sellers? Security and protection of vital information. This is where the SSL certificate or the Secure Sockets Layer comes into picture. What is SSL? Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols which provide secure communications on the Internet for things such as web browsing, e-mail, Internet faxing, instant messaging and other data transfers. In other words all the vital information that you provide over the Internet while selling or buying things is kept secure and no one, literally no one has access to this information. Hence all your vital information is kept safe, let it be your credit card number, Social Security Number or your Internet banking details.

SSL certificates have two broad categories Dedicated SSL & Shared/Wild Card SSL. A dedicated SSL certificate requires a dedicated IP address. The reason being this SSL will secure all the data for that particular domain only. This means if there are any sub-domains under that domain, these sub-domains will not be secured or covered by this dedicated SSL certificate. For example – a dedicated SSL will secure and encrypt all the data for website www.comparecarts.com but it will not cover a sub-domain www.myworld.comparecarts.com.

On the other hand we have this Wild-Card SSL certificate which covers all the sub-domains under a particular domain. For example - a shared/Wildcard SSL will secure and encrypt all the data for website www.comparecarts.com and also for its sub-domain www.myworld.comparecarts.com.