In recent years the Internet has becoming more and more used for business. As everybody knows, under Apache and other similar web server, user authentication is done through a unique combination of a username and a password. However, this security has two traditional weaknesses.
First of all, data transmitted between the Web server and browser of the client is not protected from interception and there is a potential risk for an individual to be able to intercept confidential information such as passwords or credit card data, bank accounts, etc., moving between the client and the server.
In addition to this, there is no certain way for the client to establish whether the server he is communicating with is the right one when using this traditional security system. Thieves often substitute for a well known web server, trying to seem legitimate hosts, capturing confidential information that the user believes is transmitted to a legitimate server. With the development of electronic commerce, such cases became more and more frequent.
This is the point where SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) comes in handy, seeing up a private communication channel between the Web server and the browser of the client, as well as ensuring that customers are connected to the right server at the same time. For this, a digitally signed SSL certificate is used.
There are a wide range of SSL options that you can choose for your eCommerce website, with most of the solutions being integrated into your eCommerce hosting package. Domain validation is the most inexpensive alternative to consider. However, no validation other than domain ownership is transmitted to the client. Alternatively, organization validation is a more powerful solution, including a 256 bit encryption system, usually preferred by the most important companies for building trusting relationships with their clients.
