Securing Online Transactions on Your Site With Secure Sockets Layer Encryption
If you are running an e-commerce business, you need to secure transactions between your customers and your site. To prevent the valuable data, such as credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information from stealing, you should use the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which encrypts all data and transfers them securely over the SSL connection. And even if someone intercepts the data for malicious intent, they will not be able to decrypt and use them.
To implement the Secure Sockets Layer protocol on your web server, you should purchase an SSL certificate from a reputable certificate vendor (these vendors are called Certificate Authorities), and then install this certificate on your site. To enable SSL protection, you must host your site on a dedicated IP address, which is not shared among other web sites.
There are numerous certificate authorities to choose from. When considering one, pay attention to reputation and credibility of the CA. Knowing how long they have been in business and how many customers they have will help you make the right choice.
Your Plesk control panel provides facilities for purchasing SSL certificates from GeoTrust, Inc.
To purchase an SSL certificate through MyPleskCom online store and secure your site:
- On your Home page, click the
Certificates icon in the Services group. A list of SSL certificates that you have in your repository will be displayed. - Click
Add New Certificate. - Specify the certificate properties:
- Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.
- Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.
- Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not exceed the length of 64 symbols.
- Specify the domain name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. This should be a fully qualified domain name. Example: www.your-domain.com
- Enter the domain administrator's e-mail address.
- Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it will be used to generate your private key.
- Click the Buy Certificate button.
Your private key and certificate signing request will be generated — do not delete them. MyPlesk.com login page will open in a new browser window.
- Register or login to an existing MyPlesk.com account and you will be taken step by step through the certificate purchase procedure.
- Choose the type of certificate that you wish to purchase.
- Click Proceed to Buy and order the certificate.
- In the Approver E-Mail drop-down box, please select the correct Approver e-mail.
The approver e-mail is an e-mail address that can confirm that certificate for specific domain name was requested by an authorized person.
Once your certificate request is processed, GeoTrust, Inc. will send you a confirmation e-mail. After they receive the confirmation from you, they will send the certificate to your e-mail.
- When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine or network.
- Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Home > Certificates).
- Click the Browse button in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of the saved certificate.
- Select the saved certificate, and then click Send File.
This will upload and install the certificate against the corresponding private key.
- Return to your Home page and click the
Setup icon in the Hosting group. - Select the SSL certificate that you wish to install from the Certificate drop-down box.
If there is no Certificate drop-down box on the screen, this means that you are on a shared hosting account; therefore, you need to upgrade your hosting package and purchase a dedicated IP address from your hosting provider.
- Select the SSL support check box and click OK.
To secure your site with an SSL certificate from other certificate authorities:
- On your Home page, click the
Certificates icon in the Services group. A list of SSL certificates that you have in your repository will be displayed.
- Click
Add New Certificate. - Specify the certificate properties:
- Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.
- Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.
- Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not exceed the length of 64 symbols.
- Specify the domain name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. This should be a fully qualified domain name. Example: www.your-domain.com
- Enter the domain administrator's e-mail address.
- Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it will be used to generate your private key.
- Click the Request button.
Your private key and certificate signing request will be generated and stored in the repository.
- Click the
icon, download the certificate signing request (CSR) file and save it on your machine. - Once downloaded, open the file in a text editor, copy the text enclosed in lines -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- to the clipboard.
- Using your favorite mail client software, create a new e-mail message and paste the text from the clipboard.
- Send this message to the Certification Authority that will create an SSL certificate in accordance with the information you supplied.
- When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine or network.
- Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Home > Certificates).
- Click the Browse button in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of the saved certificate.
- Select it, and then click Send File.
This will upload and install the certificate against the corresponding private key.
- Return to your Home page and click the
Setup icon in the Hosting group. - Select the SSL certificate that you wish to install from the Certificate drop-down box.
If there is no Certificate drop-down box on the screen, this means that you are on a shared hosting account; therefore, you need to upgrade your hosting package and purchase a dedicated IP address from your hosting provider.
- Select the SSL support check box and click OK.
If you do not feel like paying money for SSL certificates, but still need to secure your site, you can create a self-signed certificate and install it on your web server. This will provide data encryption; however, your customers' browsers will show warning messages telling that your certificate is not issued by a recognized authority. Thus, using self-signed certificates is not recommended as it will not instill confidence in customers, and is likely to adversely affect your online sales.
To secure your site with a self-signed SSL certificate:
- On your Home page, click the
Certificates icon in the Services group. A list of SSL certificates that you have in your repository will be displayed. - Click
Add New Certificate. - Specify the certificate properties:
- Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.
- Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.
- Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not exceed the length of 64 symbols.
- Specify the domain name for which you wish to generate an SSL certificate. This should be a fully qualified domain name. Example: www.your-domain.com.
- Enter the domain administrator's e-mail address.
- Click the Self-Signed button.
Your certificate will be generated and stored in the repository.
- Return to your Home page and click the
Setup icon in the Hosting group. - Select the self-signed SSL certificate from the Certificate drop-down box.
If there is no Certificate drop-down box on the screen, this means that you are on a shared hosting account; therefore, you need to upgrade your hosting package and purchase a dedicated IP address from your hosting provider.
- Select the SSL support check box and click OK.
To deinstall a certificate from your site and disable SSL protection:
- Make sure that the certificate you want to remove is not used at the moment.
- On your Home page, click the
Setup icon. - The Certificate drop-down box indicates which SSL certificate is currently used.
- If the certificate that you want to remove is currently in use, you should first release it by selecting another certificate in the Certificate drop-down box, and clicking OK.
- Remove the certificate from repository.
- To permanently remove the certificate from repository, on your Home page, click the
Certificates icon in the Services group. - Select a check box corresponding to the certificate that you no longer need and click
Remove Selected. - Confirm removal and click OK.
- Disable SSL support if you no longer need it.
- On your Home page, click the
Setup icon. - Deselect the SSL support check box and click OK.