It is 2014 – online sales are growing day by day. You don’t need to read official statistics to realize that the internet has revolutionized the way we buy goods and services across the whole spectrum of daily life.

This means that more of us than ever before are entering sensitive personal information online, usually in the form of credit and debit card details, home addresses, date of birth and more.

So, it follows that in the same way in-person card transactions need security measures such as chip and pin technology – online transactions have to be seen to be secure in order to build the right level of trust between everyone concerned.

SSL

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and it is the most commonly used system for allowing website users to confirm the owner of the domain they are visiting. It also enables secure data encryption on the internet too. SSL is provided by online security companies such as Thawte and is recommended by specialists in the area as a great investment.

When a browser connects to a website that uses SSL the address bar display changes to an ‘https’ prefix as opposed to the usual ‘http’ and a closed padlock symbol appears – which indicates a higher level of security is in operation.

What goes on behind the scenes is that the browser undertakes a number of checks, based on the SSL cert that the website owner will have put in place. Once the browser validates that the site is authentic, the connection moves forward.

If the certificate checks fail, a warning is shown to the user who can then decide whether to proceed or not. A CA certificate is signed by a trusted third party and this carries even more weight than a self-signed version.

Trust

The use of SSL and the certificate system offers customers full confidence that they can trust the website they are viewing and feel safe and secure to carry on to make a purchase and input their information.

Everyone has heard the horror stories regarding the lengths that hackers and criminals will go to in order to fool people into providing their personal information. This then leads to the risk of identity theft and card fraud.

The threats of cyber crime are very real and anything that makes the system safer and gives consumers greater confidence has to be used to the full and taken very seriously.