Do you ever buy anything online? Do online banking? Run your payroll online? If so, the websites you interact with should be using SSL to protect the transmission of information from your computer to the website.
So what is SSL? SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer. What it truly means is that all data sent to and from your computer and a website is encrypted. This ensures the secure connection and prevents a hacker from monitoring your network and internet traffic to “sniff” out pieces of information which could lead to a data breach and identity theft.
Typically when you view a website, data is not encrypted. If you go Google and conduct a search, your search text and results are not secured. This means data is transmitted as clear-text (clear-text is our techy term meaning that if I Google search for “yellow dog”, the term “yellow dog” is sent to the Google servers as such – without any encryption).
When a website uses SSL, all data is transmitted encrypted. So if my Google searches were over SSL, the same search for “yellow dog” would see my search request sent to Google like this: 08xw3edsklu98oijlkjwe23. As you can see, a hacker would have no clue that I was searching for “yellow dog”.
This is the value that SSL brings and why it’s important when making a purchase online or conducting online banking. To verify a website you are dealing with is using SSL look for the following:
Check out the red box around the website’s URL (address). The usage of httpS, denotes that the website is using SSL and that all data transmitted back forth from the website is secure and encrypted.
So it’s pretty simple, the next time you are making a purchase online or conducting online banking, make sure the website you are interacting with is under SSL.
Filed under: Employee Security, Security made simple, Security Tips, encryption, Small business security, SSL
