Why Your Website Needs SSL	1.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Harry Trott March 31, 2017

Encryption is a controversial topic. While the officials in UK have been pushing against encryption technology following the latest terror attacks in UK, there is no gainsaying the fact that encryption is an absolute necessity for modern day websites. Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology makes sure that every packet of data that is transmitted to and from the server is encrypted and this makes it difficult for third party hackers to break into and access confidential information that they were not supposed to access.

SSL is critical, not just for financial websites, but also for every other website with content that needs to be protected. The content in this case could be login credentials of the administrator or may be business plans, sales documents and product launch strategies that a business may not want its competitor to know.

Besides the obvious security benefits that SSL provides, there are other reasons why your website should deploy an SSL encryption on your server.

Trust : Customers entrust a lot of their confidential information to a business with the assumption that this data shall not be breached. The absence of an SSL certificate on your website would imply that your website is vulnerable to third party intrusions. This could directly impact customer trust and in turn affect your business.

Authentication : Phishing is a major problem on the internet and vulnerable users are often tricked into providing their login details on websites that look and feel like the intended destination, but instead leak information to data thieves. The presence of an SSL certificate indicates to the user that the website they are interacting with is in fact legitimate and not a clone. This helps with easier authentication and in turn, adds to trust.

PCI Compliance : If your business is into online commerce, then an SSL certificate may be required to merely comply with       the necessary regulations. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) has a set of standards and guidelines that third party websites and providers must adhere to while accepting credit card payments online. SSL is one of these regulations that are vital for online payments. Not having one would make your website ineligible for eCommerce.

Having said that, there are a few things to look out for while deploying SSL encryption on your website. First and foremost, encryption is likely to slow your website down marginally. Since encryption consumes server resources, websites with SSL tend to respond slower than those without one. This can however be offset by investing in more powerful hardware tools. Secondly, traditional SSL encryption tools demanded significant resources in managing all the various pages and folders on your website. But with present day wildcard SSL tools, it is easy to set up encryption universally across all your various pages, subdomains and folders. Most webhosting providers today come integrated with SSL technologies and this makes deployment and management extremely seamless and easy.

It goes without saying that the costs associated with enabling SSL on your website are quite minimal when compared to the benefits that a website business stands to gain from enabling encryption on their website. With improved customer trust, businesses can stand to convert a significantly higher number of customers to their business than they can manage to without SSL.