An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate verifies the authenticity of your website and encrypts the information that online visitors send and receive. Every time a user provides confidential information (passwords, credit card numbers etc), a secure connection is created with the user’s browser ensuring that no third party will access them.
Using an SSL certificate, you protect your customer’s personal data and ensure their online transactions. Thus, you create a reliable space where your customers can feel secure.

Depending on the procedure followed by each issuing authority in order to confirm the identity of the entity requesting the certificate, three types of validation have emerged: Domain, Organization and Extended Validation.

• Domain Validation: This is a basic validation. The organization requesting the certificate must simply confirm the ownership of the domain name.
  
  
• Organization Validation: Higher level validation. The organization or company requesting the certificate should confirm the domain name ownership as well as some company information such as: name, city, county, country where the company is based.
  
  
• Extended Validation: This is the highest control process. The process consists of 7 levels: the exclusive ownership of the domain name, the company address, physical and legal existence, its operation, confirming that the organization requested the SSL and the physical and legal existence of the legal representative.

During the data transfer that the SSL offers, the information that is transferred are encrypted. The encryption mechanism converts the information in a form that can only be deciphered using the right decryption key. In this way, without the required authentication, no one can read or steal the data that are being transferred.

Depending on the certificate that you choose, all or some of the following security indicators will be available:

• - A lock icon appears on the browser bar indicating that the website is secure.
• - The URL of a secure website starts with https, instead http. The s indicates security.
• - The address bar is colored green (Extended Validation).
• - Static or dynamic logos and seals appear on the website.