Chapter 1. Introduction

Table of Contents

Certification Authorities and Trusted Roots
What Type of Certificate Should I Choose?
Securing Data in a Non-Public Commercial Environment
Wildcard Certificates - Securing Multiple Domains with one Certificate
Securing Public Facing eCommerce Sites
SSL via Self-Signed Certificates

Setting up your web server to use secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates is a first and necessary step in securing your XML transport layer. Adding SSL to your server will allow you to support HTTPS for communications between Web server and client connections. This will prevent any data sent or received from the server from being readable by third parties. In today’s Web hosting environments, many Web masters host on servers with ready-made SSL setups and no installation requirements, or with setups on which a control panel handles the heavy configuration work. Whatever the case, it’s important to understand just what your SSL options are, and to also know how to manage the process manually.

In order for users to feel comfortable transmitting confidential information over the Internet using their browsers, users needed to “Trust’ the security of the transmission medium. Thus, Certification Authorities (CAs) were born to ensure the software companies building today’s popular client libraries would include support for these CAs, the certificates that originate the SSL certificates sold to users for securing Websites. These companies are referred to as Trusted CAs; examples of these companies can be found at Certificate Authority Reviews