Of course you’ll need a company to host your site, but if you decide to process credit card orders you’ll need one that can provide a secure server. In many cases the hosting company will provide you with one for free, in other cases you may have to pay up to $10 per month on top of your normal hosting charges. If you want to use your own domain name as a secure server rather than your hosting companies domain name and certificate, you’ll need to purchase your own certificate from either Thawte or Verisign which will cost between $125 and $350 a year. EquiFax is another secure certificate issuing company who can issue you a certificate for your site for only $99.
So how does a secure certificate work? A secure server is a web server application that ensures secure information transfer between a web server and a web browser. The encryption is done with a protocol called SSL (Secure Socket Layer). When you connect to a secure server with your browser, the server and the browser use Secure Socked Layer to tell each other how to encrypt the information. Then they can securely exchange the information. For example, you can send credit card information to a secure server, and no one will know what kind of information you sent.
So, the first task that a secure server does for you is to encrypt your information. However, a secure server does much more. The most important task a secure server performs is to identify itself to the browser. It identifies itself by presenting a digital certificate to browsers who request a secure connection. The certificate works for a secure server the same way a driver license works for you, except that it is much more difficult to fake.
All of the above happens absolutely transparently for the person browsing the site. Their browser just tells them that the secure connection was established and then shows the page. The most important thing from an Internet merchant’s perspective, is that this gives your customer more confidence, and convinces them that their order information will be transferred to you safely and securely.
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