How Do I Secure Login/Register Form or Private Data with SSL?

Suppose you are a shopaholic and you shop online frequently from a website. That means that is obvious that you would have been registered yourself on that website. Now, once in a while that website that you always buy from becomes a victim of phishing attack. You are unaware of that fact and you visit that website again, but naturally you will login with your ID and password. You can’t even imagine the consequences you will have to face after that.

Well, for those of you who are still unknown to phishing, phishing is a process in which the actual website is hacked and a copy of that website is created (a fake one, of course) whose look and features are similar to that of the original one. It is normally done to acquire the usernames, passwords, credit card details and money, illegally.

So, if you own a website of any type -- be it commercial, educational, governmental -- and you have a login form that intakes the data like a username and password, you will very well understand the need of securing the login form. To fulfill this purpose you need a SSL certificate.

What happens when you don’t secure your Login Form?
 

• When your login page is not secured at all, there is no way a user can know the authenticity of your website and hence he/she may drop the idea of going ahead.
• If your website is not secured at all the browsers will show a warning regarding the untrusted connection and hence will decrease in visits and conversions.

• If the page is not secured the username and the password of the login page (which is http) is transmitted as a plain text and not as encrypted, and there is the possibility that the data may become the victim of a man-in –the-middle-attack. In this process the hijacker can easily redirect the page to a different URL.
• Few automated tools like SSL strip are available on the marks, which makes the man-in-the-middle-attack much easier (however it is not so easy on every network).

 
Man-in-the-middle-attack is a process which refers to eavesdropping on the communication between two persons. It is impersonated by a third person while the other two victims communicating totally remain unaware regarding this fact and keep on communicating unsafely.

Why SSL certificate?

SSL is a security protocol based on algorithms. It encrypts the data transmitted between the server and the client (if secured by SSL certificate). Thus, it makes difficult (but not impossible) for the intruders to hack the data and modify it. Moreover, SSL certificates are issued and are dually signed by the trusted third-party entity CA (Certificate Authority, the main entity issuing SSL and other digital certificates.)

Almost 99% of browsers recognize the SSL certificate within the website and establish an encrypted connection. Along with the security the next aspect which matters a lot is trust. Being a genuine business online, you have to preserve your trust to sustain in today’s cut-throat race. As soon as you lose the trust of your customers/clients, you may lose your business too.

How will you secure your website with SSL?

You have two options. First, you can secure your entire website or second, you can secure only the login/registration pages where you collect a user’s personal information. You should go with the first option. When users visit your website and see your web pages are secured that they will feel more confident to deal with you.

There are many types of SSL certificates available in the market like Domain Validation, Organization Validation and Extended Validation. Each certificate follows a different validation procedure to provide authentication of your website. EV (Extended Validation) SSL certificate provides highest protection and authentication by following strict validation process. It is enabled in a green address bar in the browser, which will help detect phishing websites and boost the user’s confidence to make transactions.

The world’s most popular websites (like Facebook, Twitter, NASA, Google and OpenID) protect their users' information by using signed certificates that are issued by trusted certificate authorities. 

Show your concern towards the customers by securing your website with a SSL certificate and emerge as a trusted and favorite brand over the network.