Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

SSL provides a level of security and privacy for those wishing to conduct secure transactions over the Internet. Introduced to the Internet market by Netscape Communications, the SSL protocol protects HTTP transmissions over the Internet by adding a layer of encryption. This insures that your transactions are not subject to "sniffing" by a third party.

SSL provides visitors to your web site with the confidence to communicate securely via an encrypted session. For companies wishing to conduct serious e-commerce, such as receiving credit card numbers or other sensitive information, SSL is a must.

While SSL handles the encryption part of a secure HTTP transaction, a Digital Certificate is necessary to provide server authentication.

There is a one time set-up fee of $375 to add SSL to your account plus $25 per month for hosting on your own domain.

A great alternative to purchasing a SSL certificate is to purchase a Shopping Cart that has its own SSL built in. You have all the benefits of SSL without any of the hassles that go with it for detail please visit Kickasp.com

Accessing Secure Server

If you are a customer with your own digital certificate or a you can access any of your web content (documents, images, scripts, etc.) by using the "https://" prefix rather than the "http://" prefix. For example, to send the contents of a fill-out-form securely to one of your CGI scripts, you would need to include something like the following in your HTML source:
<form method="POST"
action="https://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/cgi- bin/whateverscript.cgi">
You should be sure that once you enter secure mode that you do not reference embedded document content (images, etc.) by an insecure prefix (i.e. src="http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/image.gif"). You will get a security error, change the links to "https"

Web Hosting customers, contact
to request a secure server subdomain.

Another option for acquiring a digital certificate is from VeriSign or DirectNic or Thawte Consulting.

Note: If you are Upgrading or downgrading accounts that requires a change of Web server. You will need to update your URL links to reflect a new server number.

Retrieving Data From Server

As mentioned above, the secure environment refers to the transmission of information between web browser and web server. We suggest that you have a script written to save the submitted form content to a text file. In so doing, you can reference the text via secure URL and retrieve its content (e.g. credit card information) securely via the web thus completing the loop.

• https://www.your-domain.com/datafile.txt
  (using your own digital certificate)

To protect the data from unauthorized web surfers, you can store the data file(s) in a password protected directory.