How to Secure A Website By HTTPS

How to secure a website by HTTPS

Internet security is important for both businesses and individuals. Current Information Age has significantly affected the way we interact with one another on both a private and professional. If you have any sensitive information on your website (including email and password), then you need to be secure. The best way to do that is to enable HTTPS from HTTP, also known as SSL (secure socket layers), they will send your information going to and from your server automatically in encrypted form.

Website visitors will feel safe on your site when they see HTTPS instead of HTTP while access your website by knowing that it’s protected by a security certificate.

SSL

SSL (‘secure socket layer’) explains a technique for encrypting and authenticating data traffic over the internet. The transfer of data between the browser and web server is secured. It required more where confidential and sensitive information is transferred rapidly between user and server, using an SSL certificate or a TLS (‘transport layer security’) is simply unavoidable.

HTTPS

HTTPS stands for hypertext transport protocol secure. It is the used to secure data while transfer, whereas HTTP, refers to the non-secured form. In HTTP, all transferred data can be read or changed by hackers, and users can never really be sure whether their credit card data has been sent to the right online seller or a hacker. HTTPS or SSL encrypts HTTP data and checks the authenticity of requests.

Especially Google has announced that they will push you up in the search rankings if you use HTTPS, it gives an SEO benefit too.

How to get HTTPS on your website

Step 1: Host with a dedicated IP address

SSL certificates require a dedicated IP address. This ensures that the traffic going to that address is only going to your website. One of the most popular and affordable host for a dedicated IP is StableHost.

Step 2: Buy a Certificate

Next step after getting dedicated IP address for your website is buying a Certificate its like an ID Card for your site. This is fulfilled by creating an SSL certificate. A certificate is simply a section of letters and numbers that only your site knows, like a password. When users visit your site via HTTPS that password is examined, and if it matches, it redirects you to the website and encrypts everything flowing to and from the site.

One of the best option to buy Certificate is from GeoTrust QuickSSL.

Step 3: Activate the certificate

Sometimes web host does it for you and sometimes we have to activate by yourself. If this is not done by web host and we have to go web hosting control panel, then go to the SSL/TLS admin area and choose “Generate an SSL certificate and Signing Request”. After filling form you will get “CSR” which is required at SSL cert issuer so they can establish your identity.

Step 4: Install the certificate

Same for this step like Sometimes web host do it for you and sometimes we have to activate by yourself. We have the Certificate in hand already, just need to paste it into web host control panel.

Step 5: Update your site to use HTTPS

After completing all the above steps, you can access your site with HTTPS. But for better user experience, the site must be updated so that we can avoid unwanted encryption processing and slow processing.

Conclusion

From this blog, we understand one of the most important security aspects of every website i.e. HTTPS. We learn what is the meaning of HTTPS and SSL in terms of technical terms and understand how to convert a website from HTTP to HTTPS.

Reference

1. https://medium.freecodecamp.org/free-https-c051ca570324

2. https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/04/changing-from-http-to-https