Introduction

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. To find out more about how SSL works, please refer to the Introduction to Public Key Cryptography document authored by Netscape Communications.

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

Ordering SSL for your Virtual Server is an easy task, just send an e-mail request to our Order Processing department. However, securing a Digital Certificate is a more intricate (and sometimes complicated) process. A separate document describes Digital Certificates in detail.

Some answers to frequently asked questions about SSL and Digital Certificates can be found in SSL FAQ. Please see our web page about Digital Certificate for complete information regarding obtaining and installing a Digital Certificate on your Virtual Server.

We offer SSL as an add-on enhancement feature for to the Virtual Server System. There is a nominal one-time setup/license fee and a Digital Certicate fee payable to the Certificate Authority you choose. Please see the Accounts Information page for current SSL setup/license fee information and the Digital Certificate page for CA fees.

Activating SSL on your Server

Please review the Digital Certificate page for an overview of Digital Certiciates and what it available for your use on the virtual servers.

To activate SSL on your virtual server using our default digital certificate, as explained on the Digital Certificate page, you should send an e-mail request to service@digitaldaze.com. If you would like to obtain your own digital certificate, please complete the Certificate Request Form.

Accessing Your Secure Server

You can access any of your web content (documents, images, scripts, etc) on your Virtual Server securely 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 include something like the following in your HTML source:

    <form method="POST"
          action="https://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/cgi-bin/script.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"). If you do, a warning will appear in the user's web browser. Instead, when accessing a page securely, all embedded content should be referenced by using https://.