What Is Verisign SSL?

Financial institutions who provide online banking use SSL to protect customers.

VeriSign originally began offering secure socket layer certificates, or SSL, for websites in 1995. Websites that sell products through online portals or that require visitors to use a log-in name can benefit from obtaining an SSL certificate from VeriSign.

Significance

A consumer who buys online merchandise or services from a website that features SSL has his personal financial information encrypted during the check-out process. This encryption decreases the likelihood of hackers obtaining personal information that could facilitate identity theft or fraudulent bank activity.

Authentication

In order to issue a SSL certificate, VeriSign uses an authentication process to ensure that the certificate applicant is the same party who operates the website. This identity authentication helps prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Function

When a customer accesses a website with VeriSign SSL technology, her browser communicates with the website's server. The server provides the web browser with SSL certificate credentials. After the browser acknowledges the validity of the SSL certificate it sends a message to the website's server initiating an encrypted web session.

References

• VeriSign: SSL Certificates
• VeriSign: Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-How It Works