Digital Certificate

A digital certificate is an electronic “credit card” that establishes your credentials when doing business or other transactions on the Web. The certificate is issued by a certification authority (CA). It contains your name, a serial number, expiration dates, a copy of the certificate holder’s public key (used for encrypting messages and digital signatures), and the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority so that a recipient can verify that the certificate is real. Digital certificates can be kept in registries so that authenticating users can look up other users’ public keys.

Secure Socket Layer

The SSL protocol is the web standard for encrypting communications between users and web sites. Data sent via an SSL connection is protected by encryption, a mechanism that prevents eavesdropping and tampering with any transmitted data. SSL provides businesses and consumers with the confidence that private data sent to a web site, such as credit card numbers, are kept confidential. Web server certificates are required to initialize an SSL session.