Asia Virtual Solutions Website is Now Fully HTTPS://
If you haven’t noticed already, we here at Asia virtual solutions have completely switched over our entire web presence to HTTPS:// – providing you with the utmost in safety, security, and protection.
Understanding that the Internet is such a major part of our lives today, and that we no longer just “surf the web” to entertain ourselves to do our shopping, banking, and investing online as well, we want to make sure that all our visitors – as well as each of our valued clients – get to take advantage of the protection that they deserve.
This is the major reason behind why we move forward with full SSL protection, and why we recommend that our clients do the exact same thing.
We are about to dig a little bit deeper into why we feel you should start to implement full SSL protection ASAP, highlighting all of the reasons behind this level of protection, the benefits that you will enjoy, and going over the basics of the process so that you can jumpstart everything right away!
Let’s dive right in!
What exactly is SSL security and why is the HTTPS:// designation so important?
Before you can fully get behind the idea of paying a little bit extra to upgrade your security on, it’s important that you understand exactly what it is you are paying to upgrade and why you are making the decision to do so.
SSL technology – Secure Sockets Layer technology – is essentially a form of digital security that acts as a backbone of secure digital transfers, providing for “insulation” for all secure information to move through as it goes from one website to another secure site like your bank, your credit card processor, etc.
Sensitive information cannot and should not be shared across “open channels”. Today hackers and digital thieves are better than ever at stealing information shared across open channels, and that’s exactly what information shared over standard http:// protocols is going to be.
Instead, you need a secure channel that is going to act as a bridge between your web browser, the server of the company that you are doing business with, and the “final destination” for that data – and that’s where the SSL technology comes into play.
Acting as an encryption tool, the information that is transferred between your web browser and the web server/final destination for your data is going to be mixed up, convoluted, and encrypted so that it cannot be decrypted by anyone other than the final stop for your information.
SSL technology allows you to input information in a website just as you would normally, but as long as the website is showing that it is secure (using the HTTPS:// protocol we mentioned above) everything – EVERYTHING – you that you input is going to be encrypted as it is input into the website and will remain encrypted until it reaches the secure server that the website is hosted on.
This guarantees that your personal, private, and payment information stays both personal and private, and that even if the data is somehow intercepted between your web browser and the web server those that intercept this information won’t be able to do anything with it because it has been encrypted by SSL technology.
Who takes advantage of SSL technology?
Well, for starters, WE are now taking advantage of SSL technology as you’ll see by the HTTPS:// designation that we have in front of our domain name now, as well as the “SECURE” designation and the padlock logo that you’ll likely see in your web browser near the web address as well.
We are taking advantage of SSL technology to protect your private and your personal information, but we are also leveraging SSL technology to make sure that our clients feel safe and secure, that they know we are taking care of them, and that we are using advanced technology to protect the data that they entrust us with.
If you are doing business with people online you’ll want to make sure that you are also taking advantage of SSL technology. E-commerce shops – small shops and single page websites as well as major industry giants like Amazon, for example – absolutely MUST take advantage of SSL technology, as no one would ever reasonably provide their payment information across unsecured channels for fear that it would be hijacked, stolen, and used nefariously.
Anyone – and we mean ANYONE – that has a website today that leverages any kind of sensitive information, personal or private data, or is going to be conducting transactions of any kind absolutely must be using SSL certification and SSL technology to keep information secure and safe.
All SSL technology is protected by government level encryption protocols (is something that we will get into in just a moment), providing as much of a secure tunnel for data as humanly possible right now.
But even if you aren’t necessarily accepting payments or personal, private, or sensitive data from clients, customers, or visitors to your website you’ll want to at least consider moving forward with SSL certification anyway.
People today are very savvy about using technology, are going to be looking for markers of SSL certification, and when they find websites that aren’t secure they are going to be a lot less likely to trust them, to get into relationships with them, or to become customers or clients of the people running those sites later down the line.
SSL technology (verified SSL technology) isn’t going to be the ONLY way you improve your influence or your persuasive abilities online, but it’s definitely going to add to both of those critical factors – and you’ll want to leverage anything and everything you can in this ultra competitive business environment we all live and operate in today.
Highlighting the benefits of SSL technology and certification
As I highlighted above, there are a number of major benefits you are going to enjoy when you choose to forward with SSL certification for your website. We want to make sure that we cover as many of those details as possible so that you best understand exactly what you’re getting into and why you should choose to forward with this technology the way that we already have!
Encrypted information is secure information
I have made mention a number of times about the importance of keeping private and secure information both private and secure, and the best way to do so when you’re talking about the digital transfer of information online is to do so using encryption.
Encryption is essentially a way for data to be “scrambled”, transmitted to another place or server online, “unscrambled”, and then read by ONLY the people or machine that have and encryption key to open up the data and the messages contained within.
Encryption technology today is incredibly advance and 256 bit encryption is the “gold standard” – the same kind of encryption level taken advantage of by government agencies all over the world to protect their sensitive information and their secrets.
SSL security takes advantage of this exact same kind of encryption, providing you with the same level of protection and security that these government agencies enjoy on a daily basis. This keeps your personal information, your identifying information, and your payment information completely safe during transit!
SSL provides for authentication
Anytime you are talking about building a website or web property where sensitive information will be transferred from a client to a company through the web you are talking about the potential for this kind of information to be hijacked along the way, or for information to be routed from one destination to another without you ever knowing what was going on.
With SSL technology and the HTTPS:// designation you don’t ever have to worry about those issues popping up any longer.
These technologies guarantee that your information is transmitted to a safe and secure server, that it is the server that you are expecting it to be (thanks to SSL certificate verification), and that you can trust this transaction of data to go through as smoothly and successfully as you had hoped it would.
SSL certifications are incredibly transparent. You’ll be able to view all of the relevant information about a certification with just a few clicks of your mouse, and you’ll be able to figure out whether or not the SSL information matches up with your expectations, whether the security is active and in place, and other details about the certification that will help you feel better before you transmit sensitive information.
SSL technology provides compliance for accepting payments online
According to the Payment Card Industry compliance regulation, all online businesses need to take advantage of a legitimate SSL certificate with at least 128 bit encryption (though most upgrade to 256 bit encryption), and this certificate needs to be provided by a 100% legitimate licensor of this kind of technology.
Any website that does not meet all of these standards will not be eligible to accept credit card payments from any of the major credit card processing companies around the world today. This adds a tremendous amount of trust, legitimacy, and protection to online shopping, a must in today’s age when so many purchases take place on the Internet and the Internet alone.
You are able to “future proof” your business with SSL technology
SSL technology is still in its relative infancy, but as the technology grows, adapts, and becomes more important and more powerful, so will your SSL certification. But better than that, all of the upgrades that happen to SSL certification will happen “behind-the-scenes” and you’ll be able to take advantage of these benefits without having to make ANY changes to your website or its underlying technology.
This creates a lot of leverage for your business, improves your ability to make the most of cutting-edge technology, and lets you “future proof” your business online without having to handle any of the heavy lifting all on your own.
It’s likely that the entire web will move to SSL certification in the near future, and it’s easy to see why. By getting out in front of this trend you already have the basics of security under your feet and as a backbone of your online presence – and that’s only ever going to be good for business.
Boost customer trust across the board
At the end of the day, you are going to be conducting business with individuals, not computers and not robots.
People are still at least a little bit sensitive about providing all of their important personal, payment, and private information online – and with good reason. Even if you aren’t necessarily accepting payments, processing transactions, or accepting or transmitting sensitive data, SSL certification, SSL technology, and the HTTPS:// designation is only going to help your web visitors trust you more.
This is going to allow you to put your customers at ease, give them the opportunity to safely and securely navigate your website, and understand that you are legitimate, you are what you appear to be, and that you can be trusted moving forward.
It’s impossible to really quantify just how beneficial this can be to your bottom line, but anecdotal evidence and hard research shows that people flat-out trust secure websites more than unsecured websites – and it’s effortless to see why!
Moving forward with SSL technology
Now that you better understand why I have decided to forward with this kind of technology, it’s important to make clear that we are able to help all of our clients – established clients as well as brand-new client – make sure that their websites, their web properties, their online stores, and their mobile websites and applications are all is safe and secure as ours are.
If you’re interested in learning a little bit more about how SSL technology can help you in your specific situation, or if you want to better understand the “nitty-gritty” behind how you go about implementing SSL technology – or if you’re ready for someone like us to set everything up for you so you are good to go without having to do anything on your own – I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Resources that we found useful when we set up our Asia Virtual Solutions SSL
- The certificate – This is the first step, is to get a SSL ( Secure Sockets Layer ) certificate. This is pretty straight forward, and cpanel these days offer free Lets Encrypt Certificates and you can get them from within Cpanel WHM, we decided to go for the more reputed paid certificate from Comodo, which we purchase via NameCheap,our domain registrar, see the banners above.
- We applying for the certificate you will need to prepare a SSL signing key from within your server, It is really straight forward and if you search for SSL in Cpanel – WHM you will see the option to create a signing request, this you will need to provide to namecheap or whoever you buy the certificate from.
- We found that allot of the things in our website had to be changed, specially the theme and the navigation, there were over 181 errors that showed when we tested our site for SSL compatibility, and all we saw was red warnings everywhere, as you can see in the below image. I almost had a hart attack when i saw over 180 errors that had to be fixed in the site before we can go full HTTPS — you can use this handy tool to check your site if it is ready for SSL – https://www.whynopadlock.com/index.html
- I thought it is going to take forever to fix all those 181 errors and warnings, so I started searching for help and found a site called Creative Minds – https://www.cminds.com/ssl-https-wordpress-plugins/ which suggested some plugins to help you get https ready.
- We downloaded the one called SSL Insecure Content Fixer settings from the list, installed it, and literally clicked 1 button ( Capture All ) and all 181 errors we had was fixed, when we checked it with .
So there you have it now, it was a pretty straight forward process making the change, and i encourage it to do the same. If you have any questions , i would be happy to answer where possible
