What is WildCard Certificate SSL, and Why Do You Need It?

Have you ever seen the green box inside the address bar when you make any transaction using paypal? That’s an example of implementation SSL. An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates the identity of a Web site and encrypts information that is sent to the server using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. SSL certificates—built around stringent, industry-leading authentication measures—allow Web site owners to secure all online transactions with up to 256-bit encryption. An SSL certificate on a Web site ensures that sensitive data is safe from prying eyes.

There are some type of SSL/ Secure Certificate, Shared Certificate, Domain Validates, Company Validates, Extended Validates, Wildcard Certificate and Multi-Domain Certificate, and this time I will share to you about Wildcard Certificate.

Wildcard Certificate

A wildcard certificate is a public key certificate which can be used with multiple subdomains of a domain. Depending on the number of subdomains an advantage could be that it saves money and also could be more convenient. A Wildcard SSL certificate secures your website URL, In general, wildcard certificates can only be used to secure first-level sub-domains of the domain that they are issued to. For example, a standard wildcard certificate is issued to *.domain.com. Once that certificate is installed on the server/servers, users can connect securely to www.domain.com, mail.domain.com, autodiscover.domain.com, etc.

this is the sample of plus.google.com certificate

Limitation

In the easy way, I would say the certificate will valid for

Lala.example.com

Lili.example.com

Lulu.example.com

But it will not cover 

Lolo.lala.example.com  (multiple.sublevels.domain.com)

Or naked domain such

example.com (you need to put www)

Why do you need that?

The main purpose is to keep your data saved, The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can understand it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. This protects it from hackers and identity thieves.

Once you makes sure your sites is saved, you will gain visitor trust.