9 misunderstandings of SSL and HTTPS encryption

Although SSL certificate and HTTPS encryption have been proved to be playing crucial parts in company security, many enterprises are still expecting a fluke of unsecure links in the cloud or big data environment. The reason for it is that a lot of people have misunderstandings when faced with problems like cost, performance and better usability involved in encryption as well as private key management. SSL and HTTPS can be correctly applied in company’s security strategy only if they are correctly understood without misconceptions, exaggerations and overlooking.

Misunderstanding: Only organizations that have compliance requirements need to encrypt

Truth: If you have products, customers, employees and sensitive market data, then HTTPS encryption is needed regardless of compliance requirement.

Misunderstanding: SSL can encrypt any data

Truth: SSL only encrypt data in transmission instead of stored data. No matter whether the data needs to be stored in a long term, company should make sure the security when store the data.

Misunderstanding: Encryption is too complicated and takes lots of resources

Truth: Data encryption is not necessarily difficult as long as you understand the type of data that needs to be encrypted, where it appears and who has access to it.

Misunderstanding: Encrypted data is secured data

Truth: Many organizations and institutes fail to effectively manage their private key, which leads to private key being stolen or allow cloud service providers manage it. Good management of private key and forceful strategy implementation can change this situation.

Misunderstanding: Your data will not be stolen once it’s encrypted

Truth: Company should foresee that their data will be affected at some point for there is no solutions that can 100% protect data at any time. But encrypted data cannot be cracked without the private key. Thus data encryption can reduce the destructive effect.

Misunderstanding: Only the login page of website needs HTTPS

Truth: This is very much a wrong point of view. Any web page without HTTPS has higher risk of being hijacked, especially in a public unencrypted network connection.

Misunderstanding: HTTPS makes website load slower

Truth: HTTPS has no obvious effect on website loading speed. You can use upgrade processor to deal with the extra work of SSL encryption.

Misunderstanding: SSL certificate is too expensive

Truth: You can find an affordable SSL certificate after shopping around for the best price. Compared with the long-term effect caused by data leak, buying a good SSL certificate is actually not that expensive.

Misunderstanding: HTTPS sites do not have cache

Truth: To put it in a simple way, you can prompt Web browser to cache HTTPS sites by response header.

System involved with enterprise confidential data and connected to the internet should start from using HTTPS encryption and SSL protection to enhance enterprise data protection. Platform and website carry important data of users should take the responsibility to make every effort to perfect security protection. There is no absolute security in the world of internet. But every step enterprise takes adds to the barrier against hackers and improves the capability of security precaution. Internet CSO suggests taking the method of security depth and using multi-layer precautions against diverse security threats.

WoSign SSL certificate is the most basic link of internet security protection. It provides data transmission encryption, data integrity protection and server identification validation through HTTPS encryption and SSL certification mechanism to conduct high-intensity encryption to data in transmission layer and server identification validation prevent data from being leaked or modified and ensure data is transmitted to the correct server. These can establish a secure and trustful data transmission network and effectively deal with the currently-common security incidents like data leak, traffic hijacking and fishing fraud.