To succeed with eCommerce on the web, your site should provide visitors with SSL security. In this article, I will describe how to create a request for an SSL digital certificate. He will also describe how to install the certificate once it is received.One of the limiting factors that can make or break an e-commerce web site is how secure it is. The main buzzword for security on the web is SSL. SSL, or Secure Socket Layer, is a request/response protocol that involves public and private keys, as well as a digital certificate. These days, a 128-bit security certificate is considered standard on any web server, and most newer client web browsers (version 4 or above) are capable of working with a 128 bit public key. For older browsers, the encryption level is simply lowered to a level that the browser can handle, which is 40 bits. Keep in mind though, that a 128-bit certificate is literally trillions of times hard to crack that a 40-bit one!

In this article, I will describe how to create a request for an SSL digital certificate. I will also describe how to install the certificate once it’s received. To receive a digital certificate, you must request one from a certificate provider, such as Verisign or Thawte. We will create a SSL certificate request for a Windows 2000 web server running IIS 5.