Secure your website with an SSL certificate
Security starts with the connection to your website. If your site contains forms where customers can enter personal data such as their name, postal address or e-mail address, or if you have an area reserved for customers or members, you need to make sure that the data sent from your visitors' browsers is not transmitted to the server in plain text. This ensures that the data cannot be intercepted on your visitor's network, for example over an unsecured Wi-Fi connection, or by spyware on networks or routers sitting between your visitors and your server.
A secure SSL/TLS connection always comes with a certificate. This certificate lets visitors know the identity of the person or company running the site. For instance, to make sure that you really are on HaiSoft's website, if you open this page in a desktop browser (such as Firefox, Internet Explorer or Chrome), you will see the company name HaiSoft SARL and the country (France) in the green bar next to the site's address. This additional security makes it possible to identify the party you are dealing with beyond any doubt. On banking websites, for example, the bank's name is shown in the green bar to avoid any confusion.
HaiSoft servers, whether shared hosting or dedicated, are compatible with all types of certificates. It is worth understanding what each type of certificate is for, and which one to choose for which purpose.
THE DV CERTIFICATE
Each type of certificate validates certain types of information. With a DV (Domain Validation) certificate, only the domain name is validated. This certificate simply confirms that the certificate request was made by the holder of the domain name. It does not contain any information about the site owner, but it allows you to use a secure connection for your site.
This certificate is suitable for extranet access or for website administration panels, such as blogs (with WordPress, for example) or community sites, to secure communications when accessing the back office. This type of certificate secures access to your site and allows Google to see it as a secure site, which can sometimes increase your site's visibility and the trust it inspires.
A DV certificate costs €59 excl. VAT per year, including creation and installation by our technicians.
THE OV CERTIFICATE
An OV (Organisation Validation) certificate is issued once the organisation (company, association or holder) has been verified. Verification takes place in 2 stages and requires documents, usually a signed letter on company letterhead and, for French companies, a K-bis extract (company registration certificate), in order to validate the company's details and confirm that the company in question does indeed hold the domain name.
This type of certificate is mainly intended for online shops that do not necessarily have a physical store (sole traders, for example) and do not process banking data through their site.
This OV certificate costs €199.90 excl. VAT for 2 years (3 years since 1 January 2015), including creation and installation by our technicians. Options such as multiple domains or unlimited subdomains (wildcard) can be added at very reasonable prices when the certificate is created (€20 excl. VAT and €40 excl. VAT respectively for the certificate's period of validity, i.e. 3 years). Additional certificates can also be created within the following 11 months, at the price of a DV certificate.
THE EV CERTIFICATE
The EV (Extended Validation) certificate differs from the others in that it displays the name of the company that owns the site in the green bar, as at the top of the HaiSoft website. To set up this type of certificate, the organisation's details are validated in 2 stages: first with the documents required for OV certification (letter and K-bis), then with a letter from a lawyer or notary known to the company, vouching for the company's documents and its established physical presence. Telephone calls are added to the signatures to provide a double guarantee that the signatories have been verified.
This type of certificate should be used if banking data passes through your site, and it is only available on a dedicated server or a virtual server. It is only available if the company officially exists and has premises, and it is not available to private individuals.
This EV certificate costs €399.90 excl. VAT for 2 years, including creation and installation by our technicians. This does not include any lawyer's or notary's fees that may be charged for drawing up the documents. You can then add other domain names to this certificate (for an extra €20 excl. VAT per domain), but wildcards are not allowed. Once certification has been obtained, additional OV certificates are available at reduced prices for 11 months, with wildcard (€99 excl. VAT for 3 years) or without (€59 excl. VAT for 3 years).
Security is an increasingly important part of running a website. Although not every site needs to be secured, you must secure yours if it uses protected access (with a password) or offers online sales, in order to protect the data passing through your site from any unwanted eavesdropping. Our technicians are available to help you choose the best solution to protect your site.
