by Ricci Ellis of Ricci Alexis

I recently had a discussion with a fellow blogger about SSL certificates because my site got hacked last week and she thought having the certificate would cover you against attacks. Well, guess what friends, it won’t and I’m here today to tell you why, things you can do to prevent attacks and what, exactly, your SSL certificate does for you/your website.

First things first, what in the world is an SSL Certificate?? Most people didn’t actually know anything about SSL certificates or had even heard of them until last fall when Google announced that they were going to start flagging sites that didn’t have them and marking them as “unsafe”. You can physically see when a site is marked unsafe because the little green lock shown in the photo of a browser below will be red and/or not locked. The website’s address will also be HTTPS and not just HTTP.

To find out exactly what an SSL certificate is and does click here to READ MORE.