Know about CSR Before Buying SSL Certificate

 Do you get ready for more trust when you run an online business? If you are a newbie to digital business, then you must know how security today influences the trust of internet users. To build trust, you must provide a secure connection anytime users visit your site. One of the best ways to do so is by installing a cheap digital certificate. You can get the best quality digital certificate which is issued by a reputable Certificate Authority.

Digital certificate or SSL Certificate secures communication between the browser of users and your webserver to prevent unauthorized parties access or read the data sent. Your website has HTTPS and padlocks icon after your SSL Certificate installed. This means that sensitive data of your customers and visitors are secure. The most you get trust, the most you build a reputation. To get your certificate issued, there are steps you must go through such as generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR).

What is the Certificate Signing Request (CSR)?

CSR is a small, encoded text file containing information about organization and domain you want to secure. CSR is required to activate your SSL Certificate and is generated on the server where the certificate will be installed. You must submit a CSR to Certificate Authority and use it to generate your certificate.

What is Contained in a CSR?

Before buying an SSL Certificate, you may wonder what CSR and what it contains. Below are things contained in your CSR.

• The common name is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your server which must matches exactly what type of your web browser or you will receive “a name mismatch error”
• The organization is the legal name of your organization that should include suffixes like Corp, LLC, or Inc
• Organization Unit is the division of your organization which will handle the certificate
• Locality or city is the location of your organization
• State/ region is the state or region where your organization is located
• The country is the two-letter ISO code for country of your organization location
• Email Address is an email address used to contact your organization

Code of CSR

Your CSR code can contain the SAN field in it. SAN stands for Subject Alternative Name which is used for additional domains you want to include into a multi-domain certificate. Some web servers and CSR code generators may have the SAN field included for CSR generation. If you are sure about domains and the number that you will secure, you then can use those fields.

Aside from that, you must also know that your CSR Code may also contain a public key that will get included in your certificate. Data encryption by SSL Certificate is based on the use of two keys (public and private). While the public key is used to encrypt data private key is used to decrypt data that is encrypted using a public key. These keys make secure data transmission via an SSL Certificate.

CSR Tools

During the CSR generation process, you may need to use CSR Tools such as:

• CSR Generator: is a tool used to generate CSR quickly and easily. You must fill out the correct field with correct information so your CSR is ready to go.
• CSR Decoder: is used to decode CSR in order to make sure the information contained is correct. This tool works after you copy your CSR into it.
• Certificate Key Matcher: is a tool used to determine whether a private key or CSR file matches your certificate.