Digital certificates secure electronic documents by a variety of strategies that range from simple digital signatures to online digital id systems. At their most basic level, certificates provide a digital record verifying the sender’s identity and providing the user with a secure reply option. Independent certification authorities authenticate the digital ID certificates, and recipients use the public key to verify the certificate and encrypt a reply.

Businesses use digital id certificates to guarantee end-users that files haven’t been tampered with or forged. The certificate provides an encrypted digest of the original file that the recipient’s software compares to the delivered file to ensure a match.

Digital security certificates offer a number of benefits for online transactions, including:

1. Securing sensitive data by encrypting digital records.

2. Assuring customers that data is private and free from tampering through a digital certificate ID.

3. Providing a competitive edge to your online business.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Add a digital signature to all documents and e-mail correspondence

Digital signatures provide the basic level of security to verify that the documents being sent did in fact originate from your business, whether they be email accounts or agency-wide documents posted for review. Digital signatures add the advantage of keeping costs down for smaller businesses that don't conduct extensive online transactions.

I recommend: Adobe’s Acrobat Professional software allows you to create your signature and add it to your document. Small business owners can add a personal digital ID to their email with Comodo secure email certificates. VeriSign code signing ID’s offer developers options for building signatures into code that is distributed online.

Certify your server with a secure socket layer digital certificate

Secure socket layer certificates, or SSL certificates for short, encrypt the connection between your server and your customers' browsers. This can be especially important if your business conducts e-commerce.

I recommend: VeriSign and subsidiaries, including GeoTrust, share more than half the digital security certificate market. VeriSign’s trial certificates offer the basic security features that you can upgrade with options from basic SSL to VeriSign's Secure Site Pro with Extended Validation. GeoTrust’s quick SSL certificates can be authorized almost immediately. Comodo trial certificates allow you to evaluate a digital certificate for 90 days. It also offers extended validation certificates with multi-year terms. GoDaddy specializes in more affordable certificates for businesses with tight security budgets.

Protect your entire site or domain with a digital ID system

A wildcard SSL digital security certificate covers multiple servers, which can save you time and overhead that would otherwise be tied up managing several certificates with different expiration dates.

I recommend: GeoTrust’s Power Server ID Wildcard certificates are compatible with almost every browser as well as mobile computers and phones. Comodo Wildcard certificates use Server Gated Cryptography (SGC) to upgrade older browsers’ encryption capabilities. DigiCert Wildcard Plus SSL certificates support mobile browsers by supporting Subject Alternate Names, which require SSL digital security certificates to seek additional domain names from the alternate names list. Entrust's unified communications certificates cover multiple protocols and multiple domains.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Extended validation SSL turns the browser address bar green in Internet Explorer 7 and upcoming releases of Firefox and Opera. The green address bar indicates that site has long-term SSL validation so that the user immediately knows the level of site security. The address bar will also display the name of the digital certificates owners.