After World War II, people realized that sharing secret keys was the most difficult thing to do. As a result, the notion of public key cryptography was developed in the late 1970s at MIT and Stanford Universities, basically to be able to share keys secretly at a lower cost. Since then, the industry of cryptography has blossomed.
The basic setup was the desire of a sending entity to transmit information in the form of a message to the receiving entity. The information is meant to be secret; therefore, the possibility of a third entity to read the message should be as low as possible.
In 1984, Dr. Taher Elgamal, Egyptian Cryptographer, presented a cryptosystem known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all the data passing between the web server and the browsers remain private and integral. SSL is an industry standard and is used by millions of websites to protect their online transactions with their customers.
Most of us depend on websites, whether for online shopping, chatting with friends, or managing bank accounts. Unfortunately, it is easy to be fooled by fake websites that are designed to provide private information to criminals. Thankfully, it is now easier to know when a website is secured.
There are two important things we have to think about while sharing important information online; the first is the connection between the personal computer and the company’s computer or servers. Through this connection the name or the credit card information will be transferred, so this connection needs to be secured. The second thing is to make sure that we are communicating with a trustworthy company.
It is important to know that we are dealing with a trustworthy company or website, and that the means of transporting our data is secured. Secure websites encrypt information before sending it between computers, which makes the information completely unreadable for hackers, and only the computer at the other end can read it. We can know that the connection is secured through the address bar; if it starts with HTTPS instead of HTTP, this is a secured website. That is in addition to the padlock icon on the browser.
Another way to know whether the organization behind the website is not a hacker, is a new system that shows new web browser display color and company name in the address bar that help you know that the website is trustworthy. Organizations that depend on security and require confidential information as passwords and credit card numbers, their websites are reviewed and validated by unbiased, licensed companies known as Certificate Authorities which test these websites to provide an EV-SSL certificate. This certificate changes the color of the company name in the address bar; if it is green then the website is safe, but if it is red then stop and take care.
References
www.networkworld.com
www.digicert.com