SSL Certification’s Crucial Role in Building Local E-Commerce Ecosystem

The technical security aspect is often missed by e-commerce players, particularly by those who aren’t that serious in developing their business’ platform capability. This is clearly a mistake, as it’s the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol that successfully protect the costumers, by functioning as a system that encrypts every single data exchange (including transaction data), all this time.

SSL’s fundamental role indeed is the foremost gate towards consumer protection. It has become a standard for inter-server connection protection between e-commerce websites and browsers.

Web hosting and cloud server provider Dewaweb likens SSL to an envelope with extra layers which ensures that the consumer’s privacy is well-protected, meaning that a website without SSL protocol is very vulnerable, as the data transmitted within it will be visible to everyone.

In fact, the security issue that surrounds payment via credit card is somewhat problematic to most of common people. A data by A.T Kearney suggests that 60% of e-commerce consumers in Indonesia are reluctant to do payment via credit card. This is where SSL becomes essential, as it hides those important credit card data by making them random through a solid encryption.

“SSL certification indicates the level of security that an online trade website offers when customers do transaction there. It provides e-commerce entrepreneurs an equal encryption power to protect their business,” said Dewaweb’s CEO and Founder Edy Budiman, according to the press release we received.

Further, the highest validation standard given by the Certification Authority (CA) towards companies is the Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificate, which is marked by a green bar (located at the address bar on client’s browser) and the verified company’s name, which has gone through highly strict validation process. This scheme is very crucial to enhance the customer’s trust as well as security warranty of doing transaction through that particular website. The implication surely affects the sales performance in the future.

“There are still many online activities-based commercial websites which have yet equipped themselves with verified SSL certificate, even in ASEAN. Internet users become more reluctant to share their private and confidential information online, thanks to the increasing trend of cyber crime nowadays,” WebNIC’s Program Manager Jimmy Chin, one of Dewaweb’s main SSL distributors.