What Is SSL? #

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol which creates a secure connection between a client and the server over which to send information.  Secure Sockets Layer works by using a cryptographic system that uses two keys to encrypt data. Secure Sockets Layer is essential for protecting your website, even if it doesn’t handle sensitive information like credit cards, it also provides privacy, critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your website users’ personal information, when installed on a web server, it activates the padlock and the https protocol and allows secure connections from a web sever to a browser.  This is important because the information you send on the internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the final destination server, any computer in between you and the server can see any credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL, when an SSL is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to, in essence it will protect your website and the personal information of your website users from hackers and identity thieves.
If you are going to have subscribers on your website, make sales of goods and services or run an ecommerce services you definitely need an SSL certificate on your website.
Meanwhile the certificate is to be renewed annually.