SSL Security

[MikeyBlakey]

Hey Fellow Shop Siters,

I am waiting for USPS to process my request for setting up shipping with them. However I am a little concerned with regards to SSL Security options. I am not sure what all this entails..It says my CC Security is at a low, I have it set to where I process my payments manually. Will I be able to process and view my customers CC info without setting up SSL security?

I have read a little bit into this and it seems I need to use SSL or I won't be able to manually process. Who do I purchase a certificate from / How much does something like that cost?

Mike

[Jim]

You could process orders manually without using SSL but I doubt you would have many orders. Most people wouldn't trust a site where they were asked to enter credit card information and the url isn't secure, i.e. has http:// instead of https:// .

If you are using Offline/manual credit card processing ShopSite will always report the security level as low even if you have ssl enabled. It just isn't a safe practice to have the credit card numbers visible to anyone other than the person that owns the credit card.

You should first talk to whomever you host your site with to see if they have a secure url that you can use for your store. Most hosts do provide a shared certificate for their clients but it would really be best to get a separate certificate for your site. If you use a shared certificate the url that the shopper ends up making their payment on will not have your domain name as the main domain. So instead of the checkout screen showing https://yourdomain.com/ss/thankyou.cgi it would have something like https:/somehosting.company.com/storename/ss/thankyou.cgi. Your host could probably also sell you a certificate just for your domain.

[loren_d_c]

Or you could use PayPal Express for credit card orders and turn off the acceptance of the individual credit card types in your store. Then you wouldn't need an SSL certificate on your site for the purposes of credit card processing because the card would be entered on PayPal's secure site, and your security level would go straight to High because you would never be dealing with the card number (PayPal doesn't give merchant's access to the number).

-Loren

[MikeyBlakey]

Ok, Thanks so much for the responses.

I have purchased the Dedicated IP and SSL Certificate through host Monster. My question now is, if I were to not process the payments manually, which avenue is best to go from what shop site offers? Do those options have more monthly fees associated with them or are they one time payments?

Mike