Specifications

FIGURE 13.6

The certificate path for www.equifaxsecure.com shows the network of trust that enables us to trust this site.

The most common use for digital certificates is to provide an air of respectability to an

e-commerce site. With a certificate issued by a well-known CA, Web browsers can make SSL

connections to your site without bringing up warning dialogs. Web servers that enable SSL

connections are often called secure Web servers.

Secure Web Servers

You can use the Apache Web server, Microsoft IIS, or any number of other free or commercial

Web servers for secure communication with browsers via Secure Sockets Layer. Using Apache

enables you to use a UNIX-like operating system, which will almost certainly be more reliable,

but is harder to set up than IIS. You can also, of course, choose to use Apache on a Windows

platform.

Using SSL on IIS involves simply installing IIS, generating a key pair, and installing your cer-

tificate. Using SSL on Apache requires installing three different packages: Apache, Mod_SSL,

and OpenSSL.

You can also have your cake and eat it too by purchasing Stronghold. Stronghold is a commer-

cial product available from www.c2.net for around $1,000 (U.S.). It is based on Apache, but

comes as a self-installing binary preconfigured with SSL. This way you get the reliability of

UNIX, as well as an easy-to-install product with technical support from the vendor.

E-commerce and Security

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