Secure transit of data is essential for E-Commerce activities (such as receiving credit card numbers) or for accepting other sensitive information from forms (such as addresses or personal information). FOCUS Servers support the industry standard SSL technology to protect you and to reassure your clients.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
SSL technology was developed to secure and to authenticate data in transit. SSL technology protects against "sniffing" (electronic "eavesdropping" during transit) or data alteration attacks (modifying data in transit).

SSL Digital Certificates
An SSL Digital Certificate on your server assures your customers that the web site is legitimately yours and not that of an impostor. It contains ownership information about (company name, domain name, contact address, etc) and information about the issuing Certificate Authority (GeoTrust, VeriSign, etc). It also provides you with a legal basis to perform transactions on the Internet.

FOCUS Shared Certificate
FOCUS Hosting includes a Shared SSL Certificate free with Signature (Standard, Pro, Pro Plus), Virtual and Dedicated Servers. (This may also be made available to "Website" Plan users.)

Exclusive Certificates
You may install your own exclusive Certificate on a Virtual or Dedicated Server. There are several providers and varying prices. FOCUS can assist with this - please contact us for details.

Accepting Online Payments by Credit Card
For added security, credit card information should never be stored on the server. Credit card processing companies provide the means for the card information to be input directly to their site.

SSL Protocol Explained - More Information
According to Sun Microsystems Inc..."

• SSL encrypts data so that no one who intercepts is able to read it.

• SSL can assure clients they are dealing with the real server they intended to connect to.

• SSL can prevent any unauthorized clients from connecting to the server.

• SSL prevents anyone from meddling with data going to or coming from the server.

"The Secure Sockets Layer(SSL) Protocol provides several layers of security available for all users of a web server equipped with SSL. All data coming from and going to an SSL equipped server is encrypted. This ensures that anyone who may be able to spy on the data transmission will not be able to understand the data. An SSL equipped server can also identify itself to anyone who visits it. This ensures that your clients can trust that they have indeed connected to the server they intended to reach.

When necessary, an SSL equipped server can also authenticate the clients that are connecting to it. This ensures that a person connecting to your server is not pretending to be someone to whom you have given restricted access. An SSL equipped server can also assure data integrity. This security measure prevents meddlers from intercepting a data transmission (which they cannot understand) and replacing it with a fake one they create. With this feature you can be confident that no one is able to intervene between the server and the client."
(Source : http://java.sun.com/javastore/jserv/ssl.html)