How do you secure your website? By encrypting it
In practice, this means you purchase an encryption key from a certification authority. This key is known as an SSL certificate. The certificate then encrypts your website.
However, SSL certificates are by no means cheap. The highest-quality ones cost several thousand crowns a year and you have to renew them regularly (and pay for them again).
What is Let’s Encrypt
Let’s Encrypt is an automated certification authority that offers a basic encryption key free of charge for any website. It is funded by donors, including leading innovators such as Chrome, Mozilla, Facebook and Cisco. The aim is to enable even small websites and businesses to secure their sites.
How Let’s Encrypt works:
- The service is free.
- The service is transparent. It publishes all issued certificates.
- The service is automated. The certificate is issued for 90 days. At AITOM, we have managed to automate the process. You will therefore receive a new encryption key every 90 days.
- The service is based on the open-source principle.
- Most browsers trust Let’s Encrypt certificates.
- Currently, over 29 million websites worldwide are certified via Let’s Encrypt.
How encryption works
As soon as you connect to the internet, your computer communicates with the server using a series of ones and zeros. It is not difficult for hackers to intercept your communication with the server, monitor user activity, or even alter some of the ones and zeros to change the content of the communication.
An SSL certificate encrypts the content of your communication
. This means no one can intercept it or interfere in any way with the communication between the server and you as the user.
There are three levels of encryption. AITOM, for example, uses the basic level – this is sufficient because you do not send us any personal data. The most advanced levels are used, for instance, by banks or your data box. You can tell by the level of identification:
Even a basic encryption key can protect websites. In fact, there are only two organisations in the world capable of breaking SSL certificates: the American and British intelligence services.
We automatically deploy Let’s Encrypt on all new projects on our servers.