Some websites need to handle data securely and assure the end-user they are a) secure and b) who they say they are. The traditional way to achieve these is via Secure Socket Layer.

The self-signed certificate is a certificate that you can create yourself that will provide SSL encryption but without the verification of your website from an outside source. The outside verification does cost money. In other words, you can get the protection you need, encryption by doing it yourself.

This tutorial assumes you’re going to do a self-signed certificate. Note that you can pretty much follow along with the tutorial for getting and installing a certificate via a Certificate Authority (CA), but omit the steps for generating your own self-signed cert. Generate the request, work with the CA to get the certificate, and then follow the installation and configuration steps.

DigiNotar B.V., a unit of VASCO Data Security International, Inc., is an Internet Trust Service Provider based in the Netherlands. Part of their business involves issuing digital certificates.

"I recently made a blog post complaining about the behavior in Firefox 3 [...] After that post got Slashdotted, I got an email from Giuseppe Scrivano saying that he was interested in implementing better certificate behavior in IceCat. The question is this: What is the optimal certificate handling behavior for a web browser? ..."

This tutorial shows how you can use a free Class1 SSL Certificate from StartSSL to secure your ISPConfig 3 installation and get rid of self-signed certificate warnings. The guide covers using the SSL certificate for the ISPConfig web interface (both Apache2 and nginx), Postfix (for TLS connections), Courier and Dovecot (for POP3s and IMAPs), and PureFTPd (for TLS/FTPES connections).

gnoMint is a desktop application that lets you easily manage your own certificate authority (CA). Many secure communications technologies use digital certificates to ensure that the party or service they are connecting with is not an impostor.

When you visit a Secure website in Firefox chances are that the FavIcon for the website is replaced with a Green bar with the details of the company. This is because of the default properties in Firefox to display detailed information of the website from the Extended Validation Certificate on the website.

A quick walk-through on setting up org-signed SSL certificates for JBoss, Tomcat, etc. Specific notes on using your own company's CA as the signing authority.