Alibaba Cloud SSL Certificates Service

1. Why is my certificate still under authentication and not yet activated?

It will normally take 3-5 business days for an OV certificate order and 5-7 business days for an EV certificate order to be processed.

Please also ensure your phone is reachable while the review is in process. The solution architect may contact you with a phone call if they identify any issues during the review process. If the solution architect is not able to contact you in time, it may lead to a delay in processing your order.

2. What is the difference between HTTPS and HTTP?

HTTP is a transmission protocol that has been in use for a long time. Data transmitted by the HTTP protocol is unencrypted, which means that passwords, accounts, transaction records and other confidential information provided by users are in plain text and may be compromised, stolen, tampered with or exploited by hackers at any time, making the HTTP protocol quite insecure for transmitting private information.

HTTPS is an SSL-based website encrypted transmission protocol. After the SSL certificate is installed on a website, access abiding by the HTTPS encrypted protocol can activate the "SSL Encrypted Channel" (SSL protocol) between the client browser and the website server, enabling encrypted transmission to prevent transmitted data from being compromised or tampered with. In simple terms, HTTPS is equivalent to HTTP + SSL and is an enhanced secure version of HTTP.

3. What is an SSL certificate?

An SSL certificate is a server digital certificate that conforms to the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol. The SSL protocol was originally developed by Netscape Communications in the U.S. Its full name is Secure Sockets Layer. It specifies a layered mechanism to ensure data security between application protocols (such as HTTP, Telnet and FTP) and TCP/IP. It is a security protocol implemented on the transmission communication protocol (TCP/IP) and utilizes public key technology to provide data encryption, server authentication, message integrity and optional client machine authentication for TCP/IP connections. As this protocol could solve the problem of insecure plain text transmission over the Internet, it soon won industry-wide support and has now become an international standard. The SSL certificate is issued after a "trusted root certificate authority" in the browser verifies the server identity, and implements website identity authentication and encrypted transmission.

4. What are the advantages of SSL certificates?

SSL certificates have the following advantages compared to traditional encryption methods:

1. Quick and convenient. All you need to do is to apply for a certificate and deploy it on the server. No further actions are required from you within the validity period of the certificate.

2. Efficient and secure. After deploying the SSL certificate, an encryption lock icon will appear in the address bar or the right side if you access a website with HTTPS, demonstrating that the website is encrypted. You can also view the company name in the address bar when using the EV certificate.

3. Identity authentication. This feature is exclusive to SSL certificate encryption. This allows you to view certificate information regarding the website owner’s company, and thereby confirm the effectiveness and authenticity of the website to minimize the risk of visiting a phishing site.

5. How to deploy an SSL digital certificate on various types of servers?

1. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud console to locate the certificate service.

2. On the "My Orders" page of the certificate, find the issued certificate of the expected type and click "Download".

3. On the Certificates "Download" page, select your expected server type and download the certificate for this type of server. After the download is complete, deploy and install the certificate following the guide on the download page to implement HTTPS trusted access for your website. It is also possible to ”Push" the certificate to Server Load Balancer, CDN, WAF, and Anti-DDoS from the certificate console.