If you offer products and services on your site and you would like the payment information that people submit to be risk-free, you need an SSL certificate. Secure Sockets Layer is a protocol that encrypts the info exchanged between a user and a server, but to get an SSL, you will need a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). This is Base64 encoded information that the SSL service provider will use to create the certificate. The CSR consists of your web address, Business name and Unit, postal address and email of the organization which will use the certificate. The Certificate Authority reviews and approves the CSR before it supplies an SSL certificate that is signed in an electronic format using its private key as an authority. In order to install an SSL, you will need an overall of four batches of code - the CSR, a Private Key that is created when you generate your Request, the actual certificate and a specific Certificate Authority code, that is unique for each and every vendor.