If you offer products and services on your website and you would like the payment data that clients send to be protected, you need an SSL certificate. Secure Sockets Layer is a protocol that encodes the data exchanged between a user and a web server, but to acquire an SSL, you will need a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). This is Base64 encoded info that the SSL service provider will use to issue the certificate. The CSR contains the web address, Business name and Unit, mailing address and email of the organization which will use the certificate. The Certificate Authority evaluates and approves the CSR before it supplies an SSL certificate that is signed electronically with its private key as an authority. To be able to install an SSL, you need a total of 4 batches of code - the CSR, a Private Key that is made when you generate the Request, the actual certificate plus a special Certificate Authority code, that is unique for every single vendor.