All of our web hosting accounts come with a secure directory built in. This means that all accounts have the ability to run secure applications at initial sign-up. Keep in mind that additional security configurations might need to be programmed in order for your applications to run correctly.

What exactly is a secure server or directory?

The concept is really quite simple. In order for a visitor to safely pass information through your website, such as credit card numbers or other personal information, the data must be passed through a special type of server. This server encrypts the information before it sends it to where it needs to go. This prevents someone from intercepting the information and using it illegally. The more consumers learn about purchasing products and services on-line, the more they are realizing that they should never send any sensitive information through a non-secure site. This does not mean that the whole website needs to be secured, only those pages passing sensitive information.

How does someone know they are in a secure area?

Excellent question. Just because someone places a statement on their site stating that your transactions are secure, does not mean your data is safe. 'Secure' is one of those words people tend to interpret differently. There is an easy sure fire ways to check if you are within a secure area. Web browsers will display a special symbol if the page is secure. This is something that the webmaster can not fake - either the page is or is not secure. They have no way of having this symbol display if in fact the page is at risk. The three most common symbols are as follows:

This symbol will be displayed in Internet Explorer browsers at the bottom right hand corner of the screen

This symbol will be displayed in Netscape browsers at the bottom left hand corner of the screen

https:// This is not necessarily a symbol, but is another indication that a site is secure. All web address start with the letters http. A secure server will add an 's' to the end displaying https.

If you need to place files in a secure server, simply let us know. Please note: For web site administrators who are hosted by another company and do not have access to a secure server, we can provide a supplementary secure server to work with your current servers. Please contact us for details on this.