SSL certificate – is a digital signature of a website. It ensures encrypted connection between website visitors and the server. The certificate is also used to confirm website authenticity: any user can verify if a specific website truly belongs to a corresponding company.
Starting from BitrixVM version 7.2.0 offers a new feature of connecting both free Let's Encrypt, as well as own SSL certificates, issued by any certification authority.
Let’s Encrypt certification authority issues Domain-validated certificates (DV), free of charge and with 90-day validity period. These DV-class certificates confirm the domain as well as encode and protect data during data transfer via https protocol. Both individual persons and legal entities can install it on their websites. Such SSL certificates will be suitable for medium-sized websites and small projects, when high level of trust is not required from clients and website visitors. Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates in BitrixVM are issued within several minutes and are automatically extended approximately one month prior to validity expiration.
SSL certificates that offer a higher level of trust to your products, company and services, are issued by certification authorities with more detailed validation:
Organization Validation certificate (OV). In addition to data protection, domain membership to a specific organization is also guaranteed. The certificate is issued only to legal entities with confirmed phone number. A visitor of a website with such certificate can find information about the organization-website owner by just clicking on a 'lock' button.
Extended Validation certificate (EV). It is identical to OV, only with more detailed validation of tax and commercial activities of a company. Name of the company appears near the 'lock' icon at the website. Such certificates can be often found at website of banks and online systems with large number of visitors.
Own SSL certificates, issued by certification authorities must be issued and extended individually. In BitrixVM, such certificates must be re-connected each time, when they are re-issued by the certification authority.