Find Out What Wildcard Certificates Can Do for You You can get SSL on as many subdomains as you want.
Wildcards?
We should first understand what wildcard means before going any further with wildcard certificates. The word "wildcard" is a computer term referring to a symbol, usually an asterisk (*), that is meant to be substitued by any character or string. In other words, an asterisk symbolcould mean any word. In our case, *.example dot com is used to represent all subdomains of example dot com: mail.example dot com, user.example dot com, news.example dot com, shop.example dot com etc.
One of the fields in an SSL certificate is the "Common Name" field. This is basically the domain where the SSL certificate is tied to. Now, if you look at a wildcard Certificate, you'll notice the use of a wildcard. For example, *.bigbusiness dot com If you apply for a wildcard certificate sometime in the future, you will be asked to supply a Common Name, that's why it's important that you remember how to write wildcard domain names.
Benefits to Wildcard Certificates
The main reason that wildcard certificates are so popular is that they cut costs. Typical SSL certificates at $150 each may be fine for people who need SSL on only a few subdomains, but what about five subdomains? That's $750! If you need SSL on more than five subdomains, you'll be saving a ton of money with wildcard certificates that costs only about $600 each. The websites of big companies will sometimes need SSL on over 30 subdomains.
Another advantage to having wildcard certificates is manageability. Handling a number of SSL certificates is a daunting task. Just imagine purchasing, setting up, and then annually renewing several SSL certificates, all at once! It's not a good idea to let one person manage several SSL certificates because they may very easily make mistakes. Fixing errors will cost you time, and with websites, downtime costs a lot of money. All that can't comapare to thinking about just a single wildcard certificate. Having to manage one certificate is infinitely easier. It also reduces the chances of errors.
Wildcard Certificate Drawbacks
However, there are some drawbacks to using wildcard certificates. The first among them is security. By using one wildcard certificate, all servers hosting all subdomains share the same private decryption key. A hacker gains the ability to decrypt all encrypted messages that go to and from all servers if he manages to compromise just one of them and obtains the decryption key.
All the subdomains that use the wildcard certificate will not work if it gets revoked. You will be forced to put your website on down time until you get the wildcard certificate working again, or you get new SSL certificates for every single subdomain that needs SSL security.
Also, wildcard certificates do not work with Extended Verification (EV). You might be wondering what EV is. It's a set of very strict guidelines that certificate providers use when giving out certificates. EV is meant to increase public confidence in SSL. EV guidelines unfortunately do not allow certificates with wildcards in the Common Name. The green address bar feature only works in EV certificates, so you don't get that feature with wildcard certificates.
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