Checking whether a web page that you expect to be secure actually has a security certificate installed is much more noticeable in modern browsers that highlight the address bar in yellow or green (depending on the type of certificate) than they were in the days when all you had to go on was the padlock. In some situations it will not matter who issued the certificate since all you need to worry about is that what you enter into the form will be encrypted before it is sent. In other cases you need to be certain that who you are sending it to is who you expect them to be and to check that you need to know who it is who issued the certificate to them in the first place so as to know how much trust you can place in the certificate. Browsers usually have a default list of trusted certificate issuing authorities and will alert you if the certificate doesn’t have an issuing chain that leads back to one of these. Of course you may still want to check on just who the authority who issued a particular certificate is.

Checking Root Certificate Authorities

Tags: certificate, security