Basic SSL Certificate Questions

Question

It has been a long time since I purchased a SSL Certificate for a web site and I am confused on what I need. There are a lot of options and I can't filter out what is really needed verse what are optional premium services. Would really like to hear from your experience what is important to you when purchasing a SSL Cert.

Some of my questions are:

• How important is it to have 40 bit minimum vs. 128 bit minimum encryption?
• Is organization validation important if this is going to be a B2B site?
• Is the warranty/insurance important at all? Is this just a marketing scheme? How many people really collect on this?
• The site is going to be Windows Azure should this matter in my decision?

Thanks in advance for your answers!!

Answer 1

• GoDaddy SSL certificates are cheap and are great for any small to medium size business endeavor.
• Get the organization validation options if you are doing millions of dollars a year in transactions. IMO it's not that important or critical as a buyer
• Standard SSL will allow you to do secure.yourdomain.com OR www.yourdomain.com OR some single domain name. Get a wildcard if you plan on doing more like client1.yourdomain.com or client2.yourdomain.com
• Warranty / Insurance - no need
• As for Azure here is a step by step process for doing your Azure SSL certificate

The low cost GoDaddy certificates work fine for 99.9% scenarios and they are like $20 to $30 dollars versus $300+

Answer 2

Biggest thing is to ensure you can get the format in PFX. I purchased mine from RapidSSL and unfortunately it has been the biggest pain getting it to a PFX file. Don't go through the hours wasted like I had to.