What are SSL and TLS Certificates?

An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificate refers to an electronic document that carries digital certificates with a unique key pair and helps to authenticate a website or a server. It serves two primary functions:

• Authentication: It is a document that shows that the website or server in question has been authenticated from the web server or internet service provider in question. They help to validate that the actually intended receiver is being reached with the message and not some fake individual.
• Encryption: The certificate can be used to achieve the encrypted connection between a client, for instance, a web browser, and a server by applying the SSL/TLS protocols.
• SSL and TLS are security protocols that is used to ensure security in communication done through the computer network. To begin with, SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and TLS stands for Transport layer security even though TLS is the advancement of SSL. Hearing SSL these days is often hearing TLS because TLS is the most recent version of the protocol.

If a client sends data over https, then the server responds with its certificate which contains the server’s public key. The client makes sure that the certificate presented to it is valid and if it is then proceeds to use one of the keys in the certificate to create a secure tunnel with the server. Such encryption allows for guaranteeing that all the data transferred between the client and server are safe and cannot be intercepted or changed.

It is always more important for your web applications and services to ensure the transmission data security for users and protect personal information with HTTPS encryption. Microsoft’s cloud offering known as Azure offers several ways of deploying SSL & TLS certificates that would facilitate secure channeling. This tutorial will explain the steps of installing an SSL certificate in Azure in three various situations: targeting Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Service, or Azure Virtual Machines. This article shall underline how to go about it including obtaining a trusted CA (Certificate Authority), configuring and binding the certificate to the Azure resources.