SSL certificates are published by companies specialized in issuing and hosting SSL certificates. To obtain such a certificate you need to make a contract and purchase a certificate dedicated to your company. This certificate will be known to the whole web and will contain information regarding your company, the certificate issuer, and your website.
Example for a secured web site
1
Create a CSR (Certificate Signing Request)
Start by creating a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) file. There are several tools to create a CSR file. OpenSSL is a widely used tool for that task.
2
Submit the CSR to a Certificate Authority
After you create the CSR file, send it to your certificate authority (CA). The CA will verify the information you provided in the CSR. If the verification is successful, they will sign and issue the certificates.
Your certificate authority will guide you through the process of creating a CSR file and receiving the certificates.
3
Receive and prepare the certificate files
After a successful application you will receive your certificate files. As described in the previous section, you need three files to distribute with your server:
root.pem
cert.pem
key.pem
If cert.pem and key.pem are provided in a single file, open it with a text editor and save the individual certificates into separate .pem files.
Some certificate providers supply cert.pem and key.pem in a single file—split them into separate .pem files using a text editor if needed.
