Securing Business Success: The Key Role of Multi-Domain SSL

Modern businesses often face cyberattacks, causing data losses and lacking user trust. For example, more than 71 million users across the internet face cyberattacks each year. This means organizations need to ensure higher security for their website. One way to ensure better website security is using a digital certificate, especially if you have more than one domain. A multi-domain SSL certificate secures your site.

But why do you need a multi-domain SSL certificate?

The answer lies in the name of the digital certificate, a multi-domain SSL certificate.

Using a multi-domain SSL certificate, you can secure several domains for your website, ensuring security at reduced costs. However, data security is one of many reasons businesses must install a multi-domain website certificate. This article will help you understand multi-domain certificates, their benefits, and why you need them for your business success.

What is a multi-domain SSL certificate?

A multi-domain SSL certificate helps you secure multiple domains and subdomains. Also known as Subject Alternative Name (SAN), it ensures that the connection between your domain server and browser is secure. To understand how such a certificate works, you must first know what a domain is.

A domain name helps connect your website’s IP address with the server. When a user enters a domain like mydomain.com, a Domain Name System (DNS) server will look up the associated IP address, including files, database, and HTML code.

Now, data can be lost if a cyber attacker can access the communication between the IP address and the DNS server. A multi-domain SSL certificate ensures that this connection between the IP address and server is secure.

Benefits of using a multi-domain SSL certificate for your business

Multi-domain SSL certificates provide many benefits besides data protection and website security. This includes the benefit of improved trust among users, better search engine rankings, and enhanced visibility for your brand.

#1. Improved brand trust among customers:

Customers always prefer to buy from the brands they trust. According to Oberlo, 46% of customers prefer to pay more for trustworthy brands. If you want to boost sales, improving brand trust should be at the top of your checklist.

Multi-domain SSL certificates can help you improve brand trust through enhanced user data protection. With security for several domains, customers' personally identifiable information stays secure, enhancing brand trust.

#2. Better search engine rankings

Search engine algorithms constantly keep changing metrics to index websites. However, one key metric that every search engine factors in to rank your website is the level of cybersecurity. How secure your website makes or breaks the chances of ranking high on search engine result pages.

Take an example of Google’s search engine ranking factors. HTTPS has been one of Google's most significant ranking factors since 2014. So, if you want your websites to rank higher in Google, establishing HTTPS protocol becomes crucial. This is where a multi-domain SSL certificate comes into play.

It helps you enforce HTTPS protocol for each user interaction across your website domains, ensuring better search engine rankings.

#3. Reduced costs on data recovery

Data recovery costs are increasing yearly due to complex security requirements and a need for proper data protection measures across enterprises. According to IBM, the average cost of data breaches worldwide is $4.45 billion, with a 15% increase rate for the last 3 years. This includes the cost of data recovery, identifying root causes, and fortifying the system's security.

So, there is no denying the fact that you need a robust security measure to ensure data security for optimal operational costs. A multi-domain SSL certificate helps improve data security and reduce the cost of data recovery.

#4. Enhanced brand visibility

Multi-domain SSL certificates ensure better brand visibility through improved search engine rankings, brand associations, and customer loyalty. Better search engine rankings mean more customers will interact with you over the business, leading to improved visibility.

Customers who trust your brand due to improved data security will recommend the brand across the channel, improving visibility. For example, higher brand trust leads to better customer association, ultimately enhancing your value on social media channels.

#5. Scaling with a multi-domain certificate is easier

Enterprises need to expand their business offerings based on demand forecasting and enter new markets. The process of expanding business offerings also involved new acquisitions and mergers. This means more domains are added to the existing ones, which requires extra data protection.

Multi-domain SSL certificates allow businesses to scale their operations easily across new acquisitions and mergers. It enables you to add new domains to the existing protected subdomains through a digital certificate through SANs.

Now that you know the benefits of a multi-domain SSL certificate, here is how it improves your website security.

How does a multi-domain SSL certificate work?

Multi-domain SSL certificate works on the principle of cryptography like any other SSL certificate. It encrypts the data through a security key which can be decrypted through a different security key. This process is also known as asymmetric encryptions where two different set of security key pairs are used.

What sets the multi-domain certificate apart from other SSL certificate is the ability to secure several domains within your organization. For example, if you have several domains and subdomains like,

• mydomain.com
• domain.io
• medomain.net
• hr.mydomain.com
• payment.domain.io

All these domains and subdomains are added in a SAN file with one primary domain set as the common name also known as the CNAME file. These domains and subdomains added in SAN file are secured through single multi-domain certificate.

If you want to use a multi-domain certificate to secure multiple domains, installation is crucial. First you need to create a certificate signing request (CSR) and submit it to a leading certificate authority (CA). Once CA receives the CSR, it will review the request thoroughly and verify your business details to issue the certificate.

Many certificate authorities offer cheap multi-domain SSL certificates that you can install on your systems and secure websites.

As a business, knowing how it works helps in understanding the mechanism required to enhance your website security. However, when deciding whether to use specific technology for website security, you also need to consider factors like ROI and costs.

Key reasons you need a multi-domain SSL certificate

Multi-domain SSL certificates are key to your website protection and improved ROI. But how? Here are some of the reasons you can consider while deciding whether to install it or not.

#1. Optimized operational costs

Enterprises spend heavily on operational capabilities, including data retrieval from different sources, processing and analyzing it. If you are an eCommerce business, data aggregation from multiple sources and other activities needs a robust, secure platform.

If your systems are not secure it can lead to cyber-attacks and higher costs due to expenses on data recovery. You need to factor in the cost of error isolation, identifying the root cause, and retrieving the lost data.

Apart from the above, you also need a backup for emergencies, which will cost overhead. So, to optimize costs, finding a cheap multi-domain SSL certificate that meets your business requirements makes more sense.

#2. Enhanced conversions for your interactions

Trust is a major factor when users buy from any brand. So, if you are struggling to convert whenever the user interacts with your brand, you need to focus on building trust. Multi-domain SSL certificates help you improve user trust and ensure better conversions.

It also ensures that your user’s data is secure and there are no disruptions while customers interact with your business. For example, if you have an eCommerce website or multi-domain SSL certificates, make sure there are no breakdowns due to cyberattacks ensuring an enhanced shopping experience.

#3. Reduced SSL management issues

SSL certificates need configurational efficiency to ensure there are no security issues. If your certificate is not configured correctly it can lead to cyberattacks. Apart from the SSL configuration management you also need to ensure certificates are renewed within time, or it can impact the security of your website.

This is where you need a multi-domain certificate that helps configure all the SSL certificates and ensures timely renewals through a single certificate. You don’t need to manage separate certificates, reducing the administrative overhead.

Key takeaways

Increasing internet usage is causing businesses to strategize more on data security and adopt new approaches. However, SSL certificates have long been a go-to approach for website security. So, if you are a business looking to improve website security installing an SSL certificate makes sense but when it comes to economies of scale, multi-domain certificates are a better choice.

A multi-domain SSL certificate helps your business improve data security, visibility, search engine rankings, conversions, and ROI. You can choose a multi-domain certificate from many leading certificate authorities, but selecting a suitable option makes sense.