What is the difference between an SSL and a digital certificate?

Question

are they the same or that an SSL can be considered a digital certificate?

Answer 1

No, they're most definitely not the same.



The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a commonly-used protocol for managing the security of a message transmission on the Internet. SSL uses a program layer located between the Internet's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Transport Control Protocol (TCP) layers. The "sockets" part of the term refers to the sockets method of passing data back and forth between a client and a server program in a network or between program layers in the same computer. SSL uses the public-and-private key encryption system from RSA, which also includes the use of a digital certificate.



A digital certificate is an electronic "credit card" that establishes your credentials when doing business or other transactions on the Web. It is issued by a certification authority (CA). It contains your name, a serial number, expiration dates, a copy of the certificate holder's public key (used for encrypting messages and digital signatures), and the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority so that a recipient can verify that the certificate is real. Some digital certificates conform to a standard, X.509. Digital certificates can be kept in registries so that authenticating users can look up other users' public keys.



I hope these information answers your question, have a nice day!

Answer 2

Simply, SSL certificates are used to secure the communication between browsers and server, and it will show the secured connection with https instead of just http when you surfing the SSL enabled sites.



While Digital certificates are used to sign the code for the software or software content and used by the distributors of software such as "cNet", digital certificates are also called code signing certificate which helps to aware users about the software that is signed by the authorized person or not, and after signing anybody changed or modified the software or not. So SSL Certificates and Digital Certificates(Code Signing Certificates) both are very different and you can not use SSL Certificate for code signing or code signing for SSL.

Answer 3

SSL certificates secures websites unlike digital certificates secures emails/documents.