Installing SSL Certificates

Install SSL certificates and enable Auto HTTPS and HSTS

E-commerce sites require encrypted connections to remain PCI complaint and accept credit card data. Encryption ensures secure transmission of credit card details, which prevents bad actors from intercepting the information. To encrypt connections for your website, you must have an SSL (TLS) certificate installed for your site. (“SSL” and “TLS” are widely-used acronyms for “Secure Sockets Layer” and “Transport Layer Security.” SSL is now deprecated. TLS is the successor of SSL.)

Through the HTTPS page for your application, you can install or upload your own certificate. Alternately, you can enable the Auto HTTPS feature, so Webscale automatically obtains, installs, and maintains Let’s Encrypt certificates for your site.

You can also use this page to choose other certificate options, including enabling HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) to ensure full encryption and compliance.

You can use the HTTPS page to perform the following operations.

  • Install or upload a SSL certificate
  • Enable the Auto HTTPS feature
  • Restrict your site to only accept newer versions of certificates
  • Offload HTTPS to terminate all HTTPS traffic at the data plane
  • Prompt Webscale to validate your origin server’s certificate
  • Enable HSTS for your application

Access the HTTPS page

To access the HTTPS page

  1. Click the three vertical dots menu icon on the upper-right corner of the application box and select Edit.

    Select Edit from the application menu

    -or-

    On your application page, click the Actions menu icon and select Edit.

    Select Edit from the Action menu

  2. On the sidebar menu, select HTTPS.
    The HTTPS page displays.

    Select Edit HTTPS

Install your own SSL certificate

To install an SSL (TLS) certificate for an application, paste the contents of a certificate and its key and chain into the Certificate content box. Or, you can upload one or more certificate files for your application. You must also upload the key files for the certificates. A single certificate can protect all of your domains. If you have multiple domains, you can install a certificate for each one.

To install an SSL certificate

  1. In the HTTPS certificates section, click the Add a certificate link. The Add a TSL certificate dialog box displays.

    Click Add Certificate link

  2. In the Certificate content box, paste the contents of your SSL certificate, key, and chain files. Or, click Choose files to upload the certificate, key, and chain files.

    Enter or upload certificate, chain, and key

  3. Click Add. The certificate then displays in the HTTPS certificates list of certificates.

  4. Click Apply.

Enable the Auto HTTPS feature

If you don’t own an SSL certificate or want to leverage the Auto HTTPS feature, you can enable this feature so Webscale will manage your certificates. For each application domain, Webscale will obtain and install a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. To do so, it requests the certificates and creates the challenge files necessary to create them.

Let’s Encrypt certificates expire after 90 days. Webscale automatically renews and updates each certificate.

To enable the Auto HTTPS feature

  1. In the Auto HTTPS section of the HTTPS page, click the toggle to enable or disable the Auto HTTPS feature.
    Enabling this feature starts the certificate request and installation task.

    Enable Auto HTTPS feature

  2. Click Apply.

  3. You can verify that you have successfully enabled this feature by viewing the status of the corresponding tasks and through the following procedure.

    a. On the Webscale Control Panel page, click the menu icon on upper left of the screen.
    b. Click Tasks on the sidebar menu to view the Tasks page. A list of current and recent tasks displays.

    Users List
    c. Click the Obtain certificate task to view information on the task status, certificate order, and HTTPS and DNS challenges.

The task will expire. If Let’s Encrypt cannot verify the challenges within the specified expiration period, Webscale must make a new request. Contact support for assistance or if you have questions.

Enable or disable HSTS

HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure), an encrypted version of the HTTP protocol, is a web security policy mechanism that helps protect websites against man-in-the middle attacks. These attacks include protocol downgrade attacks and cookie hijacking. It uses SSL or TLS to encrypt all communication between a client and a server. Through this secure connection, clients can safely exchange sensitive data with a server, such as when performing banking activities or online shopping.

When you enable HSTS, you increase the security of your application.

To enable or disable HSTS

  1. In the HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) section of the HTTPS page, click the toggle to enable or disable HSTS.
  2. Click Apply.

Enable or disable other HTTPS settings

You can use the following instructions to enable or disable the Protocols, HTTPS offload, and Origin validation settings.

To enable or disable the other HTTPS settings

  1. For each HTTPS setting, click the toggle to enable or disable it in the section for the setting.
  2. Click Apply.

Further reading

Have questions not answered here? Please Contact Support to get more help.


Last modified September 10, 2020