What Is A Wildcard SSL Certificate? And It’s Advantages

A site is encoded utilizing the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) joined with an SSL endorsement, which contains all the essential data to lay out a protected association. This is attached to a particular space address (URL) and must be utilized. While using a subdomain, for example, ftp.example.com, you want a general, specific case or your own SSL server declaration.

A Wildcard SSL Certificate Protects Any Number Of Subdomains

Because of a stretched framework with many sub-spaces – these are called third-level spaces- the time has come consuming and relentless to utilize a different SSL server endorsement for each. Thus, trump card endorsements for a site began around 2008, permitting numerous spaces to be scrambled using HTTPS. In the IT business, a trump card represents a placeholder – one of the most notable is the reference bullet *, which encases quite a few unique or similar letters or numbers. It is likewise conceivable to indicate extra letters to limit a region further. The bullet is, by a long shot, the most often utilized trump card and is likewise utilized for the SSL declaration. A few genuine models are:

1. *.example.com
2. f*.example.com
3. *.ftp.example.com
4. w*w.example.com

Restricting the scope can make sense in some cases for various reasons – for example, to be able to use a different SSL certificate for a specific website, to assign other owners to the subdomains, or to be able to exclude particular addresses explicitly. An asterisk stands for one or more letters – so the combination f*.example.com includes domains like ftp.example.com and free.example.com.

Restrictions On A Wildcard SSL Certificate

Using a Wildcard SSL Certificate correctly and knowing its limitations is essential to achieve encryption over HTTPS and not accidentally exclude certain parts. For this reason, the following rules must be strictly observed:

1. A wild card only protects a specific level – neither above nor below.
2. A combination of several placeholders, such as *.*.example.com, is prohibited.
3. The SSL certificate uses the same HTTPS encryption for all affected subdomains.
4. The combination of several wildcards within a single SSL certificate is allowed.
5. An individualization of information, such as individual instances’ owners, is impossible.

Specifically, in the above examples, this means that the wildcard *.example.com allows HTTPS on various sublevels such as www.example.com, ftp.example.com, and mail.example.com, but not on the website example.com or underlying layers like ftp.www.example.com. These must either be specified additionally or require their own SSL server certificate. Like any SSL certificate, a wildcard must be checked for its owner by the issuing certification authority before issuing it. 

It is up to you which variants to authenticate the website, whether via the company, owner, domain name system (DNS), or server and should be considered in an SSL certificate comparison. Free providers such as Lets Encrypt usually only offer a few automated processes because of the otherwise high effort.

Advantages Of A Wildcard And Possible Alternatives

In the case of a branched website with paid certificates, a wildcard helps to reduce expenses significantly. In addition, it simplifies the administration of HTTPS. It has a positive effect on the performance of a server because part of the computationally expensive cryptography is no longer necessary with a uniform key. 

There are only a few alternatives to HTTPS for encrypting a website, which is also usually technically complex. On the other hand, a wildcard can be easily avoided by applying for and using a separate SSL certificate for each subdomain. This leads to providers like Lets Encrypt not increasing costs but making administration more complex, which could be more practical for a branched website – for example, a provider with customer-specific sub-addresses.

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