If you are selling anything on the Internet that buyers can pay by credit card, this information must be encrypted from the time the information is entered into the web page, to the time it is received by the merchant on email. The first step in this encryption process utilises either a 40 or 128 bit digital security certificate issued by one of the authorised certificate providers. Each certificate is unique to a particular URL and takes the form of https://secure.domain.com. You will also notice that in your browser there is a lock as one of the toolbar buttons. This lock becomes closed and active once you enter a secure site. You can click on the lock if you like to see the certificate and the domain it is subscribed to. If the domain in the certificate does not match the one of the site you are currently on, this is a dodgey site.

It is important to note also that any SSL certificate will only encrypt information from a person's browser to the server. It does not send encrypted information to an email account. This is where the second encryption method needs to take over and handle the transfer of the information.

S/MIME is a specification for secure electronic mail. S/MIME stands for Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions and was designed to add security to e-mail messages in MIME format. S/MIME melds proven cryptographic constructs with standard e-mail practices. More importantly, it was designed to be interoperable, so that any two packages that implement S/MIME can communicate securely. SMIME is the only official standard for encryption of e-mail as defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

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