Question:
One of my customers is looking to get some Wildcard SSL Certificates. They have one main domain and 30 to 40 sub domains across 3 different Internet Service Providers, and all the domains are tagged with all the ISP’s for redundancy.
They are having Internet Service provision from BSNL, TATA and National Knowledge Network with respective individual IP Address.
Please help me with what they should get. Can my customer buy one single Wildcard Certificate or 3 Wild Card Certificates for 3 individual IP’s?
Short Answer:
Just one technically.
The main thing to focus on when pertaining to SSL Certificate is the domains (Common Name). IP’s are irrelevant when it comes to SSL Certificates. All that matters is are the domains and subdomains and if they are all under the same domain. In the case with wildcard certificates, *.domain.com, one SSL certificate can supply validation for the base domain example.com, and infinitely many subdomains i.e. secure.domain.com, mail.domain.com, etc..
So ignore all the fuss about ISP’s, Redundancy, TATA, etc…
Not every ISP or server hosting company will allow wildcard certificates to be used on their systems. the reason being is security. Wildcard certificate create a lot of flexibility but if you take a wildcard certificate and apply it to a bunch of systems you are essentially putting all those systems at risk if one of them gets compromised by hackers. Double check with those providers and see if wildcards are ok with their systems.
Posted by:
Dominic Rafael
Senior Lead IT Engineer
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