If you need to use an SSL Certificate on your website, to protect the payment and login data that users submit, you'll need a Certificate Signing Request, or CSR. The Request contains all the info about the entity that will use the SSL in an encoded form, for instance the exact website address for the site, the Business/Organization name, physical and email address. It should be sent to a vendor, or Certificate Authority, which reviews the posted information and based on it, gives the SSL certificate. The SSL set up requires four bits of code - the certificate, the CSR, a specific private key which is generated together with the CSR and the SSL vendor private key. A website that has an SSL installed can be opened with https:// rather than the usual http:// and the info submitted for the CSR will be viewed in standard text format from a web browser.
