ICYMI: There was a massive cyber attack last Friday (10/21/2016). The DNS company DYN which provides DNS service to a gigantic section of the internet was under DDoS attack. This attack brought down sites like Twitter, Reddit, GitHub, Amazon, Tumbler, PayPal, and more. In my opinion, even though it is a very bad thing they used a pretty neat trick to make it happen.
Because it's freakin' awesome!!!! That's why :) Seriously though, this is a question that we receive quite often over the years. Let's break it down.
SSL stands for Secured Sockets Layer. It's a protocol thanks encrypts the traffic from the web server to your browser. Unlike non-secured websites, where traffic travels over port 80, SSL forces traffic to travel over port 443. So what does that actually mean? It means that your customers and prospective clients can feel at ease browsing your website knowing that their traffic has been encrypted. You can always tell a secured website by seeing the green pad lock next to the URL Address bar (kind of like the image above).