Electronic Commerce

Liberty U Boosts Online Transaction Security

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/19/10

Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA has implemented a digital certificate management service from Verizon Business. The goal is to protect student information, financial records, and other confidential data.

Designed for a university environment, the service provides a secure socket layer (SSL) certificate to Web site visitors during specific transactions to confirm to the user that the Web page is authenticated. It also encrypts the data--for example, credit card or social security numbers--passing between the user and the site.

"Whether handling tuition payments or storing student records, it's essential that we provide a trusted environment for the business of learning," said Nick Tripp, systems security engineer. "We are taking advantage of Verizon Business' digital certificate management service within our current network infrastructure to manage the individual certificates associated with the university. By controlling and managing the overall public key infrastructure--or PKI--system, we're able to speed up the certification process, which allows us to cost-effectively keep our data secure."

Liberty University has about 12,000 residential students and hosts 50,000 online students.