When should Wildcard Certificates be used?

A Wildcard Certificate is a great way for a company to tie up all their domains in one certificate, as a single SSL Certificate is used to secure multiple websites. Typically a standard SSL Certificate is issued to a single Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) only, which means it can only be used on the exact domain (including sub-domain) to which it has been issued. With the Wildcard SSL option activated you can easily get around this restriction by receiving an SSL Certificate issued to *.domain.com. The * character replaces a "fixed" sub-domain with a "variable" one.
e.g. a single Wildcard certificate allows you to secure:

• www.yourdomain.com
• secure.yourdomain.com
• webmail.yourdomain.com
• owa.yourdomain.com
• anything.yourdomain.com

As well as securing an unlimited number of sub domains on your domain Name with a single SSL Certificate, the Wildcard function also helps future proof the addition of further secure sub domains and eases SSL and IP address management.