STARS Security

The STARS servers are protected by a firewall so hacking into the servers is unlikely.

The STARS web server has 128-bit encrypted SSL Security. We decided not to purchase a security certificate from a "trusted certificate authority" since it is relatively costly and does not add to the security of the site. For the most part what it accomplishes is to reassure those not familiar with the site that it is secure.

In certain browsers a warning message is produced. For example, in IE 7 a warning page is displayed indicating:

"There is a problem with this website's security certificate. The security certificate presented by this website was not issued by a trusted certificate authority. We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website."

Even if you make STARS a trusted site in IE 7 the browser will still present the warning page. (We will talk to Bill Gates at our next opportunity and ask him to provide a way to disable this warning page for trusted sites.)

In any case, the page gives you the option to "Continue to this website (not recommended)". You may click this link to proceed to STARS without fear (or at least no more than you always had).

If you are an administrator on your local computer, you can install the Stars certificate locally in which case the warning page will not be displayed. The steps for doing this are detailed below.

Warning Page: Click “Continue to this website (not recommended)

Stars Home Page: Click “Stars Logon” or “Reports Logon”

Stars Logon Page: Note the pink ‘Certificate Error” box with a red shield on top. Click on this box.

Untrusted Cerificate Dialog Box: Click on it then click on “View Certificates”

Certificate Dialog Box: Click Install Certificate

Follow the prompts through the certificate installation. This part is straightforward.