Secure Server Virgin; How do I do it?

[bronto]

Up until now I haven't had to provide secure server (https://) web 
access.  I will be soon.

Just for the heck of it, I just tried to access my site using https, and it 
refers to a certificate labelled as localhost.localdomain, which doesn't 
look 'real' to me.  I know that to be really 'professional', I'll need to 
buy a cert from Verisign or Thawte; what I want to know is do I need any 
other software to make it work, and if there is a way provide https:// 
other than buying a cert?  Something was mentioned to me on another list 
about providing secure email authentication with a local certificate of 
some sort.

TIA

Rob