Why You Need HTTPS By July 2018 and How You Can Get One for FREE

HTTPS protocol HTTP is the protocol browsers use to connect to websites.

HTTPS is a secure version of that protocol.

Did you know the ‘S’ in HTTPS stands for secure? Communication sent over a secure protocol is encrypted. Although the communication can still be intercepted, the information that is received by the thief is in a format that can’t be read.

HTTPS serves the dual purpose of protecting the privacy and security of visitors to a website while protecting the integrity of the website itself. It’s common to think that HTTPS is important only for financial transactions, but that’s not the case. Intruders can gather information about visitors to a website that doesn’t use HTTPS technology and use that information for nefarious purposes.

Google has been vocally pushing its goal of making the internet more secure through its advocacy of HTTPS encryption adoption.

In 2014, Google began calling for HTTPS everywhere. The company announced on its blog that it was experimenting with using secure connections in its algorithms responsible for search rankings. At the time, it began to use the presence of HTTPS as a “very lightweight signal” in the rankings. The content of the site was still the primary criteria but the presence, or lack thereof, of HTTPS was factored in, as well.
In January 2017, Google Chrome 56 started marking pages that collected financial information such as credit cards and/or passwords as “not secure.”
October 2017 marked the beginning of all HTTP pages used to capture data and all HTTP pages browsed using incognito mode as being marked “not secure.”
Google plans to release Chrome 68 in July 2018. This version of Chrome is being designed to indicate all HTTP sites as “not secure.”

Its HTTPS encryption on the web report shows up-to-date progress toward Google’s goal of web-wide adoption of HTTPS usage.

Google Chrome is, by far, the most used browser, with 56.31% of the market share as of January 2018. Chrome’s closest competitor, Safari, holds only 14.44% of market share. It behooves websites to design with the understanding that consumers of their site are most likely viewing them using Chrome.

Now that Chrome users will be able to easily see which sites are not secure, psychologically, people may be less likely to enter personal information into sites that don’t use the HTTPS protocol. This can translate into a decrease in lead data capture for those sites.

Although many resources on the internet are designed to help transition a website from HTTP to HTTPS, it is not a quick and easy change to make. If your business relies on an internet presence, it’s not worth the risk of downtime to take this on without professional help. This is an instance of “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Save yourself the headache and lost time by investing in expert assistance.