Google is endeavouring to move towards a more secure web and starting in January 2017 (with Chrome 56), they plan mark pages that collect passwords or credit cards without HTTPS connection as non-secure.
This is the first part of a staged rollout that encourages websites to get rid of plain old HTTP. Their plan is to move towards ALL sites not using HTTPS as being flagged as non-secure.
What is HTTPS ?
HTTPS is Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure and is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website to which you are connecting. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It is secure because all communications using HTTPS between your browser and the website are encrypted. HTTPS is often used to protect highly confidential online transactions such as online banking and online shopping order forms. You can learn more here.
Google Chrome currently indicates non-secure HTTP connections with a neutral indicator. However, when you load a website over HTTP, it is possible for someone else on the same network to look at or even modify the site before it gets to you. This is particularly worrying if you are entering sensitive data into a website, such as a password for logging in or credit card details in order to pay.
It is for this reason that from January 2017 Google Chrome will begin by marking any pages that collect sensitive data such as passwords or credit card details using HTTP as not secure.
They intend, in the long-term (in later versions of Chrome) to gradually mark all HTTP sites as non-secure and to change the HTTP security indicator to the red triangle that they presently use for broken HTTPS.
This may confuse your website visitors because they may interpret the message to indicate that your website has been compromised. They could also interpret the message to mean that your site has some underlying security issue other than being non-HTTPS.
You can read more on the Google Blog here.
For help with getting https for your website, give us a call on 01780 740893.
This video explains the thinking behind Google’s push for a more secure web using https.
Google has a technical description of how to implement SSL on your hosting package.
If you need help with getting an https connection for your website, give us a call on 01780 740893.
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