THE INTERNET IS STILL A DAUNTING PLACE IN TERMS OF SECURITY, BUT IN RECENT YEARS IT HAS BEEN MAKING STRIDES TOWARDS A MORE SECURE WEB BY ADVOCATING SITES THAT ADOPT HTTPS ENCRYPTION. BEGINNING IN JULY 2018, GOOGLE CHROME WILL MARK ALL HTTP SITES AS “NOT SECURE”.
If your site uses HTTP encryption, Google is believed to be penalising you as it is not secure. As such, developers have been transitioning their sites to HTTPS and making the web safer for everyone. Progress last year showed this continued growth:
- Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected
- Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is now protected
- 81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default
Google has dedicated Chrome to making it as easy as possible to set up HTTPS by making mixed content audits available to help developers migrate their sites to HTTPS in the latest Node CLI version of Lighthouse.
The new auditing tool helps developers find which resources a site loads using HTTP, and which of those are ready to be upgraded to HTTPS simply by changing the subresource reference to the HTTPS version.
Chrome’s latest interface will help users understand that all HTTP sites are not secure and continue to move the web towards a secure HTTPS web by default, which is now easier and cheaper than ever before.
By switching to HTTPS, you will see many performance improvements and powerful new features that are too sensitive for HTTP.
If you are a developer or your developer is looking for set-up guides on how to get started, we recommend reading Google’s own guides.
What is HTTPS?
Many of you may be wondering, sure it’s good to have a secure internet, but what does HTTPS actually mean?
HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol defines how messages are transmitted between the visitor’s browser and the website’s servers.
SSL – Secure Socket Layer protects and encrypts information sent across the internet.
HTTPS – Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure encrypts information sent between browser and server.
HTTPS make it harder for hackers to break the connection and steal personal information; such as credit card numbers, addresses, passwords etc.
So, next time you’re shopping online, making sure to look at the domain and ensure that it has a HTTPS encryption before making a purchase.