Secure Your Website Before July!
Pay attention now – this is important! Google Chrome – currently the world’s most popular web browser – will be insisting on https security on all sites from July 2018. So if your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate, it will display a “Not Secure” warning in the URL bar. Given the understandable growth in concerns about “website security” – such a warning popping up on screen is very likely to kill off your website traffic & damage your company’s reputation.
At the very least, they’ll be wondering just how secure any data they’re shared with you is – whether that’s been generated from an online order or just from a simple contact form submission.
Here’s an example from the website of a significant mining corporation with operations across the world. We’ve blurred out their address to spare their blushes – but this is an issue that will impact on anyone with a website – large or small.
So what is an “SSL” certificate? SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer”. Essentially, SSL establishes an encrypted link between your web server and your visitor’s web browser. This ensures that all data passed between the two remains private and secure. With an unsecured HTTP connection, third-parties can snoop on any traffic passing between your reader’s browser and your web server.
It’s not just Google that are pushing to use secure https connections for all traffic – this will be a fact of life for all browsers soon. Now that Google are including SSL certification as a ranking factor, having an https:// address will automatically boost your site’s rankings. This may also be advantageous when looking at how upcoming GDPR guidelines incentivise anything that enhances site & data transfer security.
If you’d like to know how we can get your site ready for this important change please get in touch. We’re offering selected new clients a free SSL certification and installation service in combination with our advanced, secure hosting packages. First come, first (securely) served!
