Many popular websites including online banking and financial services sites are among millions of websites that are now explicitly flagged as 'not secure' by some of the most commonly used browsers.
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox now display a ‘not secure’ warning in the URL bar if a webpage is served over an unencrypted HTTP connection. This extends to any website that includes forms or other input fields, or if your site requests a user’s password – even if the password is submitted to a secure (HTTPS) site.
And passwords and credit cards are not the only types of data that should be private. Any type of data that users type into websites should not be accessible to other sites on the network, so Chrome and Firefox are now showing the ‘Not secure’ warning when users type data into HTTP sites.
Google also says this extends to when users enter data on an HTTP page, and on all HTTP pages visited in Incognito mode.
The implications here for many businesses with websites can be far-reaching. With approximately 44.5% of internet users (according to DAP), that’s a lot of potential customers who are being warned that your site doesn’t take internet safety seriously.
Additionally, Google also gives secure sites a ranking boost, which seems silly to ignore. Therefore, we’re aiming to adopt HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS, or Transport Layer Security), on our websites, to help both our clients and their customers.
Need to secure your site, but not sure where to start? We can guide you through the complicated world of SSL certificates
Of course, Google wants all websites to be secure for good reason. The implications of this new message could be devastating to some businesses if they don’t act and secure their website. This is especially so for websites in the banking or financial sector where users demand that security be the top concern.
The message is clear, make your website secure and ensure you have the trust of your website users.
If your website is still not secure and you want to make the change, then let me know. Included in our premium hosting solution is a free SSL certificate and I can make sure that you are not affected by the latest changes by Google.
