World Wide Web = World Wide Regulations
May 25, 2018If your website does not have an SSL certificate before July, visitors will see a security warning.
You may or may not be aware, but Google issued another mandate in 2017 and it has officially taken effect. Google now requires that any website that may have a login screen or requests login information (essentially every website on the web) to have an SSL certificate.
This is how a site without an SSL currently appears.
This is how a site without an SSL will appear come July 2018.
This is how sites with an SSL appear once installed.
What is an SSL certificate?
An SSL certificate is another form of Internet security. While our competitors may charge for this service, we include it as part of our standard hosting package. You may have noticed SSLs on some websites as an image of a lock appearing in the address bar of your browser or when reading a URL beginning with HTTPS. In simplest terms, the certificate offers another level of protection against hackers attempting to intercept information moving either to or from your website through an Internet browser.
Currently, those websites that do not have an SSL certificate are marked with a statement that says: “Your connection to this site is not secure” on both Chrome and Firefox. Come July 2018, Chrome will flag sites without an SSL certificate as “Not Secure” and also display a red triangle indicator along with a more severe warning to visitors. According to a recent survey on Hubspot, 82% of those polled would leave a site if they saw a “Not Secure” warning. To prevent this we have added SSLs to our 2018 standard hosting plan.
Secondary benefits to an SSL certificate:
In addition to creating a more secure environment for your website and removing the “Not Secure” warning, there are some added benefits to adding an SSL to your website:
1) Trust from users: Visitors to your site will be confident their information will remain secure.
2) Better search results: Google has publicly stated that it factors the presence of an SSL certificate into its search results algorithm.
3) Increased security: You can spend more time marketing and focusing on your business and less time worrying about security threats.
4) Attract more shoppers: If you are selling your products or services directly on your website, many shoppers check to make sure you have an SSL certificate in order to protect their information.