We all understand that HTTPS site are “secure” and HTTP sites are not. Google has been urging web site owners and managers to covert their plain HTTP sites to HTTPS for several years now, as part of an industry wide plan to use encryption in more places. Coming by July 18 of this year, Google’s browser Chrome version 68 will be flagging HTTP sites as “not secure.” If this is you, you can expect to see a drop in page rank and search results, and possibly a drop in site traffic as a result.
This effort has resulted in significant change already. 81 of the top 100 websites use HTTPS, and, depending on the platform, between 65% and 75% of Chrome traffic is using HTTPS already.
If you are one of the laggards, you might want to get the conversion scheduled. It is not as difficult as you might think, and if you use Let’s Encrypt, the price for the certificate will be free.
Most of the large hosting companies that offer the popular and inexpensive shared hosting platforms do offer security certificates for your website, at prices that range from free to $75.00 per year. So there is not a lot of incentive to avoid moving to HTTPS. We converted our site over a year ago, and it was quick and painless. We recommend that you go and do likewise.
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com