Website Wednesday: Secure Your Website!

Often on Website Wednesday we focus on a website that provides a valuable resource for businesses. Today we want to focus on websites in general and the increasing importance of encryption for your website.

In the past a large percentage of websites have not needed to “secure” their website, this was a priority for e-commerce sites not using a 3rd party payment provider like PayPal, membership-based sites, or for collecting personal information on a web form. Due to a policy change at Google (and the ever-increasing hacking threats) soon it will be necessary to “secure” your website if you haven’t already.

When I say “secure” your website it means to add encryption with an SSL certificate. You will see that a website with an SSL (Secure Socket layer) certificate will start with https:// and have a lock icon alongside your domain in the top address bar. (GoDaddy Video: What is an SSL Certificate)

Starting around July 2018 Google has decided they are going to flag websites that do not have an SSL certificate and put a bold message warning that that site is not secure. Google will also be prioritizing sites with an SSL certificate over those that do not have one. Google has already implemented this warning system on the Chrome browser.

By securing your website now, this could be an opportunity to move your website ahead of some competitors who are either not aware or choose to ignore this change by Google. If you do not add an SSL certificate are likely to see your website visitors decrease and possibly discourage some prospects that are ready to buy but are scared off looking at your site.

The latest news and insights from Google on security and safety on the Internet

A secure web is here to stay
Posted by Emily Schechter, Chrome Security Product Manager on February 8, 2018

For the past several years, we’ve moved toward a more secure web by strongly advocating that sites adopt HTTPS encryption. And within the last year, we’ve also helped users understand that HTTP sites are not secure by gradually marking a larger subset of HTTP pages as “not secure”. Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure”.