Your site should be secure

A few years ago Google started favouring sites with secure certificates (SSL) in their search results. For those of you who don’t know, an SSL (Secure Sockets layer) puts HTTPS in front of a website address, rather than the standard HTTP.

It’s fairly common knowledge that any site that asks you to input sensitive data (address or credit card details for example) should run on HTTPS otherwise there is a greater risk of the data you entered being hijacked. Without going into too much techno-babble, it basically encrypts data between your computer and the website you are entering data on to stop Joe Hacker from stealing your personal information.

Google started putting more weight behind these sites and favouring them with higher rankings in their search listings over non secure sites because they want safer and better quality sites to be more prominent as part of their results.

In July, Google Chrome browsers will begin flagging every website that does not use HTTPS encryption. Any website that contains input fields, asks for passwords or any other sensitive data, or is visited in incognito mode, will be marked as ‘not secure’ if it does not have an SSL Certificate. This will be prominently highlighted in the address bar. With the majority of internet browsing across desktop and mobile devices now carried out on Google’s Chrome browser, this means that any site not running on a secure certificate will be deemed unsafe and consequently fewer people will be willing to visit.

If you don’t already have an SSL Certificate, speak to your hosting company and get one. If you are a Datapartners customer already, you will already have been made aware of this and, if you haven't already got your site secured, please contact us to arrange an installation. The choice is yours but you’d be damaging your web presence if you don’t get one.

Published on 13 June 2018 at 16:31:00