July 2018 archive

30
Jul
2018

Chrome’s insecure change

categories: Uncategorised

According to a Google blog post, Chrome started marking all HTTP sites as “not secure”. What does that mean? It means that as of July 2018, all website starting with a “http://” will be marked as “not secure” by Chrome, while the ones starting with an “https://” will be marled as “secure”.

chrome

The image above has been taken from the Google blog post and this is how “http://” websites are now treated. There is also a warning for the visitors saying that the connection to the site is not secure and that the visitors should not enter any sensitive information on a given website, such as passwords, credit card details, etc…

So far, Google has been trying to nudge users away from the website starting with an “http://” for years. Initially, such websites’ rankings have dropped on Google causing the website owners who have wanted better rankings for their website to do something about this. This move is a bit more drastic and it seems to be giving results – more and more website owners seem to care and take the necessary steps to avoid being marked as “not secure” by Chrome.

So, what should you do if your website is marked as “not secure”? It is pretty simple – you should have an SSL certificate installed to your website. What is an SSL?  Well, SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer which ensures that all data transmitted between the web server and browser is encrypted, thus making it safe and secure. If you’d like to read more about SSL, please check this blog post.

Installing an SSL certificate on your website will help you avoid having your website marked as “not secure” by Chrome but there are some additional benefits as well and I’ll summarize these:

  • An SSL gives your search engine ranking a boost, which should help you increase the number of visits
  • It helps you look trustworthy to visitors and secures sensitive data which is very important due to GDPR,

Metropolitan House is a company offering flexible serviced and cost-effective office accommodation in Gateshead & Newcastle. They are an example of a company that reacted to Chrome update and decided to make their website secure by installing an SSL certificate.