On July 24th Google officially launched its latest browser version, Chrome 68. A core principle of the Chrome browser has been security and with this release a big change is delivered. Any website that is not encrypted with HTTPS will be displayed as 'Not Secure'.
You may have already noticed the padlock indicator next to the url in the address bar for websites that use HTTPS (s stands for secure). Data sent between you and the HTTPS website such as credit card information, phone numbers, email address and much more, is securely encrypted to prevent other people capturing your data.
Nearly two years ago Google announced that it would eventually start marking all sites that are not encrypted with HTTPS as 'Not Secure' in an attempt to motivate site owners to improve their website security. This has now become a reality and starting in October 2018 Google plans to start showing 'Not Secure' in red, warning when users enter data on pages that are not using HTTPS.
Not sure if your website already uses HTTPS and is secure or not? It is really easy to check. Open Google Chrome and type in your website address to open your website. Chrome will display an indicator to the left of your website address. If it says 'Not secure' you are not HTTPS.
If your website is not already using HTTPS you can make your website safe by using an SSL certificate. Issuing an SSL certificate changes your website from HTTP to HTTPS and changes the status in Chrome to 'Secure'.
To promote good security we have updated our hosting packages to provide free SSL certificates. We can also upgrade any old hosting packages to our new versions and assist with issuing SSL certificates to ensure your website is secure.
When an SSL certificate is added to a website it will change all the page url's so you will need to make sure search engines can still find your pages otherwise you could start losing your ranking positions and old http pages returned in results could return a page not found error.
If you would like advice on what to do to ensure your website still runs smoothly after adding an SSL certificate contact us.