Announced in a blog post yesterday, the most recent update of Google Chrome will now mark your website or web application as insecure, if your site uses HTTP rather than HTTPS. Google had already modified their search rankings to favour sites that use HTTPS, but now via Chrome, it will be explicitly highlighted to users that a site is not encrypted and that Chrome deems it to be insecure.
So what is HTTPS and why should I care ? HTTPS is a type of encryption for websites and web applications that creates a secure connection between the user and the site that they are interacting with. Connections that aren’t encrypted are a security risk, so should be avoided. If your website or web application is still running using HTTP instead of HTTPS then it’s a security risk and Google is making sure all of your users know it. From a business perspective, ensuring that all of your websites and web applications are secured via HTTPS is essential. The impression users will get when using Chrome and interacting with a HTTP site will not be positive, so bounce rates are likely to increase dramatically.
Google Chrome is now the most popular browser in the world, so it’s likely that at least half of your users will have Chrome as their default browser. If your website is currently using HTTP then this is something you need to be looking at today !
