Sarasota-Bradenton & The Florida Suncoast- Warning: Do Not Visit Websites That Say “Not-Secure” – They Don’t Have an SSL Certificate
If you’ve recently visited a website only to be greeted by a “Not Secure” pop-up in the location bar, you need to pay attention. This means the site you’re visiting lacks a secure SSL connection and your information may be getting into the wrong hands. With increasing intelligence of cybercrime and hacking nowadays, it’s an important investment for websites that will be collecting data to have an SSL connection.
We decided to do some research and break this new necessity down for you.
Look at the top of this Sarasota Post web address page. In the address bar, you’ll see “HTTPS” at the beginning of the URL. While other sites just start with “HTTP” that “S” signifies that we have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, meaning your connection is secure. You should see one on any site that asks for personal data, especially payment information. Actually, these days, you should see one pretty much everywhere.
If you see that little padlock in the address bar of your web browser, you’re visiting a secure website. That means the data you’re sending to or receiving from that site is encrypted. Any computer between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted.
When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. Not even just for sites that are facilitating purchases and acquiring credit card or payment information. If you are collecting even the most basic information such as name, address, phone number and email address, you would not want that information leaked.
Without an SSL certificate, some types can be intercepted. Do you want to take chances that your website is susceptible to hacking? A web criminal often doesn’t care how big you are or what you do for a living. They have one goal, and that is to find vulnerabilities and collect information.
There are more than just the few obvious pros of having a secure website outside of protection from hackers. Your visitors view you as trustworthy, your website will be displayed properly on Google Chrome, and Google even gives a slight ranking boost to secure sites.
Big or small, e-commerce or blog, it doesn’t matter: every site needs solid security measures. If you don’t have one already, it really is time you obtained an SSL certificate. For more information, you can reach out to the expert web developers at Sande Caplin and Associates.
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