Will your website show the dreaded “Not Secure” label after October 2017?

In January, Chrome announced that it would begin implementing procedures to notify users of the security of a website they were visiting. One of those was in displaying a “Not secure” message in the address line of the website if they had fields for credit card data or login info. See example below.

For pages that do not have credit card data or login info, there is just an “Information” icon in that position.

Starting in October 2017, Chrome will begin displaying the “Not secure” warning for 2 additional situations:

1. On pages where a user is asked to enter data on an unsecured HTTP page.
2. On ALL unsecured HTTP pages while viewed in Incognito mode.

Any time that a user browses a site in Incognito mode, they may expect a higher level of security to protect their privacy. The problem is that a standard HTTP website is not private. Other users on the web could potentially intercept that information and identify sites that a user browsed. In order to notify these users of that possibility, beginning with Chrome version 62, Chrome will display the “Not secure” warning on any site that is not secured with an SSL security certificate.

The graphic below shows how Chrome currently displays the security warnings and how they will display going forward.

Their plan to identify standard HTTP websites as non-secure will take place gradually. They believe that login information and credit card data are not the only types of information that should be protected from spying eyes. They believe that any type of information that a user types into a website form should not be available for others to possibly see. In order to identify sites where that data could possibly be intercepted, beginning with Chrome version 62, they will show the “Not secure” warning when a website visitor enters any type of information into an online form on a standard HTTP website. In time, Chrome will show these “Not secure” warnings on ALL standard HTTP pages, even when they are not being browsed in Incognito mode.

The illustration below shows how this will work starting October 2017. You will notice that as soon as the user begins typing data into the form field, the notification in the address bar changes to “Not Secure”

Another key benefit of having a secure site is that Google rewards those sites by placing them higher in the search results. So similar sites, with one having an SSL certificate on their site and the other without, the SSL site will be displayed before the non SSL site. That may be the best SEO investment you can make. Adding an SSL certificate will also permit the best performance the web has to offer and will enable powerful additional features that cannot be processed on a non secure site because they are too sensitive for standard HTTP.

Contact us online or call 702-449-8321 today to get your site secured.

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