Why you need an SSL cert on your website more than ever

Google are making changes to their browser Chrome which will change how websites load with respect to SSL certs and ‘https://’. Over the course of the next few months, Chrome will actively flag your website as insecure if you do not have an SSL cert installed. This will possibly dissuade visitors browsing your website, which would have a major impact on any business generated by your website. The aim of Google with these changes is to make the internet more secure by making website owners set up an SSL cert on their website.

While it is only the Google Chrome browser taking this step at present, other browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari and Opera) will surely follow suit before too long. And to add to that, the majority of your website visitors are already using Google Chrome.

With the release of Chrome v68 (released during the last week of July), Google has started marking all websites not loading over ‘https://’ as insecure, regardless of visitors to the site being asked to submit information or not. This error will be displayed in the address bar (as opposed to an error displaying on the website itself).

With the release of Chrome v69 (expected to be released in September), Google plan to remove the secure text from the address bar of websites loading over ‘https://’, and instead only show the padlock.

Finally with the release of Chrome v70 near the end of this year, any website not using ‘https://’ and which is requesting a user to enter in any information (login details, contact forums, etc.) will have the not secure message displayed in red to make it more prominent.

For more information on the changes coming to Google Chrome, and the reasons behind them, please visit the official Google blog.

LetsHost offer SSL Certificates for your website. Get in touch with our Sales team today to see how they can ensure your website is secured and not flagged as insecure for nearly 70% of your visitors.