News

Not secure

February 5, 2018
IT Positive

You may have noticed, as you’ve been browsing the internet, that certain websites now come up with warnings, as you can see in our illustration.

This is as a result of new changes in Google Chrome. Whereby Google will specifically notify any browser if the site they are visiting is less secure than (in their opinion) it should be.

They categorise a site as “Not secure” if it is not protected by an SSL Certificate.

SSL essentially stands for Secure Sockets Layer: a global standard security technology that enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a web server. And if a website is secured with an SSL, you will actually see the familiar http: replaces with a https:. – showing the world, and Google, that you take security seriously. This really is quite significant.

What is IN an SSL Certificate?

Here are the important pieces of information it contains:

information for encrypting your data; you don’t want hackings, viruses or a breach of customer data. This is a good start in preparing for the ever approaching GDPR.
information about your domain name and possibly also your company
dates stating from when the certificate is valid and expires

Alternative uses for an SSL Certificate

Can you use the same SSL Certificate with a number of other services? As long as your mail and website are on the same server (IP address) This is dependent that your email and website are located on the same server (IP address) so that the address of the domain can be configured with that IP address. If your mail and websites were on different servers, or IP addresses, and although there is a number of ways – the simplest solution in this scenario is to purchase a second SSL.

In addition, browsers, particularly Google, once again, have made changes to their algorithms. Which will penalise sites that don’t have SSL’s installed, therefore pushing these sites down the search rankings.