It is time to secure your web site!

If you are currently hosting a non-SSL¹ website that means information exchanged between your website and your users is not secure.

The standard for securing this information is to encrypt data transmitted between the website server and the browser by establishing a SSL (aka TLS) connection.  To use SSL your server is required to have a valid SSL Certificate installed. You may also see this referred to as an HTTPS site, versus the unsecured version which is HTTP.

The very popular web browser, Google Chrome, started noting that sites with logins that lacked SSL were not secure but as of October 2017, Chrome is now labeling any web page on a HTTP site that has input fields of any kind (e.g. search box) as “not secure”.

You may think you don’t need a secure site if you are not taking payments or collecting private information, but that is no longer the case. Visitors stay longer on websites if they see the secure SSL certificate.² Security builds trust with your visitors and Google Chrome will now be informing your visitors of your lack of security.

Other web browsers including Firefox are also moving towards more transparency on insecure sites as well. They will also alert visitors on sites without SSL as “not secure”. Even if you are not accepting payments or confidential information on your site, this could potentially affect your trust level with your visitors.

Also, SSL offers protection from hackers viewing your login credentials when you log into WordPress (or other Content Management Systems) and administer your site. Losing your credentials can more or less mean losing the site, and worse if you use the same login/password elsewhere.

Google also provides (a small) preferential search rankings to sites with SSL. Google has indicated that they encourage sites to switch to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web³

This is the process for securing your website:

1. Purchase and validate the SSL Certificate.
2. Install and verify the certificate.
3. Switch the site to SSL.
4. Troubleshoot and fix any “insecure” content errors, if any.

LuminFire can make your web site secure for $10/month or $360 per domain with a three year certificate.

Save $60 and get 3 year certificate + installation on your site for only $300. Contact us here for the SSL setup service to take advantage of this special offer today before it expires on November 12, 2017

 

If you have any questions regarding security or SSL, please let us know and we can schedule a call to discuss your options.

1. TLS is technically what browsers use for encrypted connections these days as SSL has been shown to be insecure. But since people still call it SSL, we’re using that term here.

2. https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-secure-web.html

3. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html