When viewed together with browser warnings of “insecurity” for HTTP websites, it’s easy to see that the writing is on the wall for HTTP. Mozilla Firefox recently announced an optional HTTPS-only mode, while Google Chrome is steadily moving to block mixed content (HTTP resources linked to HTTPS pages). Do you want your customers’ browsers to tell them that your website is “Not Secure” or show them a crossed-out lock when they visit it? Of course not! Compatibility: Current browser changes are pushing HTTP ever closer to incompatibility. User Experience: Recent changes to browser UI have resulted in HTTP sites being flagged as insecure. But would you really want everything else you see and do on the web to be an open book for anyone who feels like snooping (including governments, employers, or someone building a profile to de-anonymize your online activities)? HTTPS plays an important role here too. Privacy: Of course no one wants intruders scooping up their credit card numbers and passwords while they shop or bank online, and HTTPS is great for preventing that. And, if you’ve made the extra investment in EV or OV certificates, they will also be able to tell that the information really came from your business or organization. Your users will know that the data sent from your web server has not been intercepted and/or altered by a third party in transit. There are multiple good reasons to use HTTPS on your website, and to insist on HTTPS when browsing, shopping, and working on the web as a user: Integrity and Authentication: Through encryption and authentication, HTTPS protects the integrity of communication between a website and a user’s browsers. For more information on viewing the contents of a website’s digital certificate, please read our article, How can I check if a website is run by a legitimate business? EV certificates are only issued to businesses and other registered organizations, not to individuals, and include the validated name of that organization. Extended Validation (EV) certificates represent the highest standard in internet trust, and require the most effort by the CA to validate.Organization / Individual Validation (OV/IV) certificates include the validated name of a business or other organization (OV), or an individual person (IV).Domain Validation (DV) simply confirms that the domain name covered by the certificate is under the control of the entity that requested the certificate.The validation method used determines the information that will be included in a website’s SSL/TLS certificate: What information does HTTPS provide users about website owners?ĬAs use three basic validation methods when issuing digital certificates. Taken together, these guarantees of encryption, authentication, and integrity make HTTPS a much safer protocol for browsing and conducting business on the web than HTTP. The server calculates a cryptographic hash of the document’s contents, included with its digital certificate, which the browser can independently calculate to prove that the document’s integrity is intact. Integrity: Each document (such as a web page, image, or JavaScript file) sent to a browser by an HTTPS web server includes a digital signature that a web browser can use to determine that the document has not been altered by a third party or otherwise corrupted while in transit. For more information on configuring client certificates in web browsers, please read this how-to. Mutual authentication is useful for situations such as remote work, where it is desirable to include multi-factor authentication, reducing the risk of phishing or other attacks involving credential theft. HTTPS websites can also be configured for mutual authentication, in which a web browser presents a client certificate identifying the user. If the server’s certificate has been signed by a publicly trusted certificate authority (CA), such as SSL.com, the browser will accept that any identifying information included in the certificate has been validated by a trusted third party. A website’s SSL/TLS certificate includes a public key that a web browser can use to confirm that documents sent by the server (such as HTML pages) have been digitally signed by someone in possession of the corresponding private key. Authentication: Unlike HTTP, HTTPS includes robust authentication via the SSL/TLS protocol. a web server and browser) via the creation of a shared secret key. Through public-key cryptography and the SSL/TLS handshake, an encrypted communication session can be securely set up between two parties who have never met in person (e.g. By including SSL/TLS encryption, HTTPS prevents data sent over the internet from being intercepted and read by a third party. HTTPS adds encryption, authentication, and integrity to the HTTP protocol: Encryption: Because HTTP was originally designed as a clear text protocol, it is vulnerable to eavesdropping and man in the middle attacks.
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