As 2017 winds down, we find it vital to remind our clients of an important digital marketing development from this past year: Google Chrome’s announcement that it will mark all HTTP pages as “not secure” if they contain form fields that collect user data such as passwords, credit card numbers, usernames or email addresses. As a result, Level has been working diligently to obtain SSL certificates for all client landing pages and migrate them from HTTP to HTTPS (the ‘S’ standing for ‘Secure’ and indicating that all communications between browsers and the website are encrypted).
“SSL is an acronym for “Secure Sockets Layer,” so if a page has an SSL certificate, it indicates that all sensitive information shared with that page will only be accessible to the owner of the certificate,” explains Level IT Specialist Stephen Shunk. “Think of an SSL certificate as a passport of sorts. It serves as a valid form of identification and verifies that a page actually is what it says it is – Amazon.com is actually Amazon’s webpage, Facebook.com is actually Facebook. If a page doesn’t have an SSL certificate (and, in turn, doesn’t have the ‘S’ after ‘HTTP’), a user has no proof of who is receiving any information they submit.”
Google has been making its moves toward a more secure web known since 2016, but as we mentioned in a previous blog post, Google emailed official warnings to webmasters in August 2017. The warning stated that Chrome could begin serving users ‘Not Secure’ messages starting in October if users entered data on an HTTP page or visited any HTTP page while in Incognito mode. Other browsers, including Firefox and Microsoft Edge, have also increased their security standards. Such measures can greatly deter lead generation on HTTP pages.
We foresee that restrictions on HTTP pages will only continue to tighten, and our team greatly stresses the importance of obtaining SSL certificates to convert any page that is still HTTP to HTTPS.
Start off 2018 secure. Talk to your Level Account Manager today about reviewing your landing pages and obtaining the necessary certifications.
