When you look up a website these days, you’re likely to see a lock icon just to the left of the domain name in the URL bar. That lock icon means the site uses HTTPS instead of HTTP. But what do these terms even mean, what makes HTTPS so special, and what do your employees need to know about HTTPS? Here are a few points to keep in mind, courtesy of your Austin business IT experts at Gravity Systems.

S stands for security. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This protocol connects users to a particular website after looking up that website’s IP address. There’s no protection against whoever feels like stealing the data being transferred. HTTPS, or Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol, safeguards such connections by checking websites’ security certificates and warning you if the site’s certificate is invalid.

The Web is moving to HTTPS. You’ll see fewer and fewer plain, non-secure HTTP websites going forward. All the major web browsers now require site owners to use HTTPS if they want to make use of state-of-the-art data compression and other changes that increase loading speeds. For instance, Google Chrome’s latest version gives priority to HTTPS websites and defaults to HTTPS if users don’t specify a protocol (unless the target site simply doesn’t offer HTTPS at all).

HTTPS isn’t foolproof. As valuable as HTTPS encryption is, it isn’t impervious to workarounds by unscrupulous agents. The same certificates that indicate a site’s security can also be purchased by phishers for their phony websites. In this case, you may see a legit-looking domain name followed by a string of numbers. That string of numbers is the domain you’re actually being directed toward. Warn your employees not to fall for this trick!

Looking to beef up your business’s online and offline data security? Talk to our team today!