Don’t Lose Customers Over Google’s Chrome Update: SSL Certificates

Some of our clients have been asking, “what’s happening with the Google Chrome update and SSL certificates changes?” Well, SSL certificates aren’t changing. Only its appearance on Chrome. But without an up-to-date SSL certificate on your website, your customers on Chrome will see displayed in their address bar, Not Secure.

Google’s upcoming Chrome updates will be released on March 15 and September 13 2018

Your site may fall under one of the following three scenarios. If you would like assistance in reviewing your site for SSL compliance, advice on the action required or support in resolving your SSL challenge and avoid a ‘Not Secure’ message, please respond to this email and our support team will make contact.

Potential SSL scenarios

1. SSL Chrome Update – Immediate Action Required

Upcoming releases of Google Chrome on March 15 and September 13 2018 will no longer trust certain Symantec, Thawte, GeoTrust, and RapidSSL SSL/TLS certificates due to compliance issues. Chrome users will see “Not secure” in the address bar when connecting to websites using a distrusted certificate. This will affect both your SEO and Trust of the site, it is recommend you seek to resolve this ASAP.

2. SSL Non Secured Pages. You may have a SSL Installed but mixed content / all pages are not secure and do not redirect to https – Immediate Action Required

Due to upcoming releases of Google Chrome which will place more emphasis on security, compliant SSL certificates and Secured pages (specifically form pages). Some websites either on some or all pages contain mixed content (secure/non secure) and or does not redirect to the secured URL. This will ultimately present bigger issues to you in coming updates and will affect both your SEO and Distrust of your site as google will mark your site as “Not Secure”. We recommend you seek to resolve this issue/s immediately.

3. No SSL Installed / Expired – Immediate Action Required

Your site is not secured because you either have no SSL certificate installed or your certificate has expired. The connection to your site is already labelled by chrome as “Not Secure” these warnings to end users will become much more prominent to your end users in future Chrome releases this will affect SEO and Distrust of your site as Google pushes all sites to be completely secured. We recommend every published website, regardless of it being a content or ecommerce selling site has an active SSL. Should you fall into this scenario we strongly recommend adding or renewing your SSL.

For more information, please see articles below.

https://www.checkfront.com/dont-lose-customers-over-googles-chrome-update-ssl-certificates

https://www.checkfront.com/how-ssl-certificates-make-you-more-secure