Will Google name and shame you?

Google has announced plans to publicly name and shame websites that don’t meet its HTTPS (note the S) security standards.

From January 2017, people using Google’s Chrome browser will see a security warning when they visit a site with a non-secure HTTP (no S) connection. Will yours be one of the sites affected?

Google says that while more than half of all Chrome desktop page loads are served via a secure connection, only a third of the 100 most popular non-Google sites use a secure HTTPS connection as default.

This means that a lot of big brands aren’t providing online experiences for their customers that are as safe as they could be. And, perhaps more importantly, it also means that come January these big brands won’t have the final say in how they communicate with the public online.

We predict this change will have a particularly large impact on financial services brands for whom security is both a major selling point and a key decision-making factor for customers and prospects.