Local Business Defenders: HTTP to HTTPS

Business Model Flowchart

Imagine an average consumer, who goes on their favorite local company’s new website. “Hmm, dunno if I should patronize this place rather than “insert big name here.” Especially since I don’t see that lock thingy next to the address bar my son at Merritt keeps harping on about.”

Now imagine your local business owner, flexing their website hosting and making skills to rake in more income, “I keep hearing about hacks, scams and scandals on my 7 o’clock news. I worry that I may end up implicated in one of these things. What would my customers think of me? How can I, in my own way, measure up to the big names out there?”

HTTPs, known as hypertext transfer protocol secure, which works on the transport layer to protect network traffic security, privacy and integrity. This is a 2-way encryption protocol which protects against snooping and data compromisation by unwanted parties. By using trusted certificates issued by recognized authorities, users can be assured about which websites may be trusted with their private data, and not become victims of typosquatting, phishing, etc.

Given that the top 33.2% of all Alexa’s top 1,000,000 websites use https, it is imperative for net-involved businesses to step up and match this model of security. Not only as a matter of asset protection, but as a matter of ethics and good community relations.

Through public relations/educations, and authorized website scouting, our initiative aims to identify local businesses not using https protection, and aid them in switching over to https with a 5-step process:

Host with a dedicated IP address.

Buy a certificate.

Activate the certificate.

Install the certificate.

Update your site to use HTTPS.