You NEED SSL for your website and here’s why:
Please note: I originally wrote this post on Alignable. Read the original post here. Some of the information included in this article has changed and I have not updated the original post on Alignable but I have updated it here.
1) SSL Encrypts Sensitive Information
The info you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between yours and the final destination server can see everything: your credit card numbers, usernames, passwords, and other sensitive info if it is not encrypted. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server to which you are sending the info.
2) SSL Certificates Protect You from Cybercriminals
According to Cybersecurity Ventures, cybersecurity damages will cost the world over $6 TRILLION annually by 2021. It is impossible to escape the rising tide of cybercrime if your website doesn’t have an SSL cert. They will identify weakness(es) in your network . . . mostly when information is transmitted. Recently these cybercriminals have been refining malicious strains that are specifically design to capture the data while it’s moving from computer to computer before it gets to the server (these people ARE clever). You can protect yourself and all your website visitors from this mess by making sure you have an SSL cert.
3) SSL Builds Trust and Build Brand Power
With SSL certs, your customer will see visuals like the Green Lock icon and the word “Secure” up in the address bar that indicate that well-trusted encryption is in use. If I, as a customer, see that on a website, I know my information is safe. This, in turn, adds brand power and boosts credibility.
Google FLAGS all sites that do NOT have SSL certificates installed and, in most cases, prevents you from even viewing a website without an SSL certificate installed. It used to look like this when you’d get to a site with no SSL:
But now, you don’t even see that and most browsers will give you a warning that you’re about to visit a site that may be dangerous for you to visit.
So as a website owner, even if you do not collect any information, it will stop potential customers from visiting your website. So I recommend if you want to keep online trafficgoing to your website, that you get this fixed right away. It’s not expensive, and not hard to do. Why wouldn’t you want to do it?
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