Many of the front pages have encryption too - but users have to take the time to type out “HTTPS://” before the site address in order to access it. Most, if not all, have encryption on pages that handle sensitive information such as credit card payments or home addresses. It’s actually not the case that all of these websites lack encryption completely. The major cities lacking front-page encryption are Houston, Philadelphia, Dallas and San Jose - although a message on the Philadelphia front page says it will move to a new website "this summer." The states with unencrypted front pages are represented in a map above. “We were going to encrypt anyway but the timing of it definitely was focused on Google’s announcement.” “We certainly don’t want to alarm anybody,” said Audrey Hinman, chief of Montana’s Application Technology Services Bureau.
A common concern is the worry, or even confusion, that the “not secure” message might cause for a citizen visiting their government’s website. Several IT officials in state government pointed to Google as a force driving the move toward encryption.
Two of the 10 biggest cities - New York City and San Antonio - have done the same. Since the last time Government Technology checked in on this subject in March, 15 states - Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin - have all encrypted their front pages. The number of government websites without encryption on the front page has actually been dropping somewhat quickly. Now that’s not the case and encryption is the standard.” “Back a decade ago, it was expensive to encrypt, to get the certificates to work. “Historically, that’s when you would encrypt websites … when there was sensitive information like payment card data,” said Andrew Hanks, Montana’s chief information security officer. The tech giant started labeling non-HTTPS pages as “not secure” to push laggards toward encryption. According to Google, 93 percent of Web traffic on Chrome takes place on encrypted pages. It has become more or less the standard for the Internet. Without it, bad actors can do things like steal information and change a Web page’s content without the user realizing it. With encryption, users can reasonably expect that their connection is private. 9: The front pages of the official government websites for 14 states and four of the nation’s 10 most populous cities.Įncryption - most easily represented with an “HTTPS” rather than “HTTP” in front of a site’s Web address - is the practice of encoding data traveling between a website and its visitor so that any third parties who are able to peek into the data don’t know what’s happening.
Google Chrome, the most widely used Internet browser, has officially started warning users that unencrypted Web pages are “not secure.” Among those “not secure,” as of Aug.