Bespoke software and web developers, Iosys, have been keeping a careful eye on Leicestershire's top companies and in particular on how secure, or otherwise, their websites appear to be.
Craig Johnson, Managing Director of Iosys, commented on their findings saying, “Last year, Google took a stance on security, requiring websites to be secured with SSL encryption in order to avoid being classified as ‘not secure’ within their listings. We decided to run an audit to find out just how many of Leicestershire’s top companies heeded that call.
“Originally, we audited 200 websites and found that in March of this year, only 47% were secure. We repeated the audit in September and found that 65% to be secure and in November the audit reported that 83% of these same websites were now secure.
It’s highly encouraging to see that the majority of Leicestershire’s business leaders have heeded the security call, but this still leaves 17% with unsecured websites. If this is what’s happening at the very top of our business community, we can only imagine what’s happening across micro and SME sectors.
“With some web developers applying grossly inflated charges to implement SSL, or even failing to proactively advise their clients of the necessity of website encryption, I’m personally not surprised that websites are still being seen as ‘not secure’. We find that wholly and professionally unacceptable.
Our audit isn’t about naming and shaming but rather to demonstrate that it’s not expensive or time consuming nor will it disrupt your website to have the necessary work carried out in order to secure it. At Iosys, all of our client websites are secure as standard, and at no additional cost.”
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and creates an encrypted link between the users’ browser and the website ensuring that any data that passes between them is secure. You can find out if your website has an encrypted SSL certificate by simply typing in your URL. If your web address begins with https:// rather than http:// your website is secure.