Dive Brief:

• HTTPS is gaining broader acceptance, according to Troy Hunt, a Microsoft Regional Director and blogger.
• Hunt says Mozilla is now seeing more secure traffic than it is non-secure traffic. The sites implementing HTTPS doubled in a year and browsers are holding non-secure sites more accountable.
• "We connect more things to more untrusted networks than ever before and we need more protection," wrote Hunt. "Fortunately, this is something that more sites are starting to realize, even ones not handling sensitive info."

Dive Insight:

The secure web connections enabled by HTTPS can foil attempts to intercept information and help ensure the integrity of information sent and received between parties. Fortunately, HTTPS technology improvements and greater awareness have helped HTTPS blossom over the last few years.

Last month, a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found websites are now using HTTPS internet security more than ever before. Some estimates indicate more than half of page loads in Firefox and in Chrome are now secured with HTTPS, according to EFF.

The push to increase HTTPS encryption has also been helped in part by free secure certificate program Let’s Encrypt, which announced last April that it had issued more than 1.5 million HTTPS certificates to approximately three million websites around the world.