Dive Brief:

• An organization dedicated to promoting broader use of encryption on the Web said that in three months it has distributed 1 million digital certificates for free.
• Let’s Encrypt is run by the Internet Security Research Group and backed by several large technology companies, including Cisco and Facebook.
• The certificates cover 2.5 million domains, many of which had never used Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) that scrambles data as it's sent across the Internet on their websites

Dive Insight:

More companies are moving to adopt SSL/TLS, but the pracitice still goes under-used. If a site does have the certificates, a padlock will appear in the URL bar. 

In December, cloud and mobile security vendor Wandera said it discovered 16 companies that failed to encrypt payment card information in transit in their mobile apps. Wandera said the apps were not using SSL/TLS.

"Much more work remains to be done before the Internet is free from insecure protocols, but this is substantial and rapid progress," according to a blog post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which also supports the organization. 

Encryption has become a household word in recent weeks because of Apple’s high-profile battle with the FBI over access to the iPhone used by one of the gunmen in December’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino. For example, earlier this week, Amazon said it would restore an encryption option on its Fire OS devices following backlash from consumers and privacy experts.