Finally, some good news is posted. The white hats emerged this week after Mozilla revealed that more web pages are now loaded by Firefox using the secure HTTPS protocol than not.
As of 30 January, the figure stood at 50.1%, but it’s been on a steady rise since November 2015 when the figure was under 40%.
The uptake is being helped by initiatives such as the Mozilla and Chrome-backed Let’s Encrypt, which act as an automated certificate authority to provide HTTPS certs to sites for free, and HTTPS Everywhere – a Firefox, Chrome and Opera extension designed to encrypt communications with major websites.
HTTPS is slowly gaining more and more acceptance in the marketplace, with the UK government last year enabled it on sites to protect against Man in the Middle and other attacks. Also, Google switched it on for all BlogSpot domains last year. Although, HTTPS is not a silver bullet, it is still a good sign for cyber security.
Link of article: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/mozilla-https-traffic-now-over-50/
This is good news with over 50% using the secure HTTPS protocol. However, I’m not sure how this is going to last or keep the momentum alive if Firefox must continue to play a major part in this turnaround. As reported this week, the future of Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, is uncertain. Per Cnet’s Stephen Shankland in “Firefox fail: Layoffs kill Mozilla’s push beyond the browser,” “The nonprofit organization told employees Thursday that it is eliminating the team tasked with bringing Firefox to connected devices, according to people familiar with the situation.” I hope something gets done to keep the company alive because they encourage good innovations, especially when it comes to IT Security.