White House Orders All Federal Sites Go HTTPS By The End Of 2016

In a bid to close potential vulnerabilities in the government's Web presence, the White House is mandating every public federal website switch to a more secure Internet connection standard by 2016. The connection technology, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, provides site visitors more privacy and confidence they are looking at official government websites. The secure protocol also prevents a lot of Web surfing behavior from being watched or toyed with. Come Dec. 31, 2016, every public federal site must be protected with HTTPS.

Today, most of the federal government's roughly 1,200 websites use HTTP technology, which exposes website content, browser format, search terms and other user information to eavesdroppers. Anyone observing the network, including an employer or Internet service provider, can see what topics a computer user is interested in. Or instead of just watching traffic, the interloper could redirect the user to fraudulent content. The White House rule will eliminate the burden of deciding what Web content is sensitive enough to merit HTTPS protection and ensure stronger privacy governmentwide.