Moving to HTTPS

Today we are moving the Bellevue College website to exclusively use encrypted connections (HTTPS).

Forcing the use of HTTPS has a number of benefits, including better privacy and security for our users, better search engine rankings for websites, and the future possibility of using HTTP2 and other new web technologies.

Data sent using HTTPS is secured via Transport Layer Security protocol (TLS), which provides three key layers of protection:

  • Encryption. Encrypting the exchanged data to keep it secure from eavesdroppers. That means that while the user is browsing a website, nobody can “listen” to their conversations, track their activities across multiple pages or steal their information.
  • Data integrity. Data cannot be modified or corrupted during transfer, intentionally or otherwise, without being detected.
  • Authentication. Proves that your users communicate with the intended website. It protects against man-in-the-middle attacks and builds user trust, which translates into other business benefits.

— from http://www.oncrawl.com/switching-https-priority-2017/