Why HTTPS Matters to the Future of the Internet

How to manage 1,000s of domains and subdomains without pulling your hair out

Today we communicate, share, discover, buy, sell, learn, and teach on the Internet. We expect a certain degree of privacy, authenticity and trust for each of these interactions. On the internet we get this privacy, authenticity and trust from HTTPS.

HTTPS is the future of the Internet. HTTPS was built in 1994 although for many years website operators chose not to configure their websites with HTTPS. Some considered HTTPS to be too difficult or expensive, and opted to use the insecure HTTP.

Today setting up HTTPS is easier and cheaper than ever before thanks to organizations like Let’s Encrypt and Backplane. This is causing HTTPS usage by websites to skyrocket. In turn, web browsers and search engines have begun to flag non-HTTPS websites as insecure and demote them in search results in an effort to better protect users’ privacy. Soon (in weeks, at the time of this blog) it will be bad business to run any website without HTTPS.

HTTPS protects your users’ data from attackers trying to intercept network traffic. This includes attackers setting up phony wifi hotspots, as well as those surreptitiously exfiltrating data from internet service providers. HTTPS improves your SEO with multiple search engines. HTTPS enables the latest web browser features such as HTTP2 Multiplexing which in many cases can reduce latency of a website with zero code changes.

All organizations can benefit from HTTPS. For user privacy it is essential for sites that handle any user generated data or track users. For sites that want to be ranked on Google it is essential. For sites that load multiple resources from the same domain it will greatly reduce latency. Basically for any site that isn’t a static page, it’s essential. For those that are a static page, there are CDN services that provide free HTTPS for custom domains and greatly reduce geographic latency for users throughout the world.

What does the future look like?
The future will be one hundred percent HTTPS in the next 5 years. Browsers and search engines will continue to make life increasingly difficult for website operators who do not upgrade to HTTPS. Setting up HTTPS for a website will become increasingly trivial.

How can I manage all my domains and subdomains without pulling my hair out?
So now you’re ready to start making the most of HTTPS. Maybe you have 1–10 domains and subdomains. Maybe you have 100s-1000s of domains and subdomains. Either way how does all of this work? How can you make sure certificates are rotated for these domains and how can you add and remove domains at will?

Short answer: with Backplane. Backplane provisions and manages HTTPS certificates for all of your domains, handles establishing secure connections, and proxies HTTPS requests to your websites and backend services. It does all of this without any code changes to your websites or backend services. Backplane handles the provisioning and rotation of certificates automatically, so you can sit back and relax while we future-proof your sites in minutes. What’s more Backplane’s API allows you to dynamically add new domains and remove old ones.

Try Backplane today free for 30-days.