The White House is tightening online security across all government agencies, with a new order requiring the use of the HTTPS security protocol on all of its websites and online services by the end of next year.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) finalized its HTTPS-Only Standard this week as the new baseline for federal Web services after first taking its proposal to the public in March for feedback.
While the public feedback period was of little interest to the average citizen, the proposal did interest the tech community and garnered feedback from Google, Mozilla, the Internet Architecture Board, the W3C Technical Architecture Group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Technology Institute.
“The Web’s trustworthiness has become critical to its success,” Google wrote in a statement regarding the OMB’s proposal. “If a person cannot trust that they are communicating with the party they intend, they can’t use the Web to shop safely; if they cannot be assured that Web-delivered news isn’t modified in transit, they won’t trust it as much. If someone cannot be assured that they’re talking only to the intended recipients, they might avoid social networking. This proposal is an important way for the United States Government to help protect the privacy and security of citizens on the Web and lead the way in the digital world.”
United States chief information officer Tony Scott said the new standard “will eliminate inconsistent, subjective decision-making regarding which content or browsing activity is sensitive in nature, and create a stronger privacy standard government-wide.”
“It is critical that federal websites maintain the highest privacy standards for the users of its online services,” he said. “With this new action, we are driving faster internet-wide adoption of HTTPS and promoting better privacy standards for the entire browsing public.”
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Obama Administration Institutes HTTPS Security Protocol Rule for All Government Websites
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