6 Advantages and Disadvantages of HTTPS | Drawbacks & Benefits of HTTPS

What is HTTPS ?

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a type of application layer protocol that facilitates data communication between clients and servers. It is nearly impossible for any outsider to know what is being communicated between them. 

 

What is the use of HTTPS ?

The role of HTTPS is to define actions that browsers and servers needs to take in reply of certain commands. HTTPS has been commonly used by sites that needs to enter user data. One such field is Online banking.

What is the use of HTTPS ? 

 

And also HTTPS is nothing but another version of HTTP with advanced security features (With SSL/TLS certificate). Hence, it is ideal for providing identity and confidentiality. Al though HTTPS provides lots of benefits, there are possible pitfalls that it is encountered with. Before switching onto HTTPS, it is necessary to weigh all the pros and cons.

 

In this article I am going to tell you about 6 Advantages and Disadvantages of HTTPS | Drawbacks & Benefits of HTTPS. Through this post you will know the pros and cons of using HTTPS.

 

Let's get started,

 

Advantages of HTTPS

 

1. Encryption

One of the major benefits of HTTPS is its data encryption. The data that travels through HTTPS always gets encrypted. Thus, the informations are highly secured. Even if the hackers manage to get those informations, they will not be able to misuse them since the data is already encrypted.

 

2. Protection

Unlike HTTP where it saves data on the client system, no any data of the user is stored inside the client system in HTTPS. Hence, the data is not at the risk of theft at the public space.

 

3. Verification

Always a certificate makes sure that their policies and the website's policies are the same. If not the users will get a notification that it is unsecured connection. Therefore, if you are using HTTPS, users can guarantee that their data is sent to the right place and not to any invalid sites. This builds up a trust in potential clients who are trying to do business online.

 

4. Data Validation

HTTPS does the process of data validation through handshaking. All of the data transfers that are taking place and components such as sender and receiver are validated. Only if the validations are successful that data transfer occurs. If not the operations are aborted.

 

5. Reliability

The green padlock that appears on the webpage URL always gives a sense of trust to the visitors that the site is security conscious. When the site is reliable, the customers will probably will be ready to do transactions.

 

6. SEO

Having a HTTPS connection is one of the ranking signals to Google. A site that contains a HTTPS certificate will rank higher than the site that doesn't. Therefore, HTTPS is most often preferred by sites that regularly deals with money transfers, usernames and passwords.

 

Disadvantages of HTTPS

 

1. Cost

When you move onto HTTPS, you need to purchase a SSL certificate. Al though many SSL certificates are issued from the website hosting provider, it should be renewed yearly through an annual fee. Apart from that there are ways to get a free SSL certificate, but for security reasons its not recommended. 

 

2. Performance

HTTPS connections does involves lots of computations to encrypt and decrypt data. Thus, the response time is delayed decreasing the speed of the website. 

 

3. Caching

Some contents will have a problem of caching in HTTPS. Public caching those which happened earlier will not occur again. Therefore, ISPs will be unable to cache encrypted content. This kind of problems are usually faced by sites with large visitors. However as a result of higher bandwidth these issues are counteracted. 

 

4. Accessibility

There are some firewalls and proxy systems that deny access to HTTPS sites. This can be intentional as well as non-intentional. In the case of non-intentional the administrators might have forgotten to allow access to HTTPS. Sometimes this can be done deliberately as a security measurement. 

 

5. Mixed Content

If there are problems in the configuration, your site will start downloading files from HTTP instead of HTTPS. Therefore, during a course of time, the users will get a warning message as insecure content.

 

6. Computing Overhead

Due to the work of encrypting and decrypting data, additional computing overheads are prossessed from both servers and the browser. However these overheads are usually not noticeable as there are extra latency emitted from a connection setup. But if your HTTPS connection handles multiple HTTPS connections simultaneously this can be an issue.