Openbook is now on HTTPS
We are happy to announce that we are all a little bit more secure! In one of the latest versions of OpenBook, we’ve decided to move all communications to a more secure form of connection. Security is measured by its weakest link and as a company we have to make all efforts needed to protect your data and privacy.
In this short article I’ve exchanged exact details for brevity of the text so please excuse me for inaccuracies.
I don’t know if any of you noticed but it looks to me as if 2012 was the year of cyber wars. Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and are growing in amount. You can hear about them everywhere and when governments are hiring more and more “hackers” you know something is going on. 2013 is probably going to be even worse and I think it would be nice to know (even if just a fraction) about the instrumentstools out there to help protect us, the uneducated users.
So what is HTTPS and SSL?
Well, let’s be clear here – HTTPS is only a secure implementation of the regular HTTP which adds the addition of SSLTLS encryption protocls. See, the SSLTLS protocols are the really interesting parts.
SSLTLS are cryptographic protocols that encrypt your data before sending it to the other side and then the data is decrypted by the other peer. This is very important to security.
Imagine an attacker somehow captures the communication between you and the web server. Without encryption he will basically gain access to all your data! I’m talking about passwords, usernames, emails and what not. This scenario in not taken from a cyber terror film, there is a specific name for this attack – it’s called a “Man In The Middle” attack.
A picture might help illustrate the attack:
SSLTLS (and well – HTTPS) helps us protect our users against such an attack by encrypting the communication. Even if the attacker somehow captures the communication between you and the web server, all he is going to get is some useless data that looks like Gibberish.
I for one am happy to know our clients can enjoy a more secure connection and handle their social trading in the knowledge that the information they share is secure.
What do you think? Have you ever been the victim of cyber attack? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.