Stephensons is delighted to be announcing its move to HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) ensuring that the security of the firm’s customer data and online communication is protected at all times.
The national law firm has moved its website to HTTPS for numerous end-user benefits, including improved security. HTTPS provides authentication of the website and associated web server with which one is communicating, protecting against ‘man-in-the-middle attacks’. Additionally, it provides bidirectional encryption of communications between a client computer or mobile phone and the web server, protecting against eavesdropping and tampering with or forging the contents of the communication between the two computers.
This is the most recent development in the firm wide fraud and cyber-crime prevention strategy. Over the past 12 months, Stephensons has increased its investment in fighting the ever-increasing cyber threats prevalent in the legal sector. Due to the level of commitments as well as the investment of time and funds, the firm has been able to obtain a cyber-essentials certification. In the coming year the firm will be working towards an ISO27001 accreditation.
Stephensons’ website developer of eight years, Conscious solutions, has been advising clients of the necessity to consider this level of security on their websites. David Gilroy of Conscious Solutions said:
“The internet needs to move towards being entirely encrypted so that data breaches are kept to an absolute minimum. HTTPS is no longer cost restrictive, the required SSL Certificates to enable HTTPS have significantly decreased in price making this realistic for all law firms. HTTPS ensures that communications have authenticity and confidentiality is maintained. Clients want and need to know their details are safe and their payment requests are genuine. We are delighted Stephensons has taken this step with their website.”
"The investment and coordination between agencies and teams to deliver successful migrations to https needs to be taken a lot more seriously," Andy Redfern Founding Director of digital marketing specialists, Hit Search commented. “Increasingly, the message we get from Google is that secure (HTTPS) pages are now the priority, when both are available. Over the past two years after Google announced secure pages were also a ranking signal Hit Search has spoken to hundreds of business owners and SEOs about upgrading, performed dozens of upgrades and troubleshot dozens more. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that Google and many others want the web to be more secure”.
Sarah Boustouller, Head of Marketing and Partner at Stephensons, said: “Ensuring the privacy and security of our clients regardless of the communication channel they use to engage with us is vital. Legal services are sensitive by the very nature and we want to reassure our clients that their personal details will remain safe. Google has been calling for ‘HTTPS everywhere’ for over a year and are already using it as one of the ‘lightweight’ ranking signals”.
HTTPS was smoothly integrated into the Stephensons website by its in-house team, SEO agency Hitsearch and Conscious Solutions ensuring the firm’s clients did not suffer from any potential down time.