Just Over Half of Agencies Met a Web Encryption Security Deadline
Nearly half of federal websites missed a deadline last week to adopt a suite of security improvements, including adding an advanced encryption certificate, according to a government tally.
The Homeland Security Department’s binding operational directive, released in October, gave agencies until Feb. 13 to make the website security improvements. Those improvements included securing sites with HTTPS encryption, which is connoted with a green lock to the left of the website address on most browsers.
Just 54 percent of agencies met the full set of requirements, according to a tally maintained by the General Services Administration, while about 70 percent met the HTTPS requirement, according to a Homeland Security official. That’s up from about 35 percent of sites that were HTTPS compliant prior to the department’s October order, the official told Nextgov.
