To strengthen their data integrity, overall security, and leverage the crucial business and monetary benefits of changing security protocols, publishers are strongly being urged to switch from HTTP to HTTPS.

This necessity has been met with slight hesitation due to the historically tedious and expensive process of the transition, however, with the strongly incentivized motivation to use HTTPS, the means have become increasingly simplified.  

Traditional pain points

The past deterrents for making the switch to HTTPS included the cost of SSL or TLS certificates. Depending on a publisher's infrastructure with respect to the CDN in place, the varying expense could have been an obstacle. 

In addition, the process of making the switch could be rather unpleasant due to the amount of configurations and updates required. 

Lastly, every element (such as embeds, ads, etc.) loaded in a publisher's website using the enhanced security protocol, must also be loaded with HTTPS. This acted as a barrier, leading publishers to believe that the extensions that made their content more interactive and engaging, or ad networks that contributed to their revenue stream would be forfeited in favor of enhanced security protocols. 

Simplifying the process

Let's Encrypt was created with the specific purpose of removing the complexity of adopting HTTPS. It does this by providing webmasters with an automated and free process to acquire TLS certificates, and simplifies the tasks (web server configurations, certificate renewals, etc.) that formerly made the transition a daunting task.

As a project, Let's Encrypt is sponsored by major tech leaders with a vested interest in the migration to HTTPS to protect their business interests from competing major network carriers and reinforce data protection. This overwhelming support is also what's causing ad networks and third party extensions to spearhead the switch to HTTPS, easing the monetary concerns publishers once had. 

Marfeel and HTTPS

Marfeel has been HTTPS compliant for the last three years. This means that Marfeel seamlessly delivers a publisher's content that uses the enhanced security protocol over HTTPS as well.

This is also the case for all third party elements like videos and embeds; Marfeel already complies with the bolstered security requirements that some publishers have already adopted.  

To learn more about migrating from HTTP to HTTPS, see the Secure your site with HTTPS article in the Google Search Console Help.

For a detailed step-by-step guide on how to switch from HTTP to HTTPS, see the this article.