From online shopping to managing our finances to social networking, we are completely dependent on various websites or apps.

We exchanged our "trust" for these amenities rather naively.

Would you buy products from a private person in a dark side street? Or do you trust your shopping center, which, in addition to trained security staff, also follows internal monitoring guidelines?

This is exactly what we do when we don't check the security of a website. We are misled by false websites that steal our private information and hard earned money.

How can my customers determine that my website is secure and that I protect your data?

Let's start at the top of your browser as it contains some pointers! You can see the web address in the address bar. Secure websites have an address that contains an “S” at the end of HTTP. The "S" stands for "Secure". You also have a lock symbol in the browser. So if you see HTTPS and a padlock, the connection is encrypted and secure.

But what about the company behind the website? How do you know it's not a criminal with a secure connection? Well, a new system makes this easy, modern web browsers display color and company names in the address bar so you can tell that the site is trustworthy.

This works as follows: Organizations that rely on security can have their websites checked and validated by licensed, impartial companies, the so-called Certificate Authority. This ensures that the organization and website are trustworthy and use a secure connection. If the site passes the tests, the certification authority issues an EV SSL certificate, and only sites with these certificates are colored in the address bar, including the company name and address.

As with traffic signals, colors such as red and green indicate stop and go. If green, the location is safe. If red, you should not be accessing this site. Because of this verification process, criminals cannot get the certificates they need to display the colorful information in the address bar. So if you see a site with green information in the address bar, you can be sure that it is real.

If you're reading the news or checking the weather now, security doesn't matter. So don't worry if there is no HTTPS, padlock or green bar. The most important thing is security when you send confidential information such as credit card information or passwords.

For website owners, you can use Code Guard to scan malware and remove it from your website. With this tool, you can be sure that your website and your customers' information is safe.