Some of you may have noticed a subtle but important change with the results of a Google search. There may be a green circle with a white check mark before some of the search results.
According to Google’s website; “Google’s Safe Browsing technology examines billions of URLs per day looking for unsafe websites. Every day, we discover thousands of new unsafe sites, many of which are legitimate websites that have been compromised. When we detect unsafe sites, we show warnings on Google Search and in web browsers.” That appear as red “x” in front of the results title. A green check mark means the site has cleared Google security scans and red means it failed and is compromised.
The servers that host websites and cloud based applications are like any other computer and are subject to the same “best practices” guidelines. And web site developers and hosting companies are like any other humans; sometimes not as diligent about security updates and password complexity as we all would like to be. And when a website is compromised it can pass along that malware to any computer that may be browsing by.
Google should be applauded for adding this extra level of security to help you feel more confident on what you click on. Again nothing is 100% secure, but this is a good step.
F1 Solutions Security Team