The Banyan Theory Blog

Welcome to the Banyan Theory blog, where we write about anything and everything related to insurance websites, including design, search engine optimization, and tips to improve your own site.

Articles by Nick

Show all articles

Blog Articles

Why HTTPS - Part 1: The Basics

Nick
posted by Nick
on

This is part of our Why HTTPS series.

You may have noticed a strong uptick recently in the number of websites you visit that use HTTPS. Or you may have noticed that many companies, like Google and Safeco, have begun encouraging website owners to support HTTPS on their own websites. If you’re curious about the reasons behind this, and the reasons you should add HTTPS support to your website, you’re in the right place. This is the first of a series of blog posts I’ll be writing on the topic.

Whole-Site SSL

Nick
posted by Nick
on

We recently launched a new feature called Whole-Site SSL, which allows us to use SSL on every page of your website.

Before going any further, it’s important to first point out that every insurance website we have ever built and hosted has used SSL on the pages that collect sensitive information, starting with our first one in 2007. If your website is hosted with us, your forms are protected with SSL.

Heartbleed Followup

Nick
posted by Nick
on

It’s been a little over a month since the Hearbleed bug was revealed. In case you missed it, I wrote an article telling you what you needed to know regarding your website and your Banyan Theory account login — mainly that they were not affected.

Now that the dust has settled, I’d like to explain how the bug works and how important it is that you change your passwords on other sites that were affected.

Internet Explorer Zero-Day

Nick
posted by Nick
on

If you use Internet Explorer to browse the web, be aware that there is a dangerous new code-execution vulnerability. Microsoft has not issued a fix yet, making this a zero-day exploit (as in, zero days between the discovery of the vulnerability and the first attack).

All versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable (6 through 11).

Heartbleed SSL Bug

Nick
posted by Nick
on

On Monday April 7, a new vulnerability called Heartbleed was revealed in OpenSSL, a software library widely used to protect websites served over HTTPS. The good news: the websites and apps we host were not impacted. The bad news: there are a great many websites and online services that were vulnerable.

Here’s what you need to know: