From the IDG News Service:
The U.S. government is mandating the use of the HTTPS security protocol on all of its public websites and web services by the end of 2016.
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U.S. CIO Tony Scott on Monday signed the mandate to deploy HTTPS and use HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), a system that instructs a web browser to always connect to a website via HTTPS. That prevents a browser from being redirected to an insecure site.
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See Also: Full Text of Statement by US CIO Tony Scott (Includes Several Links)