Encryption of end-to-end messaging for iPhone and Whatsapp by Apple has been seen earlier. The entire web encryption was planned by a small company and they have been successful in doing so. This initiative, called as Let's Encrypt, has already helped millions of insecure sites switch to HTTPS for protection.
The San Francisco based Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) announced during the first week of April that Let's Encrypt is coming out of Beta. Without this kind of encryption, it is possible for anybody to read between a web visitor's browser and the site he is visiting. The reader could be an internet service provider, a hacker on the same Wi-Fi network or a government agency. Since its launch six months ago, 3.8 million websites have switched to HTTPS encryption with the help of Let's Encrypt. This was done by removing particular set of data from the site that was accessible to eavesdroppers.
Let's Encrypt works as a certificate authority that is verified by organizations like Globalsign, Symantec, Comodo, etc. They verify whether servers running HTTPS web sites are really who they claim to be. After verification, those computers are issued a certificate and make their HTTPS encryption work with the user's browser. The certificate is designed like an unforgeable signature, checked cryptographically by the user's browser. This will make sure that user's communications can be decrypted only by the intended site and not anybody else.
Let's Encrypt is free, unlike other commercial certificate authorities. It is also accessible to websites in far-flung countries like Iran and Cuba. The co-director of the cybersecurity initiative, Ross Schulman said that it is a silver bullet that brings down the barrier to encrypted web communications. He also said that with the help of Let's Encrypt, the cost of executing a secure website has come down to zero.