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Azure App Service Lets Encrypt Renewal Failures and Resolution

Richard Green on 18th February 2021

Paying for certificates isn’t the done thing when you can get free certificates from Lets Encrypt. Free certificates from Lets Encrypt come at a different price and that is lifetime as the certificates are only ever valid for 90 days. If you’re still manually buying and installing certificates annually then you don’t want that four times a year so we automate the process end-to-end. This has been working perfectly since about 2018 for us, however, a recent alert about a certificate expiring made us sit up and look at this case of Azure App Service Lets Encrypt renewal failures and the resolution.

Running a Static Website for Less than a Latte

Richard Green on 12th February 2021

Yes, you read that right. If all you need is a way to show a couple of static web pages you could run a static website for less than the cost of a coffee for the entire year. Although the focus here is a small, simple, and static website, you can apply the same logic to larger sites or even if you need a way to serve up static content over HTTP, not just a website.

Using Azure AD Application Proxy to Publish Internal Web Apps

Richard Green on 16th June 2020

With users working remotely, how are they accessing the internal line of business systems such as web applications that you have running? Chances are they may be having to use a VPN but Azure AD Application Proxy could provide you with a better solution.

Oftentimes, we work with customers to help them to move workloads to Microsoft Azure but what if you want or need to keep something on-premises?

Introducing HTTP/2 and Support in Azure Web Apps

Richard Green on 18th April 2018

HTTP/2 is the latest upgrade for the internet offering us advantages in performance and reduction in wait times, server resource usage and network resource usage. In this article, we explain what HTTP/2 is and why you want to use it over and above HTTP/1.1, some of its advantages and some things you need to consider before thinking about using it.

Once we get past the introduction, we’ll talk about how we can support HTTP/2 in Azure-hosted websites.

If you run a website then performance is one of the key metrics that you must consider: how does the site perform for end-users accessing the page; how many connections the website can handle at once (concurrent connections) before things start to go a bit haywire; how does the load generated by end-users impact the performance of the server and more. For a long time now, the web has relied on HTTP/1.1 as a protocol for delivering content to end-users.

PCI DSS Changes to Supported Security Protocols

Richard Green on 26th March 2018

Do you run a website? Is your organisation required or meet or have you opted to voluntarily meet the requirements of PCI DSS or do you just like to keep up with good security practices?

Starting on 30th June 2018, the PCI Security Standard Council (PCI SSC) has given organisations who must comply with PCI requirements until this date to move away from insecure web security standards. This means that if your organisation is running a website or have any web-based services which use a secure connection, they must use the TLS 1.1 or above protocols; the web service must reject connections over SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 protocols. There is a handy PDF guide at https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/PCI_SSC_Migrating_from_SSL_and_Early_TLS_Resource_Guide.pdf.

For most websites and web services, this is a simple change to implement, however, some platforms will not allow you to make this change and some application development languages may not even support these newer versions.

For big businesses, they may have teams dedicated to managing these requirements but for small organisations or start-up businesses offering online web fronts and check-out shopping services, you may not. Why not get in touch with us about consulting and we can help you investigate whether you can simply make this change or whether there is more work in store to get yourselves ready for the change. Now may even be a good time to take a look at modernisation such as Azure Web Apps for your website.

Moving to a Secure Web World

Richard Green on 23rd March 2018

The internet and digital communications are evolving. In recent years, there is momentum and support for stronger internet security and adherence to best practice and industry standards. Part of this is for more websites to deliver their content over secure channels even if the website is not transacting payments and orders or accepting input of personal data. If you are transacting and taking online payments or orders; if you have people entering their details such as a contact or subscription page on your website then you definitely should be using secure connections.

According to Scott Helme, a British security researcher, in 2017, the number of websites from the Alex Top 1 Million Websites using secure communication as standard reached 38% which is still a remarkably low number. Google now provides preference to websites which use secure channels in their rankings and modern web browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox all now clearly show you if the website being browsed is not secure.