As of today, visitors connecting to a Duda website through a secure connection will connect TLS 1.3, if their device supports it (and most up to date browsers/devices do). This improved protocol speeds up the time it takes to connect to a website through a secure connection and also includes only the most secure cryptographic algorithms. This prevents problems that previously existed with TLS 1.2 where weak cryptographic signatures (like SHA-1) could still be used.

For those unfamiliar, TLS standards for Transport Layer Security . TLS 1.0 was first released in 1999 and replaced SSL (Secure Socket Layer) as the security protocol that web servers and browsers use to connect to each other. Since then, TLS has been the standard of what’s used on the web. TLS 1.3 is a big step forward and is the first major improvement in over 10 years (TLS 1.2 was released in August 2008).

The biggest improvement is the speed of the connection. TLS 1.3 removes an extra round trip (back-and-forth) communication between the browser and web server. It does this by having the web server send back the shared cryptographic key right after the first connection attempt request. In TLS 1.2, it required the browser (Client/device) to send this after the initial connection attempt. In short, it requires fewer steps.

Fewer steps are important, especially for users on mobile networks (or satellite) connections where the latency between the user and the server is high. Every trip to the server and back is slow -- so requiring fewer back and forth trips is a big improvement.

For Duda, we are happy to show continued investment in our infrastructure and use the latest technologies to keep our customers’ websites fast, secure and modern.