Last week, a disagreement between Google and Symantec became public through various blog postings.  The disagreement involves Google’s concern about how Symantec manages SSLs, and Google’s threatened actions to address.  This involves all SSLs managed by Symantec, including those branded as Geotrust, Thawt, RapidSSL and others.

Here is a news article from PCWorld about this: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3184660/security/to-punish-symantec-google-may-distrust-a-third-of-the-webs-ssl-certificates.html

Symantec is considered the largest commercial certificate issuer in the world.  Like thousands of other organizations , UIT Security utilizes Symantec SSLs for UH and many UHS sites.  As a result, we are closely monitoring this situation, and have been in contact with Symantec management regarding this matter.  Below my signature is the statement we have received from Symantec.

What does this mean to us?

At this moment, there are no actions we, our website administrators or our users need to do regarding this situation. If/As Google takes action, some Chrome users may not see the usual SSL indicators (EV green bars, etc.).  However, all sites remain secure.

UIT Security will continue to monitor the developments and will provide additional guidance when available. 

Please contact security@uh.edu if you have any questions.