In June, the federal chief information officer instructed all executive departments and agencies to ensure that their websites and online services use secure Internet connections by default. Adoption of secure web standards will not be instantaneous, but several agencies have made notable strides towards improving security — and a new online dashboard called Pulse allows anyone to follow along with the progress.

Whenever users access a page on the Internet, they send and receive a variety of information. Text, images and videos become the page the browser displays. Websites receive metadata like IP addresses. In many cases, users also send sensitive personal information like names, contact information, addresses and credit card information.

Historically, most websites used the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for public web connections (this is the protocol being used anytime “http://” appears before a web address). But HTTP is not entirely secure — information can be intercepted, tracked or modified during transmission — which means it is only suitable for sites that do not send sensitive data. The aptly named HTTP Secure (HTTPS) protocol addresses this problem by verifying the identity of websites and encrypting information sent between websites and users. HTTPS is already used in online services like banking, shopping or document storage, but many security experts now advise using HTTPS in all cases.

Many government websites already make HTTPS connections available as an option, and some further increase security by requiring it. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently made HTTPS the default protocol for cms.gov and medicare.gov, bringing the proportion of federal websites that use secure connections to 29 percent. The goal of the new policy put forward by the chief information officer is that all federal websites will eventually be available only through secure connections.

In addition to tracking HTTPS adoption, the Pulse dashboard also monitors which sites use the Digital Analytics Platform, a shared anonymous tracking service for U.S. federal agencies. Using the Digital Analytics Platform allows agencies to track how their sites are used, and also publicly shares real-time usage data on analytics.usa.gov.

Sunlight has previously analyzed and reported on HTTPS adoption across congressional websites, but this new tool makes it easy for anyone to monitor HTTPS adoption in the executive branch — check it out at Pulse.CIO.gov.