All HTTPS, or is it OK to accept HTTP and redirect (secure vs. user friendly)

Posted by tharrison on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by tharrison
Published on 2012-09-26T03:07:07Z Indexed on 2012/09/26 3:39 UTC
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security

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ssl

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https

Our site currently redirects requests sent to http://example.com to https://example.com -- everything beyond this is served over SSL. For now, the redirect is done with an Apache rewrite rule.

Our site is dealing with money, however, so security is pretty important. Does allowing HTTP in this way pose any greater security risk than just not opening or listening on port 80? Ideally, it's a little more user-friendly to redirect.

(I am aware that SSL is only one of a large set of security considerations, so please make the generous assumption that we have done at least a "very good" job of covering various security bases.)

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