Web communication standards: an analysis of uptake in the EU : September 2022

The broad deployment of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)-related standards (such as, HTTPS, HTTP/3 and HTTP security response headers) is imperative for ensuring the interoperability, security, scalability and stability of the Internet. This report studies the adoption rate of modern HTTP-related technologies, namely HTTP Secure (HTTPS), the latest version of HTTP, i.e., HTTP/3, and HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) response header in Q3 2022 across EU Member States, as well as globally. The analysis of the level of uptake of web communication standards has been carried out using publicly available data. Our findings show that the level of adoption of all standards is similar to the previous measurement period (Q1 2022), with HTTPS having high adoption rates, whereas HTTP/3 and HSTS still showing low uptake.