Accessing websites via an encrypted HTTPS connection is a great way to protect your personal information, and especially important when you’re using public wifi.

It’s easy to forget, of course, or use HTTP by accident. But that’s where SSL Enforcer comes in. It’s a free system-level tool which looks out for HTTP connections from any application, reroutes them to use HTTPS, or otherwise blocks them entirely.

While this sounds a little drastic, it works just fine when you’re accessing a small set of known sites which all have HTTPS connections available.

If SSL Enforcer’s strict rules still cause problems then you can add exceptions, allowing http access by certain processes or to particular domains. Or you can disable and reenable it with a click.

Everything is controlled from a system tray icon

Although it’s currently still in beta – and this version expires at the end of November – SSL Enforcer worked well for us. Connections were rerouted, and we were able to bypass the program for our chosen websites without difficulty.

As the protection is applied at the system level, from the very first request, it’s all very secure. There’s no apparent chance of a data leak.

There’s no routing traffic through tunnels or proxy servers, either, which means SSL Enforcer shouldn’t have as much effect on performance as you’ll sometimes see elsewhere.

It’s not clear where SSL Enforcer will go next, what new features might be added, whether it’ll be free or a commercial product. But so far it seems to be an effective tool, and if you need this type of functionality then we’d give it a try.