Overview
SHA-1 and SHA-256 are cryptographic primitives used to protect your website and data. Unfortunately, SHA-1 has become woefully insecure over the years and should not be used on your website - period. Instead, the new SHA-256 primitive should be used.
Last year, Google stepped up it's efforts to kill SHA-1 as quickly as possible.
Google is pretty serious about deprecating SHA-1 and will start including a yellow yield sign in Chrome's address bar for any website still using SHA-1.
Google will really be stepping up their efforts on January 1, 2017, when Chrome's address bar is changed to include a red X.
Needless to say, both of these symbols would deter shoppers from placing orders on your website, so you should upgrade to the newer SHA-256 cryptographic primitive as soon as possible.
Testing Tool
Fortunately, there's a website where you can easily test to see if you are using SHA-1. Simply go to the following website and type in your website address:
If you website supports SHA-2, you should see Nice.