Hi Everyone,
I don’t currently have encrypted web access to my Home Assistant. Its not open to the internet. I access it from my phone when away via OpenVPN.
I am just wondering if there is any point in me setting up encrypted web access for my use case?
If you have use for Alexa or anything else that requires direct connection to Home Assistant SSL would be the only option.
If you only want to review your UI and switch stuff on and off then VPN would be fine.
I use the same and I think is a very good setup, no need for SSL, may be just for cases as eximo84 mentioned.
However, I advice to setup a password, you may not be alone in your LAN. For your convenient access, you can set “Remember password” for some devices, so the access wil still be very smooth.
Thanks for your feedback, I didnt think about other services that might require an external encrypted connection. Although I have an Echo, I dont want to open any more ports on my router than I need to, so for now I am not going to connect it 
Yes, I have a password set
Hi,
HASSIO was working for me also without encryption and only accessible from outside via vpn. And if possible I would like to stay with this setup.
Now the challenge was to setup Alexa with smarthome skill.
For the cloudbased service it should be possible without opening ports and installed certificate. Unfortunately the cloud is not offered in germany…
So I tried to build it by myself. but I don’t understand, why the connection from AWS Lambda needs to initiated by AWS and I have to open up the ports and all that stuff.
Is there a way to build the cloud for Alexa in that way, that it’s possible to initiate the connection from my internal network to AWS cloud and using Alexa?
Should be possible in some way as it works with the cloud based solution from Alexa…