The deadline to have what Apple calls App Transport Security (ATS) in place is Jan. 1, 2017, according to TechCrunch. The news was announced during a presentation at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. ATS was enabled in iOS 9, but not required.
“Today, I'm proud to say that at the end of 2016, App Transport Security is becoming a requirement for App Store apps,” Apple's head of security engineering and architecture, Ivan Krstic, said according to TechCrunch. “This is going to provide a great deal of real security for our users and the communications that your apps have over the network.”
What will happen going forward is the developer will have to have ATS turned on, it is now optional, which will force the developer to connect to Apple's servers using an HTTPS connection
