As much as I would love putting blame on the patient portal site administrator to quickly dismiss the issue as I have quite a bit of work ahead of me, a little googleing around made me realize that security errors on patient portal can be due to a number of reasons that are not resolved on the server side.
An SSL certificate error in the Google Chrome browser stating "Your connection is not private" can be due to the site's SSL certificate but can also be caused by the wrong date/time settings on the client. Additionally, if you are running Windows XPe (Windows XP Embedded) thin clients as I am, not being on Service Pack 3 may be the problem. There may be other software requirements depending on your OS version and what updates are installed. I was clued in on this when users reported security errors on patient portal where the https is crossed out in the URL and there is a dreaded red lock with a white X. When accessing the site on my workstation, there was no error, hinting that the problem was with the client.
Surely the site can still be accessed safely; but to users who have been pounded day in and day out regarding the importance of protecting ePHI and accessing only trusted websites, that can be confusing. So, recapping, before contacting the patient portal administrator and wrongly accusing him of not maintaining the site, I will, at the very least look to the client machine to do some initial troubleshooting. Let's not forget it take two to tango, as they say. That is, what the user sees on the browser is the sum of Client/Server communication.
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