Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Moving Your Site From “Not Secure” to Secure Maybe you’re a beginner to web development, but you’ve done the hard work: you taught yourself what you needed to know, and you’ve lovingly made that website and filled it with precious content. But one last task remains: you don’t have that little green padlock with the word “secure” beside your website’s address. You don’t yet have that magical “S” after “HTTP” . You might have heard or noticed recently that something is different on Google Chrome : if your website does not have a HTTPS certificate, your visitors will see a warning on your pages, cautioning them about your page’s security. This is because Google Chrome browser is now marking unencrypted websites that don’t provide HTTPS as “Not Secure.” If you want to: mark your website as secure retain visitors to your website and boost search engine optimization provide privacy to your site visitors keep out nosey neighbors peeping on your and your users’ connections p...

Google Chrome Now Marks HTTP Sites “Not Secure” Last week, the movement to encrypt the web achieved another milestone: Google’s Chrome browser made good on its promise to mark all HTTP sites “not secure.” EFF welcomes this move, and we are calling on other browsers to follow suit. This is the latest in the web’s massive shift from non-secure HTTP to the more secure, encrypted HTTPS protocol. All web servers use one of these two protocols to get web pages from the server to your browser. HTTP has serious problems that make it vulnerable to eavesdropping and content hijacking. HTTPS fixes most of these problems . That’s why EFF and others have been working to encourage websites to offer HTTPS by default. Users should be able to expect HTTPS by default. And browsers have been an important part of the equation to push secure browsing forward. Last year, Chrome and Firefox started showing users “Not secure” warnings when HTTP websites asked them to submit password or credit ...

Defending Users: Initial Ideas for Cryptocurrency Exchanges, Payment Processors, and Other Choke Points Within the Blockchain Ecosystem The blockchain ecosystem has drastically changed over the last nine years, and the realities of today don’t closely resemble how many early enthusiasts imagined Bitcoin would evolve. People are no longer mining Bitcoin on their home laptops, and most people aren’t storing private keys on their own hard drives and then sending Bitcoin directly to friends and merchants. Instead, we’ve seen the rise of companies building software that handles these and other tasks on behalf of users. At the same time, creators are developing dozens of new tools to interact with the Bitcoin blockchain and many alternative blockchains. This in turn has inspired a wide array of new companies that mine, store, and exchange these alternative coins. The result? Many users in the cryptocurrency space have traded banks and credit card networks for cryptocurrency exchanges, w...

Water is arguably our most precious resource.  It is requisite for the survival of all life on our planet.  It is also finite.  While water is endlessly recyclable through the hydrologic cycle, there’s only so much of the stuff, and only about 1% of it is freshwater that is usable for human consumption. Beyond its fundamental role in our survival, water also plays a key function in any number of planetary and business activities.  Water is essential for global food production. Water, and the hydrologic cycle, is responsible for driving global weather patterns.  Water is a primary ingredient in the creation of fossil fuel generated electricity.  Water is a crucial element in health and sanitation. Water is used in many of the manufacturing processes that provide us with consumable goods. Water allows us to ship these goods around the world.  Water drives global tourism and provides a source of recreation and relaxation. And our water is in trouble. ...

Fair-Use Champion Stephanie Lenz, European Digital Rights Leader Joe McNamee, and Groundbreaking Content-Moderation Researcher Sarah T. Roberts Win EFF’s Pioneer Awards Government Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg Keynotes September 27th Ceremony, Dedicated to EFF Co-Founder John Perry Barlow San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce the winners of its 2018 Pioneer Awards: fair use champion Stephanie Lenz, European digital rights leader Joe McNamee, and groundbreaking content moderation researcher Sarah T. Roberts. The ceremony will be held September 27 th in San Francisco. This year’s Pioneer Awards will be dedicated to Internet visionary and EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, who died earlier this year. EFF has renamed the statuette awarded to winners the “Barlow” in recognition of the indelible mark he left on digital rights. The keynote speaker for this year’s ceremony will be one of Barlow’s many friends, Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg co-fou...

We are living in an increasingly digital world, with lots of electronic devices doing all kinds of important jobs for us. This fact presents a big opportunity and, indeed, a responsibility for electrical contractors: supplying a uninterruptible power supply ( UPS ) with practically every job you do in order to protect those devices. Consider the simple example of a bakery housed in a small commercial building. Inside will be ovens, of course, which are today outfitted with sensitive electronic sensors and, likely, monitoring capabilities that allow for remote control over time and temperature. It will also have refrigerators that have similar electronic monitoring and control capabilities. Cash registers are also essentially small computers. For the bakery to be successful, all of these components need to be “always on.” Get the message out: Digital devices need UPSs That means all of these electrical loads require the kind of protection against power failure or disruptions that a ...

Industrial Control System (ICS) operators recognize the need to improve cybersecurity , but many lack the understanding on how to start the process.  End users attend cybersecurity conferences, webinars, or read articles in the trade press and learn about specific cybersecurity topics – like threat detection or defense in depth architectures.  Many are tempted to start to take steps to improve security – but it is critical to first create a plan prior to taking action.  Schneider Electric has issued a white paper designed to provide guidance to operators who are initiating projects to secure industrial control systems. The whitepaper introduces the cybersecurity lifecycle which consists of four phases; Assessment, Implementation, Maintenance, and Auditing.  The white paper focuses on the Assessment Phase, and provides a detailed overview of the steps required to create a security plan.  The Assessment Phase is divided into 4 major steps: Documenting the Syst...

Over  3.5 billion passengers  fly each year – that’s more than an average 9 million passengers every day around the world – and air traffic is expected to increase in coming years. To meet the needs of this influx of travelers and ensure safe, reliable operations, it’s essential that airports have a dependable energy supply and modernized low and  medium voltage  systems. Recent events give a glimpse into the costly consequences of airport blackout. In December 2017, for example, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport experienced an 11-hour power outage. It resulted in 1,400 flight cancellations and  cost Delta Airlines  an estimated $50 million. The goal of upgrading and modernizing airports’ electrical distribution systems isn’t just about cost savings, though. Providing reliable power is a critical safety issue that airports must make a priority. It’s essential for all operations: From...