Whoops - Someone at Elk Grove City Hall dropped the security ball, city's website is not secure

UPDATED 9:35 a.m. | 

Thanks to the keen eye of an Elk Grove News reader, it has come to our attention that the city's website has let its security certification lapse (see image above). 

The other was taken at about 8 a.m. today (see below), showing that elkgrovecity.org is not secure. Note the message that is shown on the screen indicating this lapse and the risks it presents to users. 

As our reader, who is a technology person, noted, "The city's SSL certification the s in https expired today lol, which is a really, really bad look, how irresponsible considering how much they pay for the website."

According to a Google search asking for what the "s" means:

"When you connect to a server using HTTPs, the “s” stands for secure. More specifically, your HTTP request is using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). SSL is a protocol used to secure communications between a client and server."

Also according to Google, no "s" means:

"The problem is that HTTP (note: no "s" on the end) data is not encrypted, and it can be intercepted by third parties to gather data being passed between the two systems. This can be addressed by using a secure version called HTTPS, where the "S" stands for secure."

Let's hope the city's IT department quickly corrects this security failure.

UPDATED 9:35 a.m.

The security lapse started at least by 10:48 p.m. on Monday, October 23, indicating guardrails were not in place for at least 10 hours. 

It appears the city has reestablished security for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. Firefox browsers remain unsecured. 

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