UCLA and Ashley Madison: This Year of the Data Breach
And people thought we were witnessing a deluge of superhero movies. Even next year, when there will be no fewer than six mask-and-cape epics, from three different studios, won’t be any comparison to the torrent of data breaches that already makes last year’s label as “Year of the Data Breach” seem like a joke. Health… Read More
Backdoors and Other Infrastructure Failures
Gawker says it’s time to panic. And really, if you look at all the bizarre happenings last week, you might think they were the harbingers of some sort of digital end times, as foretold by the Books of Cameron and Wachowksi. Computer screw ups at the NYSE, United Airlines, the Wall Street Journal’s site, stranded… Read More
Security Failure and the OPM Breach
China is currently in the news again, and not just as it relates to Donald Trump’s apartment sale figures. The massive hack of the Office of Personnel Management, which exposed files containing sensitive information on millions of federal employees, veterans, retirees, etc., has obviously been highly publicized by this point. From the standard stuff like… Read More
Easier Crime For Hackers
How many movies and TV shows have there been about bank robberies and other such heists? Probably hundreds, I would guess, over the decades. Plenty even within the last few years. It’s well-trodden narrative ground. In light of recent trends and new paradigms, however, any future screen bank robber is going to look pretty silly… Read More
For all our tax dollars, our data should be better protected
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has had a positive experience with the IRS, or really anything remotely resembling praise for them at all. Well, let’s see how much lower their opinion can get. With the agency’s announcement last week that it had suffered a data breach that had compromised the personal tax… Read More
Analytics to drive next generation of antivirus?
Big data and analytics. They’re not just things for Charles Barkley and Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey to snipe about at each other. A little ways up the I-45, they’re also hot topics at the SAS Global Forum Conference this week in Dallas, TX, which seeks to discuss them in the context of current… Read More
Value and Security in the Internet of Things
In between producing one after another commercial extolling the value of the Internet of Things, Cisco has generated a report focusing on a value of a more monetary kind. Their Trend Report, jointly released with DHL, estimates the IoT to generate $8 trillion in Value at Stake over the next decade. For the supply chain… Read More
Health Care Breaches Expected to Rise in 2015
I’m reporting a lot on the Anthem breach lately (isn’t everyone?), but it’s for good reason, as it’s just the latest flare-up that apparently has experts already diagnosing 2015 as the year in which we will see a huge spike in data breaches of health care organizations (last year the spotlight being on retailers). Whether… Read More
Tales from the Unencrypted
That was a positive, triumphant moment, an event meant to make the audience cheer. In our real world, however, it can often be quite the opposite, in these situations. Such is just one topic Erika Morphy addresses in her “More tales of security fails,” speaking of stories of cybersecurity risks in light of the Kreditech data breach. … Read More
Which is more important, compliance or security?
Which is more important, compliance or security? Which comes first, or should come first, in a company’s considerations? Security would seem to be the obvious, as well as the predominant answer. It’s what you use to encrypt and protect your data, after all. It’s as straightforward as that, and should be a major, if not… Read More