New Ransomware, New Attitudes

Characters in fiction usually have a dark foil as an antagonist.  Superman and Bizarro, Frodo and Gollum, Jerry and Newman.  But what about encryption?  For as heroic as it is and the good it does, what happens when we come up against the dark side of encryption? Yeah, ok, that sounds cheesy.  It is, however,… Read More

Encryption as Part of the Defense Strategy

I always take slight issue with data security articles that say in the title that encryption won’t protect against breaches.  To me it’s a little misleading.  It carries the implication that encryption is almost unnecessary, when that’s not what the article actually goes on to say.  Quite the opposite.  Rather, what they invariably mean is… Read More

Facebook isn’t providing identity theft protection for users

Following up on Facebook’s latest data scandal, new updates have been rolling in.  For instance, did you know that only 30 million accounts were breached in total, and not the 50 million as initially reported?  I guess the company found that 40% reduction satisfactory enough to justify their latest action—or inaction, as it were.  I… Read More

Will Americans Want Their Own GDPR?

Here is something interesting I hadn’t considered in our last GDPR write-up.  As Isaac Cohen at CSO Online points out, all the privacy notification emails US citizens are receiving in light of the new European regulations are alerting them to guidelines that otherwise might have escaped their notice.  As a result, the public is being… Read More

Keeping Kids’ Data Safe

This story is reminiscent of the toy manufacturer VTech’s breach, only with slightly older children.  I’m talking about the teen-monitoring app known as TeenSafe, which was recently discovered to have a vulnerable server, exposing the personal information of thousands of its users.  Many of these are, of course, teenagers.  The app allows for parents or… Read More

Power, Responsibility, and Corruption: Facebook at a Crossroads

There has been some questioning, since the news broke, about whether this incident involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica technically qualifies as a data breach.  Whether it does or not, European legislators will be among the first to take a serious look into the matter. You’ve probably heard the story by now: how data analytics firm… Read More

New Frontiers Challenge Data Security

The image of a Tesla Roadster cruising around the backdrop of Planet Earth is one that will surely appear in future history books (or Kindles or Nooks or whatever students will eventually use).  A historic and slightly weird visual, it was a good look for Tesla, to be part of something so unprecedented. Not so… Read More

Simple Oversights Expose Military Vulnerabilities

Now this is interesting.  Military personnel overseas, by using fitness apps like FitBit, Jawbone and the like, have unwittingly exposed the location of several American bases around the world. Strava, a company that gathers data from these on these types of fitness gadgets, recently shared an online map (a “global heatmap”) based on 13 trillion… Read More

Your Data is Valuable. Your Rights Mean Nothing.

You know what one of most glaring issues is today?  No one looks out for the giants.  Poor institutions like Equifax and Wells Fargo, always getting stepped on by the little guy.  I applaud the Treasury Department for taking a courageous stand against the predatory consumer, always so avariciously eager for redress and restitution when… Read More

Is the Wi-Fi Sky Falling or Not?

It’s official.  Wi-Fi security has been cracked.  More specifically, its security protocol has been compromised by a bug known as KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attack).  Leveraging a weakness in the WPA2 protocol, which secures most wireless networks, KRACK can virtually create a skeleton key for a network using the protocol’s “four-way handshake” method of authentication for… Read More