standards Archives

standards

White House Cyber Chief: JP Morgan Underscores Critical Infrastructure Risk

October 9, 2014 Paul Roberts

The White House’s cyber security czar, Michael Daniel, said the Obama Administration is deeply concerned about the reported hack of systems belonging to banking giant JP Morgan Chase & Co. but sees the incident as part of a larger trend of attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure. Asked about the targeted attack against JP Morgan and other banks and financial institutions, Daniel said that the White House was concerned, but not surprised by the incident. “We have watched for several years the trend of malicious actors in cyber try to figure out how to target critical infrastructure,” he said. “Financial services is critical infrastructure.” The White House was concerned that a major U.S. bank would fall victim to hackers, but sees it in the context of a “broad trend,” rather than an isolated incident, he said. Speaking with Michael Farrell, the Cybersecurity Editor at Christian Science Monitor, Daniel hit on many of the now-common talking […]

AllSeen Alliance Announces Smart Lighting Framework

October 8, 2014 Paul Roberts

Smart lightbulbs aren’t anything new. In fact, products like the Philips Hue bulb have been in the market for years. The devices, which typically couple a standard incandescent or CF bulb with a wireless transmitter, allow lights to be managed via mobile device and also respond to environmental changes monitored by other sensors. But – as with much of the Internet of Things – each family of smart bulbs is something of an island: interacting- and communicating mostly with other smart home products from the same manufacturer. That’s good for the lightbulb maker, but bad for smart home advocates, see out-of-the box connectivity across product silos as a precursor to broad adoption of smart home technologies. It’s also been the case that the products that have been released have often fallen short in areas like security. In August, 2013, security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani disclosed a proof of concept hack […]

Tech and Telecoms Fight to dominate ‘Internet of Things’ – FT.com

October 7, 2014 Paul Roberts

The Financial Times has an interesting piece on the ongoing push and pull to develop cross-industry tech standards to govern the Internet of of Things. The article, by Daniel Thomas makes note of efforts by companies including Arm, Google and Vodafone to secure leading positions in the technology infrastructure that will provide connections to smart devices, even as firms like Apple and Google dominate the market for mobile devices and wearables that are at the vanguard of IoT. “The fragmentation and lack of technology standards could provide the biggest opportunity for telecoms operators in a fast-evolving industry already changing how people live,” says Matthew Howett, an analyst at Ovum tells FT. “There is a clear opportunity for an aggregator who is able to interconnect the myriad inoperable devices.” The article makes mention of the newly released ETSI specifications for Internet of Things (IoT) networks dedicated to low throughput communications. You can […]

Europol Warns of Internet of Things Risk

October 6, 2014 Paul Roberts

In a newly released report, Europol’s European Cybercrime Center (EC3) warns that the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) threatens to strengthen the hand of organized cyber criminal groups and make life much more difficult for police and governments that wish to pursue them. EC3’s latest Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA) says the “Internet of Everything” will greatly complicate the work of law enforcement creating “new opportunities for everything from cyber criminals to state actors to child abusers. The growing numbers of connected devices will greatly expand the “attack surface” available for cyber criminal activity, the EC3 warns. Cyber criminals may co-opt connected devices for use in common criminal activity (like denial of service attacks and spam campaigns). However, advancements like connected (“smart”) vehicles and infrastructure create openings for large scale and disruptive attacks. The report, which was published late last months, is a high level position paper and pulls data mostly […]

FDA Issues Guidance on Security of Medical Devices

October 1, 2014 Paul Roberts

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued final guidance on Wednesday that are designed to strengthen the safety of medical devices. The FDA called on medical device manufacturers to consider cyber security risks as part of the design and development of devices. The document, “Content of Premarket Submissions for Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices,” asks device makers to submit documentation to the FDA about any “risks identified and controls in place to mitigate those risks” in medical devices. The guidance also recommends that manufacturers submit documentation of plans for patching and updating the operating systems and medical software that devices run. The document, which will be released on Thursday, does not contain specific requirements. Rather, it describes the kinds of things that medical device manufacturers should consider when preparing pre-market submissions for medical devices in areas such as information confidentiality, integrity, and availability, the FDA said. The release of the document follows the […]