Big Data

Refrigerator Spam And Other Tall Tales: The Enterprise IoT Risk

On Thursday, I will chair an excellent discussion of security and the Internet of Things at the Qualys Security Conference (QSC) in Las Vegas. The discussion has the working title “Refrigerator Spam and Other Tall Tales: Assessing the Real Internet of Things Risk for Your Organization.“  As the title suggests, we’ll be disclaiming the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that surrounds much of the IoT and security space, while also highlighting the real risks that more and diverse connected devices pose to enterprises. I’ll be joined on stage by some truly exceptional minds. Among them: Danny McPherson, the Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer at Verisign and Jonathan Trull, Chief Information Security Officer, Qualys. (Jon was our guest at the first Security Ledger/Invincea CISO hangout last week.). On stage with us will be Chris Rezendes, the President of INEX Advisors and one of our moderators at The Security of Things Forum.  We’ll also be joined […]

The IoT Comes To Chicago: IoT World Forum

The Internet of Things is increasingly an industry unto itself, with the conferences to prove it. And “no,” I’m not just talking about The Security of Things Forum – Security Ledger’s own IoT and security show. (Videos from our first annual show are now available, by the way. Register to view them here.) No: there are forums and symposiums focused on all different aspects of IoT: smart cities, design, wearables, and so on. There’s O’Reilly’s Solid, GigaOm Structure and any number of smaller, regional events. I’m at one of the more prominent IoT shows this week: The Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF), which is sponsored by Cisco Systems. I’m moderating a really interesting panel that addresses a critical issue: the ways in with information technology (IT), operations technology (OT) and consumer technology (CT) converge in the IoT. These are three areas that, until recently, were separate. But a variety of developments […]

White House Cyber Chief: JP Morgan Underscores Critical Infrastructure Risk

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 […]

New York City Phone Booths Add Beacons, Stoke Controversy

The web site Buzzfeed has a scoop today about a stealthy deployment of beacon technology in Manhattan that has some privacy experts concerned. According to the exclusive report, by Buzzfeed’s Joseph Bernstein and Jeremy Singer-Vine, Titan a media company that sells ad space in more than 5,000 phone kiosk panels in New York City’s five boroughs, has installed about 500 beacons on its ad panels. The company went forward with the deployment with the blessing of New York City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT), but without any public input, Buzzfeed reported. Beacons are wireless devices that interact with mobile phones and other portable electronics. They’re used to provide location-specific data and interactions, such as advertisements linked to nearby businesses or to track the movements of an individual within a defined space (such as a show floor). In the case of the phone booth beacons, Titan and Sbordone, the company that provides the display […]

Europol Warns of Internet of Things Risk

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 […]