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With $200k Fine, FTC Finds Trust-e Not Very Trusty

November 17, 2014 Paul Roberts

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined TRUSTe, a for profit organization that is a leading provider of online reputations, $200,000 for misleading consumers about its web site monitoring services. On Monday, the Commission announced a settlement with TRUSTe over allegations that the company failed to perform annual compliance checks on more than 1,000 domains that earned its TRUSTe Certified Privacy Seal” between 2006 and 2013. The company also acknowledged making misleading statements about its for-profit status. “TRUSTe promised to hold companies accountable for protecting consumer privacy, but it fell short of that pledge,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in an official statement. “Self-regulation plays an important role in helping to protect consumers. But when companies fail to live up to their promises to consumers, the FTC will not hesitate to take action.” TRUSTe is a critical player in the online trust business. The company provides seals to businesses that meet […]

The Security of Things: Video Available

October 28, 2014 Paul Roberts

We held our first ever security and Internet of Things event back in May. The Security of Things Forum took place in Cambridge, MA (“Our Fair City”) on May 7 and brought together about 100 thought leaders and entrepreneurs for a day of discussion and debate about how best to prepare for the explosion of connected devices in the enterprise, the home, the public sector and public spaces. Since then we’ve made a couple of these sessions public: the keynote presentation by In-Q-Tel CISO Dan Geer, and a panel on enterprise risk and IoT, chaired by INEX Advisors’ founder Chris Rezendes. Attendees have had access to all the sessions, as well. But now we’re throwing the doors open to the public and making all the conference sessions available to the public, as well as some 1:1 interviews with our speakers. We invite you all to head on over and check […]

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 […]

Chief Security Officer: The Toughest Job In IT?

October 4, 2014 Paul Roberts

Register now for our CISO Hangout with Jon Trull of Qualys, the former Chief Security Officer for the State of Colorado. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are in the news a lot these days. The breaches at prominent corporations like Target, Home Depot and (this week) JP Morgan have solidified the consensus that the CISO is a necessary complement to the CIO. They’ve also shone a spotlight on what many consider to be the toughest job in corporate America. After all, successful cyber attacks and data breaches are the quickest path to a ruined corporate reputation. And a strong and capable CISO is increasingly seen as the best defense against such an unfortunate occurrence. (Target’s misfortune was the direct result, some argued, on its lack of a CISO.) With all that in the air, the time couldn’t be better to sit down with some of the top CISOs in industry and the public […]

Report: Hacked Password Behind Compromise of 75m JPMorgan Accounts

October 3, 2014 Paul Roberts

The top news this week is about Wall Street giant JP Morgan Chase, which disclosed on Thursday that a previously disclosed breach was much larger than initially believed, affecting more than 75 million account holders. And once again, reports suggest that a compromised employee account may be at the root of the incident. Bloomberg, which first broke the news of the cyber attack on JPMorgan Chase in August, said on Friday that hackers exploited an employee’s access to a development server as part of an attack on a JPMorgan Chase & Co. server that led to one of the largest cyber-attacks ever and the theft of data on 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. According to the Bloomberg report, which cited “people familiar with the bank’s review,” the breach started in June when an employee’s user name and password for what’s described as “a web-development server” were compromised. From that […]