In this Spotlight Podcast, sponsored by Trusted Computing Group*, Dennis Mattoon of Microsoft Research gives us the low-down on DICE: the Device Identifier Composition Engine Architectures, which provides a means of solving a range of security and identity problems on low cost, low power IoT endpoints. Among them: establishing strong device identity, doing device attestation and safe deployment at scale and verifying software updates.
Smart home security starts at home, according to researcher Michael Sverdlin who says that consumers should explore the security of their smart home technology and consider simple modifications or hacks to remove insecure or promiscuous features.
In this week’s podcast: a report out last week from The Institute for the Future makes clear that state sponsored trolling has gone global and is now a go-to tool for repressive regimes worldwide, constituting a new form of human rights abuse. Ben Nimmo of The Atlantic Council joins us to discuss. Also: ransomware is one of the most effective forms of online crime. Despite that, many organizations have no formal plan for responding to a ransomware attack: we talk with Thomas Hofmann of the firm Flashpoint*, which has launched a new service to help firms prepare for and respond to ransomware.
Fitness apps are proving to be a lot less beneficial to military security than they are for military fitness. That after researchers in the Netherlands discovered that data from the Polar fitness app revealed the homes and habits of those exercising in clandestine locations around the world, including intelligence agencies, military bases, nuclear weapons storage sites and embassies.
Voice based interfaces are growing in popularity, complexity and influence. But securing these interfaces has, thus far, been an afterthought. If we are destined to interact with the smart systems around us using our voice, how exactly will we manage to authenticate to those devices? In this podcast we speak with Ben Rafferty of the firm Semafone about the challenges of securing voice-based systems. Semafone won the recent PAYMNTS.com Voice Challenge with a way to use Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant as an out of band authentication mechanism.
