data privacy Archives

Tag: data privacy

For Cyber Security Awareness Month: Change Your Passwords, Or Ditch Them?

October 1, 2014 Paul Roberts

October has arrived. And while that means colorful foliage and Halloween for many of us, it is also a special time in the information security industry: cyber security awareness month – or NCSAM. Security Ledger will be supporting NCSAM this month with banner ads and other content that highlight NCSAM events. Cyber Security Awareness Month – in its 11th year- is a public-private effort to raise public awareness about online security and safety. It’s best known for the “Stop. Think. Connect.” meme, but also is an occasion for elected officials and private sector firms to highlight cyber security issues. In a Presidential Proclamation released on Tuesday, President Obama called cyber threats “one of the gravest national security dangers the United States faces.” “They jeopardize our country’s critical infrastructure, endanger our individual liberties, and threaten every American’s way of life. When our Nation’s intellectual property is stolen, it harms our economy, […]

3G Module Just 26mm Wide OK’d by AT&T| ITworld

September 29, 2014 Paul Roberts

Steve Lawson at IDG News Service has an interesting article that notes AT&T’s certification of the U-blox SARA-U260 model, which is dubbed “the world’s smallest 3G module.” The 16 x 26 millimeter device is seen as a harbinger of the kind of low power device that will greatly expand the Internet of Things. The SARA-U260 is designed to transmit small amounts of data over 3G networks and could enable a new generation of even smaller and smarter devices – from Smartmeters to wearable technology to connected cars. The U260 has features that support applications from voice calling to auto industry telematics to retail point-of-sale terminals and handheld devices, according to U-blox. It uses A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) and a technology called CellLocate that uses nearby cellular towers to triangulate a location in situations where GPS isn’t available. 3G and 2G networks are being replaced by 4G and even 5G networks for most consumer smart phones. But the technology still works great […]

Infographic: Possible Attacks on The Internet of Things

September 24, 2014 Paul Roberts

The folks over at Trend Micro have put together a nice infographic that reminds us that all those smart devices connected to the Internet communicate through some well worn channels, namely: standard communications protocols like Wi-Fi, Ethernet and Bluetooth that connect devices to each other and the global Internet, as well as HTTP that are used to transmit data to and from cloud based resources like management interfaces. Of course those standard protocols also leave IoT devices vulnerable to a wide range of commodity attacks: from brute force password cracking on web based management consoles to Man in the Middle attacks that can sniff out authentication credentials and hijack sessions. Trend’s infographic does a good job of depicting the various layers in the IoT stack and some of the likely attack vectors for each layer. It also gives advice on how to protect yourself (use encryption, patch software vulnerabilities, disable unused ports). Nothing ground breaking […]

Online Authentication Group FIDO Alliance Grabs A Big Bone: Alibaba

September 23, 2014 Paul Roberts

The FIDO Alliance, an up-and-coming industry consortium aimed at simplifying online identity and doing away with passwords added IPO darling Alibaba to its Board of Directors, according to a statement on Tuesday. The FIDO (or “Fast IDentity Online”) Alliance announced that Alibaba Group’s payments business, Alipay will be among the first to deploy FIDO technology for secure payments authentication. On September 17, the company announced that it will use Nok Nok Labs’ FIDO-compliant NNL™ S3 Authentication Suite to enable secure online payments via the Fingerprint Sensor (FPS) technology on the Samsung Galaxy S5. Alipay customers will be able to make payments and transfers using Alipay’s mobile application, Alipay Wallet by applying their fingerprint to the Galxy’s fingerprint sensor. “We look forward to participating on the FIDO Alliance board, and assuring that commerce and authentication are uniquely cooperative and seamlessly compatible,” said Ni Liang, Alibaba group, senior director, department of security, in a statement. Mobile payments […]

Report: Home Depot Fallout Reveals History of Lax Security, Hiring

September 23, 2014 Paul Roberts

Its a truism in cyber security that behind every great hack often lies a string of bad decisions and missed opportunities. Its also true that when you dig into the details of damaging cyber incidents, the root causes are personal and psychological as often as they are technical in nature. Organizations -even sophisticated and wealthy organizations – end up making bad decisions for all the wrong reason: failing to properly assess their risk, or pursuing short term savings when long term investment is needed. Home Depot learned via law enforcement that a breach of transaction data exposed as many as 52 million credit card transactions, the largest retail credit card breach to date. But as more comes out about the breach at home improvement giant Home Depot, it starts to look a lot more like the root causes there may have started in the HR department rather than the data center. The […]