Tag: Policy

Update: Cyber Spies Digging For Clues On Iraq?

The folks over at CrowdStrike have dug deep into a campaign of targeted cyber attacks targeting Washington D.C. think tanks and say they have evidence that whomever is behind the attacks has taken a sudden interest in U.S. policy towards Iraq. Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include comments from Adam Meyers, Vice President of Security Intelligence at CrowdStrike. – PFR July 8, 2014 14:30 Writing on Tuesday, CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch described a new campaign by a group they dubbed “DEEP PANDA” that was targeting think tanks specializing on U.S. foreign policy and national security. Alperovitch said CrowdStrike observed a pronounced shift in targets from think tank experts on Asia to experts on Iraq and the Middle East in recent weeks. The shift corresponded with the rapid escalation of violence in Iraq as the Islamic extremist group ISIS took control of large parts of the country. “This actor, who was engaged in […]

Continue Reading

FDA: Regulators Can’t Scale To Police Mobile Health Apps

A senior advisor to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tossed cold water on speculation that the Agency might try to police mobile health and wellness applications, saying the FDA couldn’t possibly scale up to meet the challenge of policing the hundreds of new apps appearing every month. Correction: The article was changed to clarify Mr. Patel’s comments. He was not responding to a direct question about the FDA setting up an office to regulate mobile health applications. He was commenting on the possibility of creating a platform to evaluate and rate mobile health applications.  Also, he said “It’s not do-able,” not “it’s not possible.” We apologize for any confusion created by the article. – PFR July 10, 2014. The sheer pace of innovation in the mobile health application space and the numbers of such applications already available on mobile marketplaces like the iTunes App Store and Google Play mean that many mobile health applications will escape scrutiny by federal […]

Continue Reading

Is HyperCat An IoT Silo Buster? | ZDNet

Steve Ranger over at ZDNet has an interesting write-up on HyperCat, a UK-funded data sharing open specification for Internet of Things devices. The new specifications has the backing (or at least interest) of major players and could become an alternative to proprietary standards such as Apple’s HomeKit or Google Nest. HyperCat is described as an “open, lightweight, JSON-based hypermedia catalogue” that is designed to “expose information about IoT assets over the web.” The goal is to provide a set of open APIs and data formats that startups and other smaller firms can use to built ecosystems of connected objects. Smart devices are typically developed using common technologies and platforms: RESTful APIs, JSON (Javascript Object Notation) for data formatting and HTTP (or secure HTTP) as the main communications protocol. However, the Internet of Things is badly “silo’d” – meaning that interoperability between IoT devices happens only when those smart devices happen to use the […]

Continue Reading

FTC Wants To Be Top Cop On Geolocation

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is asking Congress to make it the chief rule maker and enforcer of policies for the collection and sharing of geolocation information, according to testimony this week. Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee for Privacy, Technology that the Commission would like to see changes to the wording of the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2014 (LPPA), draft legislation designed to spell out consumer protections pertaining to the location data. Rich said that the FTC, as the U.S. Government’s leading privacy enforcement agency, should be given rule making and enforcement authority for the civil provisions of the LPPA. The current draft of the law instead gives that authority to the Department of Justice (DOJ).   The LPPA legislation (PDF) was proposed in March by Sen. Al Franken, and co-sponsored by Senators Coons (D-DE) and Warren (D-MA). It proposes updating the Electronic Communications […]

Continue Reading

Survey: Consumers Growing Wary of Information Sharing

A survey by the business information service Lexis Nexis finds that consumers have grown more wary of programs that ask them to share data in exchange for improved services or other offerings. Editor’s note: LexisNexis has clarified that its survey was released in August, 2013, not October, 2013. The story has been corrected to reflect that information. – Paul 6/4/2014 The survey of  2,072 consumers, aged 21 to 74, was conducted in October 2013 by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. It found consumers were more wary of sharing information online, including at social networking and online banking sites than they were three years earlier. “Consumers are less comfortable with information sharing than three years ago,” the survey concluded. The survey was released in concert with Telematics Detroit 2014, a conference focused on information systems used in vehicles. It was designed to measure consumers’ awareness of- and interest in so-called “use based insurance” (or UBI) – sometimes referred […]

Continue Reading
1 … 55 56 57 58 59 … 67