Monday, February 13, 2012


Eventually, the pain goes away. How long “eventually” is remains undetermined.
Update: Texas pays for data breach
February 13, 2012 by admin
Kelley Shannon provides an update on one of the biggest breaches in 2011:
The taxpayer tab for individual credit monitoring after a data breach in Comptroller Susan Combs’ office has topped $600,000, and Combs’ campaign is paying extra to resolve routine credit glitches in some cases.
Though investigations continue into the data exposure revealed in April 2011, there is no evidence of misuse of any personal information [Imagine what that would cost! Bob] belonging to 3.5 million Texans, state officials said.
Read more on ReporterNews.


It makes little difference if this was a hack through Microsoft's best corporate security or the misguided efforts of an under-trained new guy – the word is out that Microsoft's security stinks. What will that cost to repair?
Microsoft Store hacked in India, passwords stored in plain text
February 12, 2012 by admin
Sean Buckley reports:
Frequenters of India’s online Microsoft Store were briefly greeted with the suspicious visage of a Guy Fawkes mask this morning, following a hack that compromised the site’s user database. According toWPSauce, Microsoft Store India’s landing page was briefly taken over by a hacker group called Evil Shadow Team, who, in addition to putting a new face on Windows products, revealed that user passwords were saved in plain text.
Read more on Engadget.


That's a bit harsh, isn't it?
The Only Reason Companies Delete Emails Is To Destroy Evidence
The News Corp. phone-hacking scandal continues to spiral out of control, sweeping up more and more of the companies employees and executives. In the UK, 8 people were arrested, including five News Corp journalists, in the broadening scandal, which may embroil deputy COO James Murdoch—Rupert’s son and heir-apparent. A paper copy of a deleted email found in a crate ties James Murdoch directly to the events under investigation, which involved the routine and illegal hacking of phone voicemails on behalf of a News Corp publication.
This email evidence would never have been found if it wasn’t printed out because News Corp, like many corporations, regularly deletes archived emails. It is standard practice, but the technical reasons given for deleting emails are usually not the real reason they are eliminated. The only real reason to destroy old emails is to avoid liability and future lawsuits.


Is the same information available elsewhere?
Ie: Insurance companies admit data law breach
February 13, 2012 by Dissent
How many times have we talked about the risks of information being used against us by insurance carriers? Here’s a case where it reportedly happened in Ireland:
Three insurance companies have pleaded guilty to breaching the Data Protection laws by using social welfare information obtained by a private investigator.
The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner said the breaches by Zurich, FBD and Travellers were “very serious” and sent a message to the industry that information needed to be obtained lawfully.
In December 2010 the office of the Data Protection Commissioners was notified of a possible breach of the act by the Department of Social Protection.
As part of the investigation they visited the office of Reliance Private Investigators in Kildare.
They found evidence of social welfare data being passed onto three insurance companies.
Read more on RTÉ.
[From the article:
He said the three companies had pleaded guilty at an early stage and co-operated fully with the inquiry. [Couldn't they foresee this outcome? Or was no one looking forward? Bob]

(Related) Not exactly the same, but definitely of interest...
By Dissent, February 13, 2012
A German company which studies drug prescription habits for the pharma industry is accused of selling raw data to drug companies, in what magazine Der Spiegel said on Monday could be a huge data protection scandal.
A former member of staff at the data processing firm Pharmafakt GFD told the magazine under oath that data from millions of pharmacy prescriptions had been saved and analysed then sold to pharma firms.
Read more on The Local. So far, GFD has denied the allegations. GFD counts some large pharmaceuticals among its clients: Pfizer, Sanofi, Bayer, Novartis, Roche and GlaxoSmithKline, but it’s not yet clear how far and wide this scandal might reach if the former employee’s allegations are true.


It also confuses the heck out of TSA when you try to re-enter the US.
"What may once have sounded like the behavior of a raving paranoid [I resemble that remark Bob] is now considered standard operating procedure for officials at American government agencies, research groups and companies as the NY Times reports how businesses sending representatives to China give them a loaner laptop and cellphone that they wipe clean before they leave and wipe again when they return. 'If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, your devices will get penetrated,' says Joel F. Brenner, formerly the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence. The scope of the problem is illustrated by an incident at the United States Chamber of Commerce in 2010 when the chamber learned that servers in China were stealing information from four of its Asia policy experts who frequently visited China. After their trips, even the office printer and a thermostat in one of the chamber's corporate offices were communicating with an internet address in China. The chamber did not disclose how hackers had infiltrated its systems, but its first step after the attack was to bar employees from taking devices with them 'to certain countries,' notably China. 'Everybody knows that if you are doing business in China, in the 21st century, you don't bring anything with you,' says Jacob Olcott, a cybersecurity expert at Good Harbor Consulting. 'That's "Business 101" — at least it should be.'"


Is this sufficient?
February 12, 2012
FAQ - What is a privacyscore?
"A privacyscore is a way to assess the privacy risk of using a website. Privacy risk is the chance that data about you will be used or shared in ways that you probably don't expect. Privacyscores cover two kinds of data:
  • We estimate privacy risk to personal data (such as your name or email address) based on the published policies of the website.
  • We estimate privacy risk to anonymous data (such as your interests and preferences) based on the privacy qualifications of the other companies who collect this kind of data across websites.
  • You can see privacyscores of the sites as you visit by using the privacyscore add-on for Firefox and Chrome."


If we can establish a price, can I flag my information as “not for sale?”
Start-Ups Seek to Help Users Put a Price on Their Personal Data
February 13, 2012 by Dissent
Joshua Brustein reports:
… People have been willing to give away their data while the companies make money. But there is some momentum for the idea that personal data could function as a kind of online currency, to be cashed in directly or exchanged for other items of value. A number of start-ups allow people to take control — and perhaps profit from — the digital trails that they leave on the Internet.
“That marketplace does not exist right now, because consumers are not in on the game,” said Shane Green, who founded a company called Personal in 2009.
Read more on The New York Times.


Perspective
"It's somewhat hard to imagine that NASA doesn't need the computing power of an IBM mainframe any more, but NASA's CIO posted on her blog today that at the end of the month, the Big Iron will be no more at the space agency. NASA CIO Linda Cureton wrote: 'This month marks the end of an era in NASA computing. Marshall Space Flight Center powered down NASA's last mainframe, the IBM Z9 Mainframe.'"

(Related) Get the T-shirt: “I for one welcome our robot overlords”
One year later, IBM Watson goes to work (and the cloud)
… IBM is taking Watson to the next level, having created a commercial business unit working to offer Watson both on-premise and as a hosted cloud service.


Always worth reading... Something for my Techie students? More for the Professors.
February 12, 2012
Deloitte’s 3rd Annual Tech Trends Report: Top 10 Trends to Help Elevate Information Technology for Digital Business
"The unique convergence of five emerging technology forces – analytics, mobility, social, cloud and cyber security – provide the opportunity for businesses to accelerate performance in 2012, according to Deloitte’s 3rd annual Tech Trends report Elevate IT for Digital Business, released February 6, 2012. The Deloitte report identifies the top 10 technology trends that will have the most potential to impact businesses over the next 18-24 months, grouping the trends into two categories: Disruptors and Enablers.
  • Disruptors – Social Business, Gamification, Enterprise Mobility Unleashed, User Empowerment and Hyper-hybrid Cloud – are technologies that can create sustainable positive disruption in IT capabilities, business operations and sometimes even business models.
  • Enablers – Big Data Goes to Work, Geospatial Visualization, Digital Identities, Measured Innovation and Outside-in Architecture – are technologies in which many CIOs have already invested time and effort, but which may warrant another look this year because of new developments."

(Related)
Cyber-security: The vexed question of global rules
By Peggy Garvin Source: Security and Defence Agenda Sunday, 12th February 2012
From the report:
This report is made up of a survey of some 250 leading authorities worldwide and of interviews carried out in late 2011 and early 2012 with over 80 cyber-security experts in government, companies, international organisations and academia. It offers a global snapshot of current thinking about the cyber-threat and the measures that should be taken to defend against it, and assesses the way ahead. It is aimed at the influential layperson, and deliberately avoids specialised language.
For the moment, the "bad guys" have the upper hand – whether they are attacking systems for industrial or political espionage reasons, or simply to steal money – because the lack of international agreements allows them to operate swiftly and mostly with impunity. Protecting data and systems against cyber-attack has so far been about dousing the flames, although recently the focus has been shifting towards more assertive self-protection. [Armed drones? Bob]
+ Link to full report (PDF; 2.48 MB)


An idea for funding seminars? How much to start a series of seminars or keep one going? (There are several similar websites)
"Crowd-funding website Crowdtilt officially launched last week, expanding upon the collective fundraising model pioneered by Kickstarter to enable raising money for any project — even a beer blitz. Like Kickstarter, Crowdtilt allows users to create a fundraising campaign with a tipping point. If the effort falls short of the set amount, would-be donors are not charged. However, unlike Kickstarter, the platform allows users to "group fund anything." Users can initiate campaigns without first getting the approval of service administrators, which they must do on Kickstarter."

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