Monday, May 18, 2015

With everything else they did wrong, why would anyone expect Sony to have their insurance ducks in a row?
What does your CGL policy mean by “publication in any manner?”
Jana Landon reports:
It was reported recently that the parties in the closely watched data breach case of Zurich American Insurance v. Sony Corp. of America (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Feb. 21, 2014) settled while Sony’s appeal of an unfavorable trial court opinion was pending. That opinion found that no coverage was available to Sony for a massive data breach under its commercial general liability (CGL) policy. This settlement leaves open questions regarding claims by insureds regarding data hacks in existing data breach cases, especially in light of recent changes to the CGL forms.
Read more on The Legal Intelligencer. [Registration required Bob]
[From the article:
A standard CGL policy usually contains a section titled "Coverage B—Personal and Advertising Liability Injury." The current Insurance Services Office Inc. (ISO) form for Coverage B typically provides coverage for "those sums that the insured becomes legally obligated to pay as damages because of 'personal and advertising injury' to which this insurance applies." "Personal and advertising injury" is defined as an "oral or written publication, in any matter, of material that violates a person's right of privacy."
After Sony's data breach, Zurich American Insurance denied Sony's coverage claim and filed suit in July 2011. The insurer argued that, under Coverage B, the language "publication in any manner" described only the type of disclosure, not the identity of the disclosing party. Zurich contended that coverage would only extend to the publication of information by Sony, not third parties such as hackers, even though there were no such limitations in the policy language. Therefore, it argued, the data breach did not fall under the CGL policy.




For my Computer Security students. I can not redundantly repeat this reiteration enough!
Wham, Bam, Thank You Spam! Don’t Click on the Link!
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on May 17, 2015
“It seems that just like in old times (in cyberspace that means last year) the existence of “snake-oil” salesmen on the Internet is getting worse, not better. Rather than selling something medicinal or at the very least useful, these snake-oil salesmen of today have one intent only: to steal your personal information or worse, to distribute malware to your computer. One recent report issued by Symantec in April 2015 literally details scores of scams all designed to steal information and potentially ruin your computer (and others’ as well) and steal your personal information. We detail them not out of morbid curiosity of the utter gall of the snake-oil salesmen, but to hopefully inform and prevent the inadvertent “click on the link” circumstances which you and your company would rather avoid. We also point to other recently issued reports noting that other scams like phishing and spear phishing continue to be a bothersome and dangerous component of company emails. At the end of the day, continuous employee training and awareness of these sorts of scams is truly a strong part of the Holy Grail of Cybersecurity, along with certain network hardware components that can help stop “bad” emails before they get to your employees’ desktops…”




Low(er) tax rates apparently gives Ireland lots of power when it comes to Privacy. So it must be worth it, right?
RTÉ reports:
The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner will today assume responsibility for ensuring the privacy and data of around 300 million people outside the US who use Twitter each month is adequately respected.
Last month the microblogging site told users that from 18 May, “Twitter International Company will be responsible for handling your account information under Irish privacy and data protection law.”
The move means all of the social network’s users outside of the US will come under the European Union’s Data Protection Directive.
Read more on RTÉ.
[From the article:
The changes could put extra pressure on the ODPC, which is already responsible for overseeing the data protection standards of a range of other large internet multinationals based in Ireland such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn.




Sounded interesting enough to request from my local library. Economics for the Internet Age?
New on LLRX – Book Review – “The Age of Cryptocurrency”
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on May 17, 2015
Via LLRX.comBook Review – “The Age of Cryptocurrency” - Alan Rothman highlights the increasing impact of an online payment system that is immersed in finance and economics around the world – the expanding use of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. With actionable links to expert professional topical sources on these subjects, Alan’s article will bring you up to speed on a bleeding edge cross border issue that impacts law, technology, e-commerce and the deep web.




The continuing education of our computer overlords? Perhaps we should also feed them some Marx Brothers movies? I wish I had know about the World of Watson exposition. (see below)
New on LLRX – IBM’s Watson is Now Data Mining TED Talks to Extract New Forms of Knowledge
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on May 17, 2015
Via LLRX.com – IBM’s Watson is Now Data Mining TED Talks to Extract New Forms of KnowledgeAlan Rothman’s commentary offers actionable information about a new technology from IBM called Watson that is a powerful tool for researchers whose work engages data mining, knowledge management and competitive intelligence. Rothman attended a recent presentation that demonstrated how Watson is deployed as a search and discovery tool whose object is the huge video archive of TED Talks content.




For my Business Intelligence students.
World of Watson
Watch the replay




For my students. I downloaded it and will let you know if I'm as impressed as this reviewer.
Nitro: Check Out Maxthon’s Super-Fast Web Browser Today
It’s the fastest browser I’ve ever used. That’s the kind of statement that doesn’t really mean much anymore in the browser world, mostly because the Big Four — Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera — keep dethroning each other in cycles. But for the first time in a while, we actually have a clear, longshot winner.
… Want to give it a try? Download Maxthon Nitro.




For my international students.
Make International Phone Calls from your Mobile even without the Internet
… The app, known as Ringo, lets you make international calls from your mobile phone but “without” requiring the Internet. It does so by cleverly converting your request to dial an international number into a local number.
Let’s say you are trying to call someone in Singapore from India. When you make a call through Ringo, the app will internally dial a local number in India. At the other end in Singapore, it will again make a local call to the desired number and will connect these two calls using their own infrastructure. This process is transparent to the end users though it make few seconds extra to initiate the call.
… Also when open a contact inside Ringo, it will show their current local time and this little detail does help save a trip to Google.
Is Ringo a replacement for Skype or Google Hangouts? Well, yes and no. With Ringo, you do not need the Internet to make phone calls but you still need a local number. In the case of Skype, you do not need a local number but you have to be connected to the Internet. Also, Ringo is mobile only while Skype lets you call telephone numbers from Mac and Windows PCs as well.
Ringo is available for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone.




Tools & Techniques
Cometdocs - PDF to Word and Many Other Conversions
Cometdocs is a service for quickly converting documents and sharing them with others. Cometdocs will convert your documents to and from Word, PDF, and Excel. When you use Cometdocs to convert a document you can share directly with others via email. After converting your documents Cometdocs also gives you a public URL that you can post for others to use to download your document.
To use Cometdocs just upload a document, select the action that you want performed and enter your email address to share the document. Cometdocs has free and paid plans. The free plan limits you to five conversions per week.




Another Dilbert management technique I will adopt.


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