Sunday, August 14, 2016

Another phishing failure? 
Lauren Fedor reports:
Personal details and bank account information for employees of as many as 300 UK companies may have been compromised as part of a data breach at Sage, the UK software group.
[…]
On Friday, the Newcastle-based group notified around 200 of its current UK business customers that their information — including employee bank account details and salary information — may have been affected by a data breach.
Read more on Financial Times.
[From the article:
One person familiar with the situation told the Financial Times that a Sage employee’s internal login details were used to gain unauthorised access to protected data in recent weeks, prompting an investigation by the company.  The police and the Information Commissioners Office are understood to be involved in the investigation.


My students need to understand this so they can Architect it, govern it, secure it, and hack it.
Envisioning Bitcoin’s Technology at the Heart of Global Finance
A new report from the World Economic Forum predicts that the underlying technology introduced by the virtual currency Bitcoin will come to occupy a central place in the global financial system.
A report released Friday morning by the forum, a convening organization for the global elite, is one of the strongest endorsements yet for a new technology — the blockchain — that has become the talk of the financial industry, despite the shadowy origins of Bitcoin.
   Unlike existing financial ledgers or databases used by banks and other institutions, the blockchain is updated and maintained not by a single company or government.  Instead it is run by a network of users.  It’s akin to the way Wikipedia is maintained by users around the globe.
Initially, bank executives shied away from endorsing Bitcoin because it had been used for drugs and crime.  Now, however, many have focused on ways to create blockchains without using Bitcoins for transactions in any way.
This is attractive because blockchains — or “distributed ledgers,” as they are often described — could offer a new way to move money and track transactions across borders and other networks in a more secure, transparent and effective way than the current system.
   Most banks have already put together blockchain working groups and released research reports hailing the potentially transformative effect of the technology.
But few real-world uses of the blockchain have come to fruition


Interesting and depressing.
Updated in 2016, the Global Terrorism Database World Map
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Aug 13, 2016
“Updated in 2016, the GTD World Map: 45 Years of Terrorism displays the concentration and intensity (combining fatalities and injuries) of terrorist attacks that occurred worldwide across 45 years of data.”


This could take longer to resolve than the 30-Years War!
Megaupload’s Dotcom to appeal U.S. forfeiture of assets ruling
   A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled two to one on Friday that Dotcom could not recover his assets because by remaining outside the U.S., he was a fugitive, which disentitled him from using the resources to fight his case.
Dotcom’s lawyer Ira P. Rothken said his client would seek a review of the decision in front of the full bench and, if necessary, petition the Supreme Court.
“This opinion has the effect of eviscerating Kim Dotcom’s treaty rights by saying if you lawfully oppose extradition in New Zealand, the U.S. will still call you a fugitive and take all of your assets,” Rothken said in an email to Reuters received on Sunday.
   A New Zealand court ruled in December he could be extradited, but an appeal hearing has been set for later this month.
   In the Federal Court judgment, Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote Dotcom and his co-defendants’ reasons for staying in New Zealand – because of jobs, businesses, and families – were “utterly unpersuasive.”


For my IT Governance class.
Maturity models can compel your leadership to action
   While not advocating any particular tool, the maturity-model assessment family in general is geared to a cybersecurity program assessment as opposed to a risk or a threat assessment.  Most models present a common set of industry-vetted, best practices in cybersecurity.  These may go even further, matching your status to industry maturity levels.
   Why go through all this work?  Maturity models can help you to paint a clear and compelling picture of the gap between threat and preparation -- not only for infrastructure defenders, but for your management when it’s time to request resources.


Perhaps a job at Walmart, students?  
By The Time Wal-Mart Catches Up With Amazon, There Will Be No Neighborhood Stores
Wal-Mart is getting serious about catching up with Amazon.  Very serious, forging the right partnerships and amassing the right talent and resources to compete effectively against the e-commerce leader.
   Wal-Mart has a reputation for paying very little compensation—barely above minimum wage — to its low-skill floor employees.  But it pays big bucks to recruit and retain talent for its eCommerce division, where starting salaries can be as high as $149,000 a year, according to a recent Glassdoor survey.


Our students put together portfolios and invite potential employers to come in and listen to their presentations.  Perhaps we should put together digital portfolios and allow global access via the Internet?
FreshGrade Offers Free Webinars About Digital Portfolios
FreshGrade is a digital portfolio platform that has quickly risen in popularity over the last eighteen months.  The learning slideshow feature in FreshGrade is one of the many features that has helped it become popular amongst teachers and students.
FreshGrade is offering a series of free webinars to help teachers learn more about creating and using digital portfolios in the new school year.  Obviously, the webinars will feature the tools in FreshGrade, but some of the concepts in the first two webinars could be applied to just about any digital portfolio tool.  The first two webinars are already available to watch on demand. The rest of the webinars start next week.  To watch the recorded webinars just visit this page, select a webinar, then complete the registration and the recording will be available to you almost instantly.
To learn about other digital portfolio tools, check out my free guide to digital portfolios.

No comments: