Local, unfortunately. And a discussion
point for my Business Continuity class...
"I am the IT Manager for
Shambhala Mountain
Center, near Red Feather
Lakes, Colorado. We are in the pre-evacuation area for
the High Park Fire.
What is the best way to load 50+ workstations, 6 servers, IP phones,
networking gear, printers and wireless equipment into a 17-foot
U-Haul? We have limited packing supplies. We also need to spend as
much time as possible working with the fire crew on fire risk
mitigation."
The Intro to Business class should
teach: “Leave no potential source of revenue unexplored.” That
does not mean you should keep it secret.
By Dissent,
June 17, 2012
There are so many complaints and
lawsuits following breaches that I long ago gave up on mentioning
them all. But Kristen Stewart of the Salt Lake Tribune
reports on one complaint that I found particularly interesting:
When University of
Utah health law professor Leslie Francis learned her name and Social
Security number had been exposed in the state’s Medicaid breach,
she decided to do what any scholar might do — investigate.
She deduced that,
like the majority of breach victims, her information was sent to the
Utah Department of Health by a provider inquiring whether she was
covered by Medicaid.
That was a
surprise, because she is insured through her employer and none
of her providers had declared in privacy notices that they may bill
Medicaid. What’s more, when she asked the hospital she
believes is at fault to “fess up” — citing the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) — the hospital refused,
citing the same law.
The professor went on to file
complaints with HHS, OCR, and the FTC. Read more on Salt
Lake Tribune.
When your programmers say, “I've got
this really simple idea for a coding scheme...” BEWARE!
Kayak.com
investigates after customer discovers security breach
June 18, 2012 by admin
Dylan C. Robertson reports:
Kevin Hunt travels
whenever he finds time off and a good deal. So when his credit
statement listed Kayak.com, he went to the travel booking site to see
which trip the charge was for.
The site allows
people to find reservation details by searching their last name and
the last four digits of their credit card. When Hunt keyed in his
information, he found his hotel booking for an upcoming trip to
Vermont.
But he also found
bookings for people named Hunt in Oklahoma and Massachusetts,
complete with their home addresses, phone numbers and emails, as well
as credit card expiry dates.
Read more on The
Toronto Star and see what you think of the firm’s response to
the customer.
[From the article:
But he also found bookings for people
named Hunt in Oklahoma and Massachusetts, complete with their home
addresses, phone numbers and emails, as well as credit card expiry
dates.
“It’s scary,” said Hunt, a
Markham elementary school teacher. “You can see
where someone lives and when they’ll be out of town. It’s like
an invitation.”
He’d used an American Express credit
card, which often end in numbers between 1001 and 1009. Typing those
numbers alongside common names like Smith, he was able to find scores
of strangers’ personal information.
Leave this to the Pros (my Ethical
Hackers)
Hacked
companies fight back with controversial steps
June 17, 2012 by admin
Joseph Menn of Reuters reports that
some U.S. firms are fighting back against hackers in unorthodox –
if not downright illegal – ways:
“Not only do we
put out the fire, but we also look for the arsonist,” said Shawn
Henry, the former head of cybercrime investigations at the FBI who in
April joined new cyber security company CrowdStrike,
which aims to provide clients with a menu of active responses.
Once a company
detects a network breach, rather than expel the intruder immediately,
it can waste the hacker’s time and resources by appearing to grant
access to tempting material that proves impossible to extract.
Companies can also allow intruders to make off with bogus files or
“beacons” that reveal information about the thieves’ own
machines, experts say.
Henry and
CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovich do not
recommend that companies try to breach their opponent’s computers,
but they say the private sector does need to fight back more boldly
against cyber espionage.
Read more on Reuters.
[From the article:
It
is commonplace for law firms to have their emails read during
negotiations for ventures in China, Alperovich told the Reuters
Global Media and Technology Summit. That has given the other side
tremendous leverage because they know the Western client company's
strategy, including the most they would be willing to pay for a
certain stake.
But if a
company knows its lawyers will be hacked, it can
plant false information and get the upper hand.
…
Veteran government and private officials warn that much of the
activity is too risky to make sense, citing the chances for
escalation and collateral damage.
"There
is no business case for it and no possible positive
outcome," said John Pescatore, a National Security
Agency and Secret Service veteran who leads research firm Gartner's
Internet security practice.
…
Because some national governments are suspected in attacks on private
Western companies, it is natural that some of the victims want to
join their own governments to fight back.
"It's
time to have the debate about what the actions would be for the
private sector," former NSA director Kenneth Minihan said at the
RSA security conference held earlier this year in San Francisco.
In April,
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the
San Jose Mercury News that officials had been
contemplating authorizing even "proactive" private-entity
attacks, although there has been little follow-up comment.
Of course demand was up...
"Governments are sticking their
noses into Google's servers more than ever before. In the second
half of 2011, Google received 6,321
requests that it hand over its users' private data to U.S.
government agencies including law enforcement, and complied at least
partially with those requests in 93% of cases, according to the
latest update to the company's bi-annual Transparency Report. That's
up from 5,950 requests in the first half of 2011, and marks a 37%
increase in the number of requests over the same period the year
before. Compared with the second half of 2009, the first time Google
released the government request numbers, the latest figures represent
a 76% spike. Data demands from foreign governments have increased
even more quickly than those from the U.S., up to 11,936 in the
second half of 2011 compared with 9,600 in the same period the year
before, though Google was much less likely to comply with those
non-U.S. government requests."
We've done it before...
"The BBC reports that the UK's
Draft Communications Bill includes a provision which could be used to
force the Royal Mail and other mail carriers to retain data
on all physical mail passing through their networks. The law
could be used to force carriers to maintain a database of any data
written on the outside of an envelope or package which could be
accessed by government bodies at will. Such data could include
sender, recipient and type of mail (and, consequentially, the entire
contents of a postcard). It would provide a physical analog of the
recently proposed internet surveillance laws. The Home Office claims
that it has no current plans to enforce the
law." [Future plans are already
in place Bob]
An interesting issue...
June 17, 2012
Article
- Predicting Fair Use
Sag, Matthew, Predicting Fair Use
(February 25, 2012). Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 73:1 47-91 (2012);
TRPC 2011; Loyola University Chicago School of Law Research Paper No.
2012-005. Available
at SSRN
- "Fair use is often criticized as unpredictable and doctrinally incoherent - a conclusion which necessarily implies that the copyright system is fundamentally broken. This article confronts that critique by systematically assessing the predictability of fair use outcomes in litigation. Concentrating on characteristics of the contested use that would be apparent to litigants pre-trial, this study tests a number of doctrinal assumptions, claims and intuitions that have not, until now, been subject to empirical scrutiny. This article presents new empirical evidence for the significance of transformative use in determining the outcomes of fair use cases. It also substantially undermines conceptions of the doctrine that are hostile to fair use claims by commercial entities and that would restrict limit the application of fair use as a subsidy or a redistributive tool favoring the politically and economically disadvantaged. Based on the available evidence, the fair use doctrine is more rational and consistent than is commonly assumed."
If not libraries, who else might jump
on this business model?
June 17, 2012
LLRX.com
- Should libraries start their own, more trustworthy Facebook?
Via LLRX.com:
Should
libraries start their own, more trustworthy Facebook? - David
Rothman proposes that the time may be fast upon us for libraries —
perhaps allied with academic institutions, newspapers and other local
media — to start their own more trustworthy Facebook. His
involvement with the Digital Public Library of America provides a
reference point and support for the integral role that this new model
of virtual connectivity and knowledge sharing can play moving
forward.
Global Warming! Global Warming! Sorry
Al...
Sorry
Global Warming Alarmists, The Earth Is Cooling
Climate change itself is already in the
process of definitively rebutting climate alarmists who think human
use of fossil fuels is causing ultimately catastrophic global
warming. That is because natural climate cycles have already turned
from warming to cooling, global temperatures have already been
declining for more than 10 years, and global temperatures will
continue to decline for another two decades or more.
That is one of the most interesting
conclusions to come out of the seventh International Climate Change
Conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute, held last week in
Chicago.
Un-censor the Internet!
While American internet users can quite
happily watch Hulu, the fact that I live in the UK means I can’t.
Likewise, BBC iPlayer is free for UK citizens; but if your physical
location says America then you’re out of luck buddy. It’s a
frustrating state of affairs, and we won’t stand for it! Neither
will Tunlr.net: a new free service
that aims to remove region restrictions the world over by way of some
magic DNS trickery.
As my fish monger says, “Here
something just for the halibut.”
There are numerous websites that let
you be creative with paper. Adding to this list is Cube Creator, a
site that provides you with a printable cube template
that you can customize and print.
Similar tools: Printsgram
and PaperCritters.
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