“We have to buy new stuff and we don't have
money in the budget. We need people with special skills and we can't
find anyone who will work for a state salary. We're not sure who
should be responsible and we can't stop arguing about that long
enough to actually do anything.” Typical government. What would
happen if the data center stopped doing any other work until they had
security under control?
Hillary Borrud reports:
Three years after state auditors identified security weaknesses at Oregon’s main data center in Salem, the state has yet to fix some of the problems.
The vulnerabilities were outlined in a secret March 2012 letter to Michael Jordan, who, at the time, was director of the Department of Administrative Services, which manages the data warehouse. The facility stores data for multiple state agencies.
Read more on Portland
Tribune
[From
the article:
Hackers recently accessed data at the center, Gov.
Kate Brown revealed last month, but Shelby said that breach was
unrelated to the security problems auditors identified. [Even
more security vulnerabilities? Bob] However, Shelby said
one of the suggestions auditors laid out in the letter would have
helped IT staff to more quickly assess which types of data attackers
accessed.
I thought this sounded a bit cheap...
Reuters reports:
A group of small banks and credit unions suing Target Corp over its massive data breach in 2013 are moving to block the retailer’s proposed $19 million settlement with MasterCard Inc, calling it a “sweetheart deal” aimed at undercutting their own claims for losses.
Lawyers for plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, filed an emergency motion late Tuesday asking a federal judge in St. Paul, Minnesota, for a preliminary injunction that would prevent the settlement announced on March 19 from going through.
Read more on Reuters.
[From
the article:
“The agreement between
Target and MasterCard is nothing more than an attempt by Target to
avoid fully reimbursing financial institutions for losses they
suffered due to one of the largest data breaches in U.S. history,"
said a statement on Wednesday from Charles Zimmerman of Zimmerman
Reed PLLP and Karl Cambronne of Chestnut Cambronne PA, co-lead
plaintiffs' attorneys in the lawsuit.
Why bother with such a trivial “message?”
Russian
Hackers Infiltrated Pentagon Network: US
Russian hackers were able to access an
unclassified Pentagon computer network earlier this year, US
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said Thursday.
"We quickly identified the compromise and had
a team of incident responders hunting down the intruders within 24
hours," Carter said during a speech on technology and
cybersecurity at Stanford University in California.
… The
Pentagon analyzed the "network activity, associated it with
Russia, and then quickly kicked them off the network," he said.
National
Security Agency chief Michael Rogers said in March that Russia was
pushing for a show of force in the realm cybersecurity as it flexed
its muscles in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. [So why waste time on
something that is clearly no big deal? Bob]
Like
the 470 tolls here in Colorado, I assume there is a discount for
allowing this surveillance. Said another way, try to avoid
surveillance, pay more to use the bridge. (Also of interest to my
Data Analysis students)
From the NYCLU:
April 22, 2015 — The New York Civil Liberties Union this morning released a trove of government records that reveal that both city and state transportation agencies have set up E-ZPass readers in locations far from toll plazas. The records are part of the NYCLU’s new webpage that hosts records on how government agencies collect information on innocent New Yorkers, which includes recently released documents on Stingray surveillance equipment.
“New Yorkers have a right to know if our government is collecting information about us, what they’re doing with it and how long they’re keeping it for,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “One piece of information rarely says much about you, but bits and pieces collected over time can paint a detailed portrait of person – their political beliefs, religious affiliations, medical issues and even personal relationships. The documents the NYCLU is releasing provide a glimpse into some of the information the government is collecting on us every day.”
… Through its FOIL requests, the NYCLU learned that both city and state transportation agencies have set up E-ZPass readers around the state, including in 149 locations around New York City, as part of traffic studies.
View and download the E-ZPass documents
An example of security/privacy on the Internet of
Things?
13 Things
You Didn’t Know You Could Do With a Nest Thermostat
There's an App for that, but this one may make you
look like a terrorist. (Or am I being paranoid?)
How Your
Android Device Can Help You Find Your Next Home
Homesnap tries to be fun by letting you pull up
the details of a house just by taking a picture.
It then pulls up detailed information, including
things such as property lines and estimated values.
It's no longer Youtube's market. All the big
players are trying to do everything at once. Can they all succeed?
The Onion
and Vice Are Now Making Ads With Facebook
People watch videos on Facebook—a lot of videos.
During its earnings call yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that
the number of videos watched on Facebook now totals more than 4
billion per day—triple what was being watched on the
social network last summer.
With all those eyeballs trained on its moving
pictures, the company is now moving quickly to make them pay. Today
Facebook
announced that it is teaming up with seven popular media
companies, including The Onion, Disney and Vice Media, to
produce video ads for brands hoping to capture the attention of the
social network’s 1.44 billion users.
The future? Hungry? There's an App for that!
(If you order it, they will come?) If anyone makes money by
delivering, everyone will want to do it.
Chipotle
delivers burritos to your door
The fast-casual burrito chain is now offering
delivery of online and mobile orders in 67 cities using an app called
PostMates.
PostMates, a San Francisco-based startup, works
with local businesses to deliver everything from household goods and
school supplies to food and beverages.
Another cut to phone companies. Will they die the
“death of 1000 cuts” or will they not last that long?
WhatsApp
Voice Call: Everything You Need to Know
Popular instant messaging app WhatsApp has finally
launched a new voice calling service, enabling users to make phone
calls over the Internet. This is the first time WhatsApp is offering
this, which puts it head-to-head against the likes of Skype, Viber,
and others.
WhatsApp Call is now available for Android and
iOS.
… WhatsApp Call only allows for voice calls,
not video chat. You’ll still need to use other apps
to make video calls to Facebook friends. WhatsApp Call is just
like dialing a number, putting your phone to your ear and
speaking—except instead of dialing a number, you will be dialing a
WhatsApp contact only.
You can call any Android or iOS user with WhatsApp
installed. You cannot call users on other platforms yet.
Calling
someone in another country will cost the same as calling someone in
your own country—all you need to pay for is the data
charge, which is roughly the same regardless of where your call is
going.
Download: WhatsApp
for Android (Free)
Download: WhatsApp
for Android APK from official site (Free)
Download: WhatsApp
for iOS (Free)
For my Data Management students. Infographic
Pinterest
is More Important to Your Business Than You Think
Pinterest
seems to be the social network that not enough people take seriously.
Lots of people ignore it as a place to just find recipes or
projects, and not
enough people are using it correctly. It’s actually one of the
biggest
traffic drivers across social
media, and anyone (business or individual) who isn’t using it
is actually missing out.
The infographic below from the folks over at
MainStreetHost
provides all kinds of interesting facts
and statistics on just how powerful Pinterest
actually is. If you do any kind of marketing
on social media, the numbers below just might change your
perception of Pinterest.
(Related) Pinterest plus two others.
Using
Social Networks to Find Amazing Products
I'm tossing this in just because I like the
article.
The Basic
Principles of Strategy Haven’t Changed in 30 Years
Another week, another chance to be amused.
Hack
Education Weekly News
… “A California judge has denied a request
for state intervention at six California high schools where students
said they had been assigned to multiple contentless classes, were
told to go home, or sit idly in classrooms or perform menial
administrative tasks.” More
on the Cruz v California lawsuit here.
… Via
Buzzfeed: “Texas Sends Poor Teens To Adult Jail For Skipping
School.” [“That'll
larn 'em!” Bob]
… The Online Learning Consortium and MERLOT
are merging
their scholarly journals. The new journal’s name: Online
Learning.
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