Not exactly counter-propaganda, but then I don't
think we know how to do that very well.
Europe’s
top cops fight ISIS on social media
… Starting next week, a unit of the European
police agency Europol will plan to remove social media accounts
belonging to members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
within two hours of detecting them.
The unit will be working with various unnamed
social media sites, Europol Director Rob Wainwright told the
Guardian this weekend to “identify the ringleaders online”
and keep tabs on who they are targeting for new recruits.
… The move is a sign of officials’
recognition that ISIS has had a tremendous ability to gather recruits
internationally and inspire people around the globe to launch attacks
against their home country.
… According to analysis from the Brookings
Institution, there are at least 46,000
Twitter accounts associated with ISIS supporters.
Another article for my IT Governance and Risk
Management class. We need a strategy...
Cybersecurity
Has a Leadership Problem: Study
… RAND
didn't pull any punches in its 162-page report, The
Defender's Dilemma,
noting that defenders responsible for protecting corporate and
personal data are unprepared,
overwhelmed, and unsupported.
Researchers
interviewed CISOs, reviewed existing technologies, and assessed the
challenges behind making secure software in order to create the
economic models, which make up the report,
recently released by Juniper Networks.
… Another
common sense element found that people-centric investments, such as
technologies to automate security management, advanced security
training for employees, and hiring security staff led to greater
cost-savings down the road. Organizations with high levels of
security diligence curbed costs of managing security by 19 percent in
the first year, and 28 percent by the tenth year compared to
organizations with low diligence, RAND found in its survey.
A simple extension of biometrics. I wonder how
far Facebook and others will wander down this road?
Facebook Is
Now Able To Recognize You Without Even Seeing Your Face
… Facebook’s artificial intelligence team is
testing out an algorithm that can recognize people in photos even if
they are not looking at the camera.
According to New
Scientist, the algorithm is able to identify people by reviewing
hairdos, clothing, postures and body shapes. Facebook’s head of
artificial intelligence Yann LeCun used CEO Mark
Zuckerberg as an example of how the algorithm recognizes fashion
preferences since he is known for always wearing a gray T-shirt.
… As of right now, the experimental algorithm
is able to identify people with 83% accuracy.
Another government agency looking to hide behind
“Management Theater?” (If you don't know how to solve a problem,
do something that sounds good then keep shuffling the deck.)
FAA Refuses
to Release Key Documents
The Federal Aviation Administration is refusing to
release key documents that would support the agency’s claim that
its controversial Biographical Questionnaire or BQ is valid. The BQ
is a personality test that all FAA air traffic control applicants
must pass in order to be considered for a job with the FAA. A FOX
Business Network investigative report,
‘‘Trouble In the Skies’’, first exposed internal FAA
documents which discredited the BQ on May 20, 2015.
The report also made public recordings of FAA
employees offering to help air traffic control candidates cheat
on the 2014 BQ.
… Failing scores on the BQ disqualified 3000
students from FAA Collegiate Training Initiative Schools, a program
created by the FAA to prepare future air traffic controllers, from
obtaining jobs with the agency. Those 3000 students had previously
been considered “well qualified” by the FAA after earning the
highest scores on an exam used by the FAA to test an applicant’s
cognitive ability.
… The FAA discarded the BQ in 2015 and used a
new version of the test also created by APT Metrics. The FAA
refuses to say why the first version of the BQ was thrown out if it
had been validated.
(Related) An example of Security Theater.
Tim Cushing writes:
Concerns over pervasive surveillance are often shrugged off with “ends justify the means” rationalizing. If it’s effective, it must be worth doing. But as more information on domestic surveillance programs surfaces, we’re finding out that not only are they intrusive, but they’re also mostly useless.
TrapWire — software produced by Stratfor and used by security and law enforcement agencies around the world — utilizes facial and pattern recognition technology to analyze CCTV footage for “pre-attack patterns,” meshing this information with other law enforcement databases, including online submissions from citizens reporting “suspicious behavior.”
Read more on TechDirt.
You gotta love it. I wonder how much of the
government Google could replace? Probably almost as much as they
influence with their political contributions.
Senators to
feds: 'Just Google it'
Senators want to eliminate an agency tucked within
the Commerce Department, suggesting that the Internet has made it
obsolete.
Republican Sens. Mark Kirk (Ill.), Kelly Ayotte
(N.H.), Tom Cotton (Ark.) and David Perdue (Ga.) introduced
the Just Google It Act on Monday, which would
eliminate the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).
… The senators pointed to a 2014
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which found that a
majority of documents added to the NTIS collection over the past
twenty years could be found somewhere else, with most of those
available for free online.
… The senators' proposal isn't the first time
the agency has come under congressional fire.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and then-Sen. Tom
Corburn (R-Okla.) introduced
a
similar proposal last year, the Let Me Google That For You Act.
For my Computer Security students.
Free
recorded webinar on Pluralsight: Why SQL Injection Remains the #1 Web
Security Risk Today
A couple of weeks ago I did a free webinar on
Pluralsight titled Why
SQL Injection Remains the #1 Web Security Risk Today (and what you
should know about it). This is a rather self-explanatory title
and it’s completely true – SQL injection remains a big thing and
we keep getting it wrong. Like an example? Only 8 months ago,
Drupal
had a major vulnerability in their product. If you’re not
already familiar with Drupal, it allegedly
powers 2.1% of the world’s websites… including
WhiteHouse.gov.
But here’s the really scary bit from their announcement:
You should proceed under the assumption that every Drupal 7 website was compromised unless updated or patched before Oct 15th, 11pm UTC, that is 7 hours after the announcement.
Another one for my toolkit.
How to
Transcribe Video Files to Text with YouTube
A way to gather my handouts?
Book
Creator for Windows - Create Multimedia eBooks
Book
Creator has long been a popular iPad and Android app for creating
multimedia ebooks. Today, the developers of Book Creator released a
Windows
version of the app.
Book
Creator for Windows (Windows 8.1 or higher required) allows
anyone to create his or her own ebooks using images,
text, videos, and audio recordings. You can arrange your
book in three different formats; portrait, square, or landscape.
Each page in your book can include pictures and videos. In addition
to the pictures and videos you can include as much as text as you can
fit on each page. In fact, if you just want to have text on a page
you can do that. If you would like to narrate your book you can tap
the record button to add your voice to each page of your book. Every
page in your book can have a custom color scheme.
Book Creator can be a fantastic tool for students
to use to create short stories or to create
longer research papers that include multimedia elements. [Now
that is a nasty idea. I like it! Bob]
Dilbert on strategy.
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