A good deal?
Wyndham
settles FTC data breach charges
Wyndham Worldwide Corp (WYN.N) has agreed to settle U.S. Federal
Trade Commission charges that it failed to properly safeguard
customer information, in a case arising from three data breaches
affecting more than 619,000 customers.
… A consent order
outlining the settlement was filed with the federal court in Newark,
New Jersey, 3-1/2 months after the
3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said the FTC had
authority to regulate corporate cyber security.
Under the order,
Wyndham must establish a
comprehensive information security program designed to
protect cardholder data including payment card numbers, names and
expiration dates, the FTC said.
Wyndham
was not fined or required to admit wrongdoing, but will
comply with a widely used industry standard to protect the safety of
payment card information. The Parsippany, New Jersey-based company's
obligations under the order
last for 20 years.
… The case is
Federal Trade Commission v Wyndham Worldwide Corp et al, U.S.
District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 13-01887.
A self-inflicted wound?
And Avid Life Media still has not provided any
update as to how that horrific breach occurred. Nor did they respond
to my email inquiry this week requesting an update.
Related Posts:
Does Google see what keywords you are blocking?
Google
Creates New Roadblock For Corporate Data Thieves
Businesses of all sizes dread the thought of data
theft.
In response, Google said Wednesday that it is
adding technology to Gmail that makes it harder for employees to send
business data out the door. Specifically, the tech giant is bundling
a service that helps prevent sending sensitive
information through Gmail, at least for customers who pay for the
Google
Apps Unlimited edition.
With this addition, corporate IT staff can set up
a scan of outgoing email (both the text itself and attached
documents) for credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc.
Messages that trip the switch can be quarantined for review, or
returned to the sender along with a prompt to remove the information.
Administrators can also set up automatic scans that would flag
emails that include certain keywords.
Kind of a good new / bad news article.
Daily New
Malware Count Drops by 15,000: Kaspersky
The
number of new malware files detected each day dropped by roughly
15,000 in 2015 when compared to the last year, according to a recent
report from Kaspersky Lab.
According
to the security company, its products detected 310,000
new malware files each day
in 2015, compared to 325,000 in 2014. The company notes
in a blog post that the decrease is likely due to the fact that the
coding of new malware is expensive and cybercriminals have been
switching to intrusive advertising programs or legitimate digital
signatures in their attacks.
Nothing
too exciting.
Washington
Post – Cybersecurity – A Special Report
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 9, 2015
-
The ethics of Hacking 101 by Ellen Nakashima and Ashkan Soltani
-
Lassoing the Internet’s Wild West by James Andrew Lewis
-
What top government and business officials are saying about cybersecurity by Washington Post Live
-
With mobile devices, many firms are playing Russian roulette with cybersecurity by Amrita Jayakumar
-
Editor’s note: Cyber attackers have upper hand by Mary Jordan
Apparently
the world did not end as predicted.
… FBI Director James Comey's assessment is at
odds with prominent hawks, who have warned that new limits on the
National Security Agency (NSA) are hamstringing federal officials at
a time when fears about terrorism are on the rise.
"We don’t know yet” whether the NSA
reforms have had a negative impact, Comey told a Senate committee.
“In theory it should work as well or better than
what we used to have,” he insisted. “But I don’t know yet.”
“We know the bad guys are in there somewhere!”
If we have clear evidence that “Communicator X” is controlling
the planners of terrorism (call them Y1 - Yn) in several countries,
we would like to know they are talking to. We can identify X and
most of the Ys, it's the Zs that we need to gather up before that
links are lost.
In a seminal
decision updating and consolidating its previous jurisprudence on
surveillance, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights
took a sideways swing at mass surveillance programs last week,
reiterating the centrality of “reasonable suspicion” to the
authorization process and the need to ensure interception warrants
are targeted to an individual or premises. The decision in Zakharov
v. Russia — coming on the heels of the European Court of
Justice’s strongly-worded condemnation in Schrems
of interception systems that provide States with “generalised
access” to the content of communications — is another blow to
governments across Europe and the United States that continue to
argue for the legitimacy and lawfulness of bulk collection programs.
It also provoked
the ire of the Russian government, prompting an immediate
legislative move to give the Russian constitution precedence over
Strasbourg judgments.
Would it be politically correct or politically
incorrect to believe Kim?
North Korea
says it’s ready to detonate H-bomb, but skepticism abounds
WalMart would like to hold your money for you.
Wal-Mart
enters mobile payment with launch of Walmart Pay
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) said it would launch 'Walmart Pay,' to
become the first U.S. retailer to offer its own payment feature to
expand consumer payment options and increase the speed of checkouts.
… The feature
requires customers to choose Walmart Pay within the retailer's mobile
app at a checkout counter, activate their phone camera and scan the
code displayed at the register after which an e-receipt will be sent
to the app.
Perspective.
One-fifth
of Americans report going online almost constantly
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 9, 2015
Pew
FactTank – “As smartphones and other mobile devices have
become more widespread, some 21% of Americans now report that they go
online “almost constantly,” according to a Pew Research Center
survey. Overall, 73% of
Americans go online on a daily basis. Along with the 21%
who go online almost constantly, 42% go online several times a day
and 10% go online about once a day. Some 13% go online several times
a week or less often. And in this survey, 13%
of adults say they do not use the internet at all.”
Perspective.
Netflix
accounts for more than a third of prime-time internet traffic in
North America
Just in case Netflix hadn’t completely
established itself as a
juggernaut, here’s more evidence of its all-consuming hold on
consumers: The video-streaming company nets roughly 35% of aggregate
peak-period internet traffic in North America, according to a new
report.
… In set
of findings announced today (Dec. 7) for online traffic
consumption across North America, Africa, and the Middle East,
Sandvine’s data illustrated Netflix’s total domination in North
America—the service is well ahead of competitors like YouTube
(which has 16.8% of aggregate upstream/downstream traffic), Amazon
Video (2.9%), iTunes (2.6%), and Hulu (2.5%). BitTorrent, which
accounted for 31% of total internet traffic in 2008, only accounted
for 4.4% in 2015.
By comparison, Netflix had just 22% of North
American internet traffic in 2011, according to Sandvine’s report
from that year.
If Facebook is the answer, what was the question?
Worth reading.
How
Facebook Plans to Disrupt Education
Back in September, Facebook made a deal with
Summit Public Schools. Don’t worry if you didn’t hear about it
when it happened – it was a quiet event, without a lot of fanfare.
With that being said, the implications of this
partnership might change everything we know about public education.
Too depressing? My students would think this blog
post was too long to read.
How Long
Does That Book Take to Read? This Site Tells You
Daunted by the size of that book
you have been meaning to read? It might take you less time than
you think. If you want an accurate calculation of the time you’ll
need to finish that book, head
over to How
Long to Read.
The site lists more than 12 million books in its
database. Use the site search to look up the name of any book on
your reading list and select it from the search results. A dedicated
page for that book should pop up. Look to the sample text on the
side, click on the Start
Speed Reading Timer button, then read it.
Once you finish, click on the button again to stop
the timer. This displays an estimate of the time you’ll need to
read the entire book.
Trendy, but already obsolete.
A Short
Overview of 12 Tools for Creating Flipped Classroom Lessons
No comments:
Post a Comment