… Lifespan is
investigating the theft of an employee’s laptop from a car that was broken into
on February 25, 2017. Several items were
stolen, including a MacBook laptop used by the employee for work purposes. Upon discovering the theft, the employee
immediately contacted law enforcement and reported the incident to Lifespan. Lifespan promptly began an investigation and
changed the employee’s credentials used to access Lifespan system resources out
of an abundance of caution.
… Lifespan is
committed to protecting the security and confidentiality of our patients’
information, and we deeply regret this incident occurred. In order to help prevent a similar incident
from reoccurring, we are re-educating our employees and enhancing our policies
and procedures related to the security of MacBooks.
SOURCE: Lifespan
According to local
media who received a press release on the matter, Lifespan is notifying
20,000 patients.
You watch TV, TV watches you.
WikiLeaks Details Samsung Smart TV Hacking Tool
WikiLeaks has released a document detailing yet another hacking tool
allegedly used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This time, the organization has published
information on a tool designed to record audio via the built-in microphone of
some Samsung smart TVs.
The tool, dubbed “Weeping
Angel,” is apparently based on “Extending,” an implant allegedly developed
by British security service MI5 – the agencies are said to have worked together
on this project.
… The newly
released guide, dated February 2014, describes an implant for Samsung F series
smart TVs. The implant can record audio
from a device via the built-in microphone and either store or exfiltrate the
recordings.
The Weeping Angel implant can be installed by connecting a
USB device to the targeted TV, and data can be exfiltrated either via a USB
stick or a compromised Wi-Fi hotspot.
“We are not covered by HIPAA but we act like we are?”
HealthITSecurity reports:
Patient records from the New York
Organ Donor Network are not liable to
HIPAA regulations, according to a recent New York Supreme Court ruling.
A former network official claimed
that four patients had not yet been declared legally dead before their organs
were harvested, and had argued that the records in question were protected
under HIPAA.
Plaintiff Patrick McMahon also
claimed that he had been fired for being a whistleblower and stating that
organs were being taken prematurely.
[…]
McMahon argued that the network
was not
a HIPAA covered entity and the four patients’ medical records should be
turned over. The records “are material
and necessary because plaintiff insists that each person showed signs of brain
activity when their organs were harvested.”
The network reportedly acknowledged that it is not a HIPAA covered
entity, but said it still must maintain patient confidentiality
Read more about the case on HealthITSecurity.
It’s not stalking, it’s determining how your business is
doing. (You can’t turn it around if you
don’t know where it’s heading.)
10 Easy Ways Small Businesses Should Track Competitors
One of the most important yet often unvalued requirements
when running a small business is to track and monitor competition. Having a clear understanding of competitors’
business operations, such as what they are charging, what clients they have,
and what new products and services they are offering, can help a company
develop their own successful business models and strategies.
Investigating with a view to a change or just to be able
to say they are “doing something?”
U.S. Homeland Security probes possible abuse in Twitter
summons case
The U.S. Homeland Security Department's inspector general
said on Friday he was investigating possible abuse of authority in a case that
triggered a lawsuit against the department by Twitter Inc.
… In a lawsuit on April 6, Twitter disclosed
that it received a summons in March from the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border
Protection, an agency within Homeland Security, demanding records about an
account on the social media platform identified by the handle @ALT_uscis.
The account has featured posts
critical of President Donald Trump's immigration policies, leading Twitter to
complain in its lawsuit that the summons was an unlawful attempt to suppress
dissent.
The agency dropped its
demand of Twitter the day after the suit was filed.
… "DHS
OIG is also reviewing potential broader misuse of summons authority at the
department," he added.
These two events could not possibly be related. Unless someone was practicing to take
everything down?
Power outage cripples San Francisco for seven hours
A massive power outage threw San Francisco into chaos for
most of the work day on Friday, knocking out traffic signals, paralyzing
businesses and halting the city's famed cable cars.
(Related).
Why a Midtown Power Failure Snarled Your Morning Subway
Commute
Something my students will use, please!
Three Tools That Help Students Analyze What They Write
Probably every high school teacher since the dawn of time
has asked his or her students to have someone else proofread their essays
before turning them in for a grade. Unfortunately,
students don't always comply with that request. And even when they do get someone to
proofread, some items might go undetected. That's why an online writing analysis tool can
be helpful to students. Here are three free services that help students analyze
their writing.
Slick
Write is a free tool that helps you analyze your writing or that of others.
To use Slick Write you can write new
text in the provided text editor or copy and paste chunks of existing text into
Slick Write's text editor. Either way
Slick Write will provide you with an analysis of your writing. That analysis will include typical things like
a word count, a readability score, and an estimated reading time for your
document. Slick Write will also analyze
your use of adverbs and prepositional phrases throughout your document.
The Hemingway App, found at Hemingwayapp.com, provides students with
lots of helpful information about their text. To use the service students just paste some
text into the Hemingway editor and it will provide you with a bunch of
information about that text. Hemingway
highlights the parts of your writing that use passive voice, adverbs, and
overly complex sentences. All of those
factors are accounted for in generating a general readability score for your
passage. The short video embedded below
shows how easy it is to use Hemingwayapp.com
to analyze your writing.
Paste your text into Analyze My Writing and
it will generate a ton of information about your writing. Analyze My Writing will give you a break-down
of the readability of your writing on five
indices. The analysis will include
listings of the most common words and most common word pairs in your writing. A listing of how frequently you use
punctuation and punctuation types is included in the analysis provided by
Analyze My Writing. Finally, a word
cloud is included at the end of the analysis of your writing.
