Saturday, January 27, 2018

A debate on how to manage Computer Security sounds like fun. Should you budget to secure employee devices? Should the government forbid employees from using their own servers (like Hillary Clinton)?
Tim Cushing reports:
Notification of state-sponsored hacking attempts has revealed another weak spot in the US government’s defenses. The security of the government’s systems is an ongoing concern, but the Senate has revealed it’s not doing much to ensure sensitive documents and communications don’t end up in the hands of foreign hackers.
Read more on TechDirt.




Some customers are asking questions that companies are not ready to answer? I would worry more about those industries that don’t have questions.
Data Privacy Concerns Cause Sales Delays: Cisco
Nearly two-thirds of businesses worldwide have experienced significant delays in sales due to customer data privacy concerns, according to Cisco’s 2018 Privacy Maturity Benchmark Study.
The study, based on the responses of roughly 3,000 cybersecurity professionals from 25 countries, shows that 65% of businesses reported sales cycle delays due to concerns over data privacy, with an average delay of nearly 8 weeks.
However, organizations with a mature privacy process are less affected compared to privacy-immature companies. Privacy-mature firms experienced delays of only 3.4 weeks, while immature businesses reported delays averaging nearly 17 weeks.
Sales delays have also varied depending on several other factors, including country, with the longest delays reported in Mexico and Latin America, and industry, with the longest delays in the government and healthcare sectors.
The complete 2018 Privacy Maturity Benchmark Study is available for download in PDF format.




It’s not science fiction if the technology is in use today. What would Jules Verne do?
Artificial intelligence is going to supercharge surveillance
We usually think of surveillance cameras as digital eyes, watching over us or watching out for us, depending on your view. But really, they’re more like portholes: useful only when someone is looking through them. Sometimes that means a human watching live footage, usually from multiple video feeds. Most surveillance cameras are passive, however. They’re there as a deterrence, or to provide evidence if something goes wrong. Your car got stolen? Check the CCTV.
But this is changing — and fast. Artificial intelligence is giving surveillance cameras digital brains to match their eyes, letting them analyze live video with no humans necessary. This could be good news for public safety, helping police and first responders more easily spot crimes and accidents and have a range of scientific and industrial applications. But it also raises serious questions about the future of privacy and poses novel risks to social justice.
What happens when governments can track huge numbers of people using CCTV? When police can digitally tail you around a city just by uploading your mugshot into a database? Or when a biased algorithm is running on the cameras in your local mall, pinging the cops because it doesn’t like the look of a particular group of teens?


(Related).
They Are Watching You—and Everything Else on the Planet




About damn time!
FBI Director Chris Wray Says Secure Encryption Backdoors Are Possible; Sen. Ron Wyden Asks Him To Produce Receipts




Are you serious?
George Soros calls Facebook and Google a 'menace' to society and 'obstacles to innovation' in blistering attack
The billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros has launched a blistering and multipronged attack on Facebook and Google, arguing the tech giants' size and "monopolistic" behavior had made them a "menace" to society, damaged democracy, and encouraged "addiction" akin to gambling companies.
Speaking on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Hungarian businessman said that "social-media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it," adding that they have "far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections."


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