Update

Equifax Says Cybersecurity Breach Has Cost $1.4 Billion

Emma Hurt reports:

Equifax, the Atlanta credit bureau, revealed in its earnings release Friday that dealing with its 2017 cybersecurity incident has cost about $1.4 billion plus legal fees.

A year and a half ago, the company, which gathers consumers’ credit histories, revealed a massive security breach compromised the personal information of about 150 million people.

The hack itself happened nearly two years ago, between May and July of 2017, a few months after the Department of Homeland Security informed the company of a software vulnerability.

Read more on WABE.

As it becomes easier, expect even more.

April sets new record for number of health data breaches and incidents

We’ve seen a record number of incidents reported in the first quarter of 2019, and it’s not getting any better in the healthcare sector.

Whether you use HHS’s public breach tool, as Modern Healthcare does, or the system DataBreaches.net and Protenus, Inc. use to track U.S. breaches involving medical or health data, April set a new record for number of breaches or incidents disclosed during the month.

Using HHS’s breach tool, Modern Healthcare notes that there were 42 breaches each impacting or potentially impacting more than 500 patients that were reported to the federal regulator last month. Those breaches, they report, affected 686,953 people.

Although DataBreaches.net’s is still compiling and analyzing incidents disclosed in April, so far, we have 55 incidents, for which we have numbers on 49 incidents. Those 49 incidents affected 962,400 people. The number affected is nowhere near any kind of record high, but the number of incidents recorded is approximately 25% higher than monthly figures for the first quarter of this year, and a tad higher than some monthly figures from 2017, where we occasionally saw our frequency counter hit 50 or above.

This is why we teach Computer Security every Quarter.

Crippling ransomware attacks targeting US cities on the rise

Kevin Collier reports:

Targeted ransomware attacks on local US government entities — cities, police stations and schools — are on the rise, costing localities millions as some pay off the perpetrators in an effort to untangle themselves and restore vital systems.

The tally by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future — one of the first efforts to measure the breadth of the assaults — found that at least 170 county, city or state government systems have been attacked since 2013, including at least 45 police and sheriff’s offices.

Read more on WPTV.

Perspective.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613514/a-new-way-to-build-tiny-neural-networks-could-create-powerful-ai-on-your-phone/

A new way to build tiny neural networks could create powerful AI on your phone

Neural networks are the core software of deep learning. Even though they’re so widespread, however, they’re really poorly understood. Researchers have observed their emergent properties without actually understanding why they work the way they do.

Now a new paper out of MIT has taken a major step toward answering this question. And in the process the researchers have made a simple but dramatic discovery: we’ve been using neural networks far bigger than we actually need. In some cases they’re 10—even 100—times bigger, so training them costs us orders of magnitude more time and computational power than necessary.

Perspective. Have we gone “AI crazy?”

https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2019/05/mackmyra-and-microsoft-to-create-ai-whisky/

Mackmyra and Microsoft to create AI whisky

Mackmyra plans to “augment and automate” the “time-consuming” whisky-making process using AI.

The distillery has created machine learning models that are powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and AI cognitive services, and are fed with Mackmyra’s existing recipes, sales data and customer preferences.

With this information, the AI can generate more than 70 million recipes that it predicts will be popular and of the “highest quality”. According to Mackmyra, AI is much faster than manual processes involved in researching and creating whisky, and also provides blenders with “new and innovative combinations”.

Still trying to understand GDPR.

Dutch Data Protection Authority Issues Advisory On Medical Records Under GDPR

Odia Kagan of FoxRothschild writes:

“The right to be forgotten does not apply in principle to medical records. However, as a patient, you may ask your health care provider to remove data from your medical record,” according to the Dutch Data Protection Authority, Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AG), which has issued a guidance on GDPR and medical records.

Read more on HIPAA & Health Information Technology.

(Related) California is trying to understand what they meant to say…

Package of Privacy Bills Advances in California Legislature

Lucas Ropek reports:

A privacy legislation package designed to give added protections to consumers while also augmenting the landmark California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is making its way through the state Legislature — though its contents have changed significantly since originally introduced.

The Your Data Your Way initiative was introduced in late January by a cadre of Republican Assemblymembers, with the basis being additional data privacy protections.

A number of bills in the package recently made their way through the state Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection (P&CP) — and now face a potential vote on the Assembly floor.

Read more on GovTech.

‘Get the big guys!’

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-india-antitrust-exclusive/exclusive-india-orders-anti-trust-probe-of-google-for-alleged-android-abuse-sources-idUSKCN1SG17O

Exclusive: India orders anti-trust probe of Google for alleged Android abuse – sources

India’s antitrust watchdog has ordered an investigation into Alphabet Inc’s unit Google for allegedly abusing the dominant position of its popular Android mobile operating system to block rivals, two sources aware of the matter told Reuters.

It’s obvious. Perhaps we should go to a ‘per mile’ tax?

https://wgntv.com/2019/05/10/illinois-proposed-1000-electric-vehicle-registration-fee/

Illinois may start charging electric vehicle owners $1,000 per year

… The proposal is aimed at raising money to make road improvements across the state. Electric vehicles don’t pay the state’s gas tax, which is used to fund road repairs.