Friday, September 27, 2019


Remember, some hackers can read.
GAO Identifies Significant Cybersecurity Risks in US Electric Grid
The new report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that the nation’s electric grid is becoming more vulnerable to cyberattacks.


(Related)
U.S. Navy to Appoint Cyber Chief Following a Blistering Audit
… The new position is part of a broader effort to improve cybersecurity in the Navy and among its private-sector industry partners, coming after a scathing internal audit earlier this year found that repeated compromises of national-security secrets threatened the U.S.’s standing as the world’s top military power.




For my security students: know the enemy!




Before this one becomes law, lets design a tougher one!
CCPA 2.0? A New California Ballot Initiative is Introduced
On September 13, 2019, the California State Legislature passed the final CCPA amendments of 2019. Governor Newsome is expected to sign the recently passed CCPA amendments into law in advance of his October 13, 2019 deadline. Yesterday, proponents of the original CCPA ballot initiative released the text of a new initiative (The California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020) that will be voted on in the 2020 election; if passed, the initiative would substantially expand CCPA’s protections for consumers and obligations on businesses. While the new proposal preserves key aspects the current CCPA statute, there are some notable additions and amendments.




No surprise.
Most Companies Worldwide Are Not Prepared for New Privacy Regulations
As new privacy regulations continue to appear globally, there is mounting evidence to suggest that most organizations – regardless of size or type of business – are unprepared to deal with them in an effective manner. That’s one of the big takeaways from a recent September 2019 report from the Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (OTA), which analyzed more than 1,200 privacy statements from organizations around the world to see how well they adhered to new privacy regulations such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act (PIPEDA).
In many ways, the enactment of the European GDPR in May 2018 set into motion an entirely new approach to data privacy and data security. This paradigm shift included new thinking about how to manage the enormous flows of data passing into and out of organizations on a daily basis, and how to report this information to customers and users. And it also established the fact that organizations would have to start dealing with enormous fines and penalties for any lapses in data privacy or any data security breaches.




From devices to algorithms.
FDA clarifies how it will regulate digital health and artificial intelligence
In releasing the guidelines on mobile health software and CDS tools, the FDA is attempting to communicate how it will implement provisions within the 21st Century Cures Act, a law passed in late 2016 that sought to exempt several categories of health software from FDA review. The legislation gave FDA discretion to determine which specific products will fall under its purview.




A not very scientific assumption.
Don’t Fear the Terminator
Artificial intelligence never needed to evolve, so it didn’t develop the survival instinct that leads to the impulse to dominate others
Takeover by AI has long been the stuff of science fiction. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL, the sentient computer controlling the operation of an interplanetary spaceship, turns on the crew in an act of self-preservation. In The Terminator, an Internet-like computer defense system called Skynet achieves self-awareness and initiates a nuclear war, obliterating much of humanity. This trope has, by now, been almost elevated to a natural law of science fiction: a sufficiently intelligent computer system will do whatever it must to survive, which will likely include achieving dominion over the human race.
To a neuroscientist, this line of reasoning is puzzling. There are plenty of risks of AI to worry about, including economic disruption, failures in life-critical applications and weaponization by bad actors. But the one that seems to worry people most is power-hungry robots deciding, of their own volition, to take over the world. Why would a sentient AI want to take over the world? It wouldn’t.




Perspective. No need to plug in. No need to change batteries.
Photovoltaic-powered sensors for the 'Internet of Things'
By 2025, experts estimate the number of Internet of Things devices—including sensors that gather real-time data about infrastructure and the environment—could rise to 75 billion worldwide.
… MIT researchers have designed photovoltaic-powered sensors that could potentially transmit data for years before they need to be replaced. To do so, they mounted thin-film perovskite cells—known for their potential low cost, flexibility, and relative ease of fabrication—as energy-harvesters on inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags.




Perspective.
Internet sector contributes $2.1 trillion to U.S. economy: industry group
The rapidly growing internet sector accounted for $2.1 trillion of the U.S. economy in 2018, or about 10% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), an industry group said on Thursday.
… The study says the internet sector represents the fourth largest sector of the U.S. economy, behind real estate, government and manufacturing.




Something to watch for…
This Website Will Turn Wikipedia Articles Into “Real” Academic Papers
BuzzFeedNews – “The digital product agency MSCHF released a site called M-Journal on Tuesday that will turn any Wikipedia article into a “real” academic article. You can screenshot it, you can cite it — and you can send a link to your teacher. What MSCHF did was republish the entirety of Wikipedia under its own academic journal. If you go over to the site, you can search any Wikipedia article or paste in a link, and it’ll generate a citation that refers to MSCHF’s M-Journal, not Wikipedia…”



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