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Just How Much Home Security Do You Need Right Now?

When it comes to home security, technology provides us with plenty of solutions for all needs and budgets. The problem is the same technology also provides burglars and perpetrators with the similar means of bypassing your fancy security systems. Long gone are the days when burglars would brutally force their way into your home with a lever. Now...
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Nearly Half of UK Users Concerned about Identity Fraud, Reveal Studies

Nothing says the holidays like spending time with friends and family. To celebrate this special time of year, many of us purchase gifts for our loved ones. Doing so can become quite expensive, especially if we have large social circles. For that reason, we go through the holidays looking for sales on items we think our dear ones will love. But don't...
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Beware of "Your Amazon.com Order Cannot Be Shipped" Scam!

Holiday shoppers who use Amazon.com to purchase gifts will want to look out for a new scam claiming their order can't ship. Around the beginning of December, users first caught wind of a scam that's dampening the holiday cheer for users in the United Kingdom and Australia. The bogus emails state "Your Amazon.com Order Cannot Be Shipped" in the...
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Hackers Stole Research from ThyssenKrupp Steel in "Professional Attack"

Hackers stole technical trade secrets from some of the business areas of ThyssenKrupp Steel in a "professional attack." On 8 December, the German industrial group published a statement confirming the incident: "thyssenkrupp has been the target of a cyber-attack. It has been a professional attack, apparently from the Southeast Asian region....
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November 2016: The Month in Ransomware

Ransomware authors kept trying to break new ground with their attacks last month, just like they did in October. One of the cybercriminal rings blatantly compromised San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency, demonstrating that critical infrastructure isn’t much of a moving target. Also, a slew of low-impact screen lockers and .NET-based ransomware...
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Windows XP Still Used By 90% of NHS Hospital Trusts

The overwhelming majority of NHS hospital trusts in England are continuing to use Microsoft’s unsupported Windows XP operating system, putting patients and their organizations at risk. According to new research conducted by software company Citrix, nine out of ten NHS trusts questioned confirmed they still have PCs running the outdated software....
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POS Malware Activity Quadrupled over Thanksgiving Weekend

Point-of-sale (POS) malware activity, specifically network traffic for data exfiltration, quadrupled over Thanksgiving weekend. For their ongoing threat analysis, researchers at Proofpoint use network sensors deployed by its Emerging Threats group to track POS malware contact with command and control (C&C) servers. They had expected increased...
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Patch Your Sony Security Cameras Against Backdoor Attacks!

If you have a Sony network-connected CCTV camera, you may have a security problem. Researchers at SEC Consult uncovered a backdoor in Sony IP cameras that could allow a hacker to remotely execute malicious code, spy on users, brick devices, or recruit them into a DDoS botnet. As the vandal-resistant Sony IPELA Engine IP cameras at the centre of the...
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Getting Ahead of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The fact that you're reading this blog means that you're probably familiar with the EU GDPR, the possible impact it may have on your business, and the consequences should you find yourself on the wrong side of non-compliance – especially if that non-compliance is highlighted as the result of a breach in which identifiable personal data is...
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Man Receives 5 Years in Jail for Hacking Celebrities' Email Accounts

A man has received five years in prison for hacking into the email accounts of a number of celebrities and athletes. On 6 December, the Federal District Court in Manhattan passed down the sentence to Alonzo Knowles, 24, who gained unauthorized access to celebrities' email accounts and stole sensitive data. Back in December 2015, an undercover agent...
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Compensating Controls: An Impermanent Solution to an IT Compliance Gap

Compliance is a concern for every organization that handles customers' data. Unfortunately, it's not always easy for companies to meet the security requirements of frameworks like PCI DSS. Each organization faces technological and/or business constraints; factors which shape its security decisions and sometimes rule out the implementation of certain...
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Trust: The Social Basis of the Internet Ecosystem

Societies function on the basis of trust, and Internet users are no different. Users need to trust the Internet. They need to trust it to keep their data secure, protected and private, and they need to trust it to reliably give them the content they want to view and share. If governed in an inclusive way, users will continue to place their trust in...
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Is Quantum Networking The End of Man-in-the-Middle Attacks?

Research on quantum networking is well under way. In April 2012, Gerhard Rempe and other researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany announced their first working quantum network to the world. Then, just this year, Wolfgang Tittel and his researchers at the University of Calgary transported a light particle's properties...
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Thieves Used Radio Jammers to Block Motorists from Locking Their Cars

Thieves used radio jammers to steal from motorists by preventing them from locking their cars after they parked at service stations. According to BBC News, Thames Valley Police said it received 14 reports of theft at the Chieveley, Reading, and Membury stations on the M4 in Berkshire during the last two weeks of November. Each of those incidents...
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Women in Information Security: Zoё Rose

Women are eagerly needed in information security because we offer unique perspectives and there are so few of us. So far in this series, I interviewed Tiberius Hefflin, Tracy Maleef, Isly, Kat Sweet, and Jess Dodson--five different women from different parts of the English-speaking world and from different areas of IT. For my sixth and final...
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Shamoon 2: Nothing Whets Disttrack's Appetite Like Destroyed Data

Most families of malware operate on a common assumption: a user's data is valuable. For instance, some malware samples transmit pieces of a victim's data to their command-and-control (C&C) server as means of setting up an attack, while others fully embrace the spyware classification and collect as much information about a user as possible. At the...
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Uber Now Tracks Users' Location Data After a Trip Ends

Uber has issued an update allowing the online transportation network company to track passengers' data after a trip ends. Hoping to improve passengers' experience using the service, Uber released the update as a means of broadening its ability to collect "trip-related data." The company clarifies that point on its website: "Uber collects your...