Data Priacy — News

Massive DDoS attacks a growing threat to VoIP services

ORLANDO, Fla. -- When the massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in March brought down the voice-over-IP (VoIP) call processing supplied by TelePacific Communications to thousands of its customers, it marked a turning point for the local-exchange services provider in its thinking about security.

Ellen Messmer | 05 Oct | Read more

Facebook's cookie monster is unstoppable

Interesting revelations invariably emerge when a high-profile entity is scrutinised, intensely and unforgivingly, by those who are convinced it's too good to be true. Case in point: Julia Gillard. The NBN. Miley Cyrus. And Facebook, of course, which this week was pulled into yet another privacy scandal that should surprise absolutely nobody – and offer yet another reason why CSOs should be very, very careful when it comes to use of social media within their company's four walls.

David Braue | 30 Sep | Read more

The encryption quiz

The complexity of encryption schemes has been increased dramatically in an attempt to outpace the development of computational tools designed to crack them. Now it's important to devise algorithms that can't be brute forced for trillions of years in the hopes that they will remain secure long enough to be useful before they, too, are broken. Here's a quiz about encryption to see how well you are versed in one of security's most important components. Keep track of your score and check at the end to see how well you stack up.

Tim Greene and Jim Duffy | 29 Sep | Read more

Catching up with mobile security threats

Development of enterprise mobile apps has been moving more slowly than development of consumer-facing apps, according to Gartner. One main reason is IT leaders' concerns about the security of mobile devices, which are often employees' personal devices, and are vulnerable to being lost, hacked or stolen. While there are plenty of established tools and practices for keeping Web visitors from straying (or hacking) into sensitive corporate data, managing security across a diverse set of mobile devices remains a challenge, IT experts say.

Elisabeth Horwitt | 29 Sep | Read more

Competing for privacy in a social media world

For years, Facebook users have been clamoring for better privacy controls and clarity, while Facebook engineers oscillate between improvements and major privacy snafus. Every now and then a new wave of exasperated users cry out "That's it, I'm leaving". Up to now, users really didn't have anywhere to go after quitting, so they effectively quit the social media scene, self-ostracized (MySpace is equivalent to being exiled, perhaps worse). Now that they have somewhere else to go (Google+), Facebook is ramping up its privacy controls and seems to be taking privacy more seriously. Let the privacy competition begin!

Andreas M. Antonopoulos | 08 Sep | Read more

Risky workers

I thought we could examine a recent theme in a little more detail this month: the challenges of dealing with the <a href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/681822/just-say-yes-why-banning-consumer-devices-makes-your-organization-less-secure">consumerization of IT devices</a> in the workplace. We recently completed a study, in partnership with Symantec, that looked at the security and compliance risks of a mobile workforce. It affirmed what I've believed for a long time, namely, that there is a consensus that mobile workers pose a great risk and that, for the most part, businesses are not prepared to mitigate that risk.

Bob Bragdon | 31 Aug | Read more

Caution: Should You Share Your Location on Facebook?

Facebook recently rolled out a number of changes to the social networking site. One of the changes eliminates the <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/238708/facebook_revamps_locationsharing_feature_in_places.html">concept of Facebook Places</a>, but instead incorporates location-aware updates at virtually every level of Facebook. You might want to think twice, though, before <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/209709/facebook_deals_bring_customers_to_your_facebook_place.html">broadcasting your location</a> to the anonymous masses online.

Tony Bradley | 30 Aug | Read more

OPINION: Is Google being evil?

Recently, I contended that "Freedom and privacy, in any meaningful sense, are dead" and discussed the two types of privacy, "factual" privacy, which concerns "static" data such as your age and cholesterol level, and "lifestream" privacy which is the realtime data about things such as where you go and who you talk to.

Mark Gibbs | 24 Aug | Read more