Brian Harrell, appointed by the President of the United States in December 2018 to serve as the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, resigned his post last week and is headed to the private sector.
Let’s face it, passwords are a pain. As we’ve been pushed towards using longer and ever more complex passwords, and told to update them with increasing frequency, password management has become something of a headache. We’ve gone from simple, easy to remember passwords to 12- or 16-character passwords that must contain a mixture of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.
According to IDC, by 2025 there will be 41.6 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices, generating a massive 79 zettabytes (ZB) of data. To put that into perspective, in 2006, IDC estimated that the total amount of electronic data created and stored was a mere 0.18 ZB. This growing amount of data represents a vast and exponentially increasing attack surface, which poses a huge opportunity for cybercriminals and a seemingly insurmountable task for those responsible for protecting and securing it. This task is only made more difficult by the lack of regulation and security measures being built into IoT devices at present. As IoT looks to become a foundational aspect of our everyday lives, it’s vital we, as consumers, understand the threats posed to our devices and the data they store.
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed how 3 agencies—the Federal Aviation Administration, Indian Health Service, and the Small Business Administration—used cybersecurity tools that identify the hardware and software on their networks and check for vulnerabilities and insecure configurations.
IBM, the owner of the Weather Channel mobile app, has reached a settlement with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office after a 2019 lawsuit alleged that the app was deceiving its users in how it was using their geolocation data.
The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) held its summer meeting virtually to discuss Election Day preparations and other areas of coordination between the federal government and state and local election officials.
CyVision Technologies, Inc. announced that Paul Goldenberg, chairman and president of Cardinal Point Strategies, and John “Jack” Donohue, Cardinal Point’s senior advisor–national security, have been appointed to serve on its board of advisors. In their advisory role these two renown cyber and homeland security experts will offer strategic and tactical guidance in understanding and navigating critical cybersecurity issues facing the public sector organizations, institutions and private sector businesses.
As many employees transfer back to a more traditional business setting from remote work environments, adjustments to cybersecurity protocols are going to be necessary. Organizations will need to evaluate any temporary provisions that were put into place during the COVID-19 pandemic, including any shortcuts that were taken and processes that were circumvented, and whether such protocols should be reversed or enhanced.
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