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.
The year 2020 has served up some unprecedented challenges for the human race in every aspect, with wireless connectivity more important than ever. Particularly as millions continue to work and learn remotely, our connected world of devices, vehicles, homes and cities is expanding exponentially. According to a report from GSMA and ABI Research, the number of mobile subscriptions worldwide had already reached 8.1 billion by 2017 at an annual growth rate of 5.4 percent. It’s now predicted that by 2025 the number will increase to 9.8 billion, with 3G and 4G representing 51 percent of total subscriptions and 91 percent of the total traffic generated, while 5G subscriptions are expected to exceed 849 million.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it plans to evaluate technologies and systems that could detect and mitigate potential safety risks posed by unmanned aircraft. The effort will be part of the agency’s Airport Unmanned Aircraft Systems Detection and Mitigation Research Program.
SAI Global has released results from a business continuity benchmarking study. ‘Addressing the COVID-19 gap: How Business Continuity professionals can propel business forward’ provides the results of a pre-COVID survey and a March 2020 follow up.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently launched a webpage to promote the rebranded Tribal Emergency Communications Program, which supports direct consultation to tribes and Alaska Native communities to strengthen public safety communications.
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.
RSS
