Posts Tagged: "hacking"

Cyber crimes and data breaches have become far too widespread in the recent times. Technological progress has taken the risk to new levels, with newer techniques to exploit vulnerable organizations, corporations and governments being discovered every day… A considerable number of organizational respondents to the survey, approximately 32%, reported being affected by cyber crime. Nearly 34% felt that they would be affected within the next 2 years. While 61% of the top executives feared cyber attacks, only 37% of organizations claimed to have a cyber incident response plan in place. Obviously, this represents a significant disconnect between the level of fear and the level of preparedness in the industry.

Cybercrime seemed to be in the news daily in 2016. From the hack of the Democratic National Committee email accounts to the massive data breaches suffered by large technology companies, a major restaurant chain, and numerous government agencies, the news seemed inundated by a steady stream of high profile cybercrime. What is in store for 2017? Given the proliferation of electronic devices and data in our society, we can reasonably expect cases of cybercrime to continue to increase in number and complexity in the new year.

LinkedIn recently filed suit in the Northern District of California against Doe Defendants for allegedly “scraping” data about its users from its website through fake profiles and software bots. LinkedIn alleges that the data scraping that was performed using fake profiles and bots was in violation of its user agreement, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, among other things.

The FBI is not asking for a backdoor to the Apple iOS. Apple says that the FBI wants Apple to create a new version of the iOS that has a backdoor that allows bypassing security on the devices. If true, this is a preposterous request and it would be illegal, so I don’t believe it’s the case. A new OS would not allow the terrorist phone to be hacked. In fact, it would have no effect whatsoever on any existing phone that already had an older, secure OS. This is more likely a red herring that Apple is using to garner publicity and show that it is protecting customers from the big, bad government.

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Oracle has agreed to settle charges that it deceived consumers about the security provided by updates to its Java Platform, Standard Edition software (Java SE), which is installed on more than 850 million personal computers. The FTC will now publish a description of the consent agreement in the Federal Register. The agreement will be subject to public comment for 30 days, beginning yesterday and continuing through Jan. 20, 2016. Thereafter the Commission will decide whether to make the proposed consent order final, which is typically the outcome.

As card-present transactions become less susceptible to fraud because of the shift to EMV chip card technologies, it’s expected that more fraud will shift to online platforms where it’s still relatively easy to input fraudulent financial information without being noticed; some reports indicate that online retail fraud in the U.S. alone is expected to rise by 106 percent in three years after October’s EMV liability shift from banks to business owners. One way that businesses conducting sales online can get themselves ready to respond quickly to fraud is through effective planning prior to major sales events like Black Friday or, perhaps more important when thinking about e-commerce, Cyber Monday. If those workers handling fulfillment of online orders are more aware of expected sales projections, it will help them be more aware of clues that the business might be a target for fraud if actual sales figures differ wildly.

The same technology that makes it easy for you to stay in touch with the office also makes it easy for nefarious individuals to hack your communications and into our devices. Because office computers are generally connected to the same network if a hacker is able to gain access to one machine that shares the network connection they can potentially, and sometimes quite easily, gain access to all of the machines and information on the network. What this means is that computers on the same Wi-Fi network can potentially have access to any unencrypted information that pass through that network.

By the end of 2015, about 40% of all credit and debit card transactions will use EMV cards. To process payments on EMV cards, businesses must upgrade to new card processing or point-of-sale technologies.

Law firms are coming under growing scrutiny for a lack of effort in addressing hacking concerns or even coming clean with the threats which they have faced. A cybersecurity report released in February of this year by Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) lambasted law firms for being at high risk for cyber intrusions while the industry standard for cybersecurity remains much lower than for other industries. Law firms who deal with incredibly valuable intellectual properties should be acutely aware of the risks that they face from hackers, especially those from overseas. Patented technologies have been the target of international hackers in recent months. Just this May, the U.S. Justice Department charged six Chinese nationals with stealing IP related to wireless technologies developed by a couple of American companies.

The titans of the 19th Century made fortunes because they controlled access to the raw materials and infrastructure of commerce: steel, oil, lumber, railroads, canals, shipping. In contrast, the Third Industrial Revolution creates value not just from ideas that improve our ability to transform materials, but from information itself. This shift to intangible assets has been profound, but so swift that few have paid sufficient attention to the magnitude of the change. In the Information Age, your secrets – a new technology, a business plan, insights extracted from data analytics – define your competitive advantage. And because business is global, competition can emerge anywhere, anytime.