The US Congress  decided to repeal an Internet privacy regulation passed under the Obama administration. For many, this is unsettling news. Trump has already initialed the controversial repeal, which allows Internet providers to store and sell users’ browsing histories. The previous regulation, however, required these companies to obtain permission fr

Sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking that the incessant overuse of the word ‘disruptive’ these days could do with some, well, disrupting of its own. So much is written, presented and marketed around apparently ‘disruptive’ use of technologies like AI, IoT and of course blockchain, when much of it could perhaps be better described as foundation innova

Data privacy is a concern for many Americans, but the U.S. Senate is on its way to putting your data at even higher risk of privacy issues. Current laws have broadband privacy rules in place that require Internet Service Providers to receive explicit consent from consumers before they can share or sell private information, such as web browsing data, to adver

A specialty practice in Texas has notified more than 200,000 patients of a ransomware attack that might have exposed their personal information.On 24 March, Urology Austin sent out notification letters to 279,663 patients informing them of an incident that occurred back in January. As quoted by DataBreaches.net:“On January 22, 2017, Urology Austin was

On March 1, Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s Chief Executive Office, gave up millions of dollars. As she noted in a blog post on Tumblr, “I am the CEO of the company [Yahoo!] and since this incident happened during my tenure, I have agreed to forgo my annual bonus and my annual equity grant.” All in, Mayer gave up upwards of 2 million in cash bonuses and millions mor

Many IT decision makers look at assets as hardware, but really they should consider why they have the hardware in the first place.These decision makers remember the very significant investments they made in servers, PCs, firewalls, and so on in order to deploy that new CRM or Electronic Medical Records System. They think of the tens of thousands of dollars t

The Pennsylvania State Democratic Caucus has taken its computer systems temporarily offline following a ransomware attack.According to PennLive, the caucus discovered the attack early in the morning on 3 March. Offices remained open throughout the day. Even so, members and employees alike couldn’t access systems or data because the ransomware had sprea

If the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the EU’s data protection harmonisation project, was to become Hollywood movie, its genre would most likely be horror.Focus on the regulation over the past twelve months has been mostly aimed toward its penalties, with scare stories in no short supply. The GDPR has been called many things; visionary, giv

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has confirmed a data breach affected customers’ payment cards at 12 of its locations.On 3 February, IHG announced that it launched an investigation back on 28 December 2016 after receiving a report of unauthorized charges placed on customers’ credit cards. The Denham-based company, which owns 5,000 hotels that

Law enforcement used an Ohio homeowner’s pacemaker data to arrest and charge him with insurance fraud and arson.On 19 September 2016, residents of the area around Court Donegal in Middletown, Ohio woke up to the sound of a “loud explosion.” One of the residents, Mike Huff, said his dogs began barking at 6:30 a.m. When he looked outside, he

My boyfriend works a demanding day job at a major Canadian big box furniture and appliance retailing chain. Knowing that I write about information security for a living, he had an interesting story to tell me:“An LG Smart TV was returned to us by the customer, and it had their credit card credentials in it! Why didn’t they do a factory reset firs

A fired IT employee demanded his former employer pay him 200,000 USD in exchange for the return of its sensitive information.Triano Williams hired attorney Calvita J. Frederick to represent him in a dispute involving the American College of Education, an Indianapolis-based online provider of Master’s and Doctorate degrees in teaching at which he previo

Vacuums, refrigerators and thermostats – OH MY! Take a stroll through the homewares section of your favorite store and you are likely to find that nearly all home appliances lighting, and thermostats have a “smart” model or feature. Such is the reality of the Internet of Things (IoT).With two IT professionals in our household, we run it a bit differently tha

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again – for cyber-criminals and all manner of online miscreants, that is. Whilst next-gen malware samples may be finding new and inventive ways of delivering their payloads, the tried and tested phishing scam isn’t going anywhere just yet. Especially during this distracting and emotive season when even the most vigil

The current digital economy revolves around data. Giving up our data is the price we pay for signing up for free internet services, as the companies who provide these services use this personal information in order to fine-tune ads paid for by their true clients: advertisers. Data is the Internet’s oil. Unlike this limited fossil fuel, however, data is incr