Lifeboat Foundation

A very bad and at times dangerous trend:

Hackers for hire; very lucrative new consulting business for out of work tech specialists.

As hackers switch to malware-as-a-service model to make their malicious tools and services available to general public, security firms struggle to find a way to catch the bad guys.

Continue reading “When Malware Becomes a Service, Anyone Can Be a Hacker” »

Key UK Hackers profiled like rock stars.

CYBER villains have got Brit cops right where they want them.

Ireland has real opportunity to benefit from increased global investment and establish itself as a world-class hub for cyber security practices, solutions and investment, according to a new report from Deloitte. Conducted in association with the International Sustainability and Investment Centre, the report found that Ireland has proven itself to be an innovative centre for technology and has the potential to become a world leader in cyber security.

Respondents to a survey for this report identified increased regulation on data privacy (73%), more sophisticated scamming and phishing (59%), and growth in identity theft (53%) as the major trends in the cyber area over the next five years. This will force businesses to change how they organise and manage their data security.

More than one third (36%) of respondents believe there will a trend towards outsourcing cyber management to third party organisations, and 27 percent think that businesses will establish global/regional centres of excellence for managing this function. The implication of this will be that a small number of locations will be preferred for basing these centres of excellence.

Continue reading “Ireland can become global cyber security hub — study” »

Law Firms are prime targets for hackers.

Law firms are considered by many hackers to be soft targets with a wealth of valuable information. Data from social security numbers, credit cards, and client confidences is enough to make the criminal mind salivate with malicious intent. Between 31–45% and 10–20% of firms have been infected by spyware or experienced security breaches respectively. But what can a private practitioner or law firm do to prevent these trespasses on their networks?

Continue reading “Cyber Security: How to Protect Your Firm and its Clients” »

I wish the CA AG a lot of luck; however, her approach is very questionable when you think about downstream access and feed type scenarios. Example, Business in Boston MA has an agreement with a cloud host company in CA, and Boston also has data that it pulls in from Italy, DE, etc. plus has a service that it offers to all of users and partners in the US and Europe that is hosted in CA.

How is the CA AG going to impose a policy on Boston? It can’t; in fact the business in Boston will change providers and choose to use someone in another state that will not impact their costs and business.

BTW — I didn’t even mention the whole recent announcement from China on deploying out a fully Quantum “secured” infrastructure. If this is true; everyone is exposed and this means there is no way companies can be held accountable because US didn’t have access to the more advance Quantum infrastructure technology.

Continue reading “Calif.‘s Harris Outlines ‘Reasonable’Data Security” »

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has broken with other Silicon Valley giants by backing the FBI in its battle with Apple over hacking into a locked iPhone as part of the investigation into last December’s San Bernardino terror attack.

In an interview with the Financial Times published Tuesday, Gates said a court order requiring Apple to help the FBI access a work phone belonging to gunman Syed Farook was” a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case.”

Gates went on to compare the FBI’s request to accessing bank and telephone records. However, he added that the government must be subject to rules about when it can access such information.

Continue reading “Microsoft founder Gates backs FBI in encryption fight with Apple” »

Very concerning news for the US security; we’ll see how the US responds. Remember, our largest hackers in the US is China; so we’ll need to determine what this means as well as how vulnerable we are.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/969692.shtml

China’s stock markets have been stabilizing in recent days after the rollercoaster ride at the start of the year. And one bright point has been stocks related to quantum communications, showing renewed investor interest in the new technology, which will play an important role in creating a safety net for the increasingly information technology-savvy economy.

Continue reading “China’s newest tech can offer quantum of security” »

FBI not able to hack a phone is really starting to make them look really bad. Granted Apple has created a more advance encryption format on their phones; however, FBI is supposed to be a lot more advance than this.

Why would you want your smart phone encrypted? To protect the information on it should it get lost or stolen, and to ensure no one has tampered with your data.

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Rep. David Lifferth, R-Eagle Mountain, has introduced legislation to increase punishment for those who engage in Internet crimes. HB225, Cybercrime Amendments, specifically targets crimes known as “doxing” and “swatting.” The bill has been assigned to be heard by a House committee.

Doxing is the act of releasing personal information about a person publicly online. Oftentimes, these releases are accompanied by intimidating threats toward the targets of doxing. Releasing personal information online while encouraging others to commit crimes against the victim is understandably dangerous. However, issues have been raised concerning First Amendment rights.

Originally, HB225 included criminal charges against those who release personal information with the intent to “annoy, offend, and frighten.” Lifferth is removing these phrases particularly as they don’t necessarily indicate malicious intent. Critics have expressed that HB225 would be a violation of freedom of speech.

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