Lifeboat Foundation

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” »

Finally; it’s a start at least.

This week, the Federal government took the first steps toward implementation of the The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), enacted into law last December. CISA aims to encourage sharing of cyber threat indicators and defensive measures among private companies and between the private sector and the Federal government by providing liability protection for sharing such information in accordance with the Act. The DHS Federal Register notice was published this morning here.

As required by the Act, the government has released four pieces of guidance designed to assist companies and Federal agencies with respect to sharing, receiving and handling cyber threat information.

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Criminal’s favorite new tool for extortion.

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was the target of a ransomware extortion plot in which hackers seized control of the hospital’s computer systems and then demanded that directors pay in bitcoin to regain access, according to law enforcement sources.

Ransomware attacks on business data systems are becoming an increasingly common form of cyber crime. The assault on Hollywood Presbyterian computers occurred Feb. 5, when hackers prevented hospital staff from accessing patient information, according to law enforcement sources, who were not authorized to discuss the details of the investigation. The hackers then demanded an unspecified sum of computer currency.

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Exploring the new battlegrounds of war — a lesson from Ukraine and Russia.

Failure to respond to this blurring of lines will result in the current multilateral system and rules of war becoming gradually outdated. As geopolitical power shifts to emerging states and non-state actors, and strategic competition for regional spheres of influence returns, the aspirations which informed the UN Charter – of a world defined by universal values of democracy and rule of law – seem increasingly hollow. But what new principles and values should underlie the ways in which disputes are resolved? As the incentives for hybrid warfare grows inexorably wider and more complex, we either redraw the lines, or face a future of warfare where there is no distinct or real peace.

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Why it is important to think like a criminal when developing AI as well as Cyber Defense. Recently, I shared some insights on how AI could be used by Criminals (not just hackers) and making it extremely hard for the existing legal system to catch criminals. Robots (just like drones recently have been used) could be used in many ways by cartels, robbers & burglars, killers, and even worse. This is why we have to have solid cyber defense plus stop gaps in place for the legal system to diffuse dangers that could be implemented.

ThreatMetrix’s new report has come up with several new insights from the last quarter including the evolution of bot tactics to avoid the traditional defences of lenders and banks.

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A report published by the Internet Crime Complaint Centre, which is a partnership between the United States of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Centre, in 2010, revealed that Nigeria ranks third among the list of top 10 sources of cybercrime in the world.

This translates to 8 per cent, behind the United States’ 65 per cent and United Kingdom’s 9.9 per cent.

The publication also ranks Nigeria as the first in the African region as the target and origin of malicious cyber activities.

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Although this article highlights the robots used in the courts across India; robots in the courtroom has also been proposed in the US. So, if we ask ourselves “Can robots take over court cases and reduce the overloaded burden of the court system?” In some areas as a legal assistant, or paralegal to support the attorney/s; I would say yes.

However, taking over full ownership of a case. Well, that gets tricky in the US. For example, I am a client and I have a robot representing me. I lose my court case. So, can I claim misrepresentation under the current laws? You bet I can.

What do we need to do so that the laws enable robots the same level of recogonition/ equality as a human attorney has today? In order for this type of recogonition/ equality to exist; many laws on the books (state, county, city, and federal) will need to be reviewed, admendments proposed, and a vote done on all of them. Which will take a very very long time. Because the volume of laws in the city and county in some areas like NYC, Chicago, etc. is very extensive and expensive to taxpayers.

Continue reading “D A I J I W O R L D” »

In a major step forward for self-driving cars and the industry seeking to manufacture them, US highway authorities have informed Google that its autonomous vehicle systems could qualify as a “driver” in the eyes of the law.

A letter addressed to the company from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last week suggests that if self-driving vehicles (SDVs) can satisfy a number of safety standards, the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is controlling the car – in the absence of any human controls – would not be a barrier to the car legally driving on US roads.

“We agree with Google its SDV will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years,” writes chief counsel for the NHTSA, Paul A. Hemmersbaugh. “If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the ‘driver’ as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving. In this instance, an item of motor vehicle equipment, the [SDS Self-Driving System], is actually driving the vehicle.”

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