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Ring has launched a technical preview of video end-to-end encryption to bolster the security of home video feeds. This week, the Amazon-owned smart doorbell maker said the feature is currently being rolled out to customers in order to elicit feedback, and if it proves to be successful, end-to-end video encryption could eventually be offered to users that want to add an "additional layer of security to their videos" as an opt-in feature.
The United Nations has suffered a data breach, exposing 100,000 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) private staff records, stemming from exposed Git directories and credentials. The data breach was uncovered by researchers who were examining the administrator’s database credentials through the Git directory. The private data that was uncovered included travel records and human resources demographics like nationality, gender, pay grade.
If the use of cloud computing continues to grow in tandem with remote working, organizations will have to continue to develop and build their cloud strategies to keep pace. There is a basic assumption here that most organizations will in fact have a cloud strategy in place. However, many companies were caught off guard by the number of people forced to work remotely so it seems clear that cloud strategies are not keeping up. This is a source of peril.
A new report finds cost, speed, and security are reasons for private and hybrid cloud increase, and public cloud adoption rates are dropping. Eighty-six percent of financial services respondents said hybrid cloud is the ideal IT operating model for their organization, according to a newly-released study by cloud provider Nutanix. But as they evolve their infrastructures to get there many in the financial services sector are running more applications in private cloud than other industries polled.
It is impossible to escape from data breaches today, so why not strengthen cybersecurity through simple action plans? Data is an important asset to any organization, which is why it is an important area of concern for every C-suite leader and a primary target of cybersecurity attacks by criminals. In recent years, both large and small organizations have been affected by data breaches. With predictions that ransomware attacks, cloud data breaches, attacks on endpoint devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), to continue to rise in 2021 and beyond, protecting data has been a chief priority for enterprises.
Data is shaping a new culture, bringing about a new way of doing business, a new way of decision making, new applications and infrastructure, and is an enabler for the transition to AI. Data is the focal point of our coverage on Big on Data, so following up on fellow columnists Andrew Brust and Tony Baer's predictions, here's our own round of things to keep an eye on in the 2020s.
Cybersecurity may not have been seen as a priority in 2020, with many grappling with the health, economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the nation has been distracted, cybercriminals have continued unabated and have seized the opportunity that the pandemic presented them with, targeting everything from government bodies to healthcare providers.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has published guidelines instructing government agencies and suppliers involved in defense and national security on how to update obsolete encryption protocols. Published on January 5, the recommendations (PDF) advise system administrators on how to detect and “replace unauthorized or deprecated TLS protocols with ones that meet current standards”, the agency said in a press release.
Telehealth (virtual care) usage has skyrocketed during the pandemic. When you roll back the tape a few months, healthcare providers were able to (very quickly) stand up virtual care capabilities without having to go through the intensive HIPAA compliance protocols required in the healthcare industry. Some healthcare providers have been able to tap nontraditional technologies such as Apple's FaceTime as a stopgap measure for virtual care. The accelerated innovation in delivering virtual care to the population was and is a good thing, but when speed takes precedence over security, there will be inevitable challenges. In fact, virtual care platforms have been susceptible to cyberattacks, with evidence indicating attacks on such platforms increased by 30% this year.
Top performing enterprises are accelerating digital innovation and leveraging emerging technologies to come out stronger on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has arguably been the most significant “turn” in 2020, according to Gartner's annual global survey of CIOs. In response, the report adds, 2021 will be a race to digital with the spoils going to those organizations that can maintain the momentum built up during their response to the pandemic.
Quantum computing has been a far-off dream for decades. Now that quantum computers are coming closer to reality users should be thinking hard about the security of their data.
2020 provided a glimpse of just how much AI is beginning to penetrate everyday life. It seems likely that in the next few years we’ll regularly (and unknowingly) see AI-generated text in our social media feeds, advertisements, and news outlets. The implications of AI being used in the real world raise important questions about the ethical use of AI as well. So as we look forward to 2021, it is worth taking a moment to look back at the biggest stories in AI over the past year.
According to a new FedRAMP study conducted by Maximus and Genesys, about half of all U.S. state, local, and federal governments either have some or most systems and solutions in the cloud. This information comes from the FedRAMP Survey Results Report, which detailed the results of a survey that interviewed 300 IT decision-makers at state, local, and federal government offices. The report found that governments in the United States, especially in bigger cities, are increasing their cloud adoption especially following the initial COVID-19 outbreak.
Paying attention to data privacy and security is no longer optional. This year alone has witnessed several landmark data protection and privacy events, including record-breaking fines for HIPAA violations, the handing down of the Schrems II ruling from the European Court of Justice, and the start of enforcement of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA). EU data protection authorities levied multi-million Euro fines on companies for GDPR violations, in spite of the battle against Covid-19. Here are some of the most significant data privacy trends and milestones that we’ve observed across the world throughout 2020.
We have witnessed how the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation priorities to mobilize workforces, facilitate collaboration, and ensure business continuity. In combating challenges that accompany new priorities, IT departments across the globe are continuing their search for the right solutions. Cloud computing has been the CIOs best friend in 2020, and as we move into the new year the emphasis on resilience, continuity and responsiveness in cloud investments will not disappear.
A 2018 Couchbase survey found the majority of CIOs believed those companies that did not keep up with digital innovation would last less than four years before going out of business or being bought by a competitor — caused by a downward spiral of declining customer experience, loss of customers and a fall in revenue and resources. The impact of digital transformation is huge, which can make it seem like an insurmountable challenge. Instead of refusing to face the reality of digital transformation, knowing these five myths will help you face it with more success.
In November's elections, Californians voted in favor of Proposition 24, which effectively expands the state's data privacy legislation with a new set of rules. At a broad level, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) will succeed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on January 1, 2023. In the coming months, the California legislature will iron out the details about the CPRA. However, the major changes between the CCPA and CPRA have already crystallized.
A number of digital transformation trends have become established as we enter the new year. It is clear, for example, that many people will continue to work from home for the foreseeable future, and that a large portion of them will probably work remotely on a permanent basis. It has also become clear that enterprises that failed to invest in digital transformation are facing significant competitive challenges in 2021.
An ever-growing number of enterprises plan to or are already exploring the seemingly boundless potential offered by the cloud. Yet this segment of digital transformation remains something of an open frontier waiting to be settled. There is no question that cloud adoption continues to build momentum as organizations consider how they might best benefit from migrating part or all their compute needs -- there is still plenty of room for expansion on this front.
South Country Health Alliance ("SCHA") has become aware of a data security incident that may have involved the personal information of some SCHA community members. SCHA has sent notification about this incident to potentially impacted individuals and has provided resources to assist them.
ROMWE recently discovered customer user names and passwords on the "dark web." In an abundance of caution, ROMWE has taken steps to notify all potentially affected individuals and to provide resources to assist them.
Trends that emerged in 2020, along with some new predictions, will have a huge impact on 2021 as these technologies continue to evolve and deploy even more quickly. Adoption of emerging tech will be even faster next year and securing data in these environments must finally move to the top of the priority list because more depends on security than ever before.
The global VPN market was valued at $25.41 Billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $75.59 Billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 14.7% from 2020 to 2027, Valuates Reports reveals. Major factors driving the growth of VPN market size are increase in data security concerns, rise in advanced and complex cyber threats, and an upsurge in usage of mobile and wireless devices within organizations.
In our daily discourse, we have conveniently coined anything change-related as digital transformation. As we happily turn the page on 2020, companies are thinking about how to leverage digital transformation in 2021 and beyond. Digital transformation has been described as the conversion from everything that was analog to digital. Thought of more broadly, digital transformation is the accelerated adoption of an ecosystem of technologies that connect the human race.
A brief look into the history of data privacy will quickly and clearly reveal how the concepts of privacy and security collided over a decade ago when the U.S. attempted (and failed) to pass the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2009. Interestingly, privacy and security are often spoken about as two disparate subjects, rather than a fusion of disciplines and capabilities that ensure data is protected from unauthorized use and access.
As the use of cloud services continues to grow, enterprise architects and infrastructure & operations (I&O) leaders should use seven key elements to create a pragmatic cloud strategy for their organizations, according to Gartner. Amid that reality, Gartner analysts shared seven key elements for organizations looking to create a comprehensive cloud strategy in 2021 during the Gartner IT Infrastructure Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2020, held virtually December 7-10, 2020.
Some have suggested that the best way to defend our elections is to strengthen cybersecurity. While doing so is important, the recent presidential election was the most secure in U.S. history. In practice, many of the most serious dangers to democracy stem from, or are worsened by, social media and online political advertising — no breaches or hacks necessary.
Consumers in Brazil are mostly unaware of the country's data protection rules and fail to question companies' personal data management practices, a new study has found. The survey carried out by Brazilian credit intelligence company Boa Vista with over 500 consumers between August and September 2020 suggests that over 70% of those polled do not know what the General Data Protection Regulations are.
Organizational growth comes increased risk for cyberattacks. But it can be challenging to ensure security policies and programs don’t end up siloed between disparate departments, factories, warehouses, and management regimes—especially for large companies spread across international borders and harnessing complex supply chains and go-to-market motions. This contributes to a diverse threat landscape and creates gaps that can be discovered and exploited by skilled cybercriminals.
Modern cryptography is embedded in countless digital systems and components. It's an essential tool for keeping data secure and private. Yet one of the biggest limitations with cryptography, including widely used public key encryption (PKE), is having to decrypt sensitive data in order to process and analyze it.
If 2019 was an opportunity for privacy advocates to push for preparation ahead of looming data protection deadlines, then 2020 was the year organizations were expected to prove themselves ready. But while many may have felt relatively comfortable with the state of progress by the time the July 1 enforcement deadline for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) rolled around, what came just two weeks later was “stunning and completely unexpected,” said Lisa Sotto, head of the global privacy and cybersecurity practice at Hunton Andrews Kurth.
With the rollout of coronavirus vaccines, experts say the collection of names, addresses, birth dates and other information will be vital to tracking the safety and effectiveness of products that were developed in record time. But there are concerns that the plan to collect such data could stop some of those most vulnerable to the coronavirus, including essential workers who are in the country illegally, from lining up for vaccination.
Modern cryptography is embedded in countless digital systems and components. It's an essential tool for keeping data secure and private. Yet one of the biggest limitations with cryptography, including widely used public key encryption (PKE), is having to decrypt sensitive data in order to process and analyze it.
The US is long overdue for a comprehensive federal data privacy protection law, and 2021 might finally be the year we see one. Proliferating state and international data protection laws of the last few years have created a complex regulatory patchwork for multinational companies to navigate. Industry groups who years ago balked at the prospect of regulating the data economy are now calling for rationalization and clarity, and might finally provide the necessary political will.
European data protection authorities (DPAs) need to speed up their investigative and decision-making processes before regulators lose patience and find legal means to mete out penalties under national laws instead of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). DPAs also need to be more aligned in the way they enforce the single market’s strict rules on privacy, particularly regarding fines and corrective actions, say experts looking ahead to 2021.
Documents that detail the development of the original Nintendo Switch have reportedly been leaked online. These documents, which have reportedly emerged on 4Chan, allegedly not only detail plans for the console's design but also include private keys that relate to the console's security.
The global cyber insurance market is projected to grow by 21% next year, reaching $9.5bn in value, according to new data by insurance firm Finaria.it. This is as a result of greater recognition of the increasing cyber-threat landscape, exacerbated by the shift to remote working this year. Finaria added that the cyber insurance market is expected to reach $20.4bn by 2025, as more organizations look to protect themselves from malicious actors.
A security firm has gone public with claims that it cracked the encryption used by messaging app Signal, which is famed for the level of privacy afforded to its users. According to a blog post published by Israeli company Cellebrite, “decrypting messages and attachments sent with Signal has been all but impossible – until now.” The firm goes on to set out the method by which it was allegedly able to decrypt messages sent using the Signal app for Android. No mention was made of the iOS version.
The U.S. government has urged domestic businesses not to invest in Chinese IT kit or data services over fears companies there will be coerced by the Communist Party into enabling cyber-espionage. The business advisory from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) clarified what many have known for some time: that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is on a mission to become self-sufficient in technology and a global tech superpower over the coming decades. A key part of this strategy is to steal intellectual property from foreign firms and governments. The same tactic is used to enhance the PRC’s military capabilities, the advisory noted.
There are more companies participating, with more interest, more forecasts, and bolder statements about future cybersecurity directions and our coming online life after the pandemic recedes. Little did we know that a cyber pandemic would be the top year-end summary story for 2020, which would include ransomware, data breaches, health-care attacks impacting patients and now the SolarWinds data breach.
Email addresses belonging to hundreds of thousands of users of a cryptocurrency wallet have been leaked online. An unknown threat actor has managed to acquire email addresses of 1,075,382 individuals that subscribe to the Ledger newsletter, in addition to the names and addresses of 272,853 people that have purchased a Ledger device. Both sets of information were subsequently posted online, being shared freely on Raidforums.
BigID, the leader in data discovery and intelligence for privacy, protection and perspective, today announced a partnership with Okera, which provides secure data access at scale, to align identifying data, defining and enforcing data access policies, and data anonymization for joint customers. Together, BigID and Okera empower customers to secure sensitive data in data lakes to drive visibility and security across their data ecosystem. With this partnership, joint customers can automate discovery and policy enforcement, dramatically reducing manual resources while improving response times.
Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, released the statement after the committee’s staff was briefed by the Treasury Department and the IRS about the hack of the IT company SolarWinds. The Oregon senator said the IRS reported “no evidence that IRS was compromised or taxpayer data was affected,” but he added, “The hack of the Treasury Department appears to be significant.”
Wedbush's Dan Ives was already anticipating an acceleration of cybersecurity spending for 2021 as more governments and businesses work from home and adopt cloud technology. While the overall sector will see a lift, names specifically in advanced threat detection, zero trust architecture, data security, and identity security will see a near-term surge of budget allocation based on the nature of the SolarWinds hack, said Ives.
For data-security and privacy professionals, the lesson of 2020 is that data security is no longer just about the confidentiality of data—the 'C' in the CIA triad—integrity and availability are increasingly under attack as well. Because of that, customers and citizens are paying more attention to privacy and data security issues, said Heidi Shey, principal analyst of security and risk at Forrester Research, a business intelligence firm.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced organizations across the world to reassess their digital transformation strategies, but it didn’t stifle innovation, nor force businesses to reduce spending. This is according to a new report from Couchbase, which claims that more than three quarters (77 percent) of organizations were forced to make significant changes to their digital transformation plans. In some cases, they had to start all over again. But the rate of innovation almost doubled during the pandemic, rising from eight percent last year, to 14 percent this year. Average digital transformation spend, meanwhile, grew from $27 million to $27.5 million this year.
As the fall semester began at the University of Nevada, Reno, psychology professor Mark Lescroart faced an increasingly common dilemma for teachers: How to prevent his newly remote students from cheating on the quizzes and exams he’d designed to be taken in class with supervision. One possible solution his university provided was Proctorio, an online proctoring service that uses machine learning. But Lescroart didn’t like the prospect of third-party software recording and analyzing his students in their homes. Ultimately, he decided that violating their privacy was worse than leaving a potential cheater uncaught.
IBM has launched a new solution that could potentially allow data to remain encrypted even as it is being processed by cloud computing applications or in third-party environments. The new IBM Security Homomorphic Encryption Services could enable businesses to embrace cloud solutions on a greater scale without exposing themselves to more security risks.
Artificial intelligence has been a sector to watch during the pandemic. The enterprise has been seeking new routes to efficiency, organizations with an abundance of furloughed or fired workers have bandwidth crunches, and some companies may have used the hardships of the past year to clean house with the intent of hiring fresh using new technology-driven strategies.
Data privacy trends in the US in light of this year’s election and other recent events were discussed by a panel during the FTI Consulting webinar The New Privacy Landscape: California’s New Law and Prospects for Federal Action. The significance of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), passed last month to expand the existing California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was firstly highlighted by the panel.
Trust in the U.S. government has steadily declined over the last four decades, hitting an all-time low in recent years, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, which found that 83% of Americans don’t trust the government to do what’s right. Mistrust in the government also increasingly applies to privacy, with another Pew Research study finding that about half of Americans don’t trust the government or social media platforms to protect their data.
IBM has launched a fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) test service for the enterprise in the first step to bringing in-transit encrypted data analysis into the commercial sector. IBM said on Thursday that the new FHE solution, IBM Security Homomorphic Encryption Services, will allow clients to start experimenting with how the technology could be implemented to enhance the privacy of their existing IT architecture, products, and data.
Data protection and privacy startup BigID Inc. announced today that it has raised $70 million in new funding to deliver new applications for using data for data privacy, security and governance. The Series D round was led by Salesforce Ventures and Tiger Global and included Glynn Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and Boldstart Ventures. The round was raised on a valuation of more than $1 billion, giving BigID unicorn status for the first time. Including the new funding, BigID has raised $216 million to date.
The last few years have seen the tech industry take increasing measures toward reducing and improving its environmental impact in ways big and small. But, in many ways, the most significant product that large tech companies can make greener is their own operations. The Climate Pledge, which aims to achieve net-zero carbon across its businesses by 2040, has now attracted 31 signatories, including household names across and beyond tech such as Best Buy, Verizon, Uber, JetBlue, Mercedes-Benz, and Unilever.
Biometrics are among the most personal forms of information requiring the strictest protections. Ironically, biometrics are increasingly being used as a primary or secondary authentication mechanism to protect access to other sensitive information. Regulators are taking notice.
Facebook is to follow Google’s lead and move millions of UK users out of the jurisdiction of EU privacy laws to the US (which has no such comprehensive data protection framework) next year under a looming Brexit-related change to its T&Cs, Reuters reported yesterday.
Facebook on Wednesday ran ads, published a new website and ran a blog post outlining its arguments opposing Apple over a privacy change that it claims “threatens the personalized ads that millions of small businesses rely on to find and reach customers.” Facebook, in its blog post, argued that Apple’s new tracking rules are “about profit, not privacy,” and said it believes Apple is behaving anticompetitively by using control of the App Store in a way that benefits its bottom line at the expense of developers and small businesses.
Many businesses have embraced cloud computing to allow staff access to new applications and services faster than would be possible if they were building from scratch themselves. While this has helped push forward the digital transformation agenda of many organisations, some feel they are still held back – by legacy systems that are long past their use-by date.
Spotify has been forced to issue a password reset for users after admitting that their information was exposed to some of the firm’s third-party business partners. The music streaming giant said in a customer data breach notification sent to the California attorney general that the privacy snafu was only discovered and fixed after seven months.
The Federal Trade Commission is stepping up its digital privacy work and has asked just about every major social media platform you can think of to explain what personal data it collects from users and why. The requests for information went out today to nine platforms (or their parent companies, where applicable), including Discord, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube, according to the press release.
Two-and-a-half-years after going into effect, the European Union’s new privacy law has its first fine for a U.S. tech company in a cross-border case—an overdue development, critics say. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said on Tuesday that it is fining Twitter €450,000, equivalent to about $546,000, for failing to document or properly notify the regulator within 72 hours of learning of a data breach disclosed in January 2019 that exposed some users’ private tweets.
Many businesses have embraced cloud computing to allow staff access to new applications and services faster than would be possible if they were building from scratch themselves. While this has helped push forward the digital transformation agenda of many organisations, some feel they are still held back – by legacy systems that are long past their use-by date.
The Council of the European Union, the body which represents individual EU Member States’ governments, has adopted a resolution on encryption — calling for what they dub “security through encryption and security despite encryption”. “Competent authorities must be able to access data in a lawful and targeted manner, in full respect of fundamental rights and the relevant data protection laws, while upholding cybersecurity,” the Council writes.
If you build a hybrid cloud using infrastructure in colocation data centers, the most obvious use cases for it center on basic IaaS services, like compute and storage. Those hybrid cloud services are certainly important, enabling you to burst capacity temporarily, for example, or fail over to the cloud. But to get the most out of a hybrid cloud -- especially one that takes advantage of colocation -- it may be useful to think beyond simple virtual machines and object storage services.
Forty-eight percent of US consumers said they plan to shift to online shopping this holiday season, according to a recent McKinsey study on consumer behaviors amidst the ongoing pandemic. A trend toward contactless, digital-first experiences is further illustrated by 73% of US shoppers saying they’ve tried a new shopping behavior this year, with 80% saying they intend to continue the new behavior.
TechRepublic's Karen Roby spoke with David Crandall, assistant professor of computer science at Indiana University about artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and the effects of the pandemic on higher education.
A new report from hybrid infrastructure solutions provider INAP shows that 54 percent of tech leaders say the pandemic has motivated their organization to move applications and workloads off-premise. The survey of 500 IT infrastructure managers and senior technology leaders reveals that 53 percent say that their organizations are migrating to colocation and hyperscale public cloud environments, with 50 percent also turning to hosted private cloud solutions.
UK businesses are “ahead of the curve” when it comes to the adoption of hybrid cloud, a new report from Nutanix states. The cloud company recently released its third global Enterprise Cloud Index, based on a poll of 3,400 IT decision-makers around the world. In the report, Nutanix argues that UK businesses are faring better in terms of cloud adoption, compared to the rest of Europe.
At Skyflow, our focus is on radically simplifying how companies manage, access and govern sensitive customer data. In the last 12 months, we have seen the emergence of a new category: the data privacy vault with Skyflow as its flag bearer. Today, we are happy to announce a big step forward in our ability to achieve our vision: our $17.5 million Series A, led by Canvas Ventures. With the $7.5M seed led by Foundation Capital announced in May, that brings our total raise to $25 million.
Regulation surrounding artificial intelligence technologies will likely have a growing impact on how companies store, secure, and share data in the years ahead. The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly facial recognition, by law enforcement authorities, have received a lot of attention. Still, the US is just at the beginning of what will likely be a surge in federal and state legislation regarding what companies can and cannot do regarding algorithmically derived information.
The importance of data privacy and fraud detection extends well beyond protection from hacking; they’re the cornerstones of the modern web and cloud-based services. Simply put, technologists of all disciplines know that consumers aren’t likely to engage with websites and services that are either prone to hacking or suspicious in some other way.
Companies hoping the EU and the new U.S. administration will soon strike a new transatlantic data transfer pact to replace one struck down by a court will probably have to wait months for any result, the head of the EU privacy watchdog said on Friday. Washington and Brussels have in recent years seen their data transfer accords, one known as the Safe Harbour and its successor the Privacy Shield, rejected by Europe’s top court because of concerns about U.S. surveillance.
Technology is increasingly critical as companies shift to more responsible and sustainable practices. Here's how CIOs can lead the charge on sustainable cloud migration.
The cloud leader confirmed that two new services introduced Tuesday at re:Invent can be used to manage applications on Microsoft and Google's cloud services.
Customers and employees today are increasingly concerned about their privacy, how their personal information is collected, who controls that data and how it will be used. The chief privacy officer, or CPO, plays a central role as an advocate for both customers and employees, ensuring a company respects privacy and is in compliance with regulations.
Security has slowly embraced adoption of the cloud, but cloud security native tools are still not good enough.In a roundtable discussion on exploring the cybersecurity threats faced by CISOs in enterprise and hybrid cloud environments, the subject of cloud security was outlined with regards to what is being done well, and what is being done badly.
Digital transformation isn’t going anywhere. Not now, not soon, and likely not ever. It's as close to an infinite concept as you’ll find in the conjoined worlds of business and technology. To call it a trend or attempt to pinpoint its place in the context of a maturity cycle is to miss the point.
New privacy laws will come into force across New Zealand tomorrow (December 1) as authorities tighten rules regarding data protection. The Privacy Act 2020 will mandate that organizations must report “serious” data breaches immediately if there is a “risk of harm.” The term “risk of harm” isn’t specifically defined in the Act, however it is assumed to refer to any data that has been leaked outside of an organization or public body.
Companies are still in the early stages of understanding, adopting and implementing data privacy requirements and programs that support their company security practices and culture. Building the right foundation to highly secure and protect your company includes several fundamentals that are critical to supporting the infrastructure from the ground up. The foundation should be built upon the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) privacy framework.
During the Westminster eForum of data protection, industry experts discussed how a successful fight against the coronavirus is rooted in trust in data. In the COVID-19 era, citizens are being asked to accept greater intrusions into their lives to track and isolate the virus. The risk is that some of those intrusions might become permanent while we are distracted by catastrophe.
IDC predicts that the edge computing market worldwide will grow to $250.6 billion by 2024. Dave McCarthy, the firm's research director of edge strategies, thinks edge products and services will power the next wave of digital transformation. Companies will need to think about how to build out edge capacity with new infrastructure and services. Industry experts predict that companies will start to incorporate edge computing capabilities into the software deployment pipeline and use this infrastructure to support personalized content and streaming services.
It’s no longer viable to simply secure the perimeter of the network or the hardware itself to prevent a data breach. The data also needs to be secured at the application layer. This means that the data should be encrypted by the application and only that application will have access to the encryption key. The only avenue for an attacker to access encrypted data in any meaningful way would be through the functionality exposed by the application itself – something that can be easily audited for authorization and access control issues.
A recent report released by the United Nations found that 132 out of 194 countries have now introduced data protection regulations of some kind, all varying in terms of what type of information they protect and the severity of their restrictions. These regulations are being crafted in a world where consumers and businesses are now conducting a large number of their daily tasks and transactions virtually.
The EU appears to be laying the groundwork for a move against data that has received end-to-end encryption after a spate of terrorist attacks in Paris, Vienna and Nice. In a joint statement released earlier this month, home affairs ministers from EU member states called on heads of state to “consider the matter of data encryption so that digital evidence can be lawfully collected and used by the competent authorities.”
Can a balance be struck between the privacy of citizens and allowing health officials to access any piece of information for helping to track down a cluster of coronavirus cases? The way to suppress a surge in cases is to make sure those with the virus can have their recent close contacts traced, thereby getting those identified into quarantine and tested. This is in the hopes that the virus can be prevented from spreading further into the community. Key to all of this is having quick access to data.
The Central Intelligence Agency has awarded its long-awaited Commercial Cloud Enterprise, or C2E, contract to five companies—Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM—the CIA confirmed to Nextgov Friday. Under the C2E contract vehicle, the companies will compete for specific task orders issued by the CIA on behalf of itself and the 16 other agencies that comprise the intelligence community.
Earlier this week, Siliconrepublic.com published an interview with bioethicist Dr Marielle Gross about the ethical implications of using patient data as we move into a more advanced healthcare industry. But it’s not just the ethical use of data that we have to think about in this new age of information, it’s the actual security of that data. While the beginning of the pandemic resulted in a sharp increase in cyberattacks around the world, hospitals in the US have experienced waves of attacks in recent months.
Industry must contend with the ethical challenges of building AI as the technology expands in physical and digital customer touchpoints. In the coming years, enterprise leaders can expect to see AI applications sprint beyond back-office tasks, and focus more sharply on where their brand intersects with customers.
In today’s tumultuous business-scape amid increasingly intricate, and often vexing, marketplace conditions, curating and mining data to drive analytics-based decision making is just no longer enough. For competing with maximum, sustained impact and mitigated opportunity loss, it’s rapidly monetizing data that’s now the name of the game—particularly when spurred by artificial intelligence (AI). Indeed, emerging AI methodologies are helping forward-thinking companies achieve and sustain true agility, fuel growth, and compete far more aggressively than ever before.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shift to a largely remote workforce resulted in new security challenges for many organizations in 2020. In addition to dealing with a constantly changing threat environment, security groups had to suddenly find ways to address risks to the enterprise network and data posed by home-based workers. Remote connectivity and collaboration tools including VPNs and videoconferencing platforms suddenly became big targets for attackers, as did the cloud-based services and file-sharing platforms used by work-from-home employees.
According to new research 72 percent of enterprises believe data governance is an enabler of business value rather than a cost center. However, the study from enterprise search specialist Sinequa also shows that data privacy concerns are ranked as a top barrier to being more data-driven as an organization. It finds one in four organizations have more than 50 distinct data silos. For organizations that identify as being highly data-driven that number rises to 39 per cent.
The financial sector has historically been nervous about allowing its data to go off premises, making it harder to scale. Now it's allowing for some data in the cloud to speed AI and data management. Financial services companies are and continue to be focused on maintaining a majority of their mission-critical systems on premises, where they have direct control. They also want direct control to quickly recover systems if a failure occurs. It's also financial institutions that have the reputation of being transaction-driven and not customer-centric.
Trying to create equitable, practical rules for online learning during a pandemic is hard. Enforcing those rules is even harder, as schools struggle to find resources to help students access online classes and train educators in effective online teaching practices. Schools are also struggling to determine whether it is appropriate to use new technologies to keep tabs on students, and how to implement them.
Data privacy is hard work. Countless companies that collect, store and share personal data can make data privacy consent a simply unmanageable proposition. This is the premise of a discussion draft of a new United States data privacy bill being proposed by Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio: The Data Accountability and Transparency Act. The proposed federal bill includes data rights for the public and data restrictions for organizations that align with many previous data privacy bills.
As more organizations migrate data, apps, and other assets to the cloud, security can become an even greater concern. You're trusting most or part of your security protection to your cloud provider and hoping that you can at least work with them to ensure that your data and other assets remain safe. But even if you have confidence in your provider, a certain level of uneasiness is to be expected. A new report from security firm BitGlass describes some of the security concerns with the cloud and offers advice to IT and security professionals.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated cloud adoption, and a hybrid model is the "ideal operating model" for 86% percent of respondents, according to a Nutanix survey. IT decision-makers reported deploying hybrid infrastructure as a higher priority for companies, even above improving business continuity and disaster recovery during the pandemic, according to the survey of 3,400 respondents conducted by U.K. researcher Vanson Bourne on behalf of Nutanix.
As AI tools become more commonplace, many businesses find themselves playing catch up when it comes to incorporating these new systems into their existing infrastructure. And that’s more than understandable — these tools are highly varied, often poorly-understood, and they’re constantly evolving. To start making sense of the AI landscape and determine how your business will need to adapt, the first thing to understand is that the term “AI” in fact covers a huge spectrum of different things.
Companies have been so preoccupied with the challenges presented by Covid-19 – delivering remote working overnight, getting people back into offices safely and securely, and potential job insecurities – that they have been distracted from Brexit. But with less than two months to go until the transition period ends on 31 December 2020, businesses find themselves with a series of data protection, privacy and governance challenges to overcome.
Some companies likely will have to significantly change how they secure data to continue working with European companies, under draft guidelines issued last week by the European Union that require increased privacy safeguards for information transferred outside the bloc.
When the notion of enlisting smartphones to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic first surfaced last spring, it sparked a months-long debate: Should apps collect location data, which could help with contact tracing but potentially reveal sensitive information? Or should they take a more limited approach, only measuring Bluetooth-based proximity to other phones?