Cybersecurity

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Study: Third-Party Apps Pose Risks for Enterprises

Since mobile computing put an end to the good old days when IT departments had absolute control over software deployed in the enterprise, there's been a rise in employees' use of third-party applications -- a rise that poses security risks to corporate environments. That is one of the findings in a ...

Google on Monday began rolling out a new two-step authentication feature, Google Prompt, targeting enterprise employees. The new option consists of a pop-up that displays a mobile user's name and profile image, and that specifies the location and device involved in the attempted sign-in. The device ...

Edward Snowden made a greater effort than originally believed to raise his concerns within the NSA before releasing thousands of classified documents detailing programs that allowed the agency to spy on U.S. citizens. The truth is more complex than the NSA let on, according to a report based on docu...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Banking Trojans Take Backseat to Ransomware

The banking trojan -- a type of malware used to steal credentials for bank accounts -- has been a staple of cyberthieves for years. However, ransomware, which has proven both easy to use and highly successful, has started eroding its popularity. In a typical banking trojan attack, a robber mounts a ...

By the end of the year, Android devs will be able to use a trust API from Google's Project Abacus in their apps, Google ATAP Director Dan Kaufman suggested at last week's I/O conference. The API, which will run in the background continually, is aimed at doing away with passwords. It will use a smart...

Microsoft last week announced plans to crack down on terrorist content, perhaps in response to the Obama administration's intense effort to get Silicon Valley's help in preventing organizations like ISIS from using social media as a recruiting and fundraising tool. Microsoft has amended its terms of...

Eset on Wednesday announced that it has fashioned a free tool that victims of all variants of the TeslaCrypt ransomware can use to unlock affected files. After the criminal gang behind TeslaCrypt recently abandoned support of the malicious software, an Eset analyst contacted the group anonymously, u...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Flaw Puts a Billion Wireless Mice at Risk

Wireless mice and keyboards are the perfect accessories for a world in which devices increasingly are shuffling off their connection coils, but those accessories -- especially untethered rodents -- also can create new threats for those who use them. One such threat is Mousejack. The attack exploits ...

Google last week announced that it would minimize use of Adobe's Flash Player in its Chrome Web browser by the end of the year by turning off its default status. When Chrome encounters a Web page, it will report the presence of Flash Player only if a user has indicated that the domain should execute...

The daily barrage of data breach news appears to be eroding confidence in security solutions. Fifty percent of IT pros aren't confident about the ability of their security measures to protect their data, according to a survey released last week by Barkly. The high percentage of IT pros with doubts a...

A forum on Reddit, /r/ Technology, on Monday announced it was considering blocking links to websites that require visitors to turn off their ad blockers before viewing content on the site. "It has come to our attention that many websites such as Forbes and Wired are now requiring users to disable ad...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission on Monday announced a joint investigation into the issue of mobile device security updates. The FTC issued an order requiring eight mobile device manufacturers -- Apple, BlackBerry, Google, HTC America, LG Electronics USA, M...

IBM on Tuesday announced Watson for Cyber Security, a cloud-based version of its AI technology, trained in cybersecurity as part of a year-long research project. "This technology is about using Watson's learning capability and ability to understand the meaning and context of human language, and appl...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

ISIS Cyberthreat: Puny but Gaining Power

The Islamic State group's cyberwar capabilities are unsophisticated, but they won't be that way for long. That was the conclusion of a 25-page report released last week by Flashpoint. The report, "Hacking for ISIS: The Emergent Cyber Threat Landscape," found that the Islamic State's "overall capab...

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