Security News
The EU unveiled a plan Wednesday to regulate the sprawling field of artificial intelligence, aimed at helping Europe catch up in the new tech revolution while curbing the threat of Big Brother-like abuses. There have been competing concerns over the plans from both big tech and civil liberties groups arguing that the EU is either overreaching or not going far enough.
The European Commission and several other European Union organizations were hit by a cyberattack in March, according to a European Commission spokesperson. "The Commission has set up a 24/7 monitoring services and is actively taking mitigating measures."
Ireland's Data Protection Commission is investigating a massive data leak concerning a database containing personal information belonging to more than 530 million Facebook users. "Previous datasets were published in 2019 and 2018 relating to a large-scale scraping of the Facebook website which at the time Facebook advised occurred between June 2017 and April 2018 when Facebook closed off a vulnerability in its phone lookup functionality," the DPC said.
Sensitive data pertaining to the customers of top mobile services providers in the European Union is at risk of compromise due to improperly secured websites, data security and privacy firm Tala reveals. An analysis of the websites of 13 of the top mobile telecom companies in the EU has revealed that none of them has in place even the minimum necessary protections to be considered secure.
Europe and the United States will use a thaw in ties to strike a pact that would allow for the exchange of private data across the Atlantic, replacing previous agreements struck down by an EU court. Facebook, Google, Microsoft and thousands of other companies want such a deal to keep the internet traffic flowing without facing significant legal jeopardy over European privacy laws.
The European Banking Authority, a key EU financial regulator, says it has fallen victim to a hack of its Microsoft email system which the US company blames on a Chinese group. Microsoft said last week that a state-sponsored group operating out of China was exploiting previously unknown security flaws in its Exchange email services to steal data from business and government users, believed to number in the tens of thousands so far.
"EU Agency for Cybersecurity Executive Director, Juhan Lepassaar, said:"The agreement ENISA signed with CERT-EU is a stepping-stone in utilising our synergies to the benefit of EU Member States and the EU Institutions, Agencies and Bodies. "Our structured cooperation comes at a time where the EU and its Member States need to strengthen their cybersecurity capabilities more than ever."
The European Commission lifted the threat of crucial data flows between Europe and Britain being blocked in a move that would have crippled business activity as it said Friday that privacy safeguards in the UK met European standards. In a key post-Brexit decision, the EU executive said that British authorities had sufficient measures in place to protect European users' personal data, freeing up data transfers for businesses as well as for police.
Messaging apps such as Messenger or WhatsApp and video calls on Zoom face stricter privacy rules in Europe, after a draft law passed a key EU hurdle on Wednesday. The EU's 27 member states approved a proposal that was stuck since 2017, with countries split between those wanting strict privacy online and others wanting to give leeway to law enforcement and advertisers.
European encrypted services providers ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota on Thursday urged European Union policy makers to rethink plans that would require the implementation of encryption backdoors. The Council of the European Union in December adopted a resolution on "Security through encryption and security despite encryption." The council said it supports the development and use of strong encryption to protect citizens and organizations, but at the same time it believes law enforcement and judicial authorities need to be able to exercise their legal powers.