Security News

Data privacy regulation a top three challenge for IoT adopters
2022-08-08 03:30

Fears over security have become less of a concern for organizations adopting IoT solutions than it was five years ago, according to a recent study by Wi-SUN Alliance, a global member-based association of industry leading companies driving the adoption of interoperable wireless solutions for use in smart cities, smart utilities, IoT and industrial IoT applications. The Journey to IoT Maturity, a follow-up to Wi-SUN's 'state of the nation' IoT study in 2017, is based on interviews with IT decision makers from UK and US IoT adopters within key industries, including energy and utilities, state and local government, construction, technology, and telecommunications.

Tim Hortons offers free coffee and donut to settle data privacy invasion claims
2022-07-30 13:25

Canadian fast food chain Tim Hortons is settling multiple data privacy class-action lawsuits against it by offering something it knows it's good for: a donut and coffee. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said Friday that Timmies' agreement still requires approval from the courts, but if given the go ahead, Tim Hortons mobile app users affected by the chain's improper data collection will "Receive a free hot beverage and baked good."

Google boosts Android privacy with support for DNS-over-HTTP/3
2022-07-20 21:13

Google has added support for the DNS-over-HTTP/3 protocol on Android 11 and later to increase the privacy of DNS queries while providing better performance. Roid previously supported DNS-over-TLS for version 9 and later to bolster DNS query privacy, but this system inevitably slowed down DNS requests due to the encryption overhead. Moreover, DoT requires a complete renegotiation of the new connection when changing networks.

Post-Roe Privacy
2022-07-13 11:00

"Taken together, this means the primary digital threat for people who take abortion pills is the actual evidence of intention stored on your phone, in the form of texts, emails, and search/web history. Cynthia Conti-Cook's incredible article"Surveilling the Digital Abortion Diary details what we know now about how digital evidence has been used to prosecute women who have been pregnant. As Conti-Cook says, Ms. Fisher "Conduct[ed] internet searches, including how to induce a miscarriage, 'buy abortion pills, mifepristone online, misoprostol online,' and 'buy misoprostol abortion pill online,'" and then purchased misoprostol online.

TikTok Postpones Privacy Policy Update in Europe After Italy Warns of GDPR Breach
2022-07-12 20:44

The reversal, reported by TechCrunch, comes a day after the Italian data protection authority - the Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali - warned the company against the change, citing violations of data protection laws. "The personal data stored in users' devices may not be used to profile those users and send personalized ads without their explicit consent," the Garante said.

Alibaba affiliate Ant Group open sources its privacy software and a 'Secure Processing Unit'
2022-07-05 10:30

Alibaba's financial services affiliate, Ant Group, has open sourced its "Privacy-preserving Computation Framework." A "Secure Processing Unit" that offers a "Provable, measurable secure computation device, which provides computation ability while keeping your private data protected".

Privacy protection agency seizes servers of hacked travel company
2022-07-03 19:34

The Privacy Protection Authority in Israel seized servers hosting multiple travel booking websites because their operator failed to address security issues that enabled data breaches affecting more than 300,000 individuals. On Thursday, Israel's The Privacy Protection Authority on Thursday confirmed the cyberattack, which is believed to be the work of an Iranian threat actor, The Times of Israel reports.

How businesses are prioritizing data privacy
2022-06-30 04:00

In 2021, the demand for data privacy jobs soared with no indication of slowing down and stemming from the proliferation of new government regulations and cloud migration. In this video for Help Net Security, Stephen Cavey, Chief Evangelist at Ground Labs, talks about how businesses and job seekers are not only prioritizing data privacy but using it as a competitive advantage in this rivalrous landscape.

New Firefox privacy feature strips URLs of tracking parameters
2022-06-28 21:11

Mozilla Firefox 102 was released today with a new privacy feature that strips parameters from URLs that are used to track you around the web. Numerous companies, including Facebook, Marketo, Olytics, and HubSpot, utilize custom URL query parameters to track clicks on links.

Privacy-focused Brave Search grew by 5,000% in a year
2022-06-22 16:00

Brave Search, the browser developer's privacy-centric Internet search engine, is celebrating its first anniversary after surpassing 2.5 billion queries and seeing almost 5,000% growth in a year. To celebrate this success, Brave Software announced that Brave Search is finally exiting its beta phase and will become the default search engine for all users of the Brave browser.