Security News

Britain plans to cut the size of its army and boost spending on drones, robots and a new "Cyber force" under defense plans announced by the government on Monday. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the British Army would shrink from 76,500 soldiers to 72,500 by 2025.

RingCentral announced the acquisition of the technology and engineering team at Kindite. The new technology will be incorporated into RingCentral's global communications platform, providing customers with enhanced security capabilities including end-to-end encryption.

China's government on Thursday called on Washington to drop efforts to expel three state-owned Chinese phone companies from the United States in a new clash over technology and security. The United States should "Stop the wrong practice of generalizing the concept of national security and politicizing economic issues" and "Stop abusing state power to unreasonably suppress Chinese enterprises," said a ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

"Unfortunately, it seems that FLoC contains a privacy design bug that leaks the information about whether the user is browsing in private mode or not," Olejnik wrote in a blog post on Monday, noting that he'd spotted a similar Incognito detection bug in another API. Incognito mode is supposed to prevent online histories from being recorded in the browser's local log and to erase local HTTP cookies and site data from memory at the end of a session. The service's name suggests otherwise and Google was sued in June, 2020, for allegedly collecting data from Incognito Chrome users.

Many who were largely confined to their homes contributed to the surge in home improvements like new or upgraded home offices, kitchen and outdoor rec spaces. Home security during the pandemic was critical, notably to those who were working from home, because the change from in-office to in-home was so swift, many IT departments couldn't cover all the employees with access to what-should-be-secure files.

Some 73% of companies prefer to purchase from technology providers that are transparent and proactive in helping organizations manage their cybersecurity risk, a study released Monday by Intel finds. "Security doesn't just happen. If you are not finding vulnerabilities, then you are not looking hard enough," said Suzy Greenberg, vice president of Intel product assurance and security, in a statement.

The first "Quad summit" of leaders from Australia, India, Japan, and the USA has announced the group will create a "Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group". The joint "Spirit of the Quad" statment said the group will: "Respond to the economic and health impacts of COVID-19, combat climate change, and address shared challenges, including in cyber space, critical technologies, counterterrorism, quality infrastructure investment, and humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief as well as maritime domains."

Organizations have invested millions in new technology over the past year, yet fewer than one in 10 businesses have trained staff in to use these tools. Despite soaring technology budgets, research suggests that workers still have not been trained to use new tools properly - and employees are finding themselves on the firing line.

The Biden administration has named China as the most threatening nation the United States faces, on grounds that it can combine its technological and other capabilities like no other. That assessment was offered in a new Interim National Security Guidance [PDF] issued on Wednesday, in which the administration also outlines plans to seek more regulation of advanced technologies and an intention to strike back after cyberattacks.

An artificial intelligence commission led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is urging the U.S. to boost its AI skills to counter China, including by pursuing "AI-enabled" weapons - something that Google itself has shied away from on ethical grounds. "We have to develop technology that preserves our Western values, but we have to be prepared for a world in which not everyone is doing that," said Andrew Moore, a commissioner and the head of Google Cloud AI. The group has the ear of top lawmakers from both parties, but has attracted criticism for including many members who work for tech companies with big government contracts, and who thus have a lot at stake in federal rules on emerging technology.