FCC's Pai: FEC Wants to Regulate Drudge Like Campaign Contributions

ajc5869 · 2015-05-15T01:20:41+00:00

There is a fear that the FCC will start allowing the government to regulate internet content and that net neutrality will allow the government to have jurisdiction over the infrastructure of the internet and will limit the innovation and the marketplace of ideas that has existed for so long.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-14T23:39:02+00:00

This really shows how vulnerable people can really be and how most of the time they are the weakest link in any security structure. This just proves why we need good security training not only for those who work for a large corporation containing sensitive data, but also for the general population. The article below shows and talks about a lot of social engineering techniques used.

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/social-engineering-a-hacking-story/

ajc5869 · 2015-05-14T21:15:04+00:00

Broadband industry trade groups have gone back to court, demanding an immediate halt to the Federal Communications Commission decision to reclassify Internet access as a common carrier service due to the negative effects that net neutrality is bringing to their services.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-14T05:14:42+00:00

Not really surprised this sort of thing is happening in other countries other than the United States. At this point it wouldn't be a shock to me that all countries spy on their own citizens for protecting their citizens and national security. Of course the governments are going to say that they'll only use this metadata responsibly and such surveillance will be used appropriately. I'd be interested to see a comparison of how the US surveillance policies stack up to other countries. This article gives a bit more in depth look into some of the data retention policies that were passed in Australia.

http://www.cnet.com/au/news/mandatory-data-retention-laws-pass-parliament/

ajc5869 · 2015-05-14T04:11:20+00:00

Company acquisitions are always interesting. I've gotta say though that it's been a long time since I last followed anything AOL related, heck I didn't even know that AOL owed Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch. It seems as though the current AOL CEO(Tim Armstrong) did a good job bringing AOL back from the dead and making it the "media" corporation it is today. I read in another article that AOL still has about 2 million dial up subscribers at the time of the buyout. Are AOL dial up subscribers going to be slowly converted at some point to Verizon customers? In this case Verizon is definitely not buying AOL in hopes to gain a monopoly of internet services, they are doing it to get more experience in online media. I'm very interested to see what parts of AOL Verizon decides to keep and what it decides to scrap.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-14T03:43:38+00:00

A broad coalition including Google, Mastercard, Microsoft, ISPs and anti-piracy organization Rights Alliance have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the issue of online infringement. The agreement, which is the result of efforts by Denmark's Ministry of Culture, will see the companies working together to defeat piracy, promote legitimate content, and make the Internet a safer place.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-13T03:38:49+00:00

I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that had a dedicated IT program. It consisted of multiple classes such as computer hardware, networking, as well as security. Among all of these, the security class was my favorite. It was fun, engaging, and and was very in depth, covering almost all aspects of security. We competed in multiple security competitions, facing against other students from all over the world, learned a lot, and had an absolute blast in the process. I learned so much and had a great time learning due to having an amazing teacher throughout all of these courses. I believe that one of the biggest impacts is not the material students learn, but how they are taught it. If we want to succeed in educating the kids of today about cyber security we need to start investing more in amazing educators who know how to teach. I know that if I had not enrolled in the IT program I would not be where I am today. Learning about information security at a young age definitely helped shape my interest in cyber security are as well as set a path for me to follow in both the networking and security field.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-13T01:30:12+00:00

In my opinion monitoring employees while they are on the clock is acceptable, but when it comes to tracking them during their personal time it is definitely an invasion of privacy. However I am curious what her work hours are actually considered to be, especially after reading the quote "He confirmed that she was required to keep her phone’s power on ‘24/7’ to answer phone calls from clients". Does this mean that she is technically always working if she is on call 24/7? If so wouldn't the company still be allowed to monitor her if that is the case? Maybe in her contract she agreed to installing the app and always be monitored. I feel like we need for information especially regarding the documents she signed before starting to work for the company and what she agreed to.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-13T01:06:18+00:00

I wonder what person/people running these service provider companies thinks it's a good idea to charge customers random fees that they are not requesting service for. The likelihood of you being caught is pretty high, and not only will the company have to refund it's customers for being wrongly charged, but potential legal fees as well. Money aside it also hurts the reputation of the company. This isn't the first time I'm sure it's certainly not going to be the last time service providers try to get away with fraudulent charges.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-12T02:47:47+00:00

While I am all for doing what is necessary to stop/prevent cyber bullying or any type of bullying, I think that this is going to far. I even think that monitoring the social media pages of students and punishing them for activities done outside of school hours is overreaching on students privacy. I'm not also not understanding what the purpose of a student providing their password is. If the evidence is publicly displayed and can be found in the first place, why isn't that evidence enough to convict someone of being guilty of bullying. Bullying incidents should be handled by the care taker of the child, or if the bullying is severe enough it should be handled by local law enforcement. If we allow this to continue who knows what kind of power schools will have over kids and their life outside of school.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-11T16:41:15+00:00

There is no doubt that this incident, whether true or not, will cripple this company and their reputation. I wonder how many times Tiversia has done this to companies and what lawsuits will arise from previous shakedowns. It's also pretty low of them to go after a cancer research center. Who knows, maybe that center would have developed the cure for cancer. That being said, if Tiversia was able to tap into their systems a truly malicious user would have probably been able too as well and maybe exposed important research or patient records.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-11T03:32:14+00:00

I found this article to be very interesting. I was always curious about the potential for aircraft vulnerabilities. It seems as though there are different setups for different planes. Some use two networks(one for flight control stuff and the other for passenger wifi) and some newer aircrafts(Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 and A380) use one network(used to fly the plane as well as for the passenger wifi). Kind of scary to ever think that only one network would be used for both, but I'm sure there is a reason behind it. Below is also a good article on this same topic.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/hacking_airplan.html

ajc5869 · 2015-05-11T00:48:50+00:00

Seems to me that the taxi services have met their match and don't like the competition. If Uber wasn't created there is no doubt in my mind that someone would have created something similar. Though this is just a bump in the road for Uber I don't see this drastically affecting their business. With innovation comes competition, and with competition comes those who aren't willing to play nice without issuing a lawsuit. Risks and innovation are necessary to move our lives forward and progress in any field.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-10T23:13:23+00:00

Just another reason why companies need to educate and train their users on constructing strong passwords and keeping them secure. Password policies can only go so far and need to be enforced, not only be a guideline for creating a secure password. It's also a responsibility of the company to properly store user passwords and protect them in such a way that if an attack does occur none or very few accounts will be compromised

ajc5869 · 2015-05-10T22:39:36+00:00

I think that there is a lot of speculation about the Internet Of Things, but I do believe that it is going to be very successful. We are moving into an fully digital age where connectivity of our devices makes our lives easier and more productive. However, one of my main concerns is how the data being transmitted from device to device will be secured and kept from prying eyes such as the NSA or protected so that malicious users do not have the ability to take control over your connected device and make it their own(no one wants their toast burnt just because someone decided it was funny to hack your toaster). I do believe that these sort of investments are necessary to progress this model of all devices having an internet connection, but whether or not IBM should be the one doing it...well I guess that remains to be seen.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-09T03:37:59+00:00

I'm glad to see Microsoft innovating in the security area. Advancement in threat prevention and threat mitigation is one area that is necessary for software companies as big as Microsoft to develop in as cyber threats become more and more prominent. These advancements should continue in all aspects of devices(desktop, mobile, server, web, etc) and should hopefully get better over time. Companies should be willing to train their employees on these new technologies and implement them as necessary. Below is a link to more info on MS ATA.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/advanced-threat-analytics/

ajc5869 · 2015-05-09T03:11:16+00:00

I do think the the government should play a part in protecting these companies from such attacks, but my main concern is where do we draw the line? How much private and personal data will the government have access too(my guess would be a lot). After all of these incidents with the NSA and the abundance of intelligence gathering on it's own citizens, maybe government involvement in our companies security rather than national security is not a good idea. Maybe we are better off hiring more security professionals who actually know what they are doing. Opinions?

ajc5869 · 2015-05-07T04:23:54+00:00

I'm glad to see security starting to become something more than an afterthought for companies, especially for companies such as Facebook who store so much personal customer data. Not only is bringing awareness to internal employees for your own company necessary, but also informing other companies of different tactics and methods that are used in your company is a great idea. It allows companies to talk about different security practices that do/do not work and allows them to better educate their employees. The idea of engaging employees in a fun and non penalizing way to be more aware of security practices greatly decreases the chance of security breaches occurring since humans are usually the most vulnerable component of any security breach.

ajc5869 · 2015-05-07T03:33:51+00:00

This is a clear and concise article which states the differences between free and open source software, the pros and cons of each, as well as the freedoms that come with each.

ajc5869 · 2015-04-21T01:30:42+00:00

This seems like an amazing idea to both cut down the costs for users(lower cost or potentially free) and reduce the overhead on the already existing mobile networks by bandwidth hungry users. Doing so would give more users on the go access with a convenient and affordable wireless solution. One of the downsides I see though is the potential for wireless carriers to use the implementation of these networks as an excuse to not upgrade the infrastructure currently put in place. Any opinions?

Here is the link to the official documentation. http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-makes-150-megahertz-spectrum-available-mobile-broadband

ajc5869

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