Eric Katz reports: The federal government spelled out in a request for submissions from contractors how it plans to respond to future hacks of personnel data, a tacit acknowledgment no amount of system security bolstering can effectively prevent breaches from happening altogether. The General Services Administration on Tuesday evening put forth a request for quotes on a blanket…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Fighting fire with fire: Anonymous security net targets enterprises
Paul Gillin reports: Paul Kurtz believes US enterprises have a fundamental disadvantage in fighting cyber attacks: The bad guys are cooperating with each other while the good guys work alone. Concerns about government regulation, bad publicity and intellectual property theft prevent organizations from telling anyone outside their four walls about security threats they face, said…
Massachusetts Appeals Court Set to Consider Scope of Employer Liability for Employee Data Breaches
Breton Leone-Quick writes: … The legal liability of employers for data breaches by its employees is generally an underdeveloped area of the law. But a case currently pending before the Massachusetts Appeals Court will help determine the scope of this liability in Massachusetts. In the Superior Court case, Adams v. Congress Auto Insurance Agency, Inc., No. MICV2013-01322-D (Mass….
Facebook Hijacking Case Revived by 2nd Circuit
Adam Klasfeld reports: In a case involving sex, cyberbullying and the statute of limitations, a schoolteacher filed her lawsuit just in time to accuse of (sic) her ex-boyfriend of taking over her Facebook account to post obscene messages, the Second Circuit ruled on Tuesday. The court warned in its opinion that the case demonstrates the “troubling” predicament…
Remember Impero, the school software biz that went ape over a vuln? Someone’s got revenge
From the revenge-is-a-dish-best-served-however dept. Iain Thomson reports: A few weeks ago, Impero hit the headlines when it threatened to sue someone called Slipstream, who had published details of a security flaw with the firm’s software. Impero produces an application that allows network administrators in schools to remotely manage devices and networks, and the flaw would have allowed someone with…
Higher Education Institutions Increasingly Falling Victim to Cyberattacks
Anna C. Watterson and Sean B. Hoar write: Higher education institutions are treasure troves for hackers. Colleges and universities are huge repositories of research data, sensitive information for large populations of applicants and enrolled students (personal, academic, financial and health data), as well as sensitive personal and tax information for all faculty and staff. Higher education…