Trapped in social networks

A recent survey of 4,831 active social network users, conducted by Kaspersky Lab in 12 countries, reveals that an overwhelming majority (78%) of respondents considered quitting their social networks — but chose to stay. They wanted to leave for a variety of reasons: 39% of users complained they were wasting too much time, the top…

ImageWare Launches Multi-modal Biometric Authentication for Enterprises

Today’s security consensus is that password-based authentication and access is insecure, and that some form of two- or multi-factor authentication is necessary. The simplest and easiest second factor is an SMS-based soft token, and that is the route already adopted by many organizations. However, NIST’s recently published concern over some implementations of SMS-based 2FA has…

Breaking down New York’s new cyber regulations

In late September, the New York Department of Financial Services (NY DFS) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a series of new rules strengthening cybersecurity requirements for financial firms in the state of New York. Financial firms are treasure troves of private client data and one of the most sought after targets for attackers. In the…

Researchers set to work on malware-detecting CPUs

Adding hardware protections to software ones in order to block the ever increasing onslaught of computer malware seems like a solid idea, and a group of researchers have just been given a $275,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to help them work on a possible solution: malware-detecting CPUs. This project, titled “Practical Hardware-Assisted Always-On…

Yahoo investigating if insiders knew of hack

Yahoo said investigators were looking into the possibility that some people within the company knew at the time about the late 2014 theft of information of at least 500 million user accounts. Law enforcement authorities on Monday also “began sharing certain data that they indicated was provided by a hacker who claimed the information was…

US election day faces specter of cyberattacks

Don’t be surprised if hackers make their presence felt on U.S. Election Day. Distributed denial-of-service attacks and high-profile leaks are among the tactics they might use if they try to influence Tuesday’s vote. Cybersecurity experts stress it would be incredibly difficult to hack the U.S. election. The system itself is distributed across the country over thousands…

Cognitive systems and artificial intelligence revenues to reach $47 billion in 2020

Widespread adoption of cognitive systems and artificial intelligence (AI) across a broad range of industries will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020. According to IDC, the market for cognitive/AI solutions will experience a CAGR of 55.1% over the 2016-2020 forecast period. “Software developers and end…

Catching Online Scammers, Dealers & Drug Dealers With DNS

Takedowns of malicious or fraudulent websites is a temporary fix for online fraud and crime, mainly because the bad guys then just put up another website domain they have waiting in the wings. Researchers at Black Hat Europe in London tomorrow will demonstrate a new technique they developed that uses Domain Name Service (DNS) analysis…