Calling all Thin Mints fans! Girl Scout Thin Mints cookies can now be delivered right to your doorstep – by drone… IF you live in Christiansburg, Virginia. The town has been a testing arena for commercial drone delivery by Wing (a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company). Before Girl Scout Thin Mints, starting in 2019,
National Cybersecurity Center Launches Free Training for State Elected Officials
Speaking of security education and training, the National Cybersecurity Center this week launched a new initiative to offer cyber-hygiene and IT security sessions to elected state government officials and their staff for FREE. The training sessions are getting a financial boost from Google and bipartisan support from Secretaries of State Frank LaRose (R-Ohio) and…
U.S. Users Targeted with Phishing Scams More than Users in Other Countries
The statistic that cybercriminals have been unleashing 18 million phishing emails laced with malware on a daily basis into cyberspace during the pandemic is mind boggling, and one that executives should pay attention to when prioritizing resources for user education. Math was never my strongest subject, but 18 million malicious emails targeted at all of…
Twitter fined $546,000 in December 2020 by European Data Protection Authority for 2019 Breach Notification Violations
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Twitter 450,000 euros (about US$546,000) for failing to timely notify the Irish DPC within the required 72 hours of discovering a Q4 2018 breach involving a bug in its Android app, and also for failing to adequately document that breach. The bug caused some 88,726 European Twitter users’…
DJI Responds to Recent Cybersecurity Report on App Vulnerabilities
This week, China-based DJI, the drone industry’s leading manufacturer of drones, issued a public statement regarding the recent reports released by cybersecurity researchers (neither Synacktiv nor GRIMM) about the security of its drones’ control app.
In two reports, the researchers claimed that an app on Google’s Android operating system that powers DJI drones collects large…
Privacy Tip #236 – Foreign Government-Backed Phishing Attacks Pose as Fast Food Chains
Google has warned users in a blog article that nation state-backed hackers are using the COVID-19 crisis to ramp up phishing attempts and, in one example, are posing as American fast food franchises and sending malicious emails with fake offers and coupons to government officials and health care workers.
Google has identified over 12 government-backed…
Working from Home During the Pandemic? Turn Alexa and Siri Off!
The transition from work-from-the-office to work-from-home has been rapid during the pandemic. All of a sudden, millions of workers are working from home, while data security personnel were not able to plan and operationalize the transition in an optimal way. Many security measures are being put in place now as everyone settles into the new…
Hackers Eavesdrop and Obtain Sensitive Data of Users Through Home Smart Assistants
Although Amazon and Google respond to reports of vulnerabilities in popular home smart assistants Alexa and Google Home, hackers continually work hard to exploit any vulnerabilities in order to listen to users’ every word to obtain sensitive information that can be used in future attacks.
Last week, it was reported by ZDNet that two security…
Google Sued Under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act
Another day, another suit against a brand name for allegations of violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Plaintiffs’ attorneys are having a field day filing class action lawsuits based on BIPA.
Late last week, Google was sued in Cook County, Illinois in a proposed class action, alleging that it violated BIPA by…
Diagnostic Medical Imaging Company Pays $3 Million to Resolve Potential HIPAA Violations Stemming from Data Breach
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the enforcement arm of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), announced that a Tennessee diagnostic medical imaging services company has agreed to pay $3 million to settle potential HIPAA violations arising from a data breach that exposed over 300,000 patients’ protected health information. As part of the…