New platform offers safe, self-service data sharing
In order to get the best value from data it's important that it's accessible to the right people in the business at the time they need it.
Data privacy specialist Privitar is announcing a new data provisioning platform that makes self-service data available safely, at scale, to the people who need it.
Facebook tops the data loss roll of shame
Data breaches have almost become a fact of everyday life, but there are still some that have greater impact than others.
Software company Intact has carried out an analysis of publicly available data to see which companies have suffered the most large-scale data breaches (involving more than 30,000 records or more) over the last 16 years.
Happy Identity Management Day
Every dog has its day as the saying goes and it's increasingly the case that every aspect of information technology has one too -- a day that is, not a dog.
Today is Identity Management Day, created by the The National Cybersecurity Alliance and the Identity Defined Security Alliance. It's the first one so you can forgive the lack of greetings cards and themed balloons in the shops but there is plenty of industry comment.
DuckDuckGo's Chrome extension blocks Google's controversial new FLoC tracking technique
That Google tracks internet usage is hardly news -- it how the company has operated for years, and it is central to its business model. But the search giant recently started testing a new technique for delivering targeted ads to people called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), and it's now enabled for millions of users by default.
While Google is insistent that FLoC is "privacy-preserving mechanism" and one that " enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behavior of individual users", the algorithm remains controversial for many. The cookie-free technique uses fingerprinting which the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy groups have expressed great concern about. For anyone who would like to block Google's new tracking method, DuckDuckGo's Chrome extension is here to help.
Consumers show more interest in exercising privacy rights
Consumers are exercising their privacy rights -- to access, delete or stop the sale of their data -- under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which came into force last year.
A new report from privacy platform DataGrail shows that consumers are increasingly concerned about their personal information and how it's used. It also reveals that the number of data subject requests (DSRs) companies receive varies wildly, depending on their privacy practices.
One in five healthcare files is open to all employees
A new report from Varonis reveals some startling statistics about healthcare data, with almost 20 percent of files open to all employees in an organization.
In addition the average healthcare organization has over 31,000 files -- including those that include HIPAA-protected information, financial data, and proprietary research -- open to everyone.
Digital first census raises security concerns
This year for the first time the UK's ten yearly census -- used to collect information to determine future government policy and spending -- is 'digital first' with people encouraged to fill in their returns online rather than use a paper form.
But research conducted by YouGov for security analytics and automation company Exabeam finds that many people are worried about how the data will be stored and used.
Slack rolls back controversial messaging feature within hours of its introduction
Messaging platform Slack yesterday rolled out a new feature called Connect DM that made it possible to send direct messages to anyone using the service -- regardless of whether they are part of the same company or workspace.
We say "made it possible" in the past tense because Slack was very quickly forced into something of an embarrassing partial u-turn. The company somehow failed to notice the potential for such a feature to be abused, and it was down to users and media outlets to point this out. Within hours, a key change was introduced to Connect DM to help eliminate spam and abuse.
Security and privacy knowledge is good but bad habits persist
New research from NordVPN finds that people around the world generally have good security and privacy knowledge, but still indulge in bad habits.
NordVPN ranked 21 countries by their performance, placing Germans at the top and -- perhaps surprisingly -- the Japanese at the bottom.
How changes to tracking will affect the online world [Q&A]
The Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is a random device identifier assigned to a user's device which advertisers use to track data so they can deliver customized advertising.
But Apple is about to replace the iOS IDFA tracking system in iOS 14 with a new App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature which will allow iPhone users to opt-out of tracking on third-party apps and sites. This, plus Google's crack down on third-party cookies, means privacy is a hot topic currently -- and all signs point to even more shifts in the coming year.
Microsoft is experimenting with sharing browsing data from Edge with Windows 10
Over the years there has been an increasing awareness of -- and backlash against -- the telemetry and data collection Microsoft has crowbarred into Windows 10. A new experiment with its Edge browser shows that the company is keen to make greater use of the information it gathers about its customers.
In the latest Canary build of Microsoft Edge, there is a new setting called "share browsing data with other Windows features". While optional, it is a feature that is likely to be eyed with skepticism.
Excess permissions put Android app users' data at risk
Over a third of the 1,020 most-downloaded Android apps on the Google Play store request access to a user's camera -- despite no obvious benefit for user experience and potentially placing sensitive data at risk.
Research from CyberNews also shows one in three apps request access to track a user's precise, or approximate, location. Excluding those that require such access to function, such as weather or navigation, applications attempting invasive access included gaming and even wallpaper, which appear to have no legitimate reason to track location data.
76 percent of US employees have inappropriate access to sensitive files
A new report from vArmour shows that 76 percent of employees have inappropriate access to a sensitive file, and 76 percent were granted inappropriate access to sensitive files within the past year.
IT leaders surveyed also expressed concern about inappropriate or malicious access to applications and data, with 47 percent concerned about malicious actors impersonating employees and 41 percent concerned about inappropriate access to sensitive information.
A third of enterprises suffer unauthorized cloud access
Last month we reported on public sector organizations suffering from cloud leakage. A new report out today shows that this is an issue in the private sector too.
The report from cloud governance platform CloudSphere reveals that 32 percent of enterprises have experienced unauthorized access to their cloud resources.
Never send the wrong email attachment again
Many of us will at some point have attached the wrong file to an email or sent an attachment to the wrong person.
This is more than an inconvenience as it could end up exposing sensitive data. But thanks to a new feature from Tessian you may never make an attachment error again.
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