Financial cybercrime and state-affiliated espionage made up a combined 95 percent of all cybersecurity incidents in 2012 included in a Verizon Communications study released Monday. The report examined 47,000 security incident reports from Verizon and 18 other organizations, including the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) and two of its Computer Emergency Readiness Team units, as well as the U.S. Secret Service. Verizon focused its study on the 621 confirmed data breaches included in those reports, said Jay Jacobs, principal with Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ RISK Team, which writes the annual data breach report. A final version of the report had not been made public at our deadline.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai called for a Connect America Fund to support broadband buildout for rate-of-return carriers. Also at an NCTA conference Monday, Rural Utilities Service Acting Administrator John Padalino noted he and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had asked for expanded USF support (CD Feb 20 p3). Broadband buildout support for rate-of-return telco carriers “would recognize that line loss in rural America is real, and that direct support for broadband-capable facilities” is “critical,” Pai said. Rural representatives twice interrupted him with applause, as Pai, who grew up in Kansas, repeatedly characterized himself as a friend of rural interests. “My name is Ajit, and I am a rural American,” he said. “When I confront a rural issue, whether it is about call completion or universal service or outdated regulations, it isn’t just an abstraction to me."

A recent filing by the Justice Department on spectrum and competition isn’t consistent with last year’s Spectrum Act, top Republican members of the House Commerce Committee said in a letter to FCC commissioners. If the commission adopts spectrum aggregation limits as part of incentive auction rules, it could doom the auction to failure, the legislators wrote.

Syncbak, a closely-held company that distributes participating TV stations’ signals online within their designated market area, sold a minority stake to CBS for an undisclosed amount, the companies said. CBS joins the NAB and CEA as investors in the company.

Provo, Utah, has fought for years to make its municipal fiber network a success. “From the very beginning, we have struggled,” Mayor John Curtis told us. A $39 million 20-year bond, taken out eight years ago, funded only the infrastructure buildout, he said: Operating the network, and maintaining and upgrading equipment, has “always been a struggle.” With the announcement Wednesday that Google will make Provo its third “Fiber City” (CD April 18 p18), Curtis thinks the city’s luck is about to change.

Viacom plans to again appeal a federal judge’s ruling that Google’s YouTube acted within the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in dealing with clips of Viacom’s content that users posted to the site. Judge Louis Stanton of U.S. District Court in Manhattan granted Google’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed Viacom’s case. “This ruling ignores the opinions of the higher courts and completely disregards the rights of creative artists,” a Viacom spokesman said. “We intend to appeal the decision."

"There’s a lot of work to be done and questions to be answered to ensure successful and timely transition to enable non-federal use” of the two bands, Strickling wrote. The two groups Strickling said he has asked to start planning for a possible auction are the federal Policy and Plans Steering Group, a high-level group created by the White House in 2010 to oversee spectrum, and the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee, made up of spectrum experts from the various federal departments and agencies.

The FCC Media Bureau granted Charter Communications’ request for a two-year waiver of FCC CableCARD rules to further “the development of an industry wide downloadable separate security standard,” said an order (http://bit.ly/11LKkk0). Thursday’s decision, which was expected (CD April 8 p7), disagreed with opposition to the company’s request from CEA and other groups. Signed by the bureau chief, it includes requirements for Charter to partner with a consumer electronics manufacturer to create a retail device using the new security system and to continue supporting CableCARDs. It includes extra broadband deployment, and the company said faster broadband speeds and better video services are among the benefits Charter subscribers will see.

People are developing an “intimate” relationship with their smartphones that’s “changing the fundamentals” of the entire communications industry, said George Rittenhouse, president of Bell Labs at Alcatel-Lucent, during a keynote Friday at the Competitive Carriers Association conference. Other speakers featured on the panel from the New Orleans event agreed that the new generation of “iconic” smartphones means major changes for the wireless industry.

Public-private partnerships are important to improving cybersecurity within the global information and communications technology (ICT) supply chain, said Joe Jarzombek, director-software assurance in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Cybersecurity & Communications. Such partnerships, including DHS’s Software Assurance program, are critical when “you realize that those running our critical infrastructure have the same needs we have,” he said Thursday at a Brookings Institution event. The federal government has a responsibility to help critical infrastructure operators and owners address ICT vulnerabilities, but there needs to be “public will” to make it happen, Jarzombek said. DHS is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to foster an industry-led effort to develop the Cybersecurity Framework, a voluntary set of cybersecurity standards and best practices to protect critical infrastructure, as laid out in President Barack Obama’s February cybersecurity order (CD Feb 14 p1).