The rapid digitization of consumers’ lives and enterprise records will increase the cost of data breaches to $2.1 trillion globally by 2019, said a Juniper Research news release Tuesday. The industry researcher said most data breaches will come from existing IT and network infrastructure, and threats targeting mobile devices and the IoT are being reported “at an increasing rate.” The report said cybercrime is increasingly becoming professional with the emergence of cybercrime products like malware creation software, and while the number of attacks overall may decrease, there will be more successful hacks. “We aren’t seeing much dangerous mobile or IoT malware because it’s not profitable,” said report author James Moar. “The kind of threats we will see on these devices will be either ransomware, with consumers’ devices locked down until they pay the hackers to use their devices, or as part of botnets, where processing power is harnessed as part of a more lucrative hack,” Moar said. “With the absence of a direct payout from IoT hacks, there is little motive for criminals to develop the required tools.” Juniper said 60 percent of anticipated data breaches in 2015 will occur in North America, “but this proportion will decrease over time as other countries become both richer and more digitized.”
The Trustworthy Accountability Group, the advertising industry's initiative to improve the digital ecosystem, said it plans to create, maintain and share its database of domains that have been identified as known sources of fraudulent bot traffic for digital ads. The TAG fraud threat list program was unveiled Monday at an Interactive Advertising Bureau conference in New York by Mike Zaneis, interim CEO of TAG, and Jim Norton, global head of media sales at AOL, which Verizon Tuesday agreed to buy. The technical proposal for the fraud threat list program will be at tagtoday.net and comments from ad industry stakeholders will be accepted for 30 days before the program is finalized. The pilot phase of the program battling the $6.3 billion issue of fraudulent ad traffic has been implemented, and broader deployment of the final program is expected in Q3, said TAG. The program lets ad companies “take power back from the criminals who are undermining our industry,” Zaneis said. “By gathering and sharing known sources of fraudulent impressions across the digital advertising ecosystem, TAG will give companies the information they need to find and remove non-human traffic from their inventory.” The list will be compiled using information from participating companies with “specific insight on domains that are driving significant fraudulent ad traffic to the ad industry” such as AOL and Yahoo, and will be available to advertising networks, publishers and technology providers, said TAG.
Cox Communications and Cablevision’s Optimum switched spots on Netflix’s U.S. ISP speed index, which respectively ranked them as the No. 2 and No. 3 ISPs on the April index, released Monday. Cox’s average speed rose to 3.49 Mbps in April, up from 3.43 Mbps in March and 2.9 Mbps a year ago. Cablevision’s Optimum also saw its average speed rise to 3.48 Mbps from 3.46 Mbps in March and 3 Mbps a year ago. Verizon FiOS retained the No. 1 spot on the April index with an average speed of 3.55 Mbps, while Bright House remained in fourth place with an average of 3.46 Mbps. AT&T’s DSL service and CenturyLink both rose two spots on the April index to Nos. 11 and 12, while Windstream dropped three spots to No. 14. Bell Canada remained the top ISP on Netflix’s Canada ISP index with an average speed of 3.64 Mbps. Netflix said it now ranks the speeds of ISPs in 29 nations, having added measurements for Australia and New Zealand in April.
The FTC and 27 members of the Global Privacy Enforcement Network, a group of privacy enforcement agencies around the world, are “marshaling resources to protect the privacy of children online,” a news release said Monday. “In this latest initiative, privacy experts from the FTC’s Office of Technology Research and Investigation will conduct an analysis of the privacy disclosures, interactive features, and information collection practices of children’s mobile apps,” the release said. “Staff expect to release a summary of their findings later this year,” it said.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund and the Center for Digital Democracy are hosting an event inspired by Frank Pasquale’s new book The Black Box Society on Monday at Public Citizen’s D.C. office. FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Jessica Rich will discuss what policymakers need to do to ensure the use of digital data tools complies with applicable consumer protection laws. “Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior -- silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use,” according to Harvard University Press, the book’s publisher. “The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive.” Pasquale, a University of Maryland law professor, will give a keynote address to open the event. Co-Director of the New Economy Project-NYC Sarah Ludwig and Other98.com Communications Director Alexis Goldstein will join Pasquale for a panel discussion on how to empower citizens and consumers in a digitally data-driven economy. The event begins at 9 a.m. and ends at noon. In-person attendance is limited, and a live stream of the event is available.
The Rural Utilities Service and NTIA plan a May 20 webinar on the efforts of President Barack Obama's Broadband Opportunity Council to seek comment on how federal agencies can promote broadband deployment, adoption and competition. The webinar will be 4-5 p.m. and open on a first-come, first-served basis, with attendees asked to register by May 13, said a notice Wednesday on the webinar.
The tech industry, including her own company, "needs to do a lot more when it comes to diversity,” Google Vice President-People Operations Nancy Lee said in a blog post Tuesday. Google embedded engineers at historically black colleges and universities, partnered with Hollywood to inspire girls to work in the computer science industry, built local initiatives to introduce coding to high school students from diverse communities, and expanded its employee unconscious bias training, Lee said. “But these programs represent only a sampling of all the work that is going on behind the scenes,” Lee said. “If we’re really going to make an impact, we need a holistic plan.” Google’s four-part plan includes hiring diverse workers by doubling the number of schools where Google recruits; fostering a fair and inclusive culture by raising awareness around unconscious biases; expanding the pool of technologists by teaching kids the basics of coding and inspiring girls to work in computer science; and bridging the digital divide by ensuring more underrepresented communities have access to the benefits of the Web, Lee said. “Meaningful change will take time,” she said. “We’re gradually making progress across these four areas, and we’re in it for the long term.”
Katherine Race Brin was named FTC chief privacy officer, succeeding Peter Miller, Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said Wednesday. Brin's job will be "to ensure that the FTC complies with our privacy obligations,” Ramirez said. The CPO “coordinates efforts to implement and review the agency’s policies and procedures for safeguarding all sensitive information, and chairs its Privacy Steering Committee and the Breach Notification Response Team,” the agency said in a news release. Before becoming acting CPO, Brin was senior adviser to the director of the Consumer Protection Bureau, where she worked on legislative and policy matters involving privacy, security and technology, the FTC said. From 2007 to 2014, Brin was a staff attorney in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection and “played a key role in many of the FTC’s most significant privacy and data security cases,” the agency said.
The FCC said it plans a webinar series aimed at helping seniors take advantage of broadband-enabled technology. The first session, called "Get into the Act ... Online," will be May 28, 1-2:30 p.m. Subsequent webinars will target digital literacy, broadband adoption and other issues affecting seniors, the FCC said Wednesday.
Amazon and JetBlue said JetBlue will begin allowing Amazon Prime customers later this year to use its free in-flight Fly-Fi Wi-Fi service to access Amazon’s online video and music library. JetBlue had restricted HD video streaming to customers who bought the airline’s $9-per-hour premium Wi-Fi service because of capacity issues. JetBlue customers who don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime will be able to use Fly-Fi to buy and stream Amazon Instant Video content, the companies said Tuesday. Fly-Fi connectivity will be available in all of JetBlue’s Airbus A321 and A320 aircraft this year, and in all Embraer E190 aircraft in 2016, the airline said. JetBlue said it has no plans to block customers from using other streaming services like Netflix via Fly-Fi, but won’t be able to guarantee connectivity.