Consumer confidence toward the overall economy and technology spending both fell in March, said CEA Tuesday. The CEA Index of Consumer Expectations (ICE), which measures consumer expectations about the U.S. economy as a whole, slipped 2.8 points from February to 178.4, and the Index of Consumer Technology Expectations (ICTE) dropped 5.4 points, said CEA. “While consumer confidence is down slightly from last month, U.S. economic growth continues to sustain above-trend growth,” said Shawn DuBravac, CEA chief economist. This month’s ICE remains higher year over year for the month of March since the CEA Index began tracking in 2007, said the association in a news release.
A cloud network security company started Tuesday. ProtectWise, with employees who used to work at IBM and McAfee, said it differs in that it deploys a virtual camera in the cloud to deliver “unlimited retention” of network data, which can be analyzed years later to “uncover threats that were previously unknown using the latest intelligence.” It allows a replay to detect threats or breaches as intelligence is updated, said CEO Scott Chasin in an interview last week. It’s a “time machine for threat detection,” he said. The average time between a breach occurring and being detected is about 205 days, the company said in a news release Tuesday. “The era of prevention is coming to a close, and visibility and detection are now more important than ever for all organizations to focus on,” the company said. The camera in the cloud “passively records” everything it sees, but companies can control what data is shared and analyzed, said Chief Technology Officer Gene Stevens. If a customer discovers an attack, ProtectWise automatically will look for similar breaches in real time and retrospectively, he said. The firm recognizes that “companies are suffering from alarm fatigue,” Stevens said, pointing to a 2015 Ponemon Institute survey saying the average enterprise receives almost 17,000 malware alerts weekly. Of those, 19 percent are reliable and 4 percent are investigated. ProtectWise has received more than $17 million in financing from Arsenal Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital, Paladin Capital Group and Trinity Ventures. The company has “more than a dozen” clients in industries such as technology, financial services, healthcare, and media and entertainment, including Universal Music Group, the company said in a news release Tuesday.
Cybersecurity problems are the most pressing issue facing the Internet, said an Internet Society survey. ISOC's survey, released Monday, had 801 responses from the society's six regions. Eight-six percent of respondents said they were ISOC members, and 86 percent said cybersecurity is the most critical issue facing the Internet. Seventy-five percent said making Internet governance “easier to understand” was “extremely” or “very important.”
“One of the most common motivations for hacking is the theft of financial information,” the Department of Justice wrote in blog post Friday. It’s now a crime to sell “access devices” such as credit card numbers, and the government can prosecute offenders located outside of the U.S. as long as the card number involved was issued by an American company and the government can prove an “article” used to commit the offense moved through the U.S. or that the criminal held his or her illicit profit in an American bank, DOJ said. These “requirements have proved increasingly unworkable in practice,” Justice said. When digital data is stolen, it’s not clear what “article” could be involved, the DOJ said, which is why it has proposed an amendment to the Personal Data Notification & Protection Act that “would strike the unnecessary language in the current statute.” The proposed amendment would let DOJ “prosecute anyone possessing or trafficking in credit card numbers with intent to defraud if the credit cards were issued by a United States financial institution, regardless of where the possession or trafficking takes place,” Justice said. “This kind of jurisdiction over conduct that occurs abroad is fully consistent with international norms and other criminal laws aimed at protecting Americans from economic harm.”
The FTC is hiring technologists to staff its newly formed Office of Technology Research and Investigation (OTRI), which was created to “expand the FTC’s capacity to protect consumers in an age of rapid technological innovation,” wrote FTC Chief Technologist Ashkan Soltani in a blog post Monday. In its hundred years, the commission has protected consumers as new technologies, from movies and radio to smartphones and connected cars, emerged, Soltani said. “When smart phones began to become ubiquitous, the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection created a Mobile Technology Unit” (MTU) to highlight “consumer protection challenges posed by mobile technologies,” and developed tools and techniques to protect consumers, Soltani said. The OTRI is the successor to the MTU and will tackle "an even broader array of investigative research on technology issues involving all facets of the FTC’s consumer protection mission, including privacy, data security, connected cars, smart homes, algorithmic transparency, emerging payment methods, big data, and the Internet of Things,” he said. New positions the FTC announced include a technology policy research fellowship, research coordinator and technology research internship program, Soltani said. The FTC’s tech blog, traditionally reserved for posts from the agency’s chief technologist, soon will expand to allow posts from “invited FTC staff, including members of OTRI,” who will guest blog about technical research findings and technology-related issues affecting consumers, he said.
Luxury watchmakers announced smart watch intentions at the start of the Baselworld watch and jewelry showcase event in Switzerland Thursday. They were as reluctant to provide product details as they were eager to trumpet their technology partners. At a news conference announcing a relationship among luxury watch icon TAG Heuer, Google and Intel, TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver called it “my biggest announcement ever” in his 40 years attending Baselworld. Biver prefaced a brief Q&A with the caveat that he wouldn’t provide pricing, availability or product features of the TAG Heuer smart watch. Biver called the announcement something he could “never have imagined,” a partnership that would “give birth to the greatest connected watch.” The Silicon Valley companies supplying the technology to TAG Heuer also are providing the tech foundation for Fossil Group’s upcoming smart watches (see 1503060058). That led to a question in Q&A on how the partnership with TAG Heuer differs from that with Fossil. Michael Bell, general manager-Intel's new devices group, responded for the group and said, “What we’re talking about here is a very nice luxury Swiss smart watch” and called Fossil “also a phenomenal partner.” The TAG Heuer smart watch will reside on a software platform called Android Wear, a version of the Android operating system tailored for the connected watch, said David Singleton, director-engineering of Google's Android Wear. The brains of the watch are made by Intel. Because of the collaboration among the three companies, and the fact that the watch's "brain" is made by Intel, the upcoming watch won’t be able to be labeled what has been a point of pride for TAG Heuer’s other watches: “Swiss Made.” Also at Baselworld, Gucci Timepieces said it partnered with i.am+ and will.i.am to develop wearable technology. In announcing the collaboration, Gucci Timepieces CEO Stéphane Linder, who left TAG Heuer as CEO in December, said he coined the term “fashionology” to describe the merging worlds of fashion and technology. The Gucci device will operate as a “completely standalone smartband, untethered from any smartphone,” said the company. The feature list of the smart device includes: the ability to make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages and emails, music, maps, calendar, fitness functions and a “sophisticated personal assistant activated by voice command,” the company said.
NTIA published the Internet Policy Task Force’s request for comment on possible cybersecurity issues that the IPTF should explore. The IPTF has said it’s seeking out topics that largely veer away from securing critical infrastructure, a topic that’s been the focus of other cybersecurity efforts like the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework (see 1503160059). Comments are due 5 p.m. May 18, NTIA said in a Thursday notice in the Federal Register.
The NTIA’s Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) has been a success, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said Wednesday at a Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy event on the National Broadband Plan. “We all know there’s still much more work to be done,” he said. BTOP grantees have deployed more than 113,000 miles of new or upgraded broadband connections and connected more than 25,000 “community anchor” institutions. Hundreds of thousands of Americans now have broadband as a result of the program, he said. The plan itself was key in raising an early alert about the need for more spectrum for wireless broadband, Strickling said. “It seems obvious today, but I don’t think it was quite so obvious back in 2010, the speed with which wireless devices were going to take over,” he said.
Enough Is Enough is partnering with 75 other organizations to lead its “National Porn Free Wi-Fi Campaign,” delivering 46,500 petition signatures to the CEOs of McDonald’s and Starbucks, said a news release from Enough Is Enough. The campaign and petition ask the companies to filter all pornography on their public Wi-Fi services. Organizations that joined the campaign include the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family’s Citizens Link, Home School Legal Defense Association, National Children’s Advocacy Center, Parents Television Council and Salvation Army. Neither McDonald’s nor Starbucks commented Tuesday.
Facebook received more than 35,000 government requests for user data between July and December, said the company’s transparency report released Monday. More than 14,000 of those requests came from the U.S., it said. India sent more than 5,000 requests; U.K., more than 2,000, it said.