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The Real Cost of Free WiFi

June 17, 2016

As warmer weather approaches, millions of Americans will be traveling on summer getaways. Regardless of where you are heading on your vacation, chances are that you will pack connected mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Once on vacation, most travelers will connect to Wi-Fi to find local hotspots, navigate new cities and countries, and share photos of their trips with family and friends back home.

Public Wi-Fi networks can now be found almost everywhere and make it easy for anyone to connect to the Internet no matter where they are.

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Cyber Disruption Response Guide

By National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO)

State government must now view cyber attacks that are more than cyber incidents.  We must prepare for larger magnitude events.  These can be termed cyber disruptions, disasters or even catastrophes.  This publication includes the following:

  • A call to action for states to develop state cyber disruption response plans that include: a governance structure that clearly designates who is in charge in a given event or phase of an event;

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Cyber incidents against local government and law enforcement agencies

By Sasha Romanosky, PhD.
 
In a previous blog, we saw the number of cyber incidents across all sectors of business, based on a sample of 12,000 events over the years 2004-2014. Next, we examine just the subsample of incidents affecting municipal, county, state and federal government agencies. The chart below reflects the various subsectors of governmental organizations victimized by cyber attacks during this time period, which totals just over 1,400 incidents.

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Cyber incidents against government agencies

By Sasha Romanosky, PhD.

I recently examined a dataset of over 12,000 cyber incidents that occurred during the years 2004-2014. These events include data breaches (unauthorized theft or loss of personal information), privacy violations (unauthorized collection or use of personal information), security incidents (hacks directed specifically at an organization), and other sorts of phishing or identity theft scams. The incidents relate to private sector corporations, but also include schools, non-profits, and many forms of government agencies.

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New Report on Future Internet Technologies Puts a Spotlight on Information Security

By: John S. Hollywood

In late 2014, the RAND Corporation hosted an expert panel for the National Institute of Justice on how the criminal justice community can take advantage of new Internet technologies such as the Internet of Things, intelligent agents, and semantic tagging. RAND recently released its report on the workshop (http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR928.html), describing the panel’s assessment of the science and technology needed to take advantage of emerging opportunities while mitigating potential threats.

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Sharing and Safeguarding Information

By: John S. Hollywood

Law-enforcement agencies increasingly need to share information with other nearby agencies, as well as with regional, state, and federal repositories of criminal justice information. A recent report from the RAND Corporation, Improving Information-Sharing Across Law Enforcement: Why Can’t We Know? (http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR645.html), reviews progress to date on improving the sharing of law-enforcement information, discusses the sizable barriers remaining, and identifies approaches to overcoming those barriers.

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The Harm in Password Reuse

By: Center for Internet Security

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) recently published their monthly Cyber Tips newsletter, The Harm in Password Reuse.

Below is the content provided in the newsletter published by CIS:

From the Desk of Desk of Thomas F. Duffy, Chair

Every day malicious cyber actors compromise websites and post lists of usernames, email addresses, and passwords online.

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Online Hijacking

It used to be that hijacking was something only done in person, but as we discuss in this blog post, online hijacking—where someone or some service takes over an individual’s online account—is now a growing occurrence. Not all forms of online hijacking are “criminal”; for example, browser hijacking— when your Internet search function is diverted to websites you never intended to visit or when advertisements are misleading and redirect you from the main website—may be a nuisance,

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Identification Through Anonymized Data

Much of the data individuals provide is assumed to be protected because it is anonymized—stripped of any information that identifies who those individuals are. Such anonymized data is everywhere. But how safe is the underlying assumption that individuals can’t be reidentified through such data? Unfortunately, as we discuss in this blog post, there is repeated evidence that this underlying assumption is not holding up—something that raises real concerns that people can be victimized through information they release that can be traced back to them and that makes this an emerging law enforcement issue.

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#Greenbirds

On Twitter, the “#” sign refers to a hashtag—a way to group conversations together and make topics of discussion easier to discover and search.  Our blog topic of discussion is #Greenbirds—which involves social media influencers on Twitter supporting the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL).

#Greenbirds: Measuring Importance and Influence in Syrian Foreign Fighter Networks—is a report from London-based researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence who are studying foreign fighter networks. 

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