Editor's News

Mass surveillance of the internet by GCHQ prior to December was unlawful, according to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.   It said that the “intelligence sharing” process did not comply with human rights law, and there was a lack of transparency.   Following the decisions in December 2014 that determined that the collection tool Tempora and intelligence sharing between NSA and GCHQ was in principle lawful, the complaint brought by civil rights groups Privacy International, Amnesty...

Governments should step in to cover the threats posed by cyber attacks as they present such a danger to global business.   Lloyd’s of London head Stephen Catlin said that cyber security presented the “biggest, most systemic risk” he had come across in his 42-year career in insurance, and argued that managing such liabilities was a job for Governments.   He warned that it is possible to have the same loss happening around the globe,...

Nisa has removed two-non executive directors following the leak of data last September.   Following the news from last September, where it was revealed that the convenience store suffered a major leak of its members’ data when a spreadsheet containing shareholders’ addresses, phone numbers and online passwords was leaked, Harris Aslam, 18, and Raza Rehman, 24, have been removed from the board following the incident.   Nisa chairman Christopher Baker told The Sunday Times it had launched...

American health insurer has announced that social security numbers and other personal information were stolen in a cyber attack.   With the potential to expose around 80 million Anthem customer details, accounts associated with Anthem Blue Cross, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Amerigroup, Caremore, Unicare, Healthlink, and DeCare were all part of the data breach, reported Forbes.   In a statement,...

CIO Mike McNamara has left his position at Tesco to take up the same role at US retailer Target. Over a year since Target suffered a massive breach of credit card data, McNamara will report to Target chairman and CEO, Brian Cornell. According to Computer Weekly, Tesco announced in August 2014 that it was cutting back its IT spending to reduce costs. McNamara took over as CIO in March 2011 when his predecessor Philip Clarke...

Sony Pictures is intending to spend $15 million on security defences after the 2014 attack tore the company’s defences apart.   In its financial statement, for Q1 of 2015, Sony Pictures said that it is expected to include approximately $15 million (1.8 billion yen) in investigation and remediation costs relating to the above-mentioned cyber attack.   Chris McIntosh, CEO of ViaSat UK, said: “Sony spending $15 million on cyber security shows that it has learned,...

New initiatives on data collection by the US Government will set certain limitations on the use of signals intelligence collected in bulk.   According to a White House statement, the reforms are “designed to reassure every American that our nation’s intelligence activities are carried out with appropriate oversight and respect for civil liberties and privacy”, and approved by President Obama, intend to refine the process for collecting signals intelligence.   Obama also signed Presidential Policy...

A new major zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in Adobe Flash; the third this year. Adobe officials released an advisory warning users that attackers are exploiting the vulnerability, and said that they plan to release a patch for the flaw sometime this week. The vulnerability affects Flash on Windows, OS X and Linux. Adobe said: “A critical vulnerability (CVE-2015-0313) exists in Adobe Flash Player 16.0.0.296 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh. Successful exploitation could cause a...

A simulated national cyber forensic investigation tasked 22 amateur defenders with stopping a simulated cyber strike on a fictitious multi-national energy firm at the weekend. The PwC-hosted Cyber Security Challenge tasked candidates to lead a cyber-forensics investigation against the recurring nemesis “The Flag Day Associates” who were planning to launch a malware attack. Participants were provided with a forensics lab environment and given authentic PwC cyber-forensics technology to investigate and stop the mock attack. Andrew Miller,...

The Information Commissioner's Office has the right to force NHS authorities to be audited for compliance with the Data Protection Act. Enforced as of yesterday (1st February), the ICO welcomed the legal change that will give the office the ability to subject public healthcare organisations to a compulsory audit which previously only applied to central Government departments. In August 2014, the ICO issued a £180,000 fine on the Ministry of Justice following the loss of...