Top 10 Stories

Lloyd’s of London said it has experienced rapid growth in the demand for insurance against cyber attacks.   Geoff White, underwriting manager for cyber, technology and media at Lloyd’s syndicate Barbican, said the market for cyber insurance had experienced a 50 per cent increase in insurance submissions during the first three months of the year, when compared to the same period in 2014.   “In general terms, we're continuing to see new customers purchasing cyber...

iSIGHT Partners has acquired Critical Intelligence, a vendor in cyber situational awareness and threat intelligence for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) owners and operators.   “Demand for cyber threat intelligence continues to accelerate as more and more enterprises recognise that they cannot counter sophisticated cyber threats through technology alone.  With the increased threat concerns for organisations that own and manage critical infrastructure or operate important manufacturing systems, an intelligence led approach to cyber security is critical,”...

A study of connected “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices has shown security vulnerabilities within these devices to be a potential pathway for robbery, theft of sensitive data or even stalking.   Veracode studied six common at-home devices, including the Chamberlain MyQ Internet Gateway, the Chamberlain MyQ Garage, the SmartThings Hub, the Ubi, the Wink Hub, and the Wink Relay.   The study found that the impact of security vulnerabilities in these devices could be significant...

A bug in online petition service Change.org has been fixed, after it disclosed email addresses that could have belonged to current or former subscribers.   The number of results returned on searches ranged from 40,000 to 65,000, although not every result included an e-mail address. Upon notification, website administrators disabled the search function and asked search engines to remove the offending results while engineers investigate and fix the underlying problem.   In a statement, Change.org...

Dimension Data has announced a new assessment offering which helps organisations assess the maturity of their security architecture.   Also assessing the underlying security safeguards which protect human assets from cyber attacks and their processes and technologies, the architecture will determine the ability to determine capability and maturity of key architecture controls around people, processes and technology using industry standard metrics, and determine the ability to manage security to industry standards.   Matthew Gyde, Dimension...

CipherCloud has acquired Anicut Systems, a privately held provider of adaptive security as a service   Anicut’s technology will enhance CipherCloud’s cloud discovery, data protection and monitoring platform by bringing additional intelligence and security controls that help organisations defend against a fast evolving threats landscape. The financial terms of the acquisition are undisclosed.   The Anicut technology provides advanced cloud security analysis of real-time traffic using machine learning to detect malicious insider and external threats....

A certificate to secure Gmail and Google Apps to send outgoing mail lapsed on Saturday.   The certificate was issued by Google Internet Certificate Authority G2, which issues digital certificates for Google web sites and properties. According to Google, Google Internet Authority G2 is operated in accordance with the latest version of the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements and is signed by the GeoTrust Global CA.   "The problem with Gmail should be resolved. We apologize...

The US Air Force has established a new task force designed to better understand and address cyber threats.   Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Walsh III signed a memorandum that established the Task Force Cyber Secure to “address challenges of the cyber space domain in synchronization, operations and governance within the Air Force and with those organizations it supports,” according to an Air Force release.   The three main areas the task force will focus...

Uber has hired Facebook’s Joe Sullivan to be its first chief security officer.   “This is a chance to help build the culture of a young and growing organization, and to continue building upon the safety and security initiatives that are the backbone of Uber’s success,” Sullivan said in a statement.   For Uber, hiring in security is particularly important. In February, the company disclosed that it had experienced a breach of its systems, which...

A Russian coder has revealed how he discovered a way to delete any video on YouTube.   According to a demonstration of Kamil Hismatullin's technique, he could copy part of a video's web address and use it to wipe the clip within half a minute. Rather than exploit the hack, he instead reported it to parent company Google, which rewarded him with a $5,000 bug bounty.   "Although it was an early Saturday's (sic) morning...