Top 10 Stories

The “Protecting Cyber Networks Act” has been added to the growing list of cyber threat information-sharing legislations which are pending before Congress. The PCNA, introduced this week by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, would provide liability protections to businesses that share cyber threat information with the Government, and furnish safeguards to shield citizens' personally identifiable information that could appear in shared data. One of the bill's sponsors, Adam Schiff, the US Representative for California's 28th...

The Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center (R-CISC) is working with the Financial Services ISAC (FS-ISAC) on a new threat intelligence-sharing platform. The retail industry said it will adopt the financial services industry's portal for sharing cyber attack and threat intelligence. The move brings the two intel-sharing organisations closer together in their efforts to identify, share, and thwart attack attempts on companies in their industries. "We evaluated a number of different platforms to help enable information-sharing...

According to the Boardroom Cyber Watch Survey 2014, 32.5 per cent of boards do not receive any information about their organisation’s cyber security posture or activities. Of the 55 per cent that do receive regular reports, 19 per cent% receive reports only annually. “Many boards remain in the dark about security issues, and show no interest in addressing them,”said Neil Ford of IT Governance. “It’s astounding that nearly a third of boards know nothing – and want to...

The Accelerator Network, which brings together business support services for high-growth tech companies, is working with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to bring together 50 of the UK’s brightest young cyber security minds to tackle critical cyber security issues. The three-day ‘hackathon’ will take place in June 2015 and draw collective talent drawn from the UK’s thirteen universities, which have been identified as Academic Centres of Excellence in cybersecurity research. The event...

The NYPD Captain’s Union website was hit with malware, taking it offline.   “There are indications the attack on our website was orchestrated by a group identifying themselves as “Anonymous” who have a history of targeting police websites across the country,” wrote the union’s president Roy Richter, in a letter to members.   Richter wrote that the captain’s association does not store any personal information about union members on the website, and that no “confidential...

The website of the Maine state Government was taken offline with a DDoS attack on Monday.   There was a similar attack on the Oklahoma City website for several days in a row last week.   The Maine website did not contain personal information worth stealing, spokespeople said.   FULL STORY

Flash files that are vulnerable to a serious flaw patched by Adobe Systems over three years ago still exist on many websites, exposing users to potential attacks.   A vulnerability, known as CVE-2011-2461, was found in the Adobe Flex Software Development Kit (SDK) and was fixed by Adobe in November 2011. The development tool, which has since been donated to the Apache Software Foundation, allows users to build cross-platform rich internet applications in Flash.  ...

The shortlist for RSA Conference’s Innovation Sandbox has been announced,   In its tenth year, the competition is dedicated to encouraging out-of-the-box ideas and the exploration of new technologies that have the potential to transform the information security industry.  Past winners include Sourcefire, Imperva, and most recently RedOwl Analytics.   The finalists for “Most Innovative Company at RSA Conference 2015” (in alphabetical order) are: Bugcrowd, Cybereason, Fortscale, NexDefense, SecurityDo, SentinelOne, Ticto, TrustInSoft, Vectra Networks and...

NCC Group has agreed to buy Accumuli in order to boost its capabilities in round-the-clock operational support and incident management, and develop its consulting business.   With the price set at £55 million, NCC Group's chief executive Rob Cotton said that the addition of Accumuli will enable it to provide a wider and more comprehensive range of security solutions and services.   “In this dynamic and rapidly growing international market, customers are now looking for...

Kreditech, a consumer finance startup that specialises in lending to “unbanked” consumers with little or no credit rating, is investigating a data breach. After hackers from the group A4 posted thousands of applicants’ personal and financial records online, Anna Friedrich, head of communications at the Hamburg-based lender, acknowledged that the company had an “isolated internal security incident” in November 2014, and that Hamburg police are investigating. Friedrich said Kreditech believes the data was stolen not...