• RIM proposes industry encryption forum to demands for access to e-mail, messages

    RIM has proposed that an industry forum be established to help governments manage lawful intercept, in the hope of forestalling India’s threatened ban, due this coming Wednesday; the proposed body would be led by RIM, but the company is hoping that others companies threatened by bans — Google, Skype, and others — will join in

  • Intel wants security built directly into silicon

    A consensus is emerging that the main reason for Intel’s acquisition of McAfee is that Intel wants to build directly into its hardware the kind of security features more traditionally provided by software like McAfee’s

  • Technological challenges to Intel's embedded security approach

    Embedding security in silicon faces many challenges, among them: how much can be placed into a chip, and the fact that patching hardware or firmware is when a security vulnerability is discovered, is much harder than patching software

  • Intel acquires McAfee for $7.68 billion

    Intel says security is now a fundamental component of online computing, but today’s approach to security is not adequate for the growing availability of Internet connections on mobile phones, medical devices, ATMs, automobiles, and elsewhere; the industry needs a new approach that combines software, hardware, and services to meet tomorrow’s needs

  • Indian government: Google, Skype will follow BlackBerry in being forced to open networks

    The Indian government, in a meeting last month with representatives of network operators and Internet service providers, said that after RIM was forced to open BlackBerry-based communication to government eavesdropping, Google and Skype would be asked to do the same — or face bans on some of their services in India; It is unlikely that the Indian government is interested in Google’s search business, but about twenty million Indians are active on Google’s social networking service, Orkut, which encourages them to communicate with each other over Google Talk

  • U.S., too, uneasy with encrypted communication

    The U.S. said it hoped RIM and foreign governments would find a compromise over BlackBerry encryption, but successive U.S. administrations tried to limit the export of encrypted technologies so U.S. spy agencies would have unfettered access to government and private communications abroad; until 1996 encryption at the level commonly in use today was classified by U.S. export regulations as “munitions”

  • Tire tags reveal driver whereabouts

    As computerized systems are being increasingly used in automobiles, critics are asking what safeguards system makers are putting in place to prevent vulnerabilities in such systems, knowing that bugs and security holes invariably sneak into all software

  • Move to IPv6 may create a "security nightmare"

    IPv6, the Internet’s next-generation addressing scheme is so radically different from the current one that its adoption is likely to cause severe security headaches for those who adopt it; the radical overhaul still is not ready for prime time — in large part because IT professionals have not worked out a large number of security threats facing those who rely on it to route traffic over the net

  • Identifying future digital leakers, whistle-blowers

    Digital encoding could catch future informants; the Wikileaks saga will likely result in an overhaul of how governments protects information; in addition to using watermarking, government agencies could adapt existing digital-rights-management technologies; such technologies can perform various tasks that might be relevant: identify when the same computer is downloading voluminous amounts of material, restrict downloading to authorized users, and stop users from copying or passing restricted files to other computers

  • Breakthrough: UCLA engineering devises new location-based cryptography method

    Location-based security is ensured by using quantum mechanics; this type of cryptography could be useful in several settings — for example, one could communicate with a military base with a guarantee that only someone physically present at the base will have access to the information; furthermore, the location-based method eliminates the need for distributing and storing keys, one of the most difficult tasks in cryptography

  • Shortage of cyber workers in the U.S.

    The United States is lacking an adequate number of individuals within the federal government and private sector with the technical skills necessary to secure cyberspace; there is an even greater shortage of cybersecurity experts that can design secure systems and networks, write nonvulnerable computer code and create the tools needed to prevent, detect and mitigate damage due to malicious acts

  • Algorithm could improve hospital records security

    An algorithm secures patients’ records by ensuring that access to information is available to those who need it, but only when necessary; for example, once a patient has been admitted to hospital, the admissions staff do not necessarily need access to the patient’s records anymore; in many hospitals, those staff members nonetheless continue to have access to every record on file; using the algorithm, those staffers would only be able to access the patient’s record during admission processing; after that, they would find your information unavailable

  • "Zero knowledge" keeps secrets you put on the net safe

    Intrigued by topics that touch on mathematics, computer science, physics and neuroscience, Professor Shafrira Goldwasser has made far-reaching contributions to keeping your data safe on-line; the solution she discovered used randomized methods of encoding, which came to underlie all future protocols for secure Internet transactions and data privacy

  • Web services could work with sensitive data -- without decrypting the data

    A cryptographic method could allow cloud services to work with sensitive data without ever decrypting it; a novel technique could see future Web services work with sensitive data without ever being able to read it; several implementations of a mathematical proof unveiled last year will allow cryptographers to start making the proposal more practical.

  • Obama's 29 May 2009 cybersecurity speech: a year on

    On 29 May 2009 president Obama said “America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity”; since then the United States has moved systematically toward enhancing cybersecurity through the following initiatives, but much remains to be done