Publications

Predicting things is easy. Here are my predictions for 2016 on cyber insurance, the Internet of Things, continuous monitoring and passwords.

As the nation shifts to IP-based landline telephone service or cuts the cord to go mobile, carriers, consumers and regulators face a host of challenges in providing services we take for granted.

Despite legal victories against organized criminals who encrypt and hold computers for ransom, new malicious campaigns continue to crop up. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is seeking information from DHS and the DOJ on the extent of the problem and the government’s response.

NIST is mulling over removing entropy requirements for passwords from its security guidelines. There really is no good way to measure how strong a password is, anyway.

This is a test of the Excerpt field. Treating the nationwide healthcare IT system as a critical infrastructure is a sensible requirement for a system that touches so many lives so closely.

October 1 was the deadline for a shift in payment card fraud liability that marks a major effort to boost U.S. adoption of smarter credit and debit cards. October 1 was the deadline for a shift in liability for merchants who accept credit and debit cards, which means just about all merchants today. It passed … Continue reading The Move to Smarter Chip Payment Cards Has Begun

The OPM now says that the fingerprints of 5.6 million persons were stolen in its catastrophic data breach. For the moment, at least, the loss of a Social Security number probably is more serious. But that could change. There is no way to make it sound good. The theft by hackers of the fingerprints of … Continue reading How Serious is the OPM Fingerprint Breach?

A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts rapid growth in the cyber insurance market in the next five years and identifies some weaknesses in the industry. Its recommendations could help improve global cybersecurity. Cybersecurity insurance has gotten quite a bit of attention in the past couple of weeks. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts significant growth in the … Continue reading Can Cyber Insurance Help You Become More Secure?

After years of delays and cost overruns in the GPS modernization program, the DOD system is in danger of falling out of date and dropping below the threshold for the number of satellites needed to ensure reliable positioning data for military and civilian users. About eight years ago the Air Force began a multi-billion-dollar program … Continue reading GPS Could Be At Risk

A NIST panel, working with the electric industry, has developed a guide for centralizing ID and access management to better protect the evolving Smart Grid from online and internal threats. As the electric power industry upgrades its legacy systems to an interactive Smart Grid that enables remote monitoring and a two-way flow of information, vulnerabilities … Continue reading “How To” Guide for ID and Access Management in the Electric Industry