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Very interesting........ One of my biggest fears actually. I have suffered through multiple attempts at identity theft and my philosophy has always been to prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Unfortunately I have not figured out how to adequately prepare for the worst in regards to cyber threats. Almost every asset I have is at risk including SemiWiki.com. We get attacked on a regular basis and are constantly doing security patches. Thankfully we are cloud based and have lots of help with security. My smartphone is my biggest concern. I pretty much use it for everything which means everything is at risk. I no longer use public WiFi and I use every security feature Apple offers but I still feel exposed.
"Cyber threats pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges to the United States, and my Administration is pursuing a comprehensive strategy to confront them," Obama said in a written statement announcing the new sanctions regime.
I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that the increasing prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities originating from, or directed by persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.
We are all facing and actually getting the hacking attacks. The biggest problem is people have so many devices, apps, and connection methods, how do they know what's safe and what's not safe?
For example, an organization, a government agency (domestic or foreign), or an unknown person can create a real and free antivirus software with hidden function to spy on you. Or a free flash light app you installed on your smartphone might be mining your phone's address book for all your contacts.
I can understand an advertising supported flash light app needs to know my phone's current location. But why they need to peek into my address book? Where do they send my address book content to and who is reading? I have no idea!
I used to be able to tell my friends and customers about the best safety practice in using computers and smartphones. Now I'm not quite sure that just following my advice is good enough.
Reading many terms and conditions reveals they are actually a license to open up almost everything you have. With banking apps you give away everything including your first born it seems. McAfee himself gave an interesting presentation on this terms and conditions game that was so far reaching it went beyond being ridiculous to the point of being black humor.
For those in Silicon Valley there is a keynote next week at a FREE conference that may be of interest:
“Secure Silicon: Enabler for the Internet of Things” Keynote presented by: Wally Rhines, Chairman & CEO, Mentor Graphics
As electronic system hackers penetrate deeper—from applications to embedded software to OS to silicon—the impact of security threats is growing exponentially. Viruses and malware in the operating system, or application layer, are major concerns, but only affect a portion of users. In contrast, even small malicious modifications or compromised performance in the underlying silicon can devastate system security for all users. Growth of the Internet of Things magnifies the impact of the security problem by orders of magnitude.
Since hardware is the root of trust in an electronic product, EDA companies will be increasingly pressured to solve the silicon security problems for their customers. This requires a new paradigm in silicon design creation and verification. The traditional EDA role is to design and then verify that the silicon does what it is supposed to do. Creating secure silicon, however, requires that verification ensure that the chip does nothing that it is NOT supposed to do.
The industry is at the first stage of Secure Silicon awareness; it’s going to become big business as future events unfold. Join Wally Rhines as he examines the growing threats to silicon security and EDA’s possible solutions.
Since October 2014 my Visa card has been replaced twice because of security breaches, and the company won't tell me what actually triggered the breach or what I should be doing differently to protect myself. Very frustrating and time consuming for me to update that Visa number and then alert any auto-payments scheduled for it.
yes, I also have experienced banks do not tell about details and take long time to resolve the issue. It's really frustrating, in fact they should be telling about details to their customers to equip them better for future.
On the security note - As I see it, the testing for security is never complete, most of the bugs are discovered by hacks in the field which is a very risky affair. Testing for security must improve at all levels.
Due to regulation Banks will be serious about security as they will loose money if they have a security problem. Most of the cloud services can get away with a sorry after a security breach and due to competition I don't think these services will ever be so secure. BTW, I am hosting my own storage server with owncloud; at least I know who to blame if there is a security problem .
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