AWS Facial Recognition Platform Misidentified Over 100 Politicians As Criminals

Facial recognition technology is still misidentifying people at an alarming rate – even as it’s being used by police departments to make arrests. In fact, Paul Bischoff, consumer privacy expert with Comparitech, found that Amazon’s face recognition platform incorrectly misidentified more than 100...

Nationwide Facial Recognition Ban Proposed By Lawmakers

Lawmakers have proposed legislation that would indefinitely ban the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement nationwide. The new bill comes after months of public concerns surrounding facial recognition’s implications for data privacy, government surveillance and racial bias. The...

GDPR: An impact around the world

A little more than one month after the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR to extend new data privacy rights to its people, the governor of California signed a separate, sweeping data protection law that borrowed several ideas from GDPR, sparking a torch in a...

Bruce Schneier Proposes 'Hacking Society' for a Better Tomorrow

SAN FRANCISCO – Cybersecurity experts have long stayed in their problem-solving lane when it comes to finding vulnerabilities, patching bugs and keeping networks safe. But maybe it is time they applied their defensive skillsets and adversarial understanding of cyberthreats to help solve some of...

Washington Privacy Act welcomed by corporate and nonprofit actors

The steady parade of US data privacy legislation continued last month in Washington with the introduction of an improved bill that would grant state residents the rights to access, control, delete, and port their data, as well as opting out of data sales. The bill, called the Washington Privacy...

Data Privacy Day: A Vision for the Future

January 28 is Data Privacy Day, an annual effort to empower individuals and organizations to respect privacy, safeguard data, and enable trust. This year, the National Cyber Security Alliance NCSA is bringing together experts on U.S. and international privacy for A Vision for the Future, an...

N.Y. Could Ban Cities from Paying Ransomware Attackers

New York State may soon ban municipalities from paying ransomware demands in the event of a cyberattack. State Senators Phil Boyle, George M. Borrello and Sue Serino introduced Senate Bill S7246 earlier this month, in response to the rising tide of cyberattacks targeting government agencies and...

Deepfakes laws and proposals flood US

In a rare example of legislative haste, roughly one dozen state and federal bills were introduced in the past 12 months to regulate deepfakes, the relatively modern technology that some fear could upend democracy. Though the federal proposals have yet to move forward, the state bills have found...

IoT bills and guidelines: a global response

You may not have noticed, but Internet of Things IoT rules and regulations are coming whether manufacturers want them or not. From experience, drafting up laws which are hopefully sensible and have some relevance to problems raised by current technology is a time-consuming, frustrating process...

IoT Security Woes Plague Healthcare Industry

LAS VEGAS – More hospitals are adopting internet of things IoT devices, from wearables to smart insulin pens. But neither hospitals nor the device manufacturers themselves are ready to address the onslaught of security and privacy challenges that come with medical connected devices. At least 82...

Microsoft to Apply California’s Privacy Law to All U.S. Users

Microsoft is extending a California law aimed at protecting users privacy to all of its users in the United States, an unexpected move supporting tougher requirements to disclose exactly how the company uses the consumer data it collects. The California Consumer Privacy Act, known as CCPA, is...

A week in security (November 4 – November 10)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we announced the launch of Malwarebytes 4.0, tackled data privacy legislation, and explored some of the ways robocalls come gunning for your data and your money. We also laid out the steps involved in popular vendor email compromise attacks. Other cybersecurity new...

Data Breach Fines: Are They Working to Boost Consumer Safety?

Breach statistics are downright discouraging: Over the past five years the number of businesses breached has skyrocketed. The human consequences are also bad, with billions of private email addresses, bankcard numbers and other deeply personal data points exposed online and now in the hands of...

ACCESS Act might improve data privacy through interoperability

Data privacy is back in Congressional lawmakers’ sights, as a new, legislative proposal focuses not on data collection, storage, and selling, but on the idea that Americans should be able to more easily pack up their user data and take it to a competing service—perhaps one that better respects...

Senate Passes Bill Aimed At Combating Ransomware Attacks

The U.S. Senate has approved new legislation aimed at helping government agencies and private-sector companies combat ransomware attacks. The legislation comes as local governments and schools continue to be hit by sophisticated – and in some cases coordinated – ransomware attacks. The proposed...

California Passes Bill to Ban Police Use of Facial Recognition

The California Senate has passed a bill in a 22-15 vote that would ban the use by law enforcement of body cams that use facial recognition. The move will send AB 1215, already passed by the California Assembly back in May on a 45-17 vote, to the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom to be signed into law. Th...

Understanding CCPA: It's Time to Action a Plan for Compliance

Notice to all procrastinators: The final countdown to the California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA has begun. On January 1, 2020, companies or organizations that do business in California will be required to comply with the state's strict new privacy legislation that establishes a legal and enforceab...

Facebook Agrees to Pay $5 Billion Fine and Setup New Privacy Program for 20 Years

The Federal Trade Commission FTC today officially confirmed that Facebook has agreed to pay a record-breaking $5 billion fine over privacy violations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Besides the multibillion-dollar penalty, the company has also accepted a 20-year-long agreement that...

What should a US federal data privacy law ideally include?

In the constant David-and-Goliath struggle between digital privacy advocates and corporate privacy invaders, the question of how to legally protect Americans with a comprehensive, federal data privacy law provides conflicting answers. Advocates want protections, which Big Tech interprets as...

This Week in Security News: Spam Campaigns and Cryptocurrency Miners

Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about advanced targeted attack tools being used to distribute cryptocurrency miners as well as a spam campaign targeting European user...