Commentary on the Implementation Plan for the 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy

The Atlantic Council released a detailed commentary on the White Houses new "Implementation Plan for the 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy." Lots of interesting bits. So far, at least three trends emerge: First, the plan contains a somewhat more concrete list of actions than its parent...

Proposed Massachusetts law to ban sale of your mobile location data

Cellular location phone data may be banned from sale in the state of Massachusetts, under a proposed law set to ruffle some data broker feathers. The selling of location data has long been a point of contention for privacy experts. As with so much bulk user data, claims of anonymity from the...

The TikTok Hearing Revealed That Congress Is the Problem

The interrogation of CEO Shou Zi Chew highlighted US lawmakers’ own failure to pass privacy legislation...

Australia Passes Bill to Fine Companies up to $50 Million for Data Breaches

The Australian government has passed a bill that markedly increases the penalty for companies suffering from serious or repeated data breaches. To that end, the maximum fines have been bumped up from the current AU$2.22 million to AU$50 million, 30% of an entity's adjusted turnover in the relevan...

Australian Health Insurer Medibank Suffers Breach Exposing 3.9 Million Customers' Data

Australian health insurance firm Medibank on Wednesday disclosed that the personal information of all of its customers had been unauthorizedly accessed following a recent ransomware attack. In an update to its ongoing investigation into the incident, the firm said the attackers had access to...

The Problem with Treating Data as a Commodity

Excellent Brookings paper: "Why data ownership is the wrong approach to protecting privacy." From the introduction: Treating data like it is property fails to recognize either the value that varieties of personal information serve or the abiding interest that individuals have in their personal...

You Are Here: Giving Your Users the Local Experience They Deserve

Locality matters for most things in life: weather, health care, shopping, product reviews, dinner reservations, social networking, data privacy, news, sports ... the list goes on and on in our ever more connected lives. From direct user interaction on your flagship website or app to IoT device da...

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...

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...

Harassment scandals, Sheldon Cooper, Black Mirror and blockchain

Lots of good jokes in a popular TV show The Big Bang Theory are related to Sheldon Cooper's bureaucracy in interpersonal relationships: all these "roommate agreement", "relationship agreement", etc. However, because of these endless harassment scandals in media, now it seems like a best practice ...

White House Creates Cyber Governance Unit Within OMB

With the framework explained for a number of government cybersecurity-related initiatives, now it’s time to talk money. The White House anted up strong in 2015 with proposals for a new data breach notification standard, as well as plans to facilitate information-sharing between the public and...