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Category: Cyber Security

How to Prioritizing in the New Normal

How to Prioritizing in the New Normal

Image by Piyapong Saydaung from Pixabay

Haven’t heard that term in a while, eh, and not like we all have it all figured out.

We had a conversation with a successful serial entrepreneur recently, who began by filling us in on his history:

Started and built his first business: sold it. Started and built another business: acquired. Was about to undertake his next startup when his wife told him that he was going to be a dad for the first time – and not to a singleton. Read More...

Buh-Bye Safe Spaces: On Sheltering in the Connected Home

Buh-Bye Safe Spaces: On Sheltering in the Connected Home

Image by jeferrb from Pixabay

Since we’re all spending so much time at home as a result of offices having been slow to re-open in many places, or people have opted not to return, we felt that it’s a good time to check in on the progress of the Internet of Things (IoT). Good place to start: this TED 2018 presentation on What your smart devices know (and share) about you. We’ve come a long way since then, baby – or at least technology has. Many of us are more or less stuck in our homes – and time to look at the data they’re collecting.

“There are smart lights, smart locks, smart toilets, smart toys, smart sex toys. Being smart means the device can connect to the internet, it can gather data, and it can talk to its owner.

“But once your appliances can talk to you, who else are they going to be talking to? I wanted to find out, so I went all-in and turned my one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco into a smart home. I even connected our bed to the internet. As far as I know, it was just measuring our sleeping habits. I can now tell you that the only thing worse than getting a terrible night’s sleep is to have your smart bed tell you the next day that you “missed your goal and got a low sleep score,” said Kashmir Hill, one of the two presenters, and a journalist who covers privacy and security for Gizmodo. Read More...

Follow the Eyeballs: the Home Invasion Edition

Follow the Eyeballs: the Home Invasion Edition

Today, just a simple heads up/note to self: in case you missed it, Facebook is making a major change to the News Feed that will show you more content from friends and family and less from publishers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that, as a result, he expects that people will spend less time on Facebook. And that’s what a CEO wants, after all, right? After years of focusing on increasing the number or eyeballs and user engagement by adding feature after feature and basically minting money, suddenly, Zuck has pivoted and expects that you’ll spend less time on his platform. Nothing to see here, what, eh?

We well know that Facebook is all about eyeballs and recently announced that they’re developing ‘Portal’ gadget which will let it put microphones and cameras in people’s homes. “Rather than positioning the product as a “smart assistant,” Facebook insists that the mission behind Portal is unlike that of other competing tech. True to its mission — “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” — Facebook created Portal to reintroduce the positive effects of communication back into our lives (and our homes),” Inc reports. Read More...

The Internet of Things and the Great Disconnect

The Internet of Things and the Great Disconnect

It’s been over a year since we sounded the alarm on the lack of security on the Internet of Things, and in fact, we first mentioned it when it was back in its extremely nascent stage. While it is arguably still early days, we now have connected toasters, home alarm systems, refrigerators – and heaven forfend we should be out grocery shopping and can’t ping our refrigerator to tell us which staples we need to replenish.

We have a digital native friend who is always trying to get us to download some app or other, every time we see him. We rarely comply – primarily because it seems to be the latest iteration of something we already use, and the differentiators are not great enough to convince us that the app/company are necessarily going to be around in the next few months. He’s a young entrepreneur, who is also big on having connected devices all over the home, to make his life as easy and as remotely controllable as possible.

And therein lies the rub. Read More...

The Payback is a Bitch Edition

The Payback is a Bitch Edition

First, a must-read: Tech’s Enduring Great-Man Myth.

As promised, no editorial this week due to the holidays, but rust and tech – and hubris, it seems – never rests, and given the increasing amount of connectedness/surveillance/ control of which tech is capable, and with governments at the table and in the code, fyi:

Google My Activity shows everything that company knows about its users ­ and there’s a lot Read More...