Exploring the Future of Telecommunications: A Comprehensive Analysis of Wi-Fi Analytics

The future of telecommunications is a fascinating topic that is constantly evolving, with Wi-Fi analytics playing a pivotal role in shaping this landscape. As we delve deeper into the realm of Wi-Fi analytics, we uncover a world of possibilities that could revolutionize the way we communicate and interact with technology.

Wi-Fi analytics, at its core, is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data from Wi-Fi networks. This data can provide valuable insights into user behavior, network performance, and other critical aspects of a Wi-Fi network. With the advent of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, the potential of Wi-Fi analytics has expanded exponentially.

One of the most significant developments in Wi-Fi analytics is the ability to track user behavior. By analyzing data from Wi-Fi networks, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their customers habits and preferences. This information can be used to tailor services and products to meet customer needs more effectively, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Moreover, Wi-Fi analytics can also be used to optimize network performance. By analyzing data on network usage, businesses can identify bottlenecks and other issues that may be affecting the performance of their Wi-Fi networks. This can lead to more efficient network management and improved user experience.

In addition, Wi-Fi analytics can play a crucial role in enhancing security. By monitoring network activity, businesses can detect unusual patterns that may indicate a security breach. This can enable them to take proactive measures to protect their networks and data, thereby reducing the risk of cyber-attacks.

However, the potential of Wi-Fi analytics extends beyond these applications. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), Wi-Fi analytics can play a crucial role in managing and optimizing the performance of IoT devices. By analyzing data from these devices, businesses can gain insights into their operation and usage, which can be used to enhance their functionality and efficiency.

Furthermore, Wi-Fi analytics can also play a key role in the development of smart cities. By analyzing data from Wi-Fi networks, city planners can gain insights into the behavior and needs of city residents. This can be used to design more efficient and sustainable urban environments.

Despite the immense potential of Wi-Fi analytics, there are also challenges that need to be addressed. One of the main challenges is the issue of privacy. As Wi-Fi analytics involves the collection and analysis of user data, it is essential to ensure that this is done in a manner that respects user privacy and complies with data protection regulations.

Another challenge is the need for advanced analytical skills. As Wi-Fi analytics involves the analysis of complex data, it requires a high level of expertise in data analysis and interpretation. This highlights the need for businesses to invest in training and development to equip their staff with the necessary skills.

In conclusion, Wi-Fi analytics represents a significant frontier in the future of telecommunications. By harnessing the power of this technology, businesses can gain valuable insights that can enhance their operations, improve customer satisfaction, and drive innovation. However, it is also essential to address the challenges associated with Wi-Fi analytics to fully realize its potential. As we move forward, it will be fascinating to see how Wi-Fi analytics continues to shape the future of telecommunications.

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The Future of Telecommunications: A Deep Dive into Wi-Fi Analytics - Fagen wasanni

Policy decisions around voting technology have a huge impact on the security, fairness, and accessibility of elections. These decisions must be made from a fully informed perspective, particularly when the outcomes may disproportionately impact marginalized communities. One of the thorniest decisions in election administration is whoif anyoneshould be able to vote over the internet. To better inform this decision, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) should collect data on the availability of internet voting options to people with disabilities and on how many disabled voters take advantage of these options.

Having a variety of convenient options available to voters is an important way to ensure an inclusive democracy. Internet voting might seem to be an extremely convenient option. Unfortunately, widespread internet voting poses grave security risks to elections. As a 2020 notice from four federal agencies and a 2018 consensus report carried out by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have warned, the return of voted ballots over the internet is risky and perhaps impossible to make safe and secure. In our view, the potential dangers of widespread internet voting have not been significantly mitigated (by advances in technology, legislation, election procedures, or anything else) in the years since these publications. Accordingly, we have advocated against the implementation of universal internet voting.

Despite its weaknesses, though, internet voting may be the preferred method for some voters. These voters may be military personnel and overseas citizens (who have rights under UOCAVA, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) without access to reliable mail. They may also be voters with disabilities who have difficulty accessing a polling place with accessible technology, or who are unable to independently and privately mark and/or return a paper absentee ballot. For example, a report released this month by the EAC and Rutgers University researchers showed that 38% of surveyed 2022 voters with vision impairments encountered difficulty voting with a mail ballot.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than half of the states in the U.S. allow military and overseas voters to return their ballots electronically, via email, fax, or an online portal. Prior to the 2020 election, blind voters and disability rights groups sued states, arguing that they should be afforded the same ability to vote online. They argued that the unequal availability of online voting was discriminatory and therefore violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, a vital civil rights statute that aims to minimize discrimination of disabled people and was passed 33 years ago today. Partly as a result of lawsuits like these, some voters with disabilities in 13 states are now able to return their ballots electronically. For some disabled voters, internet voting provides an accessible alternative by allowing them to complete and return a ballot using adaptive technology (such as a screen reader) rather than by having to go to a polling place or mark, fold, and return a mail ballot by hand. (Several counties have piloted programs in which election officials bring accessible voting technology directly to disabled voters homes, in a form of curbside voting where the curb is the voters home, but there is little evidence that these programs are effective and scalable. They also do not serve blind or low-vision voters who want to vote absentee for a common reason: they will be absent from their home jurisdiction during the voting period.)

As a result, electronic ballot return presents a tradeoff. From a disability rights perspective, internet voting may be the best or even only way for some disabled voters to cast a ballot independently and thereby enhance access to the ballot. From a cybersecurity perspective, internet voting is considered untrustworthy and unauditable, and therefore poses such severe risks to democracy that internet voting should be limited as much as possible.

One key to addressing this tradeoff and ensuring that our elections are as secure and accessible as possible is having information on how many voters are voting online. The EAC collects some of this data from election officials when it conducts the Election Administration Voting Survey (EAVS) and Policy Survey (EAPS) after each federal election. The survey includes questions about how many UOCAVA voters return their ballots electronically. (The survey data shows that, in 2020, at least 317,919 UOCAVA voters returned their ballots electronically via email, fax, or online portal. In 2022, at least 99,174 did.) But the survey does not collect any data on how many voters not covered by UOCAVA, such as disabled voters, vote electronically.

As states have expanded the availability of internet voting for disabled voters, it has become critically important for the EAC to collect data on how many disabled voters are choosing to vote online. Michelle Bishop, a disability voting rights expert at the National Disability Rights Network, has said that, just as with UOCAVA voters, we must be willing to take a calculated risk as we offer electronic voting options to disabled voters. But it is impossible to calculate the scale of this risk without data on how many disabled voters choose to vote online.

It is possible that the number of disabled individuals who have voted over the internet is rather low. In Colorado, for example, just over 100 non-UOCAVA voters returned their ballots electronically in 2022 presumably far fewer than the number of disabled voters who were eligible to do so. If so, this raises the question whether states that have internet voting available are doing sufficient outreach to voters who may otherwise have a difficult time voting. But if the number is very high, that might suggest that voters who have the ability to use more secure methods of voting (such as in-person, hand-marked paper ballots) are voting over the internet, creating unnecessary risk.

Because of the serious security risks posed by internet voting, we need to do the best possible job of ensuring that internet voting is available to those voters who truly need itand no one else. Right now, we dont know how well we are doing at that goal. But having better usage numbers will give us a sense and help us improve election policies in order to achieve it. (We also need to have a better understanding of what the numbers should bein other words, the number of voters who have no way to vote other than over the internet. But such an analysis is beyond the scope of the EACs biennial surveys.)

To help paint a clearer picture of who votes over the internet, the EAC should modify the surveys that it will send to election officials after the 2024 election. Specifically, it should modify the EAPS survey to determine which non-UOCAVA voters in each jurisdiction are allowed to use electronic ballot return, and it should modify the EAVS survey to collect quantitative data on how many non-UOCAVA voters returned their ballots electronically. Reliable data is critical for making informed decisions about election technology and election policynot just for disabled people, but for everyone. There can be real tension between cybersecurity and accessibility in elections. Decisions on these matters must be made with evidence and data at the forefront.

The authors thank Michelle Bishop, Alexia Kemerling, Deborah Scroggin, and John Sebes for helpful feedback and conversations. The authors also thank Judd Choate, Election Director for Colorado, for providing recent data related to non-UOCAVA electronic ballot return.

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How Many Disabled People Vote Over the Internet? We Need Better ... - Center for Democracy and Technology

Cyberattacks have long posed a major challenge to healthcare providers, but were now entering a new phase in the threat landscape where malicious actors are preparing to cause even more damage.

More threat actors, are targeting connected medical devices in order to disrupt patient care. (Image credit: samunella - stock.adobe.com

A growing number of threat actors, from cybercriminal gangs focused on ransomware to state-sponsored attackers, are targeting connected medical devices (known as the Internet of Medical Things, or IoMT) in order to disrupt patient care, steal information or gain persistent access to hospital networks.

These attacks are readily achievable due to the relatively poor state of foundational medical device security hygiene, which presents a simple vector for threat actors who can hold these devices for ransom and render them unusable, among other types of attacks.

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is responding to this threat with a new effort to boost the security of these devices so providers and their patients are better protected.

The FDA recently released new cybersecurity guidance for medical device makers that requires they provide a reasonable assurance that these devices are cybersecure, as well as post-market updates and security patches to keep these devices protected. This new guidance, which falls under the FD&C Act (Section 524B, Ensuring Cybersecurity of Devices), went into effect on March 29, 2023.

The FDAs new guidance makes important changes to how medical devices are developed and maintained by their manufacturers, and it could certainly go a long way toward reducing the risks providers may face. However, its important for providers to recognize that this guidance while a significant step in the right direction does not address all of the risks associated with medical devices. There are several areas where providers will need to remain vigilant in order to protect their patients and maintain operational integrity.

Here are four key issues to keep in mind:

Legacy devices need not apply

The FDAs new cybersecurity requirements only apply to new medical devices, which are submitted for premarket approval on or after March 29, 2023. This means existing, or older/legacy, devices are not required to meet these elevated standards.

There has been extensive research on the security limitations of IoMT devices, and in our own analysis we have found that many devices lack strong password policies (i.e., they may contain default or weak passwords), firmware is often several years out of date and may contain multiple high-risk vulnerabilities, lax settings and misconfigurations, among other problems. For example, Phosphorus Labs has observed that up to 90% of infusion pumps in active clinical settings are running with default passwords.

Security issues are likely to persist

Under these requirements, device makers will need to follow better development practices in order to build products that are more secure from the start. However, this doesnt necessarily mean the device will be free from security problems.

To begin with, device manufacturers do not have complete control over their products, from a software development standpoint. Most of these devices utilize third-party software and firmware, and they may also include third-party hardware components as well. It is more difficult to ensure the security of a product when it relies on third-party code.

Additionally, even the most talented software development teams can still make mistakes, either by overlooking certain vulnerabilities or accidentally introducing them into the software/firmware design. Better development practices can reduce risks, but they cant completely eliminate them.

Security patches take time to deliver

One of the most important new FDA requirements is that device makers must have a process in place to provide post-market security support to their products. This will go a long way toward reducing the risks with these devices.

That said, it will still take time for device makers to (a) discover new vulnerabilities and (b) develop patches to fix them. Lastly, the patches have to be (c) implemented on the device. This A to C process will likely take several months on average to complete and in some cases, it could take significantly longer.

During this waiting period, threat actors that discover the same vulnerability can write or buy an exploit and begin carrying out attacks. This is what is known as a zero day attack when hackers are able to exploit a vulnerability before a patch is available. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a warning about the growing risk of healthcare zero day attacks in 2021.

Healthcare providers may also run into additional problems in terms of keeping up with vulnerability announcements and patches. They could also struggle with determining who is responsible for implementing these updates, or implementing compensating controls by changing configurations on vulnerable devices while awaiting a patch from the manufacturer (Is it the vendors responsibility? The IT team? Facilities management?)

Monitoring not included

The new standards do not require manufacturers to monitor their products for signs of suspicious activity. Once a medical device is deployed in a healthcare environment, it is the providers responsibility not the manufacturers to make sure it does not become infected with malware or is otherwise compromised or accessed by an unauthorized user. Manufacturers do not have complete control over how devices are installed and operated in clinical settings.

This type of continual monitoring can be a daunting task for providers, due to the sheer number and diversity of these devices, which can range from patient health monitors to infusion pumps and MRI machines.

How to Ensure Robust Device Security

Overall, the FDAs new security requirements are an important step forward in securing healthcare facilities from potential cyberattacks. However, providers must still remain vigilant to protect their medical devices from a variety of threats.

Healthcare providers are a lucrative target for cybercriminals, and an effective disruption target for U.S. adversaries, so these attacks will not scale down they are only going to increase in frequency and complexity.

To better protect critical equipment, providers need to carry out several key security steps.

Inventory management & risk assessment

Accurate inventorying is vital. Providers must know exactly how many and which type of devices they have, where they are on the network, and what their security and risk status is (i.e., end-of-life or discontinued devices, password strength, firmware status/age, device configurations, etc.). This can be a complex task due to the sheer size and variety of devices on the network, so healthcare providers should look to third-party solutions.

Strong access & authentication controls

Make sure all devices use strong passwords and rotate/change them regularly. Restrict or disable remote access features. Devices should also have valid, up-to-date digital certificates.

Firmware management

Devices must be regularly updated and patched to address exploitable firmware vulnerabilities. Establish a scalable device lifecycle management framework tailored to your organizational needs.

Continuous monitoring & configuration management

Medical devices require continuous monitoring to check for configuration drift (i.e., changed device settings), new updates or security patches being made available, passwords changing back to factory defaults, devices being moved, etc. This requires a comprehensive security strategy.

Make security fundamental

Build a culture of security within the healthcare organization. This includes training staff on security awareness and incident response.

Sonu Shankar, vice president of Phosphorus, is a 15-year veteran of the cybersecurity industry, who has led efforts in software development, product management, threat detection and cybersecurity strategy at companies including Arctic Wolf and Cisco.

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Cyber hygiene for medical devices: What the FDA's new guidelines ... - Chief Healthcare Executive

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The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.

The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.

The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.

The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.

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PUF security for the smallest Internet connected devices ... - eeNews Europe

Holiday hotel hackers are after your valuable data and they will even use the TV in your room to steal information. You might be chilled out in your accommodation but it can be a cyber-security hotspot filled with risk.

Virtual private network (VPN) service NordVPN is warning UK tourists that fraudsters and scammers are preying with techniques such as evil twin wi-fi connections and juice jacking USB ports. The rooms smart TV can also be a gateway for hackers who want to grab your data and sell it on the dark web.

The firms cyber-security expert Adrianus Warmenhoven said: You dont need to be at home or the office for your data to be stolen cyber-criminals will happily break into your phone at your hotel. Hackers can use a hotels cyber-security vulnerabilities in several ways to reach you. While youre on vacation and away from your home internet connection, you should be cautious and manage cyber-security risks.

Here, NordVPN reveals the five key ways hackers can target your vulnerable, valuable data and how to keep your guard up while letting your hair down.

Every public internet connection has an increased risk of being used by cybercriminals, and that includes hotel wi-fi.

It can be used to take travellers passwords and personal information in two ways. One is to connect to the hotels wi-fi and install malicious malware.

The second is to create a so-called evil twin a fake, unprotected wi-fi hotspot with an innocuous name such as Guest Wi-Fi or Free Hotel Wi-Fi and steal private information via that.

Warmenhoven said: First, ask the person at the reception desk to give the exact name and password for the provided wi-fi to avoid connecting to an evil twin network. Second, use a VPN service to encrypt your data and prevent third parties from intercepting it. Finally, it is always a good idea to enable a firewall while using public wi-fi.

Most hotel room smart TVs have a connection to local wi-fi to allow guests to access apps and streaming platforms. However, this can make them a portal for cybercriminals using the built-in microphones or cameras, or stealing the personal credentials used to log in to apps.

If you can, keep the TV unplugged from power when its not being used. Covering the webcam and avoiding logging in with personal credentials also reduces risks.

More hotels are installing convenient USB charging ports in rooms and they are a tempting way to charge a device, especially if the visitor is from a location with a different kind of plug.

However, hackers can modify public places charging cables to install malware on phones to perform an attack called juice jacking. This allows fraudsters to steal users passwords, credit card information, address, name and other data.

Warmenhoven said: Safe device charging on your way to your vacation spot might be challenging because you must carry a power bank or USB data blocker, but hotel rooms always have a socket. Usually, its the safest way to charge your devices.

Keep this function on your devices disabled to help mitigate cyber-security risks, as you may be surrounded by public and insecure internet connections.

Some travellers leave their smartphone in their hotel room and forget that even if they leave a device disconnected from wi-fi, it can automatically turn on, for example, if hotel staff move it while cleaning a room.

Disabling automatic connection is one solution to protect your device. The second is to enable auto-connection to security apps, such as firewalls or VPNs. This way, even if the device connects to wi-fi, it remains protected from hackers.

Unfortunately, it can be very challenging to have 100% security against professional hackers who often aim for high-value targets.

The cyber-attack group DarkHotel is known to use wi-fi at luxury hotels with sophisticated combined techniques such as spear phishing, malware and botnet automation designed to capture confidential data.

They seek key targets business executives, politicians, senior military and pharmaceutical company representatives and phishing emails are tailored to each victim and are highly convincing.

Warmenhoven said: Effective protection from sophisticated cyber-attacks is possible by using trusted VPN and internet security apps as well as regularly updating software. Nevertheless, travellers should always be aware of phishing attacks: verify the authenticity of suspicious emails and executable files and pay attention to odd spelling. These habits remain valuable during vacation as well as when you return to the office.

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Security experts warn Brits 'check hotel room TVs' to protect phone from hackers - Daily Star