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Unlikely hit ‘Sound of Freedom’ opens new front in US culture wars – FRANCE 24 English

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

The surprise hit of the summer, "Sound of Freedom," has so far earned $85.5 million at North American theaters in just two weeks since its release -- roughly six times its $14.5 million budget.

Last weekend, it comfortably outpaced pricey blockbusters like "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny."

With its riveting take on the true story of a former government agent rescuing children from the clutches of Colombian criminals, you'd think it would be the kind of movie that everyone could get behind.

But this is America, where "culture wars" over gas stoves, Pride flags and "The Cat in the Hat" can end friendships and turn neighbor on neighbor -- and where half the country can dismiss as evil incarnate a movie that the other half loves.

Conservatives have lavished "Sound of Freedom" with praise for speaking to a section of blue-collar America which they say has been snubbed by Hollywood elites.

Liberals have called it a recruiting tool for the far-right that promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory about a cabal of pedophiles from Hollywood and the Democratic Party kidnapping children and harvesting their blood.

"What's almost as interesting as the movie itself is the reaction it seems to provoke from the mainstream media that seem determined to tear it down at any cost," said British thriller writer Will Jordan in a positive review posted to his 1.8 million-subscriber YouTube channel, "The Critical Drinker."

"I mean, you'd think a movie that sheds light on the hidden nightmare of child trafficking would be a pretty admirable cause worthy of support."

Shot in 2018 with funding from Mexican investors, the film tells the story of former US Homeland Security special agent Tim Ballard, who in 2013 started Operation Underground Railroad to rescue children from Colombian sex traffickers.

It has become a cause celebre for right-wing pundits from Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro to former president Donald Trump, who is hosting a screening of the film at his New Jersey golf club on Wednesday.

The film was originally scheduled for release by 20th Century Fox, but that deal was canceled when Disney bought the studio in 2019, paving the way for Angel Studios to step in.

"We're getting messages from all over the country telling us about packed theaters, sold-out theaters, and spontaneous standing ovations for the film in numerous locations," said Brandon Purdie, Angel's head of theatrical distribution.

"Seeing this film has become a must, thanks to incredible word of mouth."

But the movie has been criticized for mischaracterizing the problem of trafficking and because of the controversy surrounding its star Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" (2004).

The devout Catholic, 54, has addressed several QAnon events and promotes the conspiracy theory that child trafficking rings drain their victims' blood for the hormone adrenochrome, believing it to be an elixir that wards off aging.

Ballard has also flirted publicly with another debunked theory, that a major US furniture retailer sells children, tweeting in 2020: "With or without Wayfair, child trafficking is real and happening!!!"

Operation Underground Railroad has also been accused of exaggerating its role in child trafficking rescue operations.

Criticism of "Sound of Freedom," which co-stars Oscar winner Mira Sorvino, has pitted the traditional entertainment media against the filmgoing public, with audiences awarding it a perfect score of 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and an A+ on CinemaScore.

There were largely negative reviews from mainstream liberal outlets like Variety, The New York Times and The Guardian, which called it "QAnon-adjacent" or just plain dull.

"To know thousands of adults will absorb 'Sound of Freedom,' this vigilante fever dream, and come away thinking themselves better informed on a hidden civilizational crisis... well, it's profoundly depressing," said Rolling Stone.

But Jordan sees hypocrisy in the criticism, contrasting the objections to the film with the support liberals gave "Cuties," a 2020 Netflix drama accused of hypersexualizing young girls.

"It's a film that reminds us that even though there are a lot of bad people in this world doing the worst things imaginable, there are also still good men fighting to bring them to justice," he said.

"And maybe that's something we could all do with remembering."

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Unlikely hit 'Sound of Freedom' opens new front in US culture wars - FRANCE 24 English

Joe Rogan’s carnivore diet: Exploring his journey and benefits – Sportskeeda

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

Joe Rogan, a renowned podcaster, comedian and mixed martial arts enthusiast has become a significant advocate for the carnivore diet.

Through his popular podcast, he has given a platform to influential figures in the carnivore community, including Dr. Shawn Baker, Dr. Paul Saladino and psychologist Jordan Peterson.

Let's delve into Rogan's experiences with the carnivore diet, why he chose it, what he ate and the outcomes, including its benefits and side effects.

Before we dive into Rogan's carnivore journey, let's understand what the carnivore diet is all about.

The carnivore diet involves exclusively consuming animal products while eliminating all other food groups like processed foods, vegetables, fruits and vegetable oils.

Though the strictness varies among individuals, most carnivore dieters focus on nutrient-dense ruminant meats like beef, bison and lamb, and in Joe Rogan's case, elk and moose.

As animal products are primarily zero-carb foods, the carnivore diet inherently becomes a high-fat, low-carb or keto-carnivore eating approach.

Joe Rogan first announced his experiment with the carnivore diet for 30 days in January 2020. Since then, he has continuously cycled on and off a pure carnivore diet.

Inspired by his carnivore-loving guests on the podcast, he has shared his experiences with millions of social media followers. He often posts pictures of his carnivore meals, featuring mouth-watering ribeye steaks and seared slices of elk that he hunted.

Rogan's decision to adopt the carnivore diet was driven by several factors. One of the main reasons was his desire to explore how the diet could potentially benefit his autoimmune condition called vitiligo, which causes milky white patches on the skin due to immune system activity.

Additionally, he aimed to shed excess weight and enhance his energy and mental clarity.

During his initial 30-day carnivore experiment, Rogan witnessed several positive outcomes.

He experienced a reduction in aches and pains, observed improvements in his vitiligo, and reported steady energy, weight loss and improved mental health. His weight dropped from 205 to 193 pounds, and he proudly shared his success in losing excess fat around his face, belly and waist area.

However, it's important to note that the carnivore diet also came with temporary side effects for Rogan, particularly during the first two weeks, when he dealt with explosive diarrhea.

This is a common experience for some individuals as their body adapts to the diet, and the symptoms typically resolve over time.

Joe Rogan's carnivore diet centered around two meals a day. He started with breakfast comprising eggs and bacon, while dinner consisted of delicious grass-fed elk, bison, and steak.

He emphasized the significance of consuming ample healthy fats when following a low-carb diet to avoid potential issues like protein poisoning.

Joe Rogan's embrace of the carnivore diet has not only positively impacted his own health but has also sparked curiosity and interest in this unconventional eating pattern.

While scientific evidence supporting its long-term effects is limited, the anecdotal evidence from Rogan and others suggests that the carnivore diet may offer potential benefits, particularly for autoimmune disorders and weight management.

Nevertheless, as with any dietary change, it's crucial to approach it thoughtfully, considering individual health needs and preferences.

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Joe Rogan's carnivore diet: Exploring his journey and benefits - Sportskeeda

Twitter Claims It’s Combating Hate Speech. But Evidence Says Otherwise – Them

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

As Twitter continues to disintegrate in increasingly less entertaining ways, the companys new leadership insists that hate speech on the platform just hit a record low despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

In a statement released via the official Twitter Safety account Tuesday afternoon, the company claimed that more than 99% of content [that] users and advertisers see on Twitter is healthy. The statement also included details of a new and ostensibly independent analysis of all content posted between April and May of this year, including the assertion that there are now 30% fewer impressions of hate speech across Twitter compared with last year, before billionaire Elon Musk bought the company. The analysis was carried out by the business management firm Sprinklr, which used an AI-based language learning model to determine the reach of posts containing hate speech.

Over the past 8 months, weve made progress on reducing the spread of hate speech, proactively preventing child exploitation, and giving brands more control over where their ads appear from adjacency controls to third-party verification, said Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, in a separate statement Wednesday morning.

Yaccarino released her statement in direct response to a Bloomberg report that found levels of hate speech, graphic violence, child sex abuse material, and other harmful content had dramatically increased since Musks buyout, spooking advertsers. Yaccarino accused Bloomberg of using incorrect, misleading, and outdated metrics in its report.

Of course, its pretty easy to say youve reduced hate speech on your platform when you also take a narrow view of how that term can even be applied. In April which conveniently happens to be when this latest dataset begins the Twitter Safety team removed misgendering and deadnaming from the list of behaviors that violate its community guidelines, meaning a huge amount of targeted anti-transgender harassment would likely no longer be considered harmful by Twitters definition.

But read each corporate statement carefully, and youll see that Yaccarino and Twitter arent actually reducing hate speech on the platform just controling how many people see it, specifically their advertising partners. Twitters April stealth update coincided with another major policy change often summarized as freedom of speech, not reach. Rather than remove hate speech and other rule violations outright, platform moderators (the few that are left, anyway) instead label such posts to flag them as hate speech and hide them from view. In particular, as Yaccarino put it in her statement, we proactively prevent all ads from appearing adjacent to any content that's labeled.

In other words, Yaccarino, Musk, and their team are pulling a bait-and-switch by talking about impressions when everyone else is discussing volume and impact. Twitter isn't actually tracking how much hate speech and other harmful content gets posted or if they are, they certainly arent disclosing those numbers. Instead, theyre only seem to be interested in how often anyone notices how much harmful content still around. Its like that old saying goes: If someone says a slur in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, did we just solve racism?

That Musk and Yaccarino seem more concerned with making Twitter appear safe than actually making it safe is horrible, but it doesnt come as much of a surprise. Musk has made no secret of his own anti-transgender views, declaring the adjective cisgender to be a slur last month, unbanning anti-trans ideologues like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, and regularly boosting anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda from the likes of Libs of TikTok and Matt Walsh. Yaccarino is herself a former Donald Trump appointee who follows dozens of the worst offenders on Twitter, from GOP politicians and conspiracy theorists such as Jack Posobiec to what certainly look like random QAnon reply guys.

Yaccarino and Musk are directly responsible for the toxic state of Twitter and they cannot simply hand wave away the fact that the platform remains dangerous to consumers and advertisers, said Media Matters for America vice president Julie Millican in an emailed statement to Them. [MMFA] and others have repeatedly found corporate advertising appearing alongside Holocaust deniers, white nationalists, anti-LGBTQ extremists and more which raises additional questions about Yaccarinos claims that advertisers have greater control about where their ads appear.

Sadly, it looks like the platform where so many of us built connections and communities is truly crumbling under the weight of its leaders terrible politics. To barely closeted extremists like Musk, Twitter being infested with reactionary bile isnt a downside, its a feature.

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Twitter Claims It's Combating Hate Speech. But Evidence Says Otherwise - Them

US government launches the Cyber Trust Mark, its long-awaited IoT security labeling program – TechCrunch

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

Image Credits: Javier Zayas Photography / Getty Images

The Biden administration has launched its long-awaited Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity labeling program that aims to protect Americans against the myriad security risks associated with internet-connected devices.

The program, officially named the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, aims to help Americans ensure they are buying internet-connected devices that include strong cybersecurity protections against cyberattacks.

The Internet of Things, a term encompassing everything from fitness trackers and routers to baby monitors and smart refrigerators, has long been considered a weak cybersecuritylink. Many devices ship with easy-to-guess default passwords and offer a lack of security regular updates, putting consumers at risk of being hacked.

The Biden administration says its voluntary Energy Star-influenced labeling system will raise the bar for IoT security by enabling Americans to make informed decisions about the security credentials of the internet-connected devices they buy. The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark will take the form of a distinct shield logo, which will appear on products that meet established cybersecurity criteria.

This criterion, established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will require, for example, that devices require unique and strong default passwords, protect both stored and transmitted data, offer regular security updates and ship with incident detection capabilities.

The full list of standards is not yet finalized. The White House said that NIST will immediately start work on defining cybersecurity standards for higher-risk consumer-grade routers, devices that attackers frequently targetto steal passwords and create botnets that can be used to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. This work will be completed by the end of 2023, with the aim that the initiative will cover these devices when it launches in 2024.

In a call with reporters, the White House confirmed that the Cyber Trust Mark will also include a QR code that will link to a national registry of certified devices and provide up-to-date security information, such as software updating policies, data encryption standards and vulnerability remediation.

We knew that we didnt want to create a label that said this product had been certified and secured and then stayed secure forever, a senior administration official said. The QR code will give you up-to-date information on the ongoing adherence to cyber security standards.

U.S. retailers will also be encouraged to prioritize labeled products when placing them in stores and online, the White House said, and a number have already signed up to the initiative, including Amazon and Best Buy. Otherbig-name tech firms that already agreed to the voluntary labeling initiative include Cisco, Google, LG, Qualcomm and Samsung.

While the initiative will initially focus on high-risk consumer devices, the U.S. Department of Energy announced on Tuesday that it is working with industry partners to develop cybersecurity labeling requirements for smart meters and power inverters.

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US government launches the Cyber Trust Mark, its long-awaited IoT security labeling program - TechCrunch

Kevin Mitnick, Hacker Who Eluded Authorities, Is Dead at 59 – The New York Times

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

Kevin Mitnick, who at the dawn of widespread internet usage in the mid-1990s became the nations archetypal computer hacker obsessive but clever, shy but mischievous and threatening to an uncertain degree and who later used his skills to become chief hacking officer of a cybersecurity firm, died on Sunday in Pittsburgh. He was 59.

Kathy Wattman, a spokeswoman for the cybersecurity company he partly owned, KnowBe4, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Described by The New York Times in 1995 as the nations most wanted computer outlaw, Mr. Mitnick was a fugitive for more than two years.

He was sought for gaining illegal access to about 20,000 credit card numbers, including some belonging to Silicon Valley moguls; causing millions of dollars in damage to corporate computer operations; and stealing software used for maintaining the privacy of wireless calls and handling billing information.

Ultimately, he was caught and spent five years in prison. Yet no evidence emerged that Mr. Mitnick used the files he had stolen for financial gain. He would later defend his activities as a high stakes but, in the end, harmless form of play.

Anyone who loves to play chess knows that its enough to defeat your opponent, he wrote in a 2011 memoir, Ghost in the Wires. You dont have to loot his kingdom or seize his assets to make it worthwhile.

At the time of Mr. Mitnicks capture, in February 1995, the computer age was still young; Windows 95 had not yet been released. The Mitnick Affair drove a fretful international conversation not just about hacking, but also about the internet itself.

As a media celebrity, the internet is now seriously overexposed, the Times columnist Frank Rich complained in March 1995, blaming the hoopla surrounding Mr. Mitnick.

Mr. Mitnicks most spectacular crimes were his attempts to evade capture by the authorities. In 1993, he gained control of phone systems in California that enabled him to wiretap the F.B.I. agents pursuing him and confuse their efforts to track him. At one point they raided what they thought was Mr. Mitnicks home, only to find there a Middle Eastern immigrant watching TV.

On another occasion, using a radio scanner and software, Mr. Mitnick discovered that F.B.I. agents were closing in on him. He fled his apartment, and when the authorities arrived, they found a box of doughnuts waiting for them.

Mr. Mitnick ran into trouble on Christmas Day 1994, when he stole emails from a fellow hacker named Tsutomu Shimomura and taunted him. When he learned of the attack, Mr. Shimomura suspended a cross-country ski trip he was on and volunteered to help track down Mr. Mitnick.

What The Times called a duel on the net ensued. Mr. Mitnick was the amoral savant, praising the tech skills of his adversary, while Mr. Shimomura was the freelance gunslinger with a conscience, accusing Mr. Mitnick of violating the codes of the online community.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable, he told The Times.

Mr. Shimomura, using software he had designed that reconstructed a users computer sessions, along with cellphone scanning equipment, proceeded to locate Mr. Mitnick.

Mr. Mitnick was finally captured by the F.B.I. and charged with the illegal use of a telephone access device and computer fraud. He allegedly had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars, Kent Walker, an assistant U.S. attorney in San Francisco, said at the time. He was a very big threat.

In 1998, while Mr. Mitnick awaited sentencing, a group of supporters commandeered The Timess website for several hours, forcing it to shut down. A Times technology reporter, John Markoff, also became part of the imbroglio, reporting soon after the arrest that Mr. Mitnick had gained access to Mr. Markoffs email as revenge for Mr. Markoffs reporting on his activities.

Mr. Mitnick reached plea agreements in 1996 and 1999, which included pleading guilty to computer and wire fraud. He was released from prison in 2000 on the condition that he refrain from using a computer or cellphone for three years without the permission of his probation officer.

After leaving prison, Mr. Mitnick read out a statement of self-defense. My crimes were simple crimes of trespass, he said. My case is a case of curiosity.

Kevin David Mitnick was born in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles on Aug. 6, 1963, and grew up in that city. His parents, Alan Mitnick and Shelly Jaffee, divorced when he was 3 years old, and he was raised by his mother, a waitress.

Mr. Mitnick was a heavyset and lonely boy who, by the age of 12, had figured out how to freely ride the bus using a $15 punch card and blank tickets fished from a dumpster. In high school he developed an obsession with the inner workings of the switches and circuits of telephone companies. He pulled pranks at a high level, managing to program the home phone of someone he did not like so that each time the line was answered, a recording asked for a deposit of 25 cents.

He showed a willingness to violate the law flagrantly, breaking into a Pacific Bell office as a teenager and stealing technical manuals.

In the late 1980s, he was convicted twice of hacking into corporate computer systems, leading to time in prison and counseling for addiction to computers.

Yet Mr. Mitnick often took a surprisingly old-fashioned approach to high-tech thievery. He frequently impersonated authority figures over the phone and in email, persuading low-level company officials to hand over passwords that gave him access to secret information.

Mr. Mitnicks first marriage, in his early 20s, ended quickly in divorce. In 2015, he met Kimberly Barry at a cybersecurity conference in Singapore, and the two soon began dating. They married last year, after he learned of his cancer diagnosis. She survives him and is pregnant with his first child.

The year Mr. Mitnick was released, The Times reported on an unusual arrangement in which he was hired by a California college he had victimized to consult on cybersecurity. Mr. Mitnick called it hire the hacker.

Now it is commonplace for hackers to find work by exposing the vulnerabilities of governments and corporations. KnowBe4, the company Mr. Mitnick partly owned, describes itself as the provider of the worlds largest security awareness training. The company says that a cybersecurity training curriculum that Mr. Mitnick designed is used by more than 60,000 organizations.

Writing in The New York Times Book Review about data privacy, the journalist and author Amy Webb in 2017 identified that once-hunted hacker with an epithet that would have baffled members of law enforcement and newspaper readers in the 1990s: the internet security expert Kevin Mitnick.

Livia Albeck-Ripka and Orlando Mayorquin contributed reporting.

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Kevin Mitnick, Hacker Who Eluded Authorities, Is Dead at 59 - The New York Times

Google restricting internet access to some employees to reduce cyberattack risk – CNBC

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

A man walks through Google offices on January 25, 2023 in New York City.

Leonardo Munoz | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google on Wednesday is starting a new pilot program where some employees will be restricted to internet-free desktop PCs, CNBC has learned.

The company originally selected more than 2,500 employees to participate, but after receiving feedback, the company revised the pilot to allow employees to opt out, as well as opening it up to volunteers. The company will disable internet access on the select desktops, with the exception of internal web-based tools and Google-owned websites like Google Drive and Gmail. Some workers who need the internet to do their job will get exceptions, the company stated in materials.

In addition, some employees will have no root access, meaning they won't be able to run administrative commands or do things like install software.

Google is running the program to reduce the risk of cyberattacks, according to internal materials. "Googlers are frequent targets of attacks," one internal description viewed by CNBC stated. If a Google employee's device is compromised, the attackers may have access to user data and infrastructure code, which could result in a major incident and undermine user trust, the description added.

Turning off most internet access ensures attackers cannot easily run arbitrary code remotely or grab data, the description explained.

The program comes as companies face increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.Last week, Microsoft said Chinese intelligence hacked into company email accounts belonging to two dozen government agencies, including the State Department, in the U.S. and Western Europe in a "significant" breach. Google has beenpursuingU.S. government contracts since launching a public sector division last year.

It also comes as Google, which is preparing a companywide rollout of various artificial intelligence tools, tries to boost its security. The company has also in recent months been striving harder to contain leaks.

"Ensuring the safety of our products and users is one of our top priorities," a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We routinely explore ways to strengthen our internal systems against malicious attacks."

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Google restricting internet access to some employees to reduce cyberattack risk - CNBC

Continual Improvement In The Key To Optimum Cyber Security – CIO Applications

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

Eric Lovell, Senior Director, It/Cyber Security Risk, Ally

And from a risk perspective (with few exceptions), cyber security relevant information technology aligned metrics are at the top of the mind for boards, end users, and every stakeholder group.

I would hazard to guess that at any organization, cyber security metrics of some type are being collected, tracked, and communicated. Some organizations have robust, well managed programs; others may take a minimalist approach, only tracking a handful of items because leadership demands accountability for basic things with direct and obvious business impact.

In regulated industries, such as financial services, there is an expectation that their entire digital presence should be secure and well managed. For many firms, the identification, collection, tracking, and reporting of metrics, rather than an ancillary process, is a fundamental organizational capability with measurable value for all stakeholders.

In my experience, even a cursory review of industry specific regulatory, academic, and authoritative cyber security standards and/or research products produced by organizations such as the Center for Internet Security, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, like a mature cyber risk management metrics program has the following characteristics:

1.Both retrospective and prospective/actionable

2.Comprehensive in scope but limited in number

3.Clear, concise, and of adequate frequency to provide expected benefits

4.Authoritative, both internally and externally

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Continual Improvement In The Key To Optimum Cyber Security - CIO Applications

3 Top Stocks From the Flourishing Security and Safety Services Industry – Yahoo Finance

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

The Zacks Security and Safety Services industry is poised to benefit from strong demand for security and safety solutions prompted by growing concerns of terrorist and criminal activities and the need to safeguard citizens and infrastructure. Improving supply chains and a deceleration in inflation augur well for the industrys near-term prospects.

Companies like Johnson Controls International JCI, Brady Corporation BRC and Lakeland Industries LAKE are poised to take advantage of the buoyancy in the industry.

About the Industry

The Zacks Security and Safety Services industry comprises companies that provide sophisticated and interactive security solutions and related services, which are meant to be used for residential, commercial and institutional purposes. A few industry players develop electrical weapons for personal defense, as well as military, federal, law enforcement and private security. Some of them provide solutions for the recovery of stolen vehicles, wireless communication devices, equipment for the safety of facility infrastructure and employees, and products for detecting hazards. A few companies provide a variety of services to automobile owners and insurance companies. The industry serves customers belonging to various end markets, including manufacturing, electronics, hospitality, education, construction, telecommunications, aerospace and medical.

3 Trends Shaping the Future of the Security and Safety Services Industry

Demand for Security and Safety Services: Growing concerns of terrorism and criminal activities around the world are promoting demand for security and safety services. Political unrest across countries, prompting governments to safeguard citizens and protect infrastructure, acts as a key growth driver for the industry. With growing urbanization, governments are increasingly focusing on the safety and security of people, assets and the like, thus driving demand in the industry. Thanks to rising instances of hacking, the industry is seeing growing demand for Internet security products and services like firewalls and unified threat management. Increasing efforts directed toward ensuring safe infrastructure in smart cities bode well for the industry.

Improving Supply Chains: While supply chain disruptions persist, the situation has improved significantly, as evident from the Institute for Supply Management reports Supplier Deliveries Index, which reflected faster deliveries for the eighth straight month in June. This is expected to drive the industrys growth in 2023. A reduction in raw material costs, thanks to the deceleration in inflation, should support the bottom line of industry players.

High Debt Levels: To stay competitive and keep up with changing customer needs, industry players constantly focus on upgrading and developing new products. While this augurs well for the industrys long-term growth, hefty investments in research and development often leave companies with highly leveraged balance sheets.

Story continues

Zacks Industry Rank Indicates Bright Prospects

The Zacks Security and Safety Services industry, housed within the broader Industrial Products sector, currently carries a Zacks Industry Rank #67. This rank places it in the top 27% of more than 250 Zacks industries.

The groups Zacks Industry Rank, which is basically the average of the Zacks Rank of all the member stocks, indicates solid near-term prospects. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperforms the bottom 50% by a factor of more than two to one.

The industrys positioning in the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries is a result of the positive earnings outlook for the constituent companies in aggregate. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the groups 2023 earnings per share has increased 8.5% in the past year.

Given the bullish near-term prospects of the industry, we will present a few stocks that you may want to consider for your portfolio. But it is worth taking a look at the industrys shareholder returns and its current valuation first.

Industry Outperforms Sector & S&P 500

The Zacks Security and Safety Services industry has outperformed both the broader sector and the Zacks S&P 500 composite index over the past year.

Over this period, the industry has rallied 25.4% compared with the sector and the S&P 500 Indexs increase of 21.4% and 13.9%, respectively.

Industry's Current Valuation

On the basis of forward P/E (F12M), which is a commonly used multiple for valuing security and safety services stocks, the industry is currently trading at 19.52X compared with the S&P 500s 20.10X. However, it exceeds the sectors P/E (F12M) ratio of 17.11X.

Over the past five years, the industry has traded as high as 27.04X, as low as 10.38X and at the median of 18.68X, as the chart below shows:

3 Security and Safety Services Stocks to Buy

Each of the companies mentioned below presently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Johnson Controls: A diversified technology company and a multi-industrial leader, Johnson Controls is involved in the creation of intelligent buildings, providing efficient energy solutions and integrated infrastructure. A robust demand environment, pricing actions and cost-control initiatives are expected to drive JCIs growth. Continued improvement in HVAC & Controls and strength in the Fire & Security are key catalysts to the companys growth.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Johnson Controls fiscal 2023 (ending September 2023) earnings has been revised upward by 2.6% in the past 90 days. Shares of the company have gained 8.6% in the year-to-date period.

Brady: The company offers complete identification solutions that help companies improve productivity, performance, safety and security. Brady is gaining from its continued focus on product development and innovation. Inorganic activities position BRC well for future growth.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Bradys fiscal 2023 (ending July 2023) and fiscal 2024 earnings has been revised by 1.4% each in the past 90 days. Shares of the company have gained around 7% in the year-to-date period.

Lakeland Industries: The company manufactures industrial protective clothing and accessories for the industrial and public protective clothing market. LAKE is benefiting from significant contributions from the acquisition of Eagle Technical Products, which has expanded the companys fire service protective clothing division. Improved product mix and cost-control measures should fuel the companys growth. Reduction in raw material costs and manufacturing expenses should bolster LAKEs bottom line.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Lakeland Industries fiscal 2024 (ending January 2024) earnings has been revised upward by 9.4% in the past 90 days. Shares of the company have appreciated 15.1% in the year-to-date period.

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3 Top Stocks From the Flourishing Security and Safety Services Industry - Yahoo Finance

Apple warning it could shut FaceTime, iMessage in UK over govt surveillance policy adds to growing tech industry discontent – TechCrunch

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

We havent been able to confirm the substance of the BBCs reporting with Apple which did not respond when we contacted it with questions about the story. However the tech giant recently elected to brief the broadcaster on its displeasure at another piece of (incoming) UK digital regulation hitting out in a statement last month at the Online Safety Bill (OSB) as a risk to encryption.

In making critical remarks public Apple joined a number of major tech services that had already been warning over powers contained in the draft legislation they say could enable the Internet regulator to order platforms to remove strong encryption.

Of particular concern is a government amendment last year that put the bill on a direct collision course with E2EE by proposing the regulator, Ofcom, should have powers to force platforms to scan messages for child sexual abuse content (CSAM) which, in the case of E2EE services, would likely require they implement client-side scanning by default (or otherwise backdoor encryption).

Privacy and security experts have lined up to warn over the security risks of such an approach.

As have other E2EE comms providers, including WhatsApp and Signal who have suggested they would either stop offering service in the UK or else wait to be blocked by authorities rather than comply with a law they believe will compromise the security of all their users.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is another high profile critic. It, too, has suggested it could exit the UK if the government doesnt rethink its approach.

Wikipedias concern for its service focuses on measures in the OSB related to age-gating and content censorship ostensibly for child protection which its founder, Jimmy Wales, has attacked as being bad for human rights, bad for Internet safety and simply bad law.

We would definitely not age gate nor selectively censor articles under any circumstances, Wales told TechCrunch when asked to confirm Wikipedias position on the legislation, adding: Weve chosen to be blocked in China and Turkey and other places rather than censor Wikipedia, and this is not different.

Despite the cavalcade of mainstream tech industry and expert criticism fired at the OSB ministers have so far only entrenched their position, claiming the legislation is a vital tool to fight CSAM and will also boost protections for children and other vulnerable web users.

Even concerns raised by the director of the research group selected by the government for a technical evaluation of a handful of safety tech projects given public funding back in 2021, as part of a Home Office competition to develop technology which can detect CSAM on E2EE services without comprising privacy, does not appear to have given ministers pause for thought.

The issue is that the technology being discussed is not fit as a solution, Awais Rashid, professor of cyber security at the University of Bristol and director of the Rephrain Centre, warned in a university press release earlier this month. Our evaluation shows that the solutions under consideration will compromise privacy at large and have no built-in safeguards to stop repurposing of such technologies for monitoring any personal communications.

Nor are there any mechanisms for ensuring transparency and accountability of who will receive this data and for what purposes will it be utilised. Parliament must take into account the independent scientific evidence in this regard. Otherwise the Online Safety Bill risks providing carte blanche for monitoring personal communications and potential for unfettered surveillance on a societal scale.

The governments willingness to ignore OSB critics may boil down to popular support based on its framing of the legislation as a vital child safety intervention.

Opposition to the bill within parliament has also been limited, with the opposition Labour Party broadly falling in behind the government to support the bill. Peers in the second chamber have also failed to respond to last minute calls to amend the legislation to ensure encryption is safe.

Following a final debate in the Lords last night, the Open Rights Group issued a statement warning there had been no progress in ensuring the bill could not compromise encryption:

As it stands, the Online Safety Bill will give Ofcom the power to ask tech companies to scan our private messages on the governments behalf. Despite having cross party support, the opposition withdrew an amendment that would at least ensure judges have oversight over these powers for government-mandated surveillance.

The government claims it will protect encryption but has still not provided detail about how this is possible if these powers are enacted. It is now left to tech companies, who may have to deal with notices asking them to weaken the security of their products.

The bill still has to pass through final stages which could include consideration of further amendments. But time is running out for the government to avoid a direct collision course with mainstream E2EE tech platforms. So far its preferred the fudge of claiming Ofcom would simply never ask E2EE companies to break their encryption without providing legal certainty by specifying that in the bill.

The government took a similarly fuzzy approach to encryption in the IPA which did not make it explicitly clear whether the law was essentially outlawing comms providers from using E2EE by containing powers were they could be mandated to hand over decrypted data. So there is something of a pattern in UK tech policymaking, over the past several years, where it touches strong encryption.

As for the planned changes to further extend the IPA notice regime, it remains to be seen whether Apples biggest threat yet to yank FaceTime and iMessage out of the UK gives government ministers cold feet or not.

Intelligence agency surveillance powers arent likely to be quite so easy to sell to the British public as populist claims to be clamping down on Big Tech to protect kids. But its notable that the Home Office statement in response to Apples threat cites catching child sex abusers as one of the missions the IPA was designed for.

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Apple warning it could shut FaceTime, iMessage in UK over govt surveillance policy adds to growing tech industry discontent - TechCrunch

Reducing Security Debt in the Cloud – Dark Reading

July 20, 2023 | Author: admin

Debt is a big topic of discussion these days household debt in inflationary times, tax debt following the income tax filing deadline, the debate over raising the government's debt ceiling. But one kind of debt that can haunt organizations long term doesn't get as much attention: security debt.

Just like not doing what needs to be done in time can leave you behind on your taxes or your bills and piles on interest, leaving your cybersecurity by the wayside as you build your organization can cost you more in the long term. When you don't put the building blocks in place early and pay for things upfront, the overall debt will grow as time marches on.

Many organizations deploy applications without incorporating security into the development life cycle. As a result, they often must go back and reengineer the software down to its fundamental building blocks because of inherent security flaws, which costs exponentially more than if they had built in those security checks early on.

The growth in cloud services and the move of more operations to the cloud only magnifies this effect. Since cloud applications can be spun up by anyone with a credit card, developers can potentially put valuable data and business assets at risk. Before the cloud, if a business unit wanted to deploy a new application, it would have to engage the IT organization, generally ensuring some level of security oversight. Today, a business unit can outsource the development of a custom environment on any cloud platform, without IT. Additionally, when IT and the information security team finds out about these assets, they often have limited visibility into the cloud infrastructure and configuration.

With companies constantly scrambling to build and deploy apps faster using cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platforms, security debt can mount faster than credit card charges in the drive to be agile. Obviously, the worst-case scenario of security debt is a breach a ransomware attack, vandalism, theft, or some other attack but there are many other casualties of security debt that can also be quantified. For example, the costs of reengineering security after the fact for compliance in highly regulated industries such as retail and finance can be substantial. Meanwhile, regulators are increasingly willing to lay down fines and penalties for companies that suffered data breaches because their security was noncompliant and insufficient.

Establishing baselines and aligning with some basic security frameworks can be useful tools to prevent the buildup of security debt. A security program assessment (SPA) can look holistically across multiple domains of security including security awareness, vulnerability management or identity and access management and evaluate best practices in any one of those domains to give an overall assessment against industry-specific best practices. The Center for Internet Security (CIS), for example, provides valuable control and benchmark guidelines.

Aligning with one of those frameworks accomplishes a similar role for cyber defenses as a building code does in construction, getting the organization to a baseline of safety practices that can prevent a catastrophe. The building code will not get you the fanciest mansion, but it will produce a safe home; in the same way, having a cyber baseline will provide the basic minimum benchmark for safety.

Just like building codes vary geographically hurricanes are a bigger concern in Florida than Maine the baselines for data security vary by industry. A retailer may be more concerned about complying with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, while other industries may be more concerned with meeting the baseline set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its Cyber Security Framework (CSF).

Aligning with a security framework provides some guidance on best practices, but an organization needs to fine-tune the guidelines for their unique environment and requirements. Here are some recommendations for preventing security debt in the cloud:

Security debt exists in traditional on-premises data centers as well as newer cloud platforms. Preventing it from accumulating in the cloud, however, requires a different set of skills, processes, and tools. Following the recommendations above can help pay down existing security debt before the next big breach, and avoid racking up new ones.

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Reducing Security Debt in the Cloud - Dark Reading

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Reducing Security Debt in the Cloud – Dark Reading

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