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Getting internet security right is key to the alliances very future.

The agenda at NATOs London summit reportedly includes talk about the future of internet security that is, establishing rules and roles for next-generation 5G gear. This is both a vital issue and a bellwether. If done right, moving to secure 5G systems can rejuvenate the alliance around its central mission: protecting democratic states from authoritarian incursion. Botch it, and the rift will onlyincrease.

Whether NATO comes together or falls apart over 5G presents an initial test of how it will handle Chinas rise. For Beijing, leapfrogging Western telecommunications firms is part and parcel of a vision to spread norms of authoritarian internet governance, promote surveillance technologies, build global dependencies, and undermine the liberal democratic order NATO anchors. U.S. officials can take several steps to help move the debate from admonition toaction.

First, NATO should allow members to count a portion of outlays on secure 5G systems towards national 2-percent defense spending goals. There are a number of ways 5G-inclusive targets could be defined, including one-time commitments or line-item funds, but if investing in technology built by trustworthy vendors is a priority for the United Statesand it should bethe alliances cost-sharing structure should reflectit.

Second, NATO should conduct thorough technical and political risk assessments on 5G networks and build shared cybersecurity standards. Last month,NATO announcedplans to update rules for civilian 5G. The United States should use this process to push for transparency requirements on the companies that build 5G networks, including disclosures on corporate ownership structures, direct government funding, and state influence and control. Whether an authoritarian government subsidizes telecommunications equipment to undercut local competitorsor controls a company to steal military, commercial, or personal datais relevant when considering allowing it to build the foundations of economic opportunity for NATO member states.

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Put simply, NATO should require participating suppliers to show credible independence from foreign governments. In addition to helping secure networks, such a requirement fosters internet governance that resists authoritarian surveillance and erects barriers to the unfettered access of private citizendata.

Third, the United States should urge its allies to consider cooperative business models and infrastructure sharing arrangements that would help member countries choose trusted-yet-costlier systems over cheaper alternatives. Some creativity may be in order here, but NATO partnerships with the EU, Finland, and Sweden could build joint funding and research models for secure 5G and even 6Gsystems.

Proposing these initiatives would add constructive action to the U.S. governmentssteadydrumbeatagainst Huawei. Concerns over Chinese-made 5G have centered on espionage, but extend to amassing sensitive personal and corporate information and leveraging internet dependence for geopolitical control. In capital after capital, U.S. diplomats have warned allies and called for outrightbans.

For the rest of NATO, these concrete steps are also more politically viable. Amid divisions within allied nations over 5G and ample pressure from China, a tenuous plausible deniability consensus may emerge: to ratchet up requirements without singling out one country or company. A recentEuropean Union risk assessment on 5G, for example, notably cautioned against threats from state actors, but stopped short of naming Chinaexplicitly.

Disunity here has real consequences. A split over cybersecurity and the varying presence of untrusted suppliers from China in member countries 5G networks threatens vital NATO military and intelligence cooperation. The United States hasalready warnedthat it will limit intelligence sharing if allies build 5G networks with Chinese equipment. In the words ofone official, the Americans will assume that everything we share with Germany will end up with theChinese.

Such an outcome would be disastrous for the alliance. A NATO intelligence-sharing rift would open the door to greater authoritarian interference in Western democracies, and not just from China. NATOs intelligence sharing and threat analysis cell is a central tenet of itsplan to combat hybrid threatsfrom Russia and others: disinformation campaigns, malign financial flows, the annexation of Crimea, and more. Given Russias long-standing goal of fracturing NATO, its no coincidence that Russian state media championsHuawei.

Democracies need a competitive offer and a competitive vision for the future internet that starts with counting trusted 5G spending towards 2-percent targets, conducting joint risk assessments, and pursuing cooperative businessmodels.

Aligning on 5G wont solve all of NATOs problems. It wont stop Chinas economic coercion of NATO members or its human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and it wont stop Russias influence operations in Europe. But a failure to get 5G right most certainly will exacerbate them and bode ill for the future unity of thealliance.

The rest is here:
NATO Should Count Spending on Secure 5G Towards Its 2% Goals - Defense One

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was launched by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2006 and since then annual meetings have been held across the world. This year, Germany for the first time was the host country and organized the IGF in cooperation with the United Nations from 25-29 November in Berlin.

At the IGF 2019, I attended various sessions of different formats, mainly around the issues of digital democracy and identity. Here are my main learnings in short:

Blockchain technology (BC) is neither the solution to privacy nor to authentification issues: Public BCs seem to have their main advantage in providing for a high level of protection against fraud; and if they are used to serve as identity proof (e.g., for world citizens), there seems to be no way of avoiding a trusted authority, e.g. a public registry office, as a starting point. But there is obviously no privacy in a public BC, although there seem to be several ways of using a public BC with non-disclosed data, e.g. personal data that have been translated into hashes. The BC hype meanwhile seems to have been replaced by a more realistic approach in which BC offers interesting options in various software environments and for different purposes.

Democratic political regulation of the internet has become essential, and several speakers said that a global regulation frame was required. To me this is very convincing and it is also an issue for Democracy Without Borders: inclusive and participatory global democracy will require global digital communication but this can only work with internet platforms that are protected against misuse and domination. A bottom-up approach that takes a free global internet for granted is apparently no longer realistic.

Taking a free global internet for granted is no longer realistic

Maybe the European General Data Protection Regulation is a good first step in the direction of supranational data protection regulation and a good example for others; at least this view was shared by several speakers. And there seem to be plans for an European AI regulation as well. Regarding supranational regulation, however, there is a time issue: Referring to the issue of AI regulation it was said that the UN is too slow, so multilateral agreements would be a more promising approach. This will also be true for any form of internet regulation. Even more important, however, every global approach to internet regulation will also bear the risk that governments with an anti-freedom and anti-democracy agenda will try to exert their influence on this. So, democratic political regulation of the internet is by any means a difficult task and every step in this direction needs to be considered very carefully.

The internet gets nationally or regionally fragmented. In addition, in 2019 alone there apparently have already been 35 internet shutdowns (and counting). In Iran for instance, there has apparently been an internet shutdown by the government for five days in a row and it was said that due to effective preparations by the government the national/regional internet during this shutdown was working just fine (and even faster sometimes). Controlling and restricting the internet has become an attractive model for dictatorships all over the world and this is a real threat to global democracy. And there seems to be no technical way to circumvent such shutdowns. When discussing satellite technology options, a speaker from Iran commented sarcastically that even if this was feasible, it would certainly come under US sanctions as well.

There is a lot of influencing elections nowadays, and it is getting more. This has nothing to do with the way an election itself is being held (paper & pencil, electronic voting, etc.) but is all about fake news, targeted influencing and the like that is primarily done via online platforms and social media. It was said that maybe fact checking does not really help here when influencing works with identity issues and thereby addresses emotions that even may ignore opposing facts. However, empirical proof of the effects of influencing seems difficult or even impossible.

What are the conclusions for Democracy Without Borders, particularly the Global Voting Platform (GVP) initiative? In my view, the GVPs bottom-up approach of direct world citizen participation will have to be linked stronger with a regulatory top-down-approach of enabling and securing a free global internet by supranational regulation. Initiatives such as Contract for the Web should be supported. This, however, does not mean that authentification and security issues will be less important; and the potential use of BC technology is worth a more detailed consideration. Beside its still enormous potential for free global communication the internet obviously has also developed into a means of political control, manipulation and surveillance. It is no longer a neutral platform but has become a field of global politics and internet freedom is more and more under pressure from autocratic regimes.

Original post:
Internet freedom and security challenges: notes from the IGF 2019 - Democracy Without Borders

Hackers are getting smarter and superior over time. In order to deal with the new technologies, hackers are learning new abilities and they are finding new ways approach beat the systems. Therefore , you have to increase your security that will go without question. Here are some of the elements which are changing.

Supply: Phishing Protection

Phishing attacks means delivering fake emails or digital communications to target people, once they click on the hyperlink in the messages a malware will get installed into the user s program which can steal all kind private and financial information of the consumer.

While there has been improved awareness among users to identify this kind of threats, the hacking community has additionally changed their phishing methods. By making use of advanced machine learning techniques, cyber criminals can now draft and send extremely convincing digital messages, which attract even the most cautious users in order to fall into their trap.

Once the hackers get the access they could steal all kinds of sensitive information from the person s or organization t database. Such data can include delicate personal information, images or videos; sign in details and credit card information plus passwords, etc .

Source: Security Magazine

Ransomware attacks are a huge headache for the tech industry, every year it costs its victims vast amounts of dollars because of such attacks. During these kinds of attacks, the hackers kidnap an user s or company s database and ask for big sums of money to release back the particular victim s information or data source.

The hackers will also be hard to track due to the rise in the usage of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin , Ethereum plus Ripple. As the transactions remain private it is very hard to track the identification of the hackers.

Cybersecurity experts suggest that over time people will certainly high net worth will be focused more by such attacks. These folks won t even file the complaint and pay even a wide range of ransoms to save their social standing.

Source: CSO

The evolution of cryptocurrency has many adverse effects upon cybersecurity, nowadays, hackers hijack private or organizational computing and digesting capacity to mine for cryptocurrencies.

While there are simply no direct monetary losses, such episodes indirectly cost a lot of performance problems for the victims. They also result in machine breakdown and downtime for many institutions which can cost a lot of money and reliability.

Source: ET CIO

If terrorist groups or even activists with hacking ability may physically get access to high-security systems, they could cause damage beyond imagination.

Some of the most vulnerable and higher priority targets include traffic, transport, water treatment, and electric main grid systems. Some cybersecurity experts think that even the US military systems are in high-level risk from such assaults.

If something like that occurs, you can only imagine the damage.

Supply: Careers in Cybersecurity

Not just hackers, different countries are on the verge of internet warfare. There have been instances when the cyberattack on one country was pointed out in order to, sponsored by and originated from the rival country.

Because everything relies on the internet nowadays, by using better cyber teams even smaller sized and hostile countries can harm bigger and developed the nation ersus infrastructure.

Source: WhiteSource

IoT might appear like very innovative and useful technology, but if hackers can get entry to your devices like webcams, smartwatches, household items, medical equipment, self-driven cars, security systems, you can t even imagine what kind of chaos they can cause.

Source: FinancesOnline. com

As more are more private hospitals and clinics are moving their particular patient data and other information on the internet, it can be a serious threat if this kind of personal and sensitive information drops into wrong hands.

According to the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon College, As more devices are linked to hospital and clinic networks, individual data and information will be more and more vulnerable. Even more concerning is the danger of remote compromise of a gadget directly connected to a patient. An opponent could theoretically increase or reduce dosages, send electrical signals to some patient or disable vital indication monitoring.

Supply: Connexas

Could seems like very innovative and soothing technology, in its background it contains severe safety and privacy concerns. Just for hackers, this technology will create as another weapon in their arsenal. When they have accessed a vehicle h system and take control they can quickly blackmail the passengers.

Source: Online Levels

Another severe issue is the shortage of qualified cybersecurity experts, according to reports the industry is certainly short of more than one million skilled experts in this sector.

If you are searching for more such technology tips plus news please don t miss to visit http://www.i4u.com .

Joel is a journalism major and worked with major publishing companies around the country before becoming a writer at OBN. He currently reports on everything from entertainment to business.

See the article here:
Most recent Internet Security Threats of 2019 - OBN

While transitioning into civilian life after more than a decade in the Indian Air Force, I was struck by how the growing propensity to ask for goods and services to be home delivered was causing disruptions in traditional security processes at gated communities.Security guards were unable to deal with the increased traffic at the gate and the existing processes and technologies were proving inadequate. It became clear that the authentication process needed to be digitized. This was a weak signal, no doubt, but I was convinced that it warranted deeper analysis.

We built a strong solution for these problems, and, in doing so, we were not only able to ensure seamless verification of all visitors, but deliver a number of other conveniences to residents. We could help them manage their deliveries when they were away, inform them of the arrival of their maid, enhance the security of their children, notify guards if delivery executives overstayed their welcome, among much else. A business is always looking for ways to quantify the utility of its solution. You want to know that it is a painkiller (need to have), and not just a vitamin (good to have). It is difficult to be certain.

Then, for the second time in three years, rains hit Chennai in November 2017. Connectivity dropped all across Bengaluru, which receives internet from cables laid under the port city. Our services were hit. Gate notifications werent reaching our customers and there was nothing we could do about it. Every one of us had to drop what we were doing and answer the phone. Within eight hours, around 40% of our customer base had contacted us to complain. We were delighted! A day or two later, internet speeds went back to normal and we went back to work, buoyed by the knowledge that what we were building really was a painkiller. Fast forward two years and MyGate has seen phenomenal growth. Our security solution is now in 1.2 million homes across 5,000 gated premises in 11 Indian cities. Ironically, the strongest indicator of our impact was a weak (internet) signal.

There was one moment when fate turned their way, a moment that they can look back upon and say, that was when it started. Capturing click moments.

Here is the original post:
Click Moment | 'Weak internet signals showed us our strong impact' - Livemint