Wyden to Introduce Bill to Prohibit Warrantless Phone Searches at Border
A senator from Oregon who has a long track record of involvement on security and privacy issues says he plans to introduce a bill soon that would prevent border agents from forcing Americans returning to the country to unlock their phones without a warrant. Sen. Ron Wyden said in a letter to the secretary of […]
The Threat of Voice Aging in Voice Biometrics Security
As the implementation of voice biometrics has become increasingly popular as a form of identification and authentication, researchers are challenged with determining how users’ voices change over time. New research shows that voices age significantly, even in the short term, making positive authentication more difficult with just voice biometrics alone. One obstacle making the measurement […]
On the Wire Podcast: RSA 2017
As the RSA Conference was winding down this week in San Francisco, we gathered a few reporters and other friends to talk about all the security news from the conference, what we liked, things we didn’t like so much, and a lot of other topics. Guests this year include Brian Donohue from Cyber4Sight, Chris Brook […]
Security Lessons From Snowden
SAN FRANCISCO–Working in the security field offers ample opportunity to learn from your mistakes, and perhaps no organization has had to go through that process more publicly and painfully than the National Security Agency. The failures that led to Edward Snowden walking out the door with a massive cache of NSA data four years ago […]
Security Teams Are Becoming Cyber Espionage Investigators
SAN FRANCISCO–As cyber espionage has moved from the government sector into the corporate world, enterprise security professionals have found themselves needing to become investigators to deal with the threat. But without real expertise and experience with investigations, even the best security teams can miss serious compromises in their environments. “Cybersecurity professionals don’t have experience dealing with traditional […]
‘When Computers Start Killing People, There Are Going to Be Consequences’
SAN FRANCISCO–The massive, rapidly expanding network of insecure IoT devices is becoming so large and unwieldy that it will inevitably attract attention from government regulators in the near future. And that’s actually a positive development, security experts say. “As everything becomes a computer, computer security becomes everything security. The beachhead of all of this is […]
Microsoft President: We Need to Create a Digital Geneva Convention
By Brian Donohue SAN FRANCISCO—In a keynote address at the 2017 RSA Conference, Microsoft President Brad Smith called for the creation of “a trusted and neutral digital Switzerland” in an effort to combat the influx of state-sponsored actors and attacks. Alternatively calling his plan a “Digital Geneva Convention,” Smith leaned heavily on the familiar war […]
Cryptographers Question the Promise of AI, Machine Learning in Security
SAN FRANCISCO–Artificial intelligence and machine learning are the two dominant buzzphrases at the RSA Conference this year, but some of the founding fathers of the security community are questioning how much use those technologies will be for security. “I’m actually skeptical that there will be much impact on security from AI,” Ron Rivest, a professor […]
The Joy and Pain of RSA Week
It’s that time of year again, when the security industry looks westward with a mixture of anxiety, dread, and expense-account induced giddiness: RSA week. When people who have never been to the RSA Conference before ask me what to expect, I never have a good answer. A lot of it depends on what your job […]