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The U.S. government's director for cybersecurity resigned on Friday, criticizing the excessive role of the National Security Agency in countering threats to the country's computer systems. "He has tendered his resignation," Amy Kudwa, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman told Reuters. Former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom said in a resignation letter published by the Wall Street Journal it was a "bad strategy" to have the National Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense, play a major role in cybersecurity. Beckstrom headed the National Cybersecurity Center, which was created last March to coordinate all government cybersecurity efforts and answers to the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security said in a statement that it has a strong relationship with the NSA and continues to work closely with all of its partners to protect the country's cyber networks. Beckstrom wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday in his resignation letter that the NSA currently dominates most national cyber efforts. "While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds," he wrote in the letter posted by the Wall Street Journal on its website. National Security Agency officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Beckstrom said in his letter that the cybersecurity group did not receive adequate support to accomplish its role during the previous administration of President George W. Bush, which only provided the center with five weeks of funding in the last year. His resignation will be effective March 13, the letter said. The newspaper said the Obama administration was conducting a 60-day review of the cybersecurity program started by Bush last year to protect government networks.

Two firms certified to asses a company's compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) have been placed under remediation by the PCI Security Standards Council. Two firms certified to asses a company's compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) have been placed under remediation by the PCI Security Standards Council. "We have a contractual relationship with the PCI Security Standards Council and they can pull our certification at any time," Bates said, adding that the firm is working wholeheartedly to remedy the situation. Chris Konrad, senior vice president of client services at Fortrex, did not return a phone call seeking comment. Fortrex's business is U.S-based. The company is in its sixth year assessing service providers and merchants. In addition to being certified to conduct payment application quality security assessments, the firm sells risk management consulting services. It is a reseller in security vendor Qualys Inc.'s PCI Partner Program, according to the company website. Qualys said its "program gives partners generous margins based on their level of certification." The PCI Council launched its quality assurance program for assessors in September to address growing concerns from merchants about the quality of their assessments and other issues. Merchants have complained that some QSAs don't appear to have the technical skills necessary to conduct a thorough assessment. Other merchants have raised issues with QSA's pitching security products during the assessment process. Merchants that receive negative feedback are placed on probation and a revocation process is in place if assessors do not address the issues identified by the council.

With so many workers being axed, the threat to sensitive customer, corporate, military information should be examined. Once workers leave with sensitive information, good luck controlling exposure. Cross International borders and the issue potentially expands into an national "incident" with dire consequences for corporate reputation. Protectionism vs Patriotism. Issues raised in the Great Depression revisited with more impact due to expansion of the economy to global status.

Microsoft Corp.'s plan to eliminate U.S. workers after lobbying for more foreigner visas is stirring resentment among lawmakers and employees. As many as 5,000 employees are being shown the door at Microsoft, which uses more H1-B guest-worker visas than any other U.S. company. Some employees and politicians say Microsoft should get rid of foreigners first. "If they lay people off, are they going to think of America first or are they going to think of the world first?" Chuck Grassley, a Republican Senator from Iowa, said in an interview. He sent a letter to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer the day after Microsoft announced the job cuts last month, demanding Ballmer fire visa holders first. Across the technology industry, some of the biggest users of H1-B visas are cutting jobs, including Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The firings at Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, came less than a year after Chairman Bill Gates lobbied Congress for an expansion of the visa program. Even before Microsoft announced the cuts, its first-ever companywide layoffs, comments on a blog run by an anonymous Microsoft worker angrily debated getting rid of guest workers first. The author of the Mini-Microsoft blog eventually had to censor and then completely block all arguments about visas, after the conversation "got downright nasty."

An Italian judge on Wednesday gave the go-ahead to a case in which Google (GOOG) could be held responsible for content it hosts but does not produce. The case centers on a 2006 video of four Italian youths taunting a child with Down syndrome. In the video, one of the youths incorrectly claims to be part of a small Down syndrome advocacy group called Vivi Down. The video was uploaded to the Google Video site, where it stayed for two months. Prosecutors have filed charges against five Google executives, saying they were in violation of Italian privacy laws and of contributing to the defamation of Vivi Down. At the heart of the case are two main questions: Should sites such as Google Video be held responsible for the content they host? And should such non-brick-and-mortar New Economy companies be subject to the laws in countries where they are not based? "The outcome of this will be to determine how big companies like Google should be expected to act," said Raffaele Zallone, a former chief counsel for IBM's Italian offices and the attorney representing a woman seeking damages in a secondary case tacked onto the main charges. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Italy | Google Inc | International Bus. Machines | Milan | New Economy Zallone, along with Milan prosecutors, the city's ombudsman and an attorney for Vivi Down, the advocacy group, say Google should have become aware of the offending video sooner and removed it sooner. Guglielmo Pisapia, Google's lead attorney in the case, denies any wrongdoing and says Google could not have acted differently. "Google did not produce the video, and when they received an official complaint, they removed it within five hours," said Pisapia, a former member of the Italian parliament. "If the argument is that they should have evaluated the video before it was posted, then that is a dangerous precedent." Oliviero Rossi, an author and commentator on technology issues, says unusual cases that push the limits of the law as this one does are

Update on Feb. 18, 8:33 a.m.: Facebook is backing off changes to its terms of service, informing users on their official blog that they will remain intact. "Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes in the blog. "Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised." To learn more, read our original post below. Facebook is having trouble dousing the flames in a firestorm over its trustworthiness. A recent change in its terms of use -- the legalese tacked onto the bottom of most websites -- has sparked concerns that the social networking giant plans to own all users' information forever. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed in a blog post Monday that "on Facebook people own and control their information." But privacy advocates still aren't satisfied. "I think in simple terms it's a tug of war over user data," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington. "People put information on a Facebook page to share with friends. But it's pretty much with the understanding that they're deciding what to post and who has access to it. Facebook, like any other company, is trying to obtain maximum commercial value from its users."

Regulators are examining Apple Inc's disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs' health problems to ensure investors were not misled, Bloomberg said, citing a person familiar with the matter. The Securities and Exchange Commission's review does not mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person told Bloomberg. The person declined to be identified because the inquiry is not public, the news service reported. Both the SEC and Apple declined to comment on the matter. Jobs, who earlier had said he had an easily treatable "hormonal imbalance," said last week his problems were "more complex" than originally thought, and he would take a medical leave of absence for six months. In 2004, Jobs was treated for a rare type of pancreatic cancer called an islet-cell, or neuroendocrine, tumor. Such tumors can be benign or malignant, but they usually grow slowly and are far less deadly than most pancreatic tumors.

70 percent of UK risk managers have declared that making sure the employees in their organization are risk savvy is their biggest challenge in light of new pitfalls according to research conducted by Aon. "The risks companies are facing, such as increased company insolvencies, less access to credit and increased levels of fraud, need to be dealt with by employees throughout the organization rather than just at senior management levels," said the bulletin. According to the survey of UK businesses the key risk management challenges they face in 2009 are: -- Embedding ERM in the culture of the organization 70 percent -- Keeping 'risk registers' real and relevant 47 percent -- Making the link between ERM and strategic planning processes 34 percent -- Gaining senior executive sponsorship 19 percent -- Making business continuity plans relevant to line managers 13 percent -- Credit rating agency scrutiny of ERM 6 percent Alex Hindson, head of enterprise risk management at Aon Global Risk Consulting commented: "When the markets are literally crashing down around us and we don't know what is just around the corner it is extremely tempting to focus just on the problems of today, rather than look at the issues and factors that are going to help us survive tomorrow, but this short term view can often be counter-productive.

Payment processor Heartland Payment Systems has been sued over a data breach it disclosed publicly on Inauguration Day last week. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., alleges that Heartland failed to adequately safeguard the compromised consumer data, did not notify consumers about the breach in a timely manner as required by law, and has not offered to compensate consumers for costs they may incur in protecting themselves from identity fraud. In a statement that coincided with President Barack Obama's inauguration events, Heartland said the breach occurred last year but that it found evidence of the intrusion only in the previous week and immediately notified law enforcement and credit card companies. Heartland was alerted in late October to suspicious activity surrounding processed card transactions by Visa and MasterCard and hired forensic auditors who uncovered malicious software that compromised data in the company's network, said Robert H.B. Baldwin Jr., chief financial officer of Heartland, last week. The lawsuit seeks damages and relief for the "inexplicable delay, questionable timing, and inaccuracies concerning the disclosures" with regard to the data breach, which is believed to be the largest in U.S. history. Heartland executives have declined to specify how many consumers or accounts were affected. The company handles 100 million transactions per month for more than 250,000 merchants. The lawsuit, first reported by SearchSecurity news site, also accuses Heartland of negligence in taking more than two months to determine the existence and scope of the breach and criticizes the company for failing to identify which merchants were affected by the breach. The suit was filed on behalf of Woodbury, Minn., resident Alicia Cooper, who was notified last week by her credit union that a card associated with her account was included in the breach. It seeks class action status. A Heartland spokesman said the company could no

One of the nation's largest time-share companies is going to be shelling out nearly a $1 million for making phone calls to people on the national "Do Not Call" list, federal regulators said Tuesday. Westgate Resorts, based in Orlando, Fla., was named in a complaint filed on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission. The agency alleged that Westgate and two other companies placed thousands of telemarketing calls to people on the list. The FTC says Westgate has agreed to pay $900,000 to settle the charges. The commission on Tuesday also announced a $275,000 settlement with another Florida-based travel company, Accumen Management Services Inc., and its subsidiary, All in One Vacation Club, LLC. The company made telemarketing calls to consumers who had filled out entry forms for a sweepstakes to win vacation packages. Many of those called, the FTC said, were on the Do Not Call registry and did not agree to receive the telemarketing pitches for timeshares and vacation getaways. In the case of Westgate, the agency received several thousand complaints from consumers. The commission said Westgate bought phone numbers from an Internet-based lead generator that collected contact information in connection with offerings on its Brandarama.com web site. The two other companies named in the Westgate complaint are: Central Florida Investments Inc., and CFI Sales and Marketing, LLC., which both did telemarketing for Westgate. The combined fines of $1.17 million will go to the U.S. Treasury. Calls to Westgate and Accumen seeking comment were not immediately returned. The latest enforcement actions bring to 40 the number of Do Not Call cases the government has filed against companies since the registry began in June 2003. The biggest case to date involved satellite television provider DirecTV Inc., which paid a $5.3 million settlement. More than 167 million phone numbers have been placed on the Do Not Call registry.

Facebook has gone a long way to protect the privacy of users on its own site. But what happens when users share their Facebook profiles and friend lists with other sites? Are social networks responsible for defending data its members decide to take elsewhere? Those questions have taken on added urgency following the introduction of tools by leading social networks, including Facebook and News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace, that let users interact with their friends on partner sites. Facebook Connect, for example, lets a user instantly share a movie rating on Netflix (NFLX) with all or some of his or her pals on Facebook. Privacy advocates warn that these services pose a whole new set of concerns about how user data are collected and shared among sites on the Web. Using these open-networking tools, thousands of companies can unearth a trove of new data about a visitor-age, gender, location, interests, and even what a person looks like. "I'm wondering if people really understand when they're using Facebook Connect that other sites get access to their whole user profile and social graph," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. Announced last July, Facebook Connect has already signed up more than 8,000 partner sites, many of which plan to use data collected on Facebook members for their own purposes. Joost, a video-viewing site that integrated with Facebook Connect in December, checks the ages of viewers entered on their Facebook profiles to give its own content partners-CBS (CBS), for example-a better idea of which Joost users are watching CBS programming. Digg.com will let users display their Facebook profile photos alongside comments they make on the social news-sharing site.

There are plenty of rumors out in the cyberworld about the future of Twitter, a popular social networking site, and whether the company will be acquired or partner with another company. Some believe one of the suitors is Google Inc. Rumor has it, the two companies are considering collaborating on a Google real time search engine. To make it work, Google could pay cash, stock or a combination of both. Google wouldn't comment on these rumors. Nevertheless, it's an intriguing idea for a company created three years ago that has, to date, not made any money. Analysts think this would be a good marriage, according to MarketWatch. Gartner Inc. analyst Jeff Mann, for one, told the website it's a pretty good idea. "The culture and ambitions of Twitter and Google match." Not only that, there are lots of indications of growth. Twitter's content is now growing by 6 million tweets per day, and that's a win-win situation for Google, for sure.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is planning to regulate online viral marketing that uses blogs and social networking sites. Marketers are spending billions worldwide to get the endorsements of key bloggers and groups on social networking sites. One tactic, used by Microsoft and others, is to send products to bloggers on 'long-term loans' on the understanding that they will comment about them on their sites. AdvertisementUnder the new regulations being proposed, such bloggers would be legally liable if they make untrue statements about the products or services. The companies too would face sanctions. "This impacts every industry and almost every single brand in our economy, and that trickles down into social media," Anthony DiResta, an attorney representing several advertising associations, told The Financial Times. This is the first revision of the rules on this kind of advertising by the FTC since 1980 and is needed, according to the organisation, because new forms of communication have opened up new fields to marketing. "The guides needed to be updated to address not only the changes in technology, but the consequences of new marketing practices," said Richard Cleland, assistant director for the FTC's division of advertising practices. " Word-of-mouth marketing is not exempt from the laws of truthful advertising." Advertisers are resisting the changes, however, which threaten a highly effective form of marketing new products and services. "Regulating these developing media too soon may have a chilling effect on blogs and other forms of viral marketing, as bloggers and other viral marketers will be discouraged from publishing content for fear of being held liable for any potentially misleading claim," Richard O'Brien, vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, said in an advisory to the FTC.

The country's largest office products store sold a returned computer hard-drive on clearance containing hundreds of personal files on it - a move privacy experts say violates key provisions of a privacy law requiring businesses to safeguard personal information of customers. The transaction occurred recently at a Staples Business Depot store in Ottawa, one of about 300 across the country. When the purchaser booted up the Maxtor mini, he found hundreds of files on the external hard drive. The files, totalling about 400, belonged to Jill Vickers, a retired political science professor from Carleton University. They included some research papers already in the public domain, but some were sensitive documents. "It is especially of concern to me as the files contain some 20 years of reference and assessment letters which are confidential documents," said Vickers, who recently purchased a new computer system for her home that initially included the Maxtor backup drive. When her son, who was tasked with transferring her files to the drive, noticed the daily automatic backup function was not functioning properly, he returned it to Staples. He thought he had deleted the files. "Even though it's not in my possession, it's my data. They should wipe it clean," Vickers said of Staples. Canwest News Service last week provided Staples with the model and serial number of equipment, as well as the receipt for the clearance purchase. A company spokeswoman said it required more time to gather the facts to comment on the specific incident. "We will continue to look into this," said Alessandra Saccal. In a statement, she reiterated, "privacy of any kind is of great concern to us, that is why we have procedures in place to clear any items with memory before being resold."

The Federal Trade Commission had some sharp words for Internet advertising companies Thursday, saying that they simply are not disclosing how they collect information about users well enough. And the agency threatened that the industry had better get its act together - or else. Or else what? Well, that's a bit harder. The commission has limited ability to issue binding regulations on advertising practices, and the process is cumbersome. But if the agency were to say that its attempt over the last few years to have Internet companies voluntarily bolster their privacy standards has failed, it could encourage Congress to pass online privacy legislation. Indeed, two members of the commission - Pamela Jones Harbour, an independent, and Jon Leibowitz, a Democrat - issued statements saying that while they support the commission's action, they hope for further regulation and possibly legislation on the issue. What the commission issued Thursday was the final version of its principles for online behavioral advertising - that is, ads shown to you based on something you did in the past. The agency issued its first draft of these at the end of 2007 and spent more than a year digesting comments. These principles were meant to spur various Internet groups to create self-regulatory standards for their members. And one group, the Network Advertising Initiative, did publish new rules. The top recommendation was that users should be given clear notice about what information was collected and an easy way to tell sites to stop watching them. "What we observe is that, with rare exception, is not the rule for any Web sites," said Eileen Harrington, the acting director of the commission's bureau of consumer protection, in an interview Thursday. "It is far more commonplace to put the information in the midst of lengthy and hard-to-understand privacy policies."

The discovery of documents with students' personally identifying information stored in an unlocked room has launched protests against the university's chief information security officer. Students at Binghamton University in New York are circulating a petition to remove the university's chief information security officer following the discovery of boxes full of documents listing personal information of students and parents in an unlocked storage room. The existence of the unsecured documents was discovered March 6 by a reporter working for student radio station WHRW and disclosed on March 9. For that investigative work, the student reporter could face criminal charges. Binghamton University has had other recent problems with information security. In the past year, according to an article written by Robert Glass, the WHRW news director, university employees accidentally e-mailed the Social Security numbers of 338 students to another group of 200 students, sent the personal information of exchange students -- passport scans and birth certificates -- to student groups, and disposed of information about more than 70 former graduate students in trash bins atop a pile of shredded documents. Those breaches led the university to create an information security council, with a full-time information security officer, to prevent further incidents, according to Glass. Glass did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A University spokeswoman characterized the hiring of Terry Dylewski as the university's chief information security officer as a reflection of the school's ongoing concern about information security rather than a response to past breaches. Asked about the status of the students' petition to remove Dylewski, as reported by Broome County Fox affiliate WICZ TV, she said that question should be directed to the students. The spokeswoman said the university is treating the incident as a possible crime and that a criminal investigation is ongoing. She sai

Better to settle with the FTC than get your company's reputation as consumer-friendly (deserved or not) dragged through the court of public opinion.

Sears Holdings has agreed to settle allegations it collected personal data from customers without adequate disclosures, the Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday. The FTC had accused Sears Holdings, created in 2005 with the merger of Sears and Kmart, of paying online customers $10 to allow the company to track their online browsing. But the FTC said Sears also collected information on non-Sears sites, such as online bank statements, drug prescription records and emails. "The software would also track some computer activities that were not related to the Internet," the FTC said in a statement. Sears did disclose all it would monitor in a lengthy user license agreement, but the FTC argued it was not enough. "The complaint charges that Sears' failure to adequately disclose the scope of the tracking software's data collection was deceptive and violates the FTC Act," the FTC said in a statement. Sears did not immediately reply to two telephone calls and one email seeking a comment. Under the settlement, Sears is required to destroy the data collected and make future disclosures more prominent.

The Army says it's investigating allegations that eight male soldiers took pictures and video of as many as 21 female soldiers in their unit showering at Fort Dix. The photos were allegedly taken last fall, before the 266th Military Police Company of the Virginia Army National Guard shipped out to Iraq in December. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Friday the Army is conducting a criminal investigation and that no charges have been filed. Fort Dix spokeswoman Carolee Nisbet says the allegations are disappointing. She said most soldiers who train at the New Jersey installation before being deployed "live up to the Army values." The 266th is now serving in Basra. A spokesman for the Virginia Army National Guard did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Next week, the White House will launch a blog to discuss the Obama administration's open government initiative. In a nod to openness and citizen participation in government, the administration also plans to soon open White House blogs to public comments. In a speech to an annual National Archives and Records Administration conference, Beth Noveck, deputy CTO of the open government initiative at the Office of Science and Technology, asserted that the Obama administration continues to make strides toward opening up the government's data and operations to public scrutiny.

Open government? America might just have to learn to read again.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has proposed rules for a new automated method of checking security settings on federal computers. The process is known as the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), and NIST has offered both programs and recommendations designed to help federal agencies use the system effectively. The proposed rules follow a July 2008 order from the Office of Management and Budget requiring federal agencies to use SCAP-validated products to measure compliance with a mandated group of security settings that run Windows XP and Vista. Public comments can be made on the NIST proposal until June 12.

Defunct behavioral targeting company NebuAd did not just spur complaints by lawmakers and privacy advocates. This week, NebuAd's defense lawyers filed papers with the federal district court in San Francisco asking to withdraw as counsel in a privacy lawsuit. In a motion dated Monday, attorney Thomas Gilbertsen alleges that NebuAd is behind on its legal bills -- in some cases by more than 45 days. He also argues that because NebuAd is out of business, no officers or employees are available to help with the defense. "Because NebuAd has essentially ceased to exist, it can no longer participate in this case," states the motion. Gilbertsen also asked that the case be delayed pending NebuAd's liquidation and the resolution of creditors' claims. Gilbertsen also says in court papers that counsel and NebuAd have "irreconcilable differences." He did not elaborate in the motion or return messages seeking comment.