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"In light of a spike in identity theft and the frequency with which personal information is stored on portable devices, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) have expanded Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (GAPP) to include protocols for securing and disposing of personal information. "Safeguarding personal information is one of the most challenging responsibilities facing an organization, whether such information pertains to employees or customers," said Everett C. Johnson, CPA, chair of AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force and a past international president of ISACA, a global information technology association. "We've updated the criteria of our privacy principles to minimize the risks to personal information." GAPP offers guidance and best practices on securing portable devices, breach management and ensuring continued effectiveness of privacy controls. The guidance additionally covers disposal and destruction of personal information. The principles are designed for chief privacy officers, executive management, compliance officers, legal counsel, CPAs and CAs offering technology advisory services. "Portable tools such as laptops and memory sticks provide convenience to employees but appropriate measures must be put in place to secure them and the data they contain," said Donald Sheehy, CA.CISA, CIPP/C, associate partner with Deloitte (Canada) and a member of the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force. "We must stay abreast of technological advances to assure that proper measures are put into place to defend against any new threats." Created by the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force, GAPP is designed to help an organization's management team assess an existing privacy program or address privacy obligations and risks. The principles provide a framework for CPAs and CAs to offer privacy services to their clients and employers, such as advisory services, privacy risk assessments and attestation or

"Got an e-mail list of customers or readers and want to know more about each - such as their full name, friends, gender, age, interests, location, job and education level? Facebook has just the free feature you're looking for, thanks to its recent privacy changes. The hack, first publicized by blogger Max Klein, repurposes a Facebook feature that lets people find their friends on Facebook by scanning through e-mail addresses in their contact list. But as Klein points out, a marketer could take a list of 1,000 e-mail addresses, either legally or illegally collected - and upload those through a dummy account - which then lets the user see all the profiles created using those addresses. Given Facebook's ubiquity and most people's reliance on a single e-mail address, the harvest could be quite rich. Using a simple scraping tool, a marketer could then turn a list of e-mail addresses into a rich, full-fledged set of marketing profiles, with names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends, depending on how users have their profiles set. Run a few algorithms on that data and you can start to make inferences about race, income, sexual orientation and interests. While that information isn't available for all users, Facebook changed its privacy settings in early December so that certain information can't be made private, including one's name, current city, profile picture, gender, networks and friend list (the latter can be somewhat hidden from public view). Anyone with your e-mail address can harvest that information, the company admits."

Probably not limited to FaceBook

"If there was anything even vaguely comforting about the data breaches that were announced this year, it was that many of them stemmed from familiar and downright mundane security failures. Companies continued to be felled more by usual issues such as lost laptops, un-patched or poorly coded software, inadvertent disclosures and rogue insiders, rather than by sneaky new attack techniques or devastating new hacker tools. "

Preventable data loss damages customer trust and corporate trust.

The federal U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines calculator was developed by an innovative lawyer who was looking to develop a tool to help lawyers do the calculation for their clients.

When ethical hackers track down computer criminals, do they risk prosecution themselves? Security researchers at this week's Usenix conference in Boston believe this is a danger, and that ethical hackers have to develop a uniform code of ethics for themselves before the federal government decides to take action on its own. One such researcher introduced himself by saying "Hi, I'm Dave Dittrich, and I'm a computer criminal." Dittrich, senior security engineer and researcher at the University of Washington's Information School, has not been unlucky enough to be prosecuted. But ten years ago, he took actions to disrupt distributed denial-of-service attacks which he says could have been construed as criminal, he says. Working within the University of Washington Network, Dittrich says he "copied files from one host in Canada that was caching malicious software and logs of compromised hosts," allowing him to gain a fuller understanding of the nascent distributed denial-of-service tools, and to inform the operators of infected Web sites that a problem existed.

eBook: Compliance 2.0: Comprehensive, Scalable and Sustainable Systems http://go.techtarget.com/r/6705298/226727/1 Enterprises are moving towards a top-down approach to compliance that starts with risk assessment and prioritization, experts agree. In this expert e-book gain insight from senior IT and security officers who are taking a holistic approach to compliance for long-term sustainability and cost reduction. Learn which quantitative tools you can use to prioritize your efforts, maximize your investments and get key business executives to support your next project. Learn how to: ** Bring your data into governance ** Understand and manage your risk exposure ** Get the right people on board to support your strategy and policies Start building your true compliance infrastructure: http://go.techtarget.com/r/6705299/226727/2

As the impact of digital advertising on consumer privacy comes under scrutiny, AT&T is taking a stance in support of stricter standards. Rep. Rick Boucher (D., Va.), chairman of the subcommittee, said in an interview Wednesday that a statute is needed to regulate how companies collect, share and use data on consumers' behavior in targeting online advertising. While ad targeting on the Web has been at the forefront of privacy advocates' concerns, worries are growing about other media, ranging from mobile phones to emerging TV technologies. To sell marketers targeted ads, technology and media companies collect data about customers, ranging from the Web sites they visit to the neighborhoods they live in to the TV shows they watch. Marketers often will pay a premium for this form of advertising because it allows them to show their ads to consumers who are likelier to buy their products or services. "Pitfalls arise because behavioral advertising in its current forms is largely invisible to consumers," says Dorothy Attwood, AT&T's senior vice president of public policy and chief privacy officer, in prepared testimony she is expected to deliver at the hearing of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. Her statement says consumers don't fully understand that their online activity is used to create detailed profiles of them. Internet and other media companies say the data they use to target ads are anonymous and can't be traced to individual consumers. AT&T plans to argue that consumers should have "full and complete" notice of what information is collected about them and how it is used and protected, and should have tools that let them determine whether their Web activities are being tracked. The company says it won't use consumer information for online behavioral advertising unless it first obtains consent from the consumers involved. AT&T's stance contrasts with the position taken by most big Internet companies and industry trade grou

IT directors are adding multiple layers of protection to their networks and constantly upgrade those measures to adjust for new threats. Is this good? Is the Internet too broken to fix? Is there a better path to enterprise network security? One option is a new "gated community" Internet, where users give up their freedoms and anonymity for safety. My initiation to the Internet and the World Wide Web occurred in 1994 in a large meeting room at an Atlanta hotel. Most of the 100 or so seats were empty. Those in attendance seemed fairly rabid about this new network and took exception to one speaker's prediction that the Web would become a major marketing vehicle. "Not gonna happen," said one attendee. "We'll spam them into submission if they try. We won't let this become commercialized." I kind of chuckled to myself. Those early adopters were mainly concerned with protecting the Internet from commercialization and marketing. Security was not even part of the discussion. Now, it is threatening to dismantle the Internet as a communication and commerce tool. Cyber attacks on U.S. government computer networks increased a reported 40 percent in 2008, according to data from the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. More than 100 million credit card accounts at Heartland Payment Systems were compromised last year. In November, the Pentagon suffered from a cyber attack in the form of a global virus or worm that spread rapidly throughout a number of military networks, and caused the agency to ban the use of external storage devices, such as flash drives and DVDs. And this is just the tip of the Internet security Relevant Products/Services iceberg. Enterprise networks are being used to launch phishing Relevant Products/Services and other Internet scams, such as the Conficker worm that infected 12 million computers late last year. IT directors everywhere are adding multiple layers of protection to their networks and constantly having to upgrade those measures to adjust fo

More consumers are growing comfortable with online behavioral targeting, perhaps as a result of an increase in familiarity, but the majority remain uneasy with the practice. That's according to a new study conducted by TNS on behalf of the privacy group Truste. For the study, consumers were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement: "I am comfortable with advertisers using my browsing history to serve me relevant ads, as long as that information cannot be tied to my name or any other personal information." Twenty-eight percent of respondents agreed, up from 24% who agreed when the same study was conducted last year. At the same time, 51% said they disagreed that they were comfortable with anonymous behavioral targeting. While that figure represents a slim majority, it's down from last year, when 57% of respondents said they disagreed. At the same time, more respondents than in the past now say they delete cookies. Almost half--48% of survey respondents--said they erase cookies at least weekly, up from 42% last year. It's not clear how much overlap there is between the respondents that regularly delete cookies and those who say they're uncomfortable with behavioral targeting. Colin O'Malley, vice president of strategic business at Truste, attributed the increase in the proportion of consumers who said they were comfortable with behavioral targeting to increased publicity over the issue. He said the recent attention to the issue in the mainstream media has helped to increase transparency. He added that the increased cookie erasures showed that consumers want to be able to manage their experience. "Cookie deletion is just one more indication that consumers are seeking tools to increase their level of control," he said.

The reality of any new technology, security or otherwise, rarely lives up to its promise. Once you move past the bright sheen of the product brochures and top-level user interfaces, only the practicalities of implementing the product in the real world remain. This is especially true of newer technologies we have little prior experience with, where our product expectations are defined by marketing, the press, and the rare peer reference. It's only after these tools are tested in the real world, under full production conditions, that we really start learning how to either best implement them, or kick them back to the vendor for a little more polish (and a compelling business use). Data loss prevention (DLP) is one of the most promising, and least understood, security technologies to emerge during the last few years. It dangles promises of ubiquitous content protection before our eyes, with shadows of complexity and costs glooming over its shoulder. As with everything, the reality is somewhere in-between. We've interviewed dozens of DLP users (including our own contacts, random volunteers and vendor references) to find out how DLP works in the trenches of the real world. The result is a collection of lessons learned and use cases to help you avoid common pitfalls while deriving maximum value. Lesson 1: Users are confused by a confusing market Lesson 2: Full DLP solutions take more effort to deploy, but are more effective and easier to manage Lesson 3: Set the right expectations and workflow early Lesson 4: Poor identity management hinders good DLP Lesson 5: False positives are a manageable concern Lesson 6: Progressive deployments are most effective Lesson 7: Endpoint DLP is still more limited than network or discovery Lesson 8: Content discovery is hot

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The Nature of the Problem Identity theft has been referred to by some as the crime of the new millennium. It can be accomplished anonymously, easily, with a variety of means, and the impact upon the victim can be devastating. Identity theft is simply the theft of identity information such as a name, date of birth, Social Security number (SSN), or a credit card number. The mundane activities of a typical consumer during the course of a regular day may provide tremendous opportunities for an identity thief: purchasing gasoline, meals, clothes, or tickets to an athletic event; renting a car, a video, or home-improvement tools; purchasing gifts or trading stock on-line; receiving mail; or taking out the garbage or recycling. Any activity in which identity information is shared or made available to others creates an opportunity for identity theft. It is estimated that identity theft has become the fastest-growing financial crime in America and perhaps the fastest-growing crime of any kind in our society. Identity Theft: Is There Another You?: Joint hearing before the House Subcomms. on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection, and on Finance and Hazardous Materials, of the Comm. on Commerce, 106th Cong. 16 (1999) (testimony of Rep. John B. Shadegg). The illegal use of identity information has increased exponentially in recent years. In fiscal year 1999 alone, the Social Security Administration (SSA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) Fraud Hotline received approximately 62,000 allegations involving SSN misuse. The widespread use of SSNs as identifiers has reduced their security and increased the likelihood that they will be the object of identity theft. The expansion and popularity of the Internet to effect commercial transactions has increased the opportunities to commit crimes involving identity theft. The expansion and popularity of the Internet to post official information for the benefit of citizens and customers has also increased opportunities to obtain

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Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials. The intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but officials said they could try during a crisis or war, the paper said in a report on its website. "The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," a senior intelligence official told the Journal. "So have the Russians." The espionage appeared pervasive across the United States and does not target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. "There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official told the paper, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year." The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not immediately available for comment on the newspaper report. Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on." Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Six out of every 10 employees stole company data when they left their job last year, said a study of US workers. The survey, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, said that so-called malicious insiders use the information to get a new job, start their own business or for revenge. "They are making these judgements based out of fear and anxiety," the Institute's Mike Spinney told BBC News. "People are worried about their jobs and want to hedge their bets," he said. "Our study showed that 59% of people will say 'I'm going to take something of value with me when I go'." The Ponemon Institute, a privacy and management research firm, surveyed 945 adults in the United States who were laid-off, fired or changed jobs in the last 12 months. Everyone that took part had access to proprietary information such as customer data, contact lists, employee records, financial reports, confidential business documents, software tools or other intellectual property.

At first glance, Chicago's latest crime-fighting strategy seems to be plucked from a Hollywood screenplay. Someone sees a thief dipping into a Salvation Army kettle in a crowd of shoppers on State Street and dials 911 from a cellphone. Within seconds, a video image of the caller's location is beamed onto a dispatcher's computer screen. An officer arrives and by police radio is directed to the suspect, whose description and precise location are conveyed by the dispatcher watching the video, leading to a quick arrest. That chain of events actually happened in the Loop in December, said Ray Orozco, the executive director of the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications. "We can now immediately take a look at the crime scene if the 911 caller is in a location within 150 feet of one of our surveillance cameras, even before the first responders arrive," Mr. Orozco said. The technology, a computer-aided dispatch system, was paid for with a $6 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security. It has been in use since a trial run in December. "One of the best tools any big city can have is visual indicators like cameras, which can help save lives," Mr. Orozco said. In addition to the city's camera network, Mr. Orozco said, the new system can also connect to cameras at private sites like tourist attractions, office buildings and university campuses. Twenty private companies have agreed to take part in the program, a spokeswoman for Mr. Orozco said, and 17 more are expected to be added soon. Citing security concerns, the city would not say how many cameras were in the system. Mayor Richard M. Daley said this week that the integrated camera network would enhance regional security as well as fight street crime. Still, opponents of Mr. Daley's use of public surveillance cameras described the new system as a potential Big Brother intrusion on privacy rights. "If a 911 caller reports that someone left a backpack on the sidewalk, wil

A leading technology advisor to President Obama said in a research note for his investment firm today that privacy and net neutrality will be among the biggest telecommunications issues facing the Federal Communications Commission and the administration going forward. Analyst Blair Levin, who was the co-lead of Obama's technology and innovation team along with nominated FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, wrote in a Stifel Nicolaus research note that the economic crisis and change of administration will shift the focus of telecom policy away from traditional phone companies to "Internet/edge" players. Indeed, Google and other Web video and voice companies like Skype have been increasingly active in recent years at the FCC, pushing particularly for net neutrality rules that would prevent carriers from blocking or charging more for certain content that travels over the Web. Levin said in a note that net neutrality will emerge again as an issue in the new administration for wireless networks. On the other hand, there won't likely be a push for new net neutrality rules for cable, DSL, and fiber network carriers at the FCC. "(There is a) consensus emerging that disputes about whether a wireline network management tool is 'reasonable' (or is actually blocking or degrading traffic) to be resolved on a case-by-case basis," Levin wrote in the note with analysts Rebecca Arbogast and David Kaut. It would be a tough climb to impose rules that force wireless carriers to open their networks. Apple and AT&T successfully argued to lawmakers and regulators to keep their exclusive iPhone contract. Skype's petition to the FCC to force carriers to allow any handset or software to operate on any network was shot down by former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. He said the biggest "sleeper" issue will be privacy. With a major overhaul of healthcare records to the Web, the rise in behavioral advertising and cloud computing, where information is stored in computers strung across many geographies

Richard Acton-Maher of San Francisco was in nearby Berkeley last month and wanted to meet friends for lunch. Instead of making calls to see who was around, he looked at a digital map on his iPhone that plotted their locations. "One of my friends was also there," said Acton-Maher, 24, who used a service from a startup company called Loopt Inc. "I gave him a call and met him for lunch. It just enhances the communications tools that I already have." Google Inc., encouraged by people's willingness to share their personal lives on sites like Facebook, is betting more people like Acton-Maher will post their whereabouts online. The owner of the most popular search engine started a program this month called Latitude, seeking to compete with mobile networking services such as Loopt, Match2Blue, Whrrl and Limbo. Besides competition, Google's effort to turn mobile phones into tracking devices faces criticism from privacy advocates. Useful for friends and family, location data would also be valuable to the government, said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a not-for-profit organization focused on civil-liberties. "This is certainly valuable information to investigators and potentially to civil litigants," Bankston said. "This type of location information presents a very new sensitive data flow." Google says its privacy settings address such concerns. People using Google's mobile maps can opt not to use Latitude and choose whom they share their information with. The program also only stores the user's last known location, not a full history of their travels, said Steve Lee, a Google product manager. 'Ephemeral Data' While Google doesn't plan to store the data, the government could still go to court to ask for the company's help in tracking someone during an investigation, Bankston said.

With all the attention Google StreetView's clash with a baby deer evoked, it can be easy to overlook the tool's crime-fighting good side. Not too long ago, StreetView was instrumental in returning a kidnapped Massachusetts girl safely to her home, and just recently, it helped a Swiss police team detect a 1.2-acre marijuana field and nab the gang responsible. As with all things Google, you have to take the bad with the good. And the good can be pretty good, as reported in the Worcester Telegram. When 9-year-old Natalie Maltais was kidnapped by her grandmother and taken to a motel in rural Virginia, Athol police were able to track her down using her cellphone and Google StreetView. The cellphone's GPS data focused on a 300-foot area in Natural Bridge, Va. Using StreetView, the Worcester cops plugged in the coordinates of the area, navigated around a bit and saw a nearby motel that looked promising. When they sent Virginia police to the site, they found the grandmother along with the girl, and returned her safely to her legal guardians. A happy ending. Similarly, the AP yesterday reported that Swiss police used Google Earth to discover the pot field and make several arrests. While working the case, the police used Google Earth to zero in on a suspect's residence, only to stumble upon the field. Although it had been camouflaged by corn planted all along its perimeter, the weed field couldn't hide from Google's Earth's piercing satellite gaze. The find led to the arrest of 16 suspects who have allegedly sold up to 7 tons of hashish and marijuana, with an annual turnover of 3 million to 10 million francs (or $2.5 million to $8.64 million) per year. So yes, while Google can be insensitive at times, especially when it comes to images uploaded by StreetView, it's also a proven force for good in the world. In other words, a tool is only as good (or bad) as the person using it. Google doesn't kill Bambis, people do.

The latest phishing scam on Facebook has raised the question yet again as to whether the social networking site is dropping the ball on security measures and properly responding to privacy complaints. Facebook faced consumer fraud charges was investigated by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in 2007 for allegedly responding too slowly to user complaints about harassment, pornography, or nudity from the social networking site. As a result, Facebook agreed to settlement requirement requiring it to respond to such complaints within 24 hours. But in a recent string of phishing attacks in which hackers have broken into a user's Facebook account and hit up his or her friends for money with the online chat tool, pretending to be stranded or robbed, a complaint has emerged that the privacy team at Facebook hasn't responded to users in a timely manner. Mark Neely, a Sydney-based management consultant, became aware that his Facebook account was hacked when friends called him to see if he was all right - the hacker had contacted them via Facebook chat saying that Neely had been robbed at gunpoint in London and would need them to wire him money so he could return to Australia. Neely says he filled out two online complaint forms and e-mailed the privacy team at Facebook, but it took them more than 40 hours to respond to him. In the meantime, his friends continued to call him about being contacted by the hacker. Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt disputes Neely's figure, saying it only took 30 hours to respond. "In this case, we have restored access to the account to the rightful owner, are identifying the means by which the account was compromised (likely malware), and building in technical protections in the Facebook system to address this particular type of scheme," Schnitt said

According to Mandiant's Kevin Mandia, retailers are being compromised by one attack in particular: SQL injection. In this keynote speech from Information Security Decisions 2008, Mandia takes you through a common retail hack and points out the attack tools being used to gain domain credentials and credit card numbers.

The key points of the plan closely mirror recommendations offered late last year by a bipartisan commission of computer security experts, which urged then president-elect Obama to set up a high-level post to tackle cyber security, consider new regulations to combat cyber crime and shore up the security of the nation's most sensitive computer networks. The strategy, as outlined in a broader policy document on homeland security priorities posted on the Whitehouse.gov Web site Wednesday, states the following goals: * Strengthen Federal Leadership on Cyber Security: Declare the cyber infrastructure a strategic asset and establish the position of national cyber advisor who will report directly to the president and will be responsible for coordinating federal agency efforts and development of national cyber policy. * Initiate a Safe Computing R&D Effort and Harden our Nation's Cyber Infrastructure: Support an initiative to develop next-generation secure computers and networking for national security applications. Work with industry and academia to develop and deploy a new generation of secure hardware and software for our critical cyber infrastructure. * Protect the IT Infrastructure That Keeps America's Economy Safe: Work with the private sector to establish tough new standards for cyber security and physical resilience. * Prevent Corporate Cyber-Espionage: Work with industry to develop the systems necessary to protect our nation's trade secrets and our research and development. Innovations in software, engineering, pharmaceuticals and other fields are being stolen online from U.S. businesses at an alarming rate. * Develop a Cyber Crime Strategy to Minimize the Opportunities for Criminal Profit: Shut down the mechanisms used to transmit criminal profits by shutting down untraceable Internet payment schemes. Initiate a grant and training program to provide federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies the tools they need to detect and prosecute cyber crime. *