Security
There’s not much research on getting a new program in place, but police chiefs who have been there have a lot of ideas about what to do — and what not to do.
At the Public Sector CIO Academy, experts from the public and private sectors provided insight into what IT leaders need to think about when considering data collection and sharing aimed at benefiting residents' lives.
While state election officials said they were generally satisfied with the support they were receiving from the Department of Homeland Security to secure election infrastructure, problems remain with planning efforts.
Our enemies will fight us in cyberspace, threatening the power-generating facilities and other critical systems we depend on. Government could be doing a lot more to fend off debilitating attacks.
Eight Ohio counties have yet to complete the 34-point security plan that was due last Friday. One county has not provided a plan to complete the checklist and so will be placed under administrative oversight.
Twitter will review and remove deepfake videos and altered images if they are “significantly” altered, shared “in a deceptive manner” or are threatening to safety. The policy “is not meant to be the final word.”
Cybersecurity research firm, McAfee found that 83 percent of counties didn’t have a dot-gov website, which would help distinguish them from misinformation sites. Election security begins with protecting online information.
Springfield City Council in Massachusetts decided to not vote on a proposed five-year ban prohibiting police from using facial recognition technology. A councilor said they’re “clearly not ready for a vote.”
In a world of phishing attacks and other technological threats, we need to do a better job of training the men and women who run the polls. There's still time, and it doesn't cost a lot.
Governments across the nation are proposing legislation that would curb the influence and prominence of online misinformation, but until those bills get signed into laws, read online information carefully and critically.
A number of bills have been introduced that seek to transform the relationship between the state's consumers, data brokers and large tech companies, but lawmakers don't necessarily agree on the legislative fine print.
Florida Rep. Kathy Castor presented a bill that would strengthen online privacy protections for those under the age of 18. Adding an amendment to the federal law, Castor wants consent from the teenagers, too.
Fulton County, Ga., finalized its $1.2 billion budget for 2020 including spending $17 million on IT infrastructure and cybersecurity. Georgia has been the target of several cyberattacks so officials want to be prepared.
Allegheny County, Pa., stores about 1,700 tax records online each year. In 2012, they purchased redacting software but didn’t retroactively redact sensitive information from previously uploaded 1997-2010 tax documents — leaving personally identifiable information exposed.
The Off-Facebook Activity option allows users to notify the social media company that they don’t want data pulled in from third-party apps. Another option will tell Facebook to not collect the data at all.
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Hackers take advantage of poor IT security practices to steal data and take down systems.
Threats of cyberattacks are ever mounting and tax filings are a treasure trove of personal information for cybercrooks. Be mindful of your data, electronic or not, to avoid fraud.
Sean McAfee, formerly of the Department of Homeland Security, will be the new chief information security officer for the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office, overseeing security efforts for the state elections agency.
While the attack against Tillamook County has not officially been dubbed ransomware and local leaders haven't commented on a posted ransom, the incident has all the trappings of that style of attack.
This week, Governing’s Future of Security looks at police use of smartphone decryption tools, ransomware legislation and election hacking fears.
Sundar Pichai recently wrote that he wanted stricter regulations for artificial intelligence. But maybe he was just saying that to reshape the federal regulations to look more like his company’s already existing ones.
In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Sundar Pichai wrote in favor of stricter regulations of artificial intelligence and noted that “principles that remain on paper are meaningless.”
State CIO explains that the “pretty substantial increases” are due to the expansion of technology into everything from watches to toothbrushes. The state has increased its cybersecurity team by 80% to bolster defenses.
Philadelphia’s airport will begin using facial recognition scanners, though there are still many concerns. Officials expect mistakes, but wonder “how might those mistakes be unequally distributed across demographics.”
The state’s Public Regulation Commission was hacked by a source that could be a foreign country, but findings are still preliminary. The PRC chief of staff thinks the hacking “could be related to a cyberattack.”
The National Security Association found a “critical vulnerability” in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Now organizations are being encouraged to “install these critical patches as soon as possible.”
New Orleans, La., City Hall has cleared thousands of city computers after last month’s cyberattack, but the public records system still has a few weeks before it will be fully recovered. The FBI is still investigating the attack’s source.
More than two dozen employees received an email in December containing malware, but county information technology staff detected and contained it before the exposure of any county resident data.
The former director of the California Independent System Operator, which oversees 80 percent of the state’s power system, says cyberthreats against the grid face a number of barriers to success.
While Facebook has announced a plan to ban most deepfake videos to stem misinformation campaigns related to the 2020 presidential election, not all manipulated media will be prevented under the policy.
Congress is hoping to take on election security concerns by reviewing voting machine makers’ cyberprotection practices, ownership and source of parts, something that hasn’t been required in the past.
