California eyes law to protect workers from digital surveillance

Credit to Author: Matthew Finnegan| Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:01:00 -0700

The California State Assembly is considering new rules that would offer workers greater protection from the use of digital monitoring tools by employers.

The “Workplace Technology Accountability Act” (AB 1651), introduced by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, would create a way to protect workers against the use of technologies that can negatively affect privacy and wellbeing.

The bill would “establish much needed, yet reasonable, limitations on how employers use data-driven technology at work,” Kalra told the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee on Wednesday. “The time is now to address the increasing use of unregulated data-driven technologies in the workplace and give workers — and the state — the necessary tools to mitigate any insidious impacts caused by them.”

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Top 6 e-signature software tools

Credit to Author: Keith Shaw| Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2022 03:00:00 -0700

The COVID-19 pandemic did not just disrupt physical meetings and physical office spaces; workflows that relied on in-person interaction, such as signing documents and contracts, were also highly impacted. Electronic signature (e-signature) software has surged in popularity over the past two years as enterprises looked to modify their signature workflows to support a remote workforce, said Holly Muscolino, group vice president for content strategies and future of work at IDC.

With many companies returning to an in-person office environment or adopting a hybrid workforce approach, where employees work some days in the office and some at home, e-signature vendors are working to convince businesses that they are still relevant. Although the market has slowed down, Muscolino said, “it’s still showing healthy growth, because there are still companies who have not adopted this technology. There is still significant room for adoption.”

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Conti’s Ransomware Toll on the Healthcare Industry

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2022 20:41:08 +0000

Conti — one of the most ruthless and successful Russian ransomware groups — publicly declared during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that it would refrain from targeting healthcare providers. But new information confirms this pledge was always a lie, and that Conti has launched more than 200 attacks against hospitals and other healthcare facilities since first surfacing in 2018 under the name “Ryuk.”

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When humans make tech mistakes

Credit to Author: Susan Bradley| Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2022 08:54:00 -0700

We often think vendors are perfect. They have backups. They have redundancy. They have experts that know exactly how to deploy solutions without fail. And then we see they aren’t any better than we are.

Let’s look at a few recent examples.

In the small to mid-sized business (SMB) space, StorageCraft has long been a trusted backup software vendor. One of the first to make image backups easy to do, it was used and recommended by many managed service providers. After StorageCraft was acquired by Arcserve in March 2021, there were no immediate major changes in how the company ran.

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April's Patch Tuesday: a lot of large, diverse and urgent updates

Credit to Author: Greg Lambert| Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2022 10:40:00 -0700

This week’s Patch Tuesday release was huge, diverse, risky, and urgent, with late update arrivals for Microsoft browsers (CVE-2022-1364) and two zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Windows (CVE-2022-26809 and CVE-2022-24500). Fortunately, Microsoft has not released any patches for Microsoft Exchange, but this month we do have to deal with more Adobe (PDF) printing related vulnerabilities and associated testing efforts. We have added the Windows and Adobe updates to our “Patch Now” schedule, and will be watching closely to see what happens with any further Microsoft Office updates. 

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Apple has good privacy arguments, but critics aren't listening

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2022 09:41:00 -0700

Apple CEO Tim Cook this week warned that regulators are on the edge of making poor decisions that will impact our future during a passionate speech in defense of personal privacy and his company’s business models at the Global Privacy Summit in Washington DC.

Neither good nor evil

The thrust of Cook’s argument is that privacy and security are essential building blocks of trust for a technologically advanced society. But that huge potential is being constrained by surveillance and insecurity.

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Microsoft Patch Tuesday, April 2022 Edition

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2022 15:01:24 +0000

Microsoft on Tuesday released updates to fix roughly 120 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software. Two of the flaws have been publicly detailed prior to this week, and one is already seeing active exploitation, according to a report from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

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Duckduckgo launches privacy browser beta for macOS

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 12:53:00 -0700

Privacy-centered search engine DuckDuckGo today launched the beta of its desktop browser for macOS.

The browser is designed from the ground up to maintain privacy, the company said, meaning it will not collect information about users and will not install cookies or tracking codes on devices. DuckDuckGo also said it can block “hidden trackers” before they load.

Duckduckgo first announced plans for a macOS desktop browser in December 2021. (The browser is already available as a download for mobile devices). In 2019, DuckDuckGo added Apple Maps support and has since made  other improvements to how it works on Apple devices.

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RaidForums Gets Raided, Alleged Admin Arrested

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:29:33 +0000

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said today it seized the website and user database for RaidForums, an extremely popular English-language cybercrime forum that sold access to more than 10 billion consumer records stolen in some of the world’s largest data breaches since 2015. The DOJ also charged the alleged administrator of RaidForums — 21-year-old Diogo Santos Coelho, of Portugal — with six criminal counts, including conspiracy, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.

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Double-Your-Crypto Scams Share Crypto Scam Host

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:26:40 +0000

Online scams that try to separate the unwary from their cryptocurrency are a dime a dozen, but a great many seemingly disparate crypto scam websites tend to rely on the same dodgy infrastructure providers to remain online in the face of massive fraud and abuse complaints from their erstwhile customers. Here’s a closer look at hundreds of phony crypto investment schemes that are all connected through a hosting provider which caters to people running crypto scams.

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