Many of us have an old Android phone somewhere in the house, doing nothing. Rather than leaving it there to add no value to your life and work, you may find that it’s much easier than you think to resurrect it. Look Beyond The Launch Even though your phone may have been the greatest and the fastest when it was launched, the passage of time doesn’t necessarily mean that it has become obsolete. Performance issues can, of course, be exaggerated by age and resource limitations, but there are some steps you can take to clean-up your old android phone and [...]

If you’re using Windows 10 and you want to make sure you’re not exposed to the security risks posed by insecure wireless networks, there is a quick and easy way you can protect your Wi-Fi connectivity. Here’s how: Go to Settings. Go to Network & Internet > Wi-Fi Make sure that the 'Connect to suggested open hotspots' option is disabled, unless you connect through a virtual private network or VPN service.

Deep fakes are digitally manipulated videos that have been created using deep learning technology to make the subject of the video (often a famous person) say anything the video maker wants them to say, even incorporating the style and facial expressions of another person. Example An example here is a video that demonstrates the technique, and features a fake video of Barack Obama saying things that he would never normally (publicly) say. Example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo Improving Fast The technique, which had its less than auspicious first uses in pornography, where porn actors were made to look and sound like famous [...]

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has found the UK government guilty of violating the right to privacy of citizens under the European convention because the safeguards within the government's system for bulk interception of communications were not strong enough to provide guarantees against abuse. The Case The case which led to the verdict, was brought against the UK government by 14 human rights groups, journalism organisations, and privacy organisations such as Amnesty International, Big Brother Watch and Liberty in the wake of the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, specifically that GCHQ was secretly intercepting communications traffic via [...]

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has reported taking 500+ calls per week reporting GDPR data breaches, but one-third of the calls appear to be based on myths and misunderstandings or over-reporting about GDPR matters. Update After Freedom of Information Request The update by the ICO about how things appear to be going just three months after the introduction of GDPR came shortly after a Freedom of Information (FOI) by law firm EMW yielded figures that showed that the number of complaints between 25th May and 3rd July 2018 rose to 6,281 versus 2,417 during the same period in 2017. Over-Reporting [...]

A bi-annual study by FireEye has found that less than a third of over half a billion emails analysed were considered clean enough not to be blocked from entering our inboxes. Phishing Problem Evident The study found that even though 9 out of 10 emails that are blocked by email security / anti-virus didn’t actually contain malware, 81% of the blocked emails were phishing attacks. This figure is double that of the previous 6 months. Webroot’s Quarterly Threat Trends Report data, for example, shows that 1.39 million new phishing sites are created each month, and that this figure was even [...]

A new kind of pilot secure email service called ‘AccountGuard’ has been launched by Microsoft, specifically for use by election candidates, and as one answer to the kind of interference that took place during the last US presidential election campaign. Ready For The Midterm Elections The new, free email service (which people must useOffice 365 to register for) is an off-shoot of Microsoft’s 'Defending Democracy' Program. This program was launched in April with the aim of protecting campaigns from hacking, through increased cyber resilience measures, enhanced account monitoring and incident response capabilities. The AccountGuard pilot has been launched in time [...]

A discovery of the file containing the code used in the recent hack of the British Airways website and app that affected 380,000 transactions has revealed that it only took 22 lines of JavaScript to cause the massive data breach. Skimming The hack that took place on 21st August and caused disruption into September is now believed to be down to the injection of a digital skimming file designed to steal financial data from the online payment forms of BA’s website and app. The small skimming file, which was discovered by a cyber-security firm RiskIQ, was used to grab data [...]

Research shows that one reason why organisations face constant, serious security threats is that cyber criminals, fuelled by a new cybercrime-based economy are spending much more on cyber attacks than organisations are spending on cyber security. Cyber Criminals Spending and Reinvesting $Trillions! Back in 2017, Gartner predicted that organisations would collectively be spending around $96 billion on their cyber-security. Although this is a big number, it is dwarfed by the figures relating to the proceeds of crime. For example, last year, Cyber Security Ventures predicted that cyber-crime will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, and Bromium’s independent study [...]