card has a tiny RFID sensor chip. These chips are supposed to make life easier by emitting radio signals for fast identification. The technology helps keep track of livestock and inventory. It makes automatic payment on toll roads and faster scanning of passports possible, and, starting around 2004, brought us contactless payment with certain credit cards.
REI and other companies sell a range of RFID-blocking products and say the number of customers looking for travel bags and credit card sleeves has been growing. That’s despite the fact that the percentage of credit cards with RFID chips in the U.S. is extremely small.
Still, people are worried about electronic pickpocketing — worried enough to strap on RFID-blocking fanny packs, even skinny jeans. In 2014, the San Francisco-based clothing company Betabrand partnered with Norton Security to create the first pair of denim with RFID protected pockets.
Eva Velasquez, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, says from a consumer perspective, deciding whether to invest in RFID-blocking technology is all about evaluating risk. In the next few years, there will undoubtedly be millions more of these cards on the market.
if you’re worried about e-pickpocketing but don’t want to spend much money, you can make your own blocking wallet or wrap your cards or passport in a thick piece of aluminum foil. According to Consumer Reports, that works as well as most RFID protectors on the market.
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more on cybersecurity in this IMS blog
By 2020 more than 50 billion things, ranging from cranes to coffee machines, will be connected to the internet. That means a lot of data will be created — too much data, in fact, to be manageable or to be kept forever affordably.
One by-product of more devices creating more data is that they are speaking lots of different programming languages. Machines are still using languages from the 1970s and 80s as well as the new languages of today. In short, applications need to have data translated for them — by an IoT babelfish, if you will — before they can make sense of the information.
Then there are analytics and data storage.
security becomes even more important as there is little human interaction in the flow of data from device to datacentre — so called machine-to-machine communication.
The education program, which aims to reach as many as 1.8 million Girl Scouts in kindergarten through sixth grade, is being developed in a partnership between the Girl Scouts and Palo Alto Networks, a security company, the organization said in a press release.
Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them
Scott Greenstone
Kidd and the others are archivists and preservationists, and they’re part of a group called XFR Collective (pronounced Transfer Collective). Most work professionally, but they volunteer their free time to do this.
That’s because research suggests that tapes like this aren’t going to live beyond 15 to 20 years. Some call this the “magnetic media crisis,” and archivists, preservationists, and librarians like the ones in the XFR Collective are trying to reverse it.
Some are old videos of police brutality; others are just weddings or old public access TV that isn’t saved anywhere else. All tapes are from people who want their content to be publicly available, and after the tapes are transferred, they’re stored on the nonprofit Internet Archive. To date, they’ve transferred 155 tapes—67 hours in total.
Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that they will be saved forever. Digital has its own problems, and Lukk says that some film preservationists argue we should be looking back to before magnetic media for stable preservation — many Hollywood films, for instance, are often stored on film in salt mines, where they can last 100 years.
cyber security experts say that weaving your personal and professional lives together via a work laptop is risky business — for you and the company. Software technology company Check Point conducted a survey of over 700 IT professionals which revealed that nearly two-thirds of IT pros believed that recent high-profile breaches were caused by employee carelessness.
DON’T: Save personal passwords in your work device keychain.
DON’T: Make off-color jokes on messaging software.
DON’T: Access free public wi-fi while working on sensitive material.
DON’T: Allow friends or non-IT department colleagues to remotely access your work computer.
DON’T: Store personal data.
DON’T: Work on your side hustle while at the office.
These gaps and others “suggest a disconnect, the report stated, “between the impacts that many administrators perceive and the reality of how digital learning is changing the market.” Open-ended responses suggested that expectations for the impact of digital learning were “set too high” or weren’t being “measured or communicated well.” Another common refrain: There’s inadequate institutional support.
While most administrators told researchers that “faculty are crucial to the success of digital learning initiatives — serving as both a bolster and a barrier to implementation success,” the resources for supporting faculty to implement digital learning are insufficient. Just a quarter of respondents said faculty professional development was implemented “effectively and at scale.” Thirty-five percent said implementation was in progress. And a third (33 percent) reported that faculty professional development was “incomplete, inconsistent, informal and/or optional.”
The report offered recommendations for improving and expanding digital learning adoption. Among the guidance:
Get realistic. While the data suggested that digital learning could improve scheduling flexibility and access, among other benefits, schools need to identify which goals are most important and “clearly articulate how and to what extent its digital learning programs are expected to help.”
Measure impact and broadcast it. Forget about small pilots; go for a scale that will demonstrate impact and then share the findings internally and with other institutions.
Use buying power to influence the market. Connect faculty with vendors for “education, product discovery and feedback.” Insist on accessibility within products, strong integration features and user friendliness.
Prepare faculty for success. Make sure there are sufficient resources and incentives to help faculty “buy into the strategy” and follow through on implementation.
Here’s an easy way to explain IoT hacks to students:
A hacker accesses a device, like a webcam, through its internet connection. Devices with weak security or easy-to-guess passwords make easy targets.
The hacker can then infect the device with malware, a type of computer virus that takes control of a device.
The hacker now has a number of options. He or she can use the device to spy, infect other devices or attack a target like the servers (centralized computers that store network data) targeted in the October 2016 attack.
Research the manufacturer. Are they reputable? Have they previously been hacked? Big, established companies based in developed countries are usually the safest.
Read up on security features. Is the device password-protected? Can you set your own password? If so, make it a strong password that uses numbers, letters and symbols — avoid common words or phrases.
Regularly check for updates. Good companies will regularly update the software on their devices to protect against vulnerabilities.
Ask yourself — do you need it? Make sure internet-connectivity is something you really need on the device you’re using. In many cases, internet-connectivity is not necessary for the device to function properly.
a few tips that students can use to protect their privacy while using smartphones:
Research apps before signing up for them. Is it from a reputable developer? Has it had security issues in the past? Use the same approach as when researching IoT devices.
Look over the terms of service. What information does it require? Does it track or store your data? Can the developer sell your information? All of these questions are important to consider.
Be careful when linking apps to your social media accounts. Giving apps access to your social media accounts makes them vulnerable to hacking. Is there a good reason for the accounts to be linked? Can you sign up without linking to a social media account?
Use two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication requires authorization beyond a password when using unrecognized devices such as entering a code sent to your cellphone. As apps allow, be sure to use two-factor authentication which will make it more difficult for hackers to access the information stored in your apps.
Bitly – Pros & Cons
Pro – If you create a free Bitly.com account you can customize your shortened URLs so that they spell words or at least have initials and numbers that are related to an event.
Con – A few years ago Bitly removed the option to create QR codes while also shortening URLs. So if you need a QR code to go with your shortened URL, you might want to try Goo.gl.
Goo.gl – Pros & Cons
Pro – Goo.gl is available in your Google Account. You can create shortened URLs and QR codes at the same time in Goo.gl.
Con – Goo.gl doesn’t let you customize the shortened URL that is generated for you. You’re stuck with the randomly generated characters that are given to you.
