privacy - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• A reportage on IT leadership

  Ready, set, grow!
  Campbell Such of Bidvest New Zealand exemplifies the new breed of CIOs focusing beyond business technology and delving into revenue generation strategies.

• Social networking, ignorance, and apathy

  There's an old joke: What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? Answer: I don't know and I don't care.

• How to recover a lost phone, tablet, or laptop

  The bad news: At some point, your cell phone is likely to go missing. Whether it falls out of your pocket in a cab, or you leave it unattended in a public place for a few seconds only to have it swiped by someone with sticky fingers and low moral fiber, your phone is vulnerable. In fact, according to a report from security software company Symantec, 36 percent of U.S. consumers have had a cell phone disappear on them.

• Is IT tracking your location via smartphone?

  Let's say you scored a boondoggle to Los Angeles for a business conference, and instead sneaked off to nearby Disneyland with the family for a vacation on the corporate dime. Or maybe you simply told your boss you were meeting a client, but hit the golf links with your buddies.

• WikiLeaks teaches enterprises five hard truths

  The recent news of government secrets posted to WikiLeaks is startling because of its size and scale. It is also symptomatic of a problem that practically every enterprise is also facing. Thanks to advent of Web 2.0, employees are demanding the benefits and openness of their social networking experience inside the enterprise. And with that newfound sharing and openness come significant security risks. Here's my take:

• Four things Facebook doesn't tell you about privacy, security

  Let us be perfectly clear: While Facebook has received a lot of criticism lately about its new privacy policies and Open Graph concept, which allows them to partner with other sites which will also have access to some Facebook user data, Facebook isn't explicitly keeping secrets from you. But some security professionals and users continually knock the site for what they say are less-than-clear explanations about where your data is going, and how secure the site really is.
  Joey Tyson, a social media security expert who maintains the site Social Hacking, says there are important data security and privacy issues happening under the radar of the Facebook experience. This is what Facebook isn't saying outright to members.

• Five technology security myths busted

  Think you can hide behind the privacy of an "unlisted" mobile phone number? Think again. Maybe you believe you don't need security software on a Mac or iPad. You'd swear that Firefox is the safest browser in town. Wrong on both counts.
  Most of us don't think about security for our digital devices until something goes wrong, or it's time to renew an anti-virus subscription. But what the security experts like to call the threat landscape changes all the time, and keeping up is hard to do. So we'll save you some time. Here are five current facts that you probably don't know about digital security --but should.

• Behavioural issues no advert for security

  Technology companies that promise to give advertisers the ability to target web surfers based on their internet habits are facing a mounting international privacy backlash amid increased scrutiny of online behavioural tracking.
  The furore has led some internet service providers to suspend or cancel trials of systems designed to monitor people online and serve up ads based on an analysis of the sites they have visited.

• Microsoft helps users to blot their IDs

  It turns out that Rorschach-style ink blots, the well-known images used in psychological testing, may provide an aide to enhance computer security.
  Technology giant Microsoft has launched a new tool using the ink blots to create personalised passwords for any website supporting the Open ID identity authentication platform.