When asked to describe what it’s like to deal with the constantly looming threat of ransomware, Chad Wilson, the Director of Information Security at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C., didn’t beat around the bush. “I’ll sum it up in one word: It’s scary,” Wilson said at a Federal Trade Commission workshop Wednesday. “It’s...

Alleging a trail of broken promises, two privacy-focused advocacy groups yesterday filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against a recent WhatsApp privacy policy change that states it will begin sharing user data with parent company Facebook. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) said in a joint...

The Federal Trade Commission doesn’t investigate every reported breach, but when it comes to prosecuting data security cases it has an impressive 70 percent closure rate, according to agency officials. FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen shed light on the agency’s approach to enforcing data security in a keynote address for a panel titled Federal Online Data...

After settling charges with the Federal Trade Commission this week a mobile advertising company will pay nearly $1M after it was determined the company tracked customers – including children – without their consent. InMobi, an India-based firm with offices across the world, will pay $950,000 in civil penalties, the FTC announced via press release on...

The glowing lack of public, real-world Stagefright exploits didn’t stop the U.S. government from using last summer’s blockbuster Android vulnerability as an illustration of the dangers facing mobile device users. Under the context of Stagefright exposing up to 1 billion devices to attack, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission yesterday said they...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with ASUSTeK Computer over sloppy security settings tied to its routers that left the personal data of 12,900 consumers’ publicly available. On Tuesday, the Taiwanese electronics company agreed to 20 years of periodic security audits along with fines of $16,000 per incident that could reach as much...

Oracle’s stewardship of Java has been scrutinized by the security community, which in 2013 languished through nearly a full year of targeted attacks exploiting zero days and other vulnerabilities in the platform. Since then, Oracle has improved the Java user experience by denying unsigned applets the ability to execute by default, and putting security restrictions...