FBI says it may have found a way to unlock Syed Rizwan's iPhone without Apple's help and while exploring this option, a federal judge has postponed tomorrow's hearing. more
A coalition, called StopWatching.Us, which includes over a hundred advocacy organizations and companies is working to organize "the biggest mass protest of the NSA's surveillance programs to date" in Washington, D.C. The coalition consists of organizations and companies such as ACLU, Access, Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation, FreedomWorks, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Mozilla, reddit, Restore the Fourth and Thoughtworks. more
A recent study released today suggests 53 percent of critical infrastructure providers have experienced what they perceived as politically motivated cyber attacks. According to Symantec's 2010 Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Survey, participants claimed to have experienced such an attack on an average of 10 times in the past five years, incurring an average cost of $850,000 during a period of five years to their businesses. more
Many industries have gone back to pre-COVID days but not telecom or their supporting technology partners. In fact, the pandemic gave a modern-day meaning to the decades-old iconic long-distance campaign to "reach out and touch someone." With so many months (and even years) of remote and isolated living, telecom audio and voice communications became the heroes of the era, bringing us together and forever changing our options in socializing and doing business. more
Whether you're a service provider or subscriber, a broken connection is an ugly situation. Operators need to shift resources to diagnose and fix the problem. Subscribers must find another way to get back online and continue with their business. And with the proliferation of cloud storage and Internet-based communication platforms, Internet connectivity is now a necessity for many. So when a disruption occurs, the angry calls are guaranteed. more
A recent article in the MIT Technology Review described the benefits that remote learning can bring to preschoolers. The article described a study by the MacArthur Foundation that has not yet been peer-reviewed. The research described the results of bringing preschool to Syrian refugees. more
Right as May turned into June, we joined thousands of attendees at the latest edition of ANGA COM in Cologne, Germany. Over the course of three days, I had the opportunity to listen and gain insights on the challenges faced today in the industry. As we're already aware, data consumption and demand continue to march upwards. This is further evident by the sheer amount of FTTx-related vendors and solutions present at the show. Cable service providers can look at DOCSIS 3.1 or tilt their HFC towards FTTx. more
As part of its effort to improve defenses against hackers, the White House today named a retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Gregory J. Touhill as the first Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) -- the position was announced eight months ago as part of Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP). more
InterConnect announces a second date for its "Master Class on Internet Governance" starting 17 – 21 November 2014. InterConnect provides the following information regarding the course. more
Ben Parr of Mashable reports: "The use of Twitter (Twitter) has been immense. #IranElection has been a top trending topic for days, as have terms like Iran, Tehran, Ahmadinejad, and Mousavi. But while there have been 10,000 to 50,000 tweets at any hour mentioning "Iran", it peaked yesterday at 221,744. This seems extreme, but it makes sense when you realize that it corresponds with when Twitter's downtime was rescheduled, which had major buzz the entire day." more
A report released by IVC Research Center in advance of this year's annual Cybertech 2016, highlights how a tight interplay between industry, investors, and the government has turned Israel into a center of cybersecurity technology. more
Perhaps it's because the death of Queen Elizabeth has been everywhere in the news, but somebody sent me an article from the BBC from 2008 where then Prince Charles warned that the lack of rural broadband in the UK was going to eventually result in broadband deserts. The now King Charles III was quoted as saying that lack of broadband puts too much pressure on the people who live without broadband and that if a solution wasn't found... more
Milton Mueller reporting in IGP: "On January 23 Daniel Sepulveda, the State Department's Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, gave a notable speech in Washington on Internet governance. This is the first US official statement on the topic since the NSA spying scandal broke and altered the landscape. Entitled 'Internet Governance 2020 - Geopolitics and the Future of the Internet,' the speech signaled the Obama administration's openness to reform as long as it is conducted within a multistakeholder framework..." more
The SEACOM submarine cable, completed in the past 24 hours, is the first modern submarine cable connecting to eastern Africa, and the first of an unprecedented wave of new cable projects on both the eastern and western coasts of Africa. Approximately USD2.4 billion in new submarine cable projects are scheduled for completion by the end of 2011. The plans for so many new cables reflect both Africa's lack of international communications infrastructure, and soaring capacity requirements. more
Contrary to previous security reports suggesting compromised machines remain infected for 6 weeks, experts at Trend Micro say these estimates are far from accurate. In its recent blog post the company said: "During the analysis of approximately 100 million compromised IP addresses, we identified that half of all IP addresses were infected for at least 300 days. That percentage rises to eighty percent if the minimum time is reduced to a month." Additionally the study also indicates that while three quarter of the IP addresses were linked to consumer users, the remaining quarter belonged to enterprise users. more