Security and Reliability: A Deeper Dive into Network Assessments

As noted in the first part of this series, Security and Reliability encompasses holistic network assessments, vulnerability assessments, and penetration testing. In this post I'd like to go deeper into network assessments. I stated last time that the phrase "network assessment" is broad. more

The Secure 5G and Beyond Act – U.S. Credibility and Legal Requirements at Stake

The Secure 5G and Beyond Act of 2020 has been submitted by the U.S. Congress to the White House for signing into law. It has been sitting there for several days now, but there are obviously more important developments demanding attention than a law compelling the Executive Branch to develop a 5G security strategy within 180 days through public and Federal agency consultations that will be implemented by the NTIA. more

2025 Cheat Sheet for Digital and Internet Governance

The year 2025 will be a landmark year for digital diplomacy and global governance. It is the year of wrapping up the UN cybersecurity OEWG and the negotiations on cybercrime at the Ad Hoc group. It's the year UN member states will decide on the future of the World Summit of Information Society process and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). more

US Government and Businesses Need Collaborative Procedures Against Major Cyberattacks, Warns Report

A new report warns that unless government and private sector decision makers begin developing specific procedures and trust now against cyber-enabled economic warfare (CEEW), the United States will find itself flat-footed during a major cyber event. more

Defending Against the Hackers of 1995

Two factor authentication that uses an uncopyable physical device (such as a cellphone or a security token) as a second factor mitigates most of these threats very effectively. Weaker two factor authentication using digital certificates is a little easier to misuse (as the user can share the certificate with others, or have it copied without them noticing) but still a lot better than a password. Security problems solved, then? more

Have LLMs Broken Fair Use?

Two sets of authors sued Anthropic and Meta in San Francisco for copyright infringement, arguing that the companies had pirated their works to train their LLMs. Everyone agreed that a key question was whether fair use allowed it, and in both cases, the courts looked at the fair use issue before dealing with other aspects of the cases. Even though the facts in both cases were very similar, last week, two judges in the same court wrote opinions, coming to very different conclusions. How can that happen? Is fair use broken? more

The Need for a Remedial gTLD Program for #newgtlds

I think the new gTLD program will have many successes. It is a failure, however, when it comes to serving developing and less developed economies, especially the communities in those economies. Actually it failed in serving communities anywhere, but it really failed when it came to serving the peoples of the world outside WEOG (the UN designations for the developed Western European nations and Other Groups; others including AU, CA US, and NZ). more

Time Warner Cable Showing Photos of Melted Fiber-Opitcs Caused by “Freakish Subterranean Fires”

In follow up to a significant outage in New York City's East Village earlier this month, Time Warner Cable has posted a detailed look at the incident caused by fire melting a portion of the fiber-optic network, affecting 24,000 customers in the area. more

FCC Gives Approval to LTE-U Devices

Ericsson, Nokia get go-ahead for LTE-U base stations despite early fears they might interfere with Wi-Fi. more

Minimized DNS Resolution: Into the Penumbra

Over the past several years, domain name queries - a critical element of internet communication - have quietly become more secure, thanks, in large part, to a little-known set of technologies that are having a global impact. Verisign CTO Dr. Burt Kaliski covered these in a recent Internet Protocol Journal article, and I'm excited to share more about the role Verisign has performed in advancing this work and making one particular technology freely available worldwide. more

Internet Platforms Collecting User Data are Digital Sweat Factories, Says EU’s Data Protection Chief

"The digital information ecosystem farms people for their attention, ideas and data in exchange for so called 'free' services," says Giovanni Buttarelli, the European data protection supervisor. more

Low-Orbit Satellite Security

I've been watching the progress of the low-orbit satellite providers, which are promising to bring broadband solutions across the planet. There has been some serious movement since the last time I discussed their status. On January 29, Starlink launched its latest round of low-orbit satellites, bringing the number in space to 242. Not all of these will be delivering broadband. The first half dozen satellites were test units to try out various concepts. more

Multi-Layer Security Architecture - Importance of DNS Firewalls

In today's world with botnets, viruses and other nefarious applications that use DNS to further their harmful activities, outbound DNS security has been largely overlooked. As a part of multi-layer security architecture, a DNS Firewall should not be ignored. After serving as a consultant for multiple organizations, I have encountered many companies that allow all internal devices to send outbound DNS queries to external DNS servers - a practice that can lead to myriad problems. more

China’s World Internet Conference to Be Held in November

China's high-profile "World Internet Conference" will be held next month where more than 1,000 representatives from tech firms and regulators are expected to attend. The event will be held from Nov. 19-21 in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province. The conference is planned to cover topics including global Internet governance, mobile Internet, cross-border e-commerce, cyber security and terrorism.  more

A Closer Look at Recent Submarine Cable Failures

In light of the recent submarine cable failures, Doug Madory from Renesys has a detailed report on what has happened to some of the providers in four countries along the route of the cable: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India. more