More Than 500 Schools in the U.S. Hit by Ransomware in 2019, Says Report

A recent report published by the cybersecurity firm Armor says ransomware infections have hit over 500 US schools in 2019 to date. Armor warns the rate of attack seems to be picking up with 15 new ransomware victims in the last two weeks, all of them educational institutions. more

US Court Upholds FCC’s Net Neutrality Repeal But Says States Can’t Be Barred from Passing Own Rules

A U.S. court decision today determined net neutrality laws could return at the state level overruling Trump administration's effort to block states from passing their own net neutrality laws. more

Happy Birthday Wi-Fi

This year is the twentieth anniversary of the formation of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the launch of commercial Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous in our lives that it's hard to believe that it's only been twenty years since all broadband connections came with wires. In 1999 most people were still using dial-up, and that's the year when early adapters started buying DSL. I remember having incredibly long phone cords so that I could use my laptop at different places around the house. more

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee Is Investigating Google’s Plans to Implement DNS Over HTTPS

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is investigating Google's plans to implement DNS over HTTPS (DoH) in Chrome according to a report by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. more

Internet Consolidation at EuroDIG 2019: Questions in Need of Answers

At EuroDIG 2019 a workshop was organised around the topic of consolidation on the Internet. It was organised around four angles: technique, competition, society and human rights and; future research. One thing became extremely clear: no one contested that consolidation is taking place nor that this already has and will have an impact on the Internet and consecutively on society. more

Watch Live Tonight – 2019 Internet Hall of Fame Ceremony

Tonight (27 Sep 2019) you can watch the 2019 Internet Hall of Fame induction ceremony streaming live out of Costa Rica. Eleven individuals from six countries will be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame (IHOF) today. The 2019 class of inductees have expanded the Internet's reach into new regions and communities, helped foster a greater understanding of the way the Internet works, and enhanced security to increase user trust in the network. more

The Hidden World of Undersea Fiber

Since the first undersea cable was completed in 1858 to deliver telegraph messages between the US and England, we've had an extensive network of undersea cable networks that enable communications between continents. Earlier this year there were 378 undersea fiber cables in place that stretch over 745,000 miles. Here's an interactive map that shows all of the cables... What's most intriguing about the map is that there are a few cities around the world where numerous cables terminate. more

Call for Participation – ICANN DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN66, Montreal, Canada

The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) and the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme are planning a DNSSEC and Security Workshop on Wednesday, 06 November 2019, during the ICANN66 meeting held from 02-07 November 2019 in Montreal, Canada. The original DNSSEC Workshop has been a part of ICANN meetings for many years and has provided a forum for both experienced and new people to meet, present and discuss current and future DNSSEC deployments. more

27 Countries Issue Joint Statement on ‘Advancing Responsible State Behavior in Cyberspace’

The joint statement was released on Monday at the United Nations ahead of the UN General Assembly's General Debate calling on all states to support the evolving framework and to join in ensuring "greater accountability and stability in cyberspace." more

Ren to Donald Trump: Take Our 5G, Please

Ren Zhengfei tells the Economist and the NY Times he is prepared to give the US essentially everything the President has asked, including the crown jewels: the complete design and source code of Huawei's 5G system. Ren would "license the entire Huawei 5G platform to any American company that wants to manufacture it and install it and operate it, completely independent of Huawei." more

Spam Is Never Timely Nor Relevant

One of the ongoing recommendations to improve deliverability is to send email that is timely and relevant to the recipient. The idea being that if you send mail a recipient wants, they're more likely to interact with it in a way that signals to the mailbox provider that the message is wanted. The baseline for that, at least whenever I've talked about timely and relevant, is that the recipient asked for mail from you in the first place. more

If Demand Is Growing, Why Is Networking World Such a Depressing Place Right Now? Let’s Dig Deeper…

Over at the ECI blog, Jonathan Homa has a nice article about the importance of network planning: In the classic movie, The Graduate (1967), the protagonist is advised on career choices, "In one word – plastics." If you were asked by a young person today, graduating with an engineering or similar degree about a career choice in telecommunications, would you think of responding, "network planning"? Well, probably not... more

Cyber Risk Now on Top of Corporate Risk Agendas, Cyber Insurance Expanding

Results from the 2019 Marsh-Microsoft Global Cyber Risk Perception survey indicates several encouraging signs of improvement in the way organizations view and manage cyber risk. more

Collaboration: A Means to Boost Enterprise Network Protection

In an age where cyber threats and attacks have reached a point of ubiquity, managing your organization's network security single-handedly may no longer be sufficient. The increasing volume and sophistication of threats, not to mention the continuous advancement in attack tools and their perpetrators' skills and know-how, has led to concerns on whether potential targets can keep up. more

Unlicensed Millimeter Wave Spectrum

I haven't seen it talked about a lot, but the FCC has set aside millimeter wave spectrum that can be used by anybody to provide broadband. That means that entities will be able to use the spectrum in rural America in areas that the big cellphone companies are likely to ignore. The FCC set aside the V band (60 GHz) as unlicensed spectrum. This band provides 14 GHz of contiguous spectrum available for anybody to use. This is an interesting spectrum because it has a few drawbacks. more