Reflections on Joe Cannataci’s First Report

Joseph Cannataci recently submitted his first report as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy - a brand new position, created in July 2015 in the wake of the German-Brazilian initiative for a UN resolution on privacy in the digital age. The report includes a description of Cannataci's working methods, a general overview of privacy-relevant topics, and a 'Ten point action plan' - described as a to-do list for the post holder, rather than a mere wish list. more

Will the UN Step Up Transparency on the Tech Envoy Selection Process?

A few weeks ago, a new vacancy was added to the UN Webpage for Senior Leadership Positions, inviting applications to become the new Tech Envoy. This position has a long and unfortunate backstory. It was created in 2019 as a new role, as an outgrowth of the UN's High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and the UN Secretary General's Roadmap for Digital Cooperation -- with a vague remit to "advise senior leadership of the United Nations on key trends in technology and... more

Senior U.S. and Chinese Officials Conclude Four-Day Meeting on Cyber Security

Senior U.S. and Chinese officials concluded a four day meeting on Saturday discussing cyber security issues ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington later this month. more

Why Universities Should Monetize Their IP Addresses Instead of Selling

Universities sit on vast reserves of IPv4 addresses -- a legacy from the early internet. Instead of one-off sales, leasing these assets could generate sustainable revenues while preserving long-term digital infrastructure and institutional flexibility. more

David J. Farber, Early Architect of the Internet, Dies at 91

David J. Farber, a pioneering computer scientist and mentor to key architects of the Internet Protocol, has died at 91, leaving a legacy that helped transform isolated machines into the global network underpinning modern communication. more

Governments Pushing for Greater Control Over Geographic TLDs

Governments are toying with the idea of asking ICANN for greater powers over gTLDs that match their geographic features," Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite. more

Google’s Project Zero Team Discovers Critical Vulnerabilities in Symantec and Norton

"These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets," says Google's Information Security Engineer, Tavis Ormandy, in reference to multiple critical vulnerabilities discovered affecting Symantec, a popular vendor in the enterprise security market. more

Independent Show 2015: Out-of-the-Box Lessons in the Digital Age

This year's Independent Show summer conference was held in Boston, a place where the accents are strong and you hear great quotes like... If I had to sum up this year's conference with one phrase, it would have to be: out-of-the-box thinking. The keynote speech was given by Professor Bharat Anand of the Harvard School of Business, whose expertise is in the areas of digital strategy, corporate strategy, and media strategy -- in other words, digital marketing. The title was "Lessons from the Digital Transformation of Media". more

FCC Chair Kevin Martin Makes His Departure Official, Announces Resignation

In his last meeting today, Federal Communication Commission (FCC) chairman Kevin J. Martin, announced that he will be leaving the commission and will not be staying in the Obama administration. While the chairman had previously declined commenting on his future plans, the departure did not come unexpected. In the statement after announcing his departure at the FCC meeting, Martin also mentioned that he would depart Jan. 20 to become a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. This announcement follows reports that President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Julius Genachowski to be the next FCC chairman. more

Malware Production Continues at Record-Setting Pace; 6000 Unique Pieces Per Day

Security researches report seeing as much unique malware in the first half of 2009 as seen in all of 2008. "This is quite something when you consider that in 2008 we saw the greatest ever growth in malware," says David Marcus of McAfee Avert Labs. More specifically, Marcus in a blog post writes that the numbers add up to an average of 200,000 unique pieces malware monthly or more than 6,000 a day. "Bear in mind these are malware we consider unique (something we had to write a driver for) and does not count all the other malware we detect generically or heuristically... When you add in the generic and heuristic detections the number becomes truly mind boggling," writes Marucs. more

Extreme Cyberattack Could Cost as Much as Superstorm Sandy, Says Insurer Lloyd’s of London

A global cyberattack has the potential to cost $120bn in economic losses, roughly the equivalent of a catastrophic natural disaster like 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, a scenario described in new research by Lloyd’s of London and Cyence, a cyber-risk analytics modeling firm. more

Virtualizing the Gateway - How CSPs Are Revolutionizing the Network Edge

Software-defined networking (SDN) itself represents a deconstructed view of current switching and routing architectures providing the abstractions of control from dataplane. With this newfound control, the industry is leveraging multiple virtualization strategies to build out public, private, and hybrid cloud architectures, delivering multiple new application services to the market. more

Third Round of Evaluation Results for New TLDs

Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the third round of initial evaluation results, bringing the total number of applicants to pass Initial Evaluation to 93. ICANN has now completed the initial evaluation of all but 13 IDN Top Level Domains. more

Turkey Blocks Access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp

Access to multiple social media services including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been reported throughout Turkey beginning Friday Nov 04 2016 1:20AM local time – ongoing as of Friday noon. more

Brits Targeted by 3.7 Billion Phishing Scams in Past 12 Months

More than 420,000 scam emails are sent every hour in the UK according to a report published by Card Protection Plan Limited (CPP). The study estimates that Britons were targeted by 3.7 billion 'phishing' emails in the last 12 months alone. And a quarter of people admit to falling victim to e-fraudsters, with the average victim losing over £285 each. more