Commentary

With the number of data breaches within retailers such as Home Depot and Target, Congress and President Obama believe they should step in. With input from the FTC, Obama intends on creating a new law requiring companies to tell consumers within 30 days of discovering a data breach that may have compromised their personal info. Obama also proposes criminalizing overseas trade of personal information. Thirdly, Obama plans to add another piece of legislation that would protect students from having their personal information by banning educational software companies from selling collected data from students to third parties and advertisers.

While the government cannot always protect you, especially when it comes to data security, these appear to be valid steps toward a safer online experience. However, keep in mind that aside from discovery after the fact, there is no way for the government to see these laws being put into action. Relying on anyone other than yourself when it comes to your personal security is generally a bad idea. For more on Obama’s proposals, click here:: Obama proposes new data laws as U.S. Central Command hacked
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We’re one week into the New Year and many people have already broken their New Year’s Resolutions. Most of the time it’s rather harmless to break them, whether it’s taking up a new hobby or trying to lose weight and so on. However, many companies and organizations need to adhere to one big resolution this year: if a security flaw is found, take action.

Last year, companies like Home Depot were aware of their security flaws, vulnerabilities, and imperfections yet didn’t take action until it was too late. Consistent updates and analysis of security systems help keep your network locked down. Time and again we’re shown that once Pandora’s Box is opened, your data cannot be returned uncompromised. For more on this topic and other security resolutions companies should follow, click here:: 4 Infosec Resolutions for the New Year
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During the holidays, a group calling themselves “The Lizard Squad” had attacked Sony’s Playstation Network and Xbox Live as a demonstration. In fact, they group had only ceased their attack after Kim Dotcom offered the cybercriminals $300,000 worth of MegaUpload vouchers. The group proceeded to advertise themselves and offer a subscription service for people to pay them to kick a target offline.

While it appears that the Lizard Squad won’t be in business much longer, it doesn’t mean that something like this won’t happen again. There are plenty within the angst-ridden general public that would pay for a hacking group to act as hitmen towards various company websites. Whether they or others like them succeed in the long term isn’t the point. It’s that more attempts and other like groups will pop up just to try. It’s not a question of “if,” but “when” right now. For more on Lizard Squad, click here:: Lizard Kids: A Long Trail of Fail
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We live in a technological age. Every business, company, and organization of merit has an online presence and a computer network in order to get work done efficiently and quickly. While having an IT team or software in place in order to protect the network is helpful, security doesn’t have to be overly expensive.

By keeping up to date on websites such as Identity Theft Labs and learning from the mistakes of other companies, you can save a load of money and trouble. Learning is free and application of that knowledge is priceless. So change passwords regularly, dump and destroy unnecessary data, and read up on security issues/threats daily. You won’t regret it. For a second article about wisdom, click here:: Get Wisdom as Cheaply as You Can
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On the surface, Tor provides a welcomed service. Many people who don’t want to be bombarded and wish to keep their online activities private use Tor in order to have a more cloaked internet experience. However, is Tor hurting more than helping?

A recent study found that almost 80% of Tor’s anonymous traffic was to child abuse websites that contained pedophiliac material. Tor officials, obviously, stated that the data collected could have been from a particular group of Tor users rather than reflect network traffic as a whole. With that said, the director of Tor noted that the majority of network’s hidden services were related to drug sites. In any case, it shows that hidden internet services can lead into dark, dark territories. For more on this story, click here:: Tor creators debate research saying 80 percent of dark web traffic attributed to child abuse sites
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