By: Emily Marcum *| Staff Writer

Cybersecurity is not the next frontier for most businesses; in fact, it’s more or less the only game in town. Over the last decade, the phrase “cybersecurity” has echoed in boardrooms, courtrooms, and living rooms like never before. What was once intellectual chatter, has become a “fact of life for corporations and governments.” According to U.S. President, Donald Trump, “Cyber theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States by far.”  So, it is no surprise that consumers were recently greeted with yet another disappointing headline concerning Equifax’s massive data breach.

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By: Evan Reid*| Guest Writer

The latest in a string of government cyberhackings targeted the CIA. The trove of hacked files, code-named “Vault 7,” details how the CIA can hack into Apple and Android devices to gather text and voice messages before they are encrypted. The files also reveal the CIA’s capabilities to hack into Smart TVs and vehicle control systems, including models from Jeep. The hackers subsequently released the compromised content to WikiLeaks, which published the highly sensitive material on March 7th. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called the hacking “a major concern.”

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By: Maria Pigna*| Staff Writer 

It goes without saying that the new age of evolving technology has presented the world with a fast treadmill of development, with no choice but to hop on or be left behind in the dark past.  This has left modern businesses and the legal market in a frenzy, with outdated policies and unsettled issues.  For decades, great customer service has been about delighting your customers with friendly staff and business policies, but in this digital global economy, the game has changed.

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By: Thomas Gaffney*| Staff Writer

By Dllu (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Imagine yourself on your morning commute to work, but instead of sitting behind the wheel you are comfortably reclined in your bucket seat reading the newspaper and eating waffles for breakfast.  Does this sound too far-fetched?  Maybe not. No one is surprised that autonomous vehicles are currently a super-hot topic in the tech and auto industries.  Every big name in the tech industry (UBER, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Telsa, etc.) is working on its own version of autonomous driving software; and why would they not?  The first company to develop an autonomous car with driving capabilities better than that of a human will get an enormous upper hand in a market that is projected to be worth at least 42 billion dollars by 2025. No one is going to purchase an autonomous car if it is not safe, however, and some of the threats facing these vehicles are not coming from the road but from the internet.

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By: Katherine Escalante*| Staff Writer

At its core, CloudPets’s new toy brings a personal touch to a stuffed animal. A parent can send a recorded message through an app, which transmits through the stuffed animal, allowing your loved one to hear your voice.  However, this personal touch may come at the cost of your personal information, passwords, and access to your voice.  Like other toys that connect to the internet, this toy stores all that information in the cloud.  With scammers developing new ways of attaining personal information, this purchase is surely something parents will have to think about twice before buying.

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By: Thomas Gaffney*| Staff Writer

On March 1, 2017, Maria Vullo, Superintendent of Financial Services for the Department of Financial Services in the state of New York, promulgated Part 500 of Title 23 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations of the State of New York, into law. This new regulation is more commonly referred to as the controversial NY state financial cybersecurity rule. Many financial institutions fought this rule vigorously because they view the bill as unprecedented, overly restrictive, and extremely costly for compliance.

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By: Maria Pigna*| Staff Writer 

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) published in full, for the first time, revised rules for collecting, analyzing, and storing information on American citizens.  CIA General Counsel, Caroline Krass, told a briefing at the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia that the guidelines are designed “in a manner that protects the privacy and civil rights of the American people.”  The CIA refers to the rules as the revised Attorney General Guidelines and will become effective March 18, 2017, sixty days after they are signed by the Director of the CIA and the Attorney General.  Continue reading »

By: Libby Casale*| Staff Writer 

Cybersecurity is an evolving and growing field, and one full of unknowns.  Panelists discussed cybersecurity, cyber incidents, and cybersecurity breaches at the Cyber Security Panel during the 2017 JBIPL Banking Law: Current and Future Issues Symposium.

For breaches, it is often not a question of whether, but when, a breach will happen. Breaches can take multiple forms.  They may be caused by hactivists, state sponsored theft, cyberterrorism, or could also be caused by malicious insiders.  Additionally, breaches could be caused by something as simple as a self-populating email header or by sending your files to an unintended recipient. Continue reading »

By: Anna-Bryce Flowe*| Staff Writer 

We’ve all gotten those annoying calls to our cell phones with an automated voice on the other end of the phone trying to sell us a cruise or a trip for two to the Bahamas; even creditors use these automated voices to keep us on the line while they try and collect on debts owed, refinance our cars, or upgrade us to a new credit card! For years people have used the typical “ TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST!” demand as a means of dodging these unwanted calls to their landlines. But, is this demand to cease calling effective when the calls come to your cell phone? What about when you provide your cell phone number to the calling party?  And, who— by law—is actually able to keep calling you with these “robocalls” regardless of your attempts to remove your number from their “List?” Continue reading »