Itai Greenberg, chief strategy officer with Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., has what some might consider the unenviable task of annually having to present a three-year product development plan to the firm’s board of directors and executive team.

As the company’s mandate is to prevent cybersecurity incidents from occurring, there is no opportunity to get it wrong. Fortunately, Greenberg, who, aside from strategy, also oversees business development and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for Check Point, is not the type to avoid such challenges, but to embrace them.

“During the year I am presenting updates for the strategy,” said Greenberg late last week, in an interview with IT World Canada, adding that adjustments are made over time based on developments occurring in the cybersecurity market.

He needs to be on the mark, as witnessed by the company’s 2023 security report, released last week, that revealed cyber attacks hitting an all time high, the result of what the company said was “response to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Education and research remains the most targeted sector, but attacks on the healthcare sector registered a 74 per cent increase year-on-year.”

Authors of the report note that cyberattacks rose by 38 per cent in 2022 compared to the previous year, with an average of 1,168 weekly attacks per organization being recorded.

Reducing those numbers and others was a central theme behind the company’s most recent product rollout, which took place on Thursday at CPX 360 Americas, the company’s annual user and partner event, which was simulcast in Toronto, New York, and several other locations across North America.

Speaking in New York, company founder and chief executive officer, Gil Shwed, predicted the world is on the verge of what he described as a “very interesting revolution – the AI revolution. We have been investing in building AI technologies – more than half of our threat engines at Check Point contain AI – but I think 2023 might be the tipping point where (it) becomes an important part of our life and our world.”

Speaking in Toronto, Greenberg said that today using AI technology is “the only way that you can deal with a cyber attack. The proliferation of attacks, the variety of the attacks, and how fast they’re changing, it’s very hard for a deterministic approach to actually block the attack.

“You need to go with something that is powered by machine, powered by AI, to understand what are the patterns of the communication, the data, the source, the destination. Now, in order for you to come up with a good technology that actually is accurate, you need to rely on long lists of indicators.”

Those theories, those sentiments, are what are behind details about two product announcements he delivered at CPX 360: Check Point Horizon XDR/XPR and Quantum SD-WAN, both of which are generally available now.

The latter is a new software blade in the Check Point Quantum Gateway, a unified management platform that contains an assortment of threat management capabilities that the company says provides prevention against zero-day, phishing, and ransomware attacks.

“Most existing SD-WAN technologies in the market are not built with security in mind,” the company said in a release. “Connecting branch office SD-WANs directly to the internet bypasses traditional data centre-based security, exposing branch offices to cyberattacks.”

According to Check Point, Quantum SD-WANs block upwards of 99.7 per cent of new malware, which means branches no longer need to choose between rapid connectivity and security.

Meanwhile, Horizon XDR/XPR – XDR is short form for extended detection and response and XPR stands for extended prevention and response — Check Point said, “elevates cyber security with a focus on proactive prevention using intelligent correlation of data, stopping cyber attacks from spreading across all vectors and minimizing the impact of threats.

It contains the following capabilities:

The ability to take immediate prevention actions such as blocking, isolating assets, quarantining, and integrating with both Check Point and third-party security products.
Streamlined cybersecurity management, which provides organizations visibility into attack behavior, context and damage, and detailed analytics on indicators of compromise.
The ability to enable organizations to “consolidate and optimize their security operations, improving collaboration between security and IT teams to strengthen threat prevention across multiple vectors.”

Dave Gruber, principal analyst at research firm ESG, said “the extended detection and response movement was fundamentally driven by the growth of a more advanced, multi-vector threat landscape. Yet prevention solutions remained siloed, often falling short in their ability to ward off advanced threats.

“The introduction of Check Point’s extended prevention and response introduces a more integrated approach to threat prevention, following principles already proven by XDR (offerings). This advancement in collaborative prevention technology looks promising and could potentially drive change across the broader security industry.”

Paul Comessotti, sales and operations executive with Check Point, who is based out of Calgary, said that attacks are happening so quickly now that the response part of the equation can no longer be handled by human beings.

“Horizon takes that out of the people’s hands and puts it in the experts’ hands using AI. For example, if something happens in Singapore, two seconds later, personnel in the Toronto office, although they are not being attacked, will not only know about it, but know they are protected. Rather than wondering what is going to happen, the prevention measures are shared via ThreatCloud AI. The technologies and the intelligence are applied and it’s all automated for them.”

The post ‘AI revolution’ firmly entrenched in Check Point’s orbit, CPX360 reveals first appeared on IT World Canada.

The U.S. came dangerously close to suffering a major cyber attack on its energy infrastructure last year, says the head of a cybersecurity company that focuses on risks to operational technology (OT) systems such as industrial control systems (ICS).

The discovery of malware dubbed Pipedream by Dragos Inc. and U.S. cyber agencies was “the closest we’ve ever been to having U.S. infrastructure go off-line,” said company CEO Robert Lee.

“I don’t think people realized how close it was to happening.”

He made the comment to reporters in a briefing before Dragos released its annual year-in-review report on Tuesday.

The report highlighted problems in network visibility in ICS/OT networks, an increase in ransomware attacks on industrial firms, and problems with identifying the seriousness of  vulnerabilities in ICS/OT devices.

Pipedream was created by a new nation-state group dubbed Chernovite. Its existence was publicized last April, but Lee said its significance was missed by news media, who focused on the malware’s ability to target programmable logic controllers [PLC’s] from Schneider Electric and Omron, and that it appeared to initially target electricity and liquid natural gas plants in the U.S..

“That was just their initial set of targets,” Lee said. “This thing can work anywhere. This is a state-level, war-time capability” to bring down infrastructure.

“One of the things that makes Pipedream truly unique is that this is the first time ever that we’ve had a set of malware that can be disruptive or destructive in industrial control environments across [any] industry.” Until now, he said, ICS/OT malware was created for particular environments — what worked against a power distributor wouldn’t work in a factory, for example.

“You could put it in a data centre, you could put it in a wind farm, you could put it in an oil and gas refinery, you could have it targeting drones … ”

While Pipedream had been installed in an unnamed system, Lee said, for some reason “they [Chernovite] weren’t ready to pull the trigger. They were getting very close.”

Related content: Canada should follow US scrutiny of electric utilities

The revelation of Pipedream gave industrial/critical infrastructure firms time to comb their systems for evidence of the malware. “There’s no fixing this,” Lee said. “No vulnerabilities that, if you patch them, you’ll be fine.”

Chernovite is still working on Pipedream, he warned, predicting the malware will eventually be deployed on some victim’s network.

Industrial firms “better have a detection and response program,” he added. “You have a zero per cent chance of being successful against this adversary and this capability if you’re just relying on prevention. You must be doing detection and response.”

The discovery of Pipedream and what the company called its “breakthrough escalation in capabilities” was one of the important events in the ICS/OT community last year, the Dragos report says.

The report also highlighted a theme throughout the report: While the industrial sector is getting better at being prepared for a cyber attack, it has a long way to go.

One of the biggest problems: Few companies have visibility into their ICS/OT networks.

Eighty per cent of Dragos’ customers have only limited network visibility, Lee said, which is “why we’re still finding some scary things.” And, he added, his company’s clients are usually firms that have a mature cybersecurity strategy.

“If you have limited or no visibility, you can’t detect anything in your OT environment,” he said.

Other problems are poor security perimeters, remote and exposed connections to the OT environment, and shared IT and OT credentials in Active Directory. “We see a ton of that” in ransomware attacks Dragos investigates, Lee said, where a hacker targets the IT network, populates ransomware out through an Active Directory domain controller, which then spreads through the OT network.

Among the report’s highlights:

— ransomware attacks on industrial infrastructure organizations nearly doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year. Of those, over 70 per cent of ransomware attacks focus on manufacturers;

— ICS/OT vulnerabilities increased 27 per cent compared to 2021. However, Lee complained that few vulnerabilities reported by vendors offer mitigation as well as a patch. Sometimes a mitigation — like disconnecting a device from the internet — is faster than installing a patch, he said.

The report also complains that 33 per cent ICS-related vulnerability advisories last year had errors that could mislead IT practitioners who use CVSS scores to triage mitigations or patching.

For that reason, Lee also maintained that only half of ICS/OT vulnerabilities are serious — ones that would result in loss of control of a system or loss of network visibility. And of those, only two per cent — ones whose devices are perimeter-facing and easily exploitable, whose vulnerabilities are actively being exploited, or add net new functionality in the industrial environment (ie you couldn’t modify the logic on a safety system) — need to be patched immediately. IT/OT should focus on these, leaving them free to do other things than vulnerability management, Lee argued.

Of the rest of the vulnerabilities, 68 per cent can be mitigated by updating firewall rules and waiting until the next scheduled maintenance period to install patches. The remaining 30 per cent may never need to be patched, depending on a risk assessment.

Dragos tracks 20 threat groups that go after industrial control systems. Of those, only eight were active during 2022. The company ranks these groups in terms of their activity: Stage One groups can infiltrate IT networks and are trying to get into OT networks, while Stage Two groups can get into OT networks and are stealing information that could be useful in disruptive or destructive attacks.

Chernovite was one of two groups Dragos discovered last year. It calls the other Bentonite. It targets the oil and natural gas sector, taking advantage of opportunities, such as poorly protected internet-facing remote connectivity, to slip into networks.

So far Bentonite hasn’t gotten into OT networks. But, Dragos warns, when it gets into IT networks it establishes long-term persistence. Its malware has data-wiping capability. “They’re smart, they’re stealing the right info,” said Lee.

The post Few companies have visibility into their ICS/OT networks: Report first appeared on IT World Canada.

Layoffs killing innovation, AI-cloning technology that shows President Biden reading transphobic text and data brokers selling your mental health data – cheap.

It’s Tuesday, February 14th. These stories and more on Hashtag Trending–today’s top technology news stories. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Layoffs have shattered dreams and sidelined the intriguing and potentially valuable projects.

As they struggle to reign in costs and shore up share values, Big Tech has been reconsidering their approach towards funding moonshot projects with uncertain returns.

Will there be Microsoft’s a third iteration of Microsoft’s HoloLens headset after the company cut 10,000 workers? And what about Amazon’s robotics and drone delivery, or Meta’s vision for the metaverse after their drastic reductions in headcount?

It’s no surprise that risk takers and innovators will bear the brunt of economic challenges. But in fact, slashing the workforce and doubling down on profitable departments does make investors very happy.

There is still a great deal of innovation funding aimed at Artificial Intelligence. In fact, investors have been flocking to AI stocks. But we can easily forget that at one point, AI was a moonshot that required years of investment that might or might not pay off. 

That being said, it’s important to note that the biggest tech companies launched by people who were part of previous downsizing, such as the famous tech bubble that burst in the early 2000’s.

Could the silver lining be that layoffs translate into a new group of innovators and entrepreneurs? 

These are key questions, especially since spate of layoffs is far from over. 

Cloud communications company Twilio Inc (TWLO.N) said on Monday that it was eliminating about 17 per cent of its staff and closing some offices as part of a restructuring effort to focus on profitability.

Streaming service Disney has yet to announce the details of its 7,000 job cuts. But the company’s chief technology officer, Jeremy Doig packed his bags before the cuts could be made official.  Hopefully, when others pack their bags they don’t take future innovation with them. 

Source: Axios & Bloomberg News & Reuters

Voice cloning tools could be an alarming misuse of AI technology.

We watched in amazement as President Joe Biden’s Jan.25 news report on tanks has been doctored to make it appear he gave a speech that attacks transgender people. The doctored video garnered thousands of views on social media.

Digital forensics experts say that the video was created using a new generation of AI tools which allow anyone to quickly generate audio, simulating a person’s voice, with a small sample and a few mouse clicks. 

The video failed to fool most users, but raised the alarm on how easy it is to create deep fake videos filled with misinformation and hateful content.

Hafiz Malik, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan who focuses on multimedia forensics said that “Tools like this are going to basically add more fuel to the fire. He added “The monster is already on the loose.”

Accordingly, following the Biden’s video, other such videos surfaced including Hillary Clinton reading the same transphobic text, Bill Clinton saying the Covid-19 vaccine causes AIDS and actress Emma Watson reading Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf”

At least one company, ElevenLabs’ whose voice synthesis platform allows users to reproduce such kind of content said that it is exploring safeguards to clamp down on the misuse, following the surge of deep fake videos

However, the startup maintained that the technology was developed to dub audio in different languages for movies, audiobooks and gaming to preserve the speaker’s voice and emotions, not to be used to fuel hate speech and disinformation. 

Source: AP News

The fourth quarter of 2022 saw the biggest fall in PC processor shipments in three decades, according to Mercury Research. The company says that CPU sales are suffering their biggest year-on-year slump since they started recording that data in 1994. The company notes that this is part of a trend, where every quarter the decline breaks the previous record.

Excluding ARM processers, which seem to be defying the trend, around 374 million CPUs were shipped in 2022 which is 21 percent less than in 2021. 2022 CPU revenues saw a 19 per cent drop to $65 billion.

One reason for the slump is inventory adjustments which might mean that although shipments dramatically plummeted, it might not indicate a drastic decline in sales to end users.

As noted, the decline is not across the board. While x86 processors have slumped ARM processors are gaining market share in the laptop market, and have not suffered the same decline x86 units suffered last year.

Analysts at Mercury predict that the decline in CPU shipments could continue through the first half of 2023 will persist before turning around in the second half of the year. 

Source: TechSpot

New data from Counterpoint Research, reported that it takes $464 US to manufacture the iPhone 14 Pro Max with 128 GB according to a story in industry blog 9to5Mac.

The article notes that while Apple doesn’t disclose its profit margins or production costs on a per device basis, it does report its overall profit margin – which Apple claims is about 37 per cent which the authors note is historically very stable for apple. 

So how is it that the iPhone 14 Pro Max costs the same as the previous iPhone 13 Pro Max?

The cost to make iPhone 14 Pro Max is roughly 3.4 per cent more expensive than the iPhone 13 Pro Max. The main reason for this difference is the new 48MP rear camera as well as the new “always-on” display.

The new A16 Bionic chip costs Apple around $11 more per unit than the older A15 Bionic chip. But external costs are apparently not the only factor. Some other components, such as those in the 5G cellular technology have fallen in cost as 5G cellular becomes more popular.

Apple’s self-designed components account for 22 per cent of the overall bill of materials cost of the iPhone 14 Pro Max and Apple works very closely with its suppliers to finalize costs well in advance of production. So even with these cost increases, and inflationary pressures on production, assembly, packaging and distribution – Apple has kept the line on prices avoiding a repeat of prior relatively high increases in costs between the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12. 

Now if only someone could do that to the price of eggs.

Source: 9TO5Mac

You can buy mental health records of 10,000 people for as little as $0.20. And you get a discount if you buy in bulk. 

Lots of companies will line up to sell these to you. They will even include the names, emails, home addresses, income and ethnicity of people with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or OCD.

At least that’s what a study published by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy has reported. The researchers found at least a dozen data brokers were offering to sell mental health data at cheap prices, often with no resistance from the person trying to buy the data and little to no restrictions on how the information is used.

The data brokers scavenge the information coming from from personal devices and health tracking. But they also scavenge web traffic data, some of which is sold to advertisers. Even a search on WebMD compromises your medical data.

Incredibly, this of not covered by The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

HIPAA’s health data rules are limited to “covered entities” including doctors and health care providers, insurance companies, and businesses who work with them directly.

Regulators are only just starting to investigate, but it isn’t certain whether US law gives them the authority to interfere.

Thank heaven that Congress always moves quickly to deal with technology challenges.

Source: Gizmodo

That’s the top tech news stories for today.

Links to these stories can be found in the article posted on itworldcanada.com/podcasts. You can also find more great stories and more in-depth coverage on itworldcanada.com or in the US on technewsday.com

If you’re trying to keep up on cybersecurity, you might want to follow our sister podcast, CyberSecurityToday.

Hashtag Trending goes to air five days a week with a daily newscast and we have a special weekend edition with an interview featuring an expert in some aspect of technology that is making the news.

Always love to hear from you, you can find me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, Twitter or just leave a comment under the article for this podcast at ITWorldCanada.com

I’m Jim Love – and with this last name, I’m the perfect person to say – happy Valentines Day.  Talk to you tomorrow.

The post Hashtag Trending Feb.14- Layoffs hamper innovation, AI cloning technology shows President Biden read transphobic text and data brokers selling mental health records first appeared on IT World Canada.

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) has finalized the policy direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), proposed last summer to enhance competition in the telecom sector.

Today’s announcement legally binds the CRTC, under the Telecommunications Act, to translate the final policy direction into detailed regulations. 

The new policy direction also rescinds the 2006 policy direction which included language that the CRTC should rely on market forces when implementing the Telecommunications Act. Instead it builds on the 2019 direction on competition, affordability, consumer rights, and innovation.

“Access to affordable and reliable Internet and wireless services is critical in today’s society and economy. This is why our government is using every tool at our disposal to ensure that telecom services are competitive, reliable and, above all, affordable,” said Industry Minister the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne.

“In general, smaller telecom service providers supported the proposed direction, but wanted the government to make it more prescriptive. Some improvements were made to make it more clear,” said Andre Arbour, director general of telecommunications and internet policy at ISED. “Several of the large telecom service providers opposed much of the direction. The government disagrees with those views, and it’s moving forward with measures to advance competition and consumer interests.”

The new policy direction to the CRTC aims to:

Enhance wholesale Internet access and competition for more affordable Internet by;

– requiring large companies to give access to competitors at regulated rates so they can offer lower prices and more choices to Canadians. The CRTC should take action to improve availability of more timely and improved wholesale rates

– The existing model of service, called the aggregated model of service, that the smaller companies relied on had been slated to be phased out by the CRTC. The direction states that this model must remain in place. 

– Require large companies to make the speeds that Canadians are demanding available to competitors.

– CRTC should ensure that wholesale Internet access is available evenly across the market, including on fibre-to-the-home networks.

2. Increase mobile wireless competition for more affordable cell phone plans by

– directing the CRTC to improve its hybrid mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) model (in which a wireless communications services provider does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers). The government will also move to a full MVNO model if necessary to support competition in the telecom sector.

3. Improve consumer rights by;

– require new measures to address unacceptable sales practices and improve transparency in terms of service and pricing, and make it easier and more affordable for consumers to change or cancel services

– require service providers to implement mandatory broadband testing to ensure Canadians know they are getting the service that they are paying for. The CRTC currently only has a voluntary broadband testing program with SamKnows, which involves the installation of specialized equipment in a representative sample of homes to monitor and test the speed and the performance of the connection in a particular location. The purpose of today’s provision is to beef up that process so that it will be mandatory, and that key providers especially in rural areas participate, Arbour said. “But ultimately, it will be up to them [CRTC] to lay out the specific rules for who it applies to and how the testing is undertaken.”

– improve accessibility of telecommunication services to Canadians with disabilities

– improve consumer protection in the event of a service outage

– strengthen the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), including by giving consumers and non-industry representatives a more prominent voice

– raise public awareness on CCTS and its capabilities to resolve disputes for consumers

4. Speed up service deployment and universal access

– Improve access to telephone poles and similar infrastructure so service providers can deploy new services more rapidly

– Adjust its Broadband Fund to meet connectivity needs across Canada. Champagne said that the government continues to roll out its C$3.225 billion in Universal Broadband Fund to support connectivity in underserved rural and remote communities.

5. Build better regulations

– directing the CRTC to use resources available to make sound decisions while being more proactive in strategic planning and market monitoring

– CRTC’s regulations should be efficient and proportionate to their purpose, balancing economic needs with competition and investment considerations

– improve decision timeliness

“Under the Telecommunications Act, the CRTC is responsible for implementing the policy direction and is required to take certain steps and approach all of its future decisions in a way that is aligned with it,” said Champagne. “I trust that the CRTC will act on this important work, and I look forward to seeing the direction being put into action soon.” 

The post Government of Canada announces final policy direction to the CRTC to improve competition in the telecom sector first appeared on IT World Canada.

The job market has been facing the changing demands of a new workforce and a new economic environment, but it remains robust. More than half of Canadian companies are planning to hire early this year, a new study by recruitment agency Robert Half found.

A survey of over 1,400 managers was conducted on behalf of Robert Half from Oct. 20 to Nov. 3 2022. The respondents had hiring responsibilities in finance, accounting, technology, marketing, creative, legal, administrative, customer support, and human resources at companies with 20 or more employees in Canada.

The survey found that 51 per cent of companies plan to hire for permanent positions. The administration, customer service, marketing, and creative divisions have the highest staffing needs.

Source: Robert Half

The survey showed that the top traits employers look for in potential hires are timeliness and professionalism during interviews, knowledge of the company, and passion for the company’s mission.

Gartner’s “9 Future of Work Trends For 2023” study, in comparison, points out that organizations are diversifying their talent pipelines by pursuing nontraditional candidates. Hiring managers are less concerned with industry experience and technical skills than they once were, and are now looking to assess candidates solely on their ability to perform in the role.

Companies also aim to have more people back in the office, but need to work on striking the right partnership with employees looking for more choice and flexibility in how they execute their job responsibilities, said David King, senior managing director, Robert Half, Canada and South America.

Furthermore, over 60 per cent of respondents in Robert’s Half study say that they are swinging towards adding more contract staff as a tactic to manage heavy workloads, increase support for key projects, and reduce burnout, King explained.

Having more contract staff aligns better with the newer generation that mostly anticipate to stay at a job for a maximum of 2-3 years and then transition to the next opportunity. “That whole gig economy mentality is very much alive in our newer demographics in the workforce. Let’s face it, they’re no longer being typically offered the attraction of a pension plan or things like that, that may have been more in fashion in past years,” stated King.

Accordingly, Gartner says that savvy HR leaders will leverage alternate approaches to recruitment by hiring gig workers or calling in former employees to flexibly bring in talent only as needed, a practice known as “quiet hiring”. Quiet hiring also includes upskilling existing employees and focusing on internal talent mobility to address organizational priorities without changing headcount.

Efficiency is also a key factor that the new workforce is looking for, despite the concern that automation and artificial intelligence might take away everyone’s jobs. 

In fact, what automation actually does is change the nature of work and add a whole set of newer jobs, said Jeremy Shaki, chief executive officer of tech education firm, Lighthouse Labs.

Shaki added that companies mostly use new technologies to enhance productivity and tasks, instead of replacing people. But employees also need to ensure that they are comfortable and up to date with the use of technology, AI, and data, because at some point in their career, these new technologies will interact with their roles in a more meaningful way.

In addition, big tech companies that are laying off thousands, and subsequently automating roles like marketing, customer service, and sales, are taking big risks in doing so, said Shaki, because customers, in general, still have a much higher preference for talking to a person than an AI.

“When you deal with customer service coming from anywhere other than in your own backyard, and not with a person, you tend to hear a lot of complaints and negativity about that. And I don’t think we’re there yet [with AI],” affirmed Shaki.

Recent tech layoffs have, without a doubt, raised anxiety over impending job losses, but King argued that the “headlines” fail to include the type of profiles being let go, and are hence not an accurate reflection of the broader tech market, that, in fact, still has a high demand for digital talent.

These layoffs are rather result of a hiring spree during the pandemic that does not fit today’s reality and economic conditions. The number of layoffs appears massive, but it is, in fact, only a fraction of new headcount added in 2022 alone, tweeted Tom Goodwin, author of Digital Darwinism.

Headcount added (purple) versus layoffs (orange), from Yahoo Finance

Furthermore, the Robert Half study stressed the need for a streamlined hiring process. Employers claimed that they conduct about four interviews with a candidate before extending a job offer.

“Hiring mistakes and regrets can occur when the pressure to staff a role overrides the search for the right candidate,” King noted. “However, drawn-out hiring processes can also be an obstacle in securing top talent, who may lose interest or accept another offer if the timeline is not streamlined.”

More organizations are using AI in their hiring process, and while it can be effective when dealing with large numbers of applications, some companies will use it poorly and “automate out” talent, Shaki said. 

Gartner pointed out that the ethical implications of using AI for hiring, in terms of fairness, diversity, inclusion, and data privacy, are also becoming increasingly salient. Organizations and vendors that use AI and machine learning will face pressure to be more transparent on their AI use, publicize their data audits, and give employees and candidates the choice to opt out from AI-led processes.

An efficient hiring process helps with the branding of a company, and so does the information that they put out there, King noted. “Given the reality of social media and access to information, companies have to be very mindful of their brand. And if their brand is not one of being supportive of initiatives like DEI or ESG initiatives, it could portray a negative brand to the market, and that may impact the ability to attract talent.”

But implementing new HR measures that align with a new generation and a new set of values can irk existing employees. Gartner’s study showed that a significant 42 per cent of employees believe their organization’s DEI efforts are divisive. And two out of five agree that a growing number of employees feel alienated, or even resent their organization’s DEI efforts.

The post Hiring to increase in Canada, despite market volatility: Robert Half study first appeared on IT World Canada.

Cybersecurity experts have long said that attackers need only to get lucky only once, while organizations have to be lucky every time there’s an attack.

Evidence of that maxim was demonstrated in the explanation by Reddit of its recent data breach.

On Feb. 5, an unknown attacker launched what the discussion site called a  “sophisticated phishing campaign that targeted Reddit employees. As in most phishing campaigns, the attacker sent out plausible-sounding prompts pointing employees to a website that cloned the behavior of our intranet gateway, in an attempt to steal credentials and second-factor tokens.

“After successfully obtaining a single employee’s credentials, the attacker gained access to some internal docs, code, as well as some internal dashboards and business systems.”

As a result of the incident, the statement said, Reddit is working to “fortify” employees’ security skills. “As we all know, the human is often the weakest part of the security chain,” the statement added.

To this employee’s credit, however, they reported their mistake, allowing Reddit’s security team to quickly remove the infiltrator’s access.

There is no evidence the site’s primary production systems — the parts of the stack that run Reddit and store the majority of its data — were accessed, the statement said.  Reddit user passwords and accounts are safe, it added.

However, the site admitted the attacker accessed “some internal documents, code, and some internal business systems.”

Exposed data included what the statement called “limited contact information for (currently hundreds of) company contacts and employees (current and former), as well as limited advertiser information. Based on several days of initial investigation by security, engineering, and data science (and friends!), we have no evidence to suggest that any of your non-public data has been accessed, or that Reddit’s information has been published or distributed online.”

The statement also urges Reddit users to enable multifactor authentication to protect their login credentials, and to use a password manager.

Johannes Ullrich, dean of research at the SANS Technology Institute, noted in an email that there is a lot of technology to detect website impersonation. “For example, companies like Google have invested a lot of effort to clean up the TLS [transport layer security, which encrypts data] infrastructure to produce reliable certificates identifying the identity of websites a browser connects to, and to prevent machine-in-the-middle attacks,” he wrote. “But at the same time, little progress has been made to find better ways to communicate to users which organization they interact with.

“Instead of relying on users to decide if a website is legit or not, we need to leverage phishing-resistant authentication schemes like FIDO2. These systems leverage existing technology like TLS to prevent the use of authentication secrets across different sites.”

The post Reddit on data breach: ‘As we all know, the human is often the weakest part of the security chain’ first appeared on IT World Canada.

Canadian bookstore chain Indigo is still dealing with last week’s cyber attack.

This morning, the company’s website was still offline. Stores were open but some were having trouble: Shoppers at the Indigo store in Toronto’s Yorkdale mall were told on Saturday that the point of sales stations on the main floor weren’t working and they had to buy products at stations on the second floor.

Immediately after the attack, purchasers were only able to pay for items in cash. Now they can use credit and debit cards. However, customers still can’t use gift cards or return purchases.

Notice on Indigo store window after Feb 2023 cyber attack (ITWC photo)

Shoppers are urged not to log into any site that claims to be Indigo Books.

Asked on Sunday for comment on the cause of the incident, a company spokesperson issued this statement: “We are working hard with third-party experts to gather more information about this incident and can provide you with an update as more information becomes available.”

The post Indigo Books still recovering from cyber attack first appeared on IT World Canada.

A hole in the GoAnywhere file transfer utility is exploited, ransomware attacks in the U.S. and Israel, and more.

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Monday, February 13th, 2023. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com and TechNewsday.com in the U.S.

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The Clop ransomware gang is back. According to Bleeping Computer, the gang says it recently stole data from over 130 organizations that use the GoAnywhere MFT file transfer utility. At risk are IT environments that exposed the tool’s administrative console to the internet, allowing a vulnerability to be exploited. The news report says Clop claims they didn’t encrypt data, only stole files. The claims couldn’t be verified. Forta, the company that develops GoAnywhere MFT, issued an emergency security update last Tuesday for on-premise versions of the utility, and one on Thursday for those using the cloud version.

That vulnerability has been added to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog kept by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Also just added to the catalog is a hole in Intet’s Ethernet Diagnostics Driver for Windows, and a vulnerability in TerraMaster’s OS operating system for its data storage solutions. Patches for these holes are available.

The city of Oakland, California is recovering from a ransomware attack last week. While its website is now up the city took affected systems offline. Core functions including 911 service, fire and emergency resources and municipal financial data were not affected. However, non-emergency systems including voicemail may be impacted.

The Israel Institute of Technology — more commonly known as the Technion — was the victim of a ransomware attack over the weekend. According to the Jerusalem Post a hacker or hackers are demanding 80 bitcoin, worth about $2 million, to unscramble stolen data. The news site DataBreaches.net says the ransom note claims all of the Technion’s data is encrypted. That hasn’t been verified. No one knows anything about the group claiming responsibility, which calls itself DarkBit. The ransom note says someone should pay for occupation and crimes against humanity. But it also talks about the firing of high-skilled experts. The Jerusalem Post quotes the Israel National Cyber Directorate saying last year there were 53 cyber attacks last year on higher education institutions in the country.

In California, more than three million patients of four medical groups that suffered ransomware attacks late last are receiving data breach notification letters. According to The Register, the four are Regal Medical Group, Lakeside Medical Organization, ADOC Medical Group and Greater Covinia Medical. All are associated with the Heritage Provider Network. Some of the stolen data might have included patients’ names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and medical records.

A now-closed Virginia university is notifying more than 78,000 students and employees of a data breach last August. At the time the REvil ransomware gang was one of three groups claiming responsibility for attacking Stratford University. According to a copy of the letter being sent to those affected, an attacker obtained some school data, including information from the student database.

A North Carolina software company that provides solutions to the healthcare sector is notifying more than 11,000 patients of a data breach. Intelligent Business Solutions says in November it detected its network had been infected with malware that prevented access to data on certain IT systems. Data copied included patient names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and medical information.

Canadian bookstore chain Indigo is still dealing with last week’s cyber attack. On Sunday, when this podcast was recorded, the company’s website was still offline. Stores were open. At first, purchasers were only able to pay for items in cash. Now they can use credit and debit cards. However, customers still can’t use gift cards or return purchases. Shoppers are urged not to log into any site that claims to be Indigo Books.

Finally, don’t forget not only is tomorrow Valentine’s Day, it’s also Patch Tuesday, when Microsoft and many major companies release security updates. However, those with SonicWall devices using Capture Client might want to hold off installing Windows 11 updates. That’s because on February 17th SonicWall will release a fix to solve a clash between Capture Client and Win11. A commentator at the SANS Institute says administrators should think about first installing the SonicWall patch before updating Windows.

Follow Cyber Security Today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Flash Briefing on your smart speaker. Thanks for listening. I’m Howard Solomon

The post Cyber Security Today, Feb. 13, 2023 – Hole in GoAnywhere file transfer utility exploited, ransomware attacks in the U.S. and Israel, and more first appeared on IT World Canada.

Google employees have choice words for their company’s mismanagement of their AI rollout last week. AI that might be able to learn without being trained and ways to cope with what some are calling the “biggest issue in hybrid and remote work.”

It’s Monday, February 13th. These stories and more on  Hashtag Trending – today’s top technology news stories. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Employees at Google had choice words for their company’s performance last week in the rollout of the Google’s AI offerings. According to a story on MSNBC, staffers took to the internal message forum Memegen to express their displeasure, calling the rollout of Bard, “rushed” “botched” and even “un-Googley.”

They were of course, referring to the fact that Google’s AI – called Bard – had made a very simple factual error, one that was not detected and found its way into the corporate presentation. That caused an uproar on twitter and sent the company’s stock plummeting.

It also raised the ire of Google employee’s, already unhappy in the face of recent layoffs.

“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic,” read one meme that included a serious picture of Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “Please return to taking a long-term outlook.” The post received many upvotes from employees.

Another popular post stated: “Sundar, and leadership, deserve a Perf NI,” which is the the lowest rating in the company’s employee performance review system. The author goes on to say, “They are being comically short sighted and un-Googlely in their pursuit of ‘sharpening focus.’”

Source: CNBC

Popular user forum Reddit was the victim of a cybersecurity breach. According to Bleeping Computer, hackers managed to gain access to the company’s internal business systems and to steal internal documents and even source code.

Hackers gained access by using a phishing technique which targeted Reddit employees and sent them to a landing page which impersonated Reddit’s internal intranet site. Using that now common technique, they were able to steal employee’s credentials and even two factor authentication tokens.

As Reddit explained in their security incident notice, “After successfully obtaining a single employee’s credentials, the attacker gained access to some internal docs, code, as well as some internal dashboards and business systems,” But the report further notes:

“We show no indications of a breach of our primary production systems (the parts of our stack that run Reddit and store the majority of our data).”

Reddit said that the employee self-reported the incident to the company’s security team.

The stolen data includes limited contact information for company contacts and current and former employees, according to Reddit and the data also included some details about the company’s advertisers. Reddit also noted that credit card information and passwords were not affected.

Source: Bleeping Computer

The Cisco 2023 Data Privacy Benchmark Report had some very interesting insights which point to a real divide between consumer and corporate perceptions of how personal data should be handled, particularly when it comes to its use by Artificial Intelligence based systems.

In the study, 95 per cent of companies called privacy a “business imperative” and said that is was an “integral” part of company culture. 94 per cent believe customers will not buy from them if they are not protecting personal data.

That belief has shown itself in corporate spending on privacy, which, according to the report, increased in 2019, and “at least held steady “in 2022 as companies saw or believed there were financial benefits from these investments.

But the report noted some strong negative responses in terms of customer trust, particularly when it comes to the use of AI. Only 43 per cent of consumers believe AI will prove useful in improving people’s lives. Only just over half (54 per cent) are willing to share even anonymized personal data to improve AI products. 60 per cent say they are concerned about how business will make use of AI, and most punishing, 65 per cent say that current uses have eroded their trust

Companies seem to recognize this, with 92 per cent saying that they need to do a better job of reassuring customers that “AI solutions will only use data for intended and legitimate purposes.”

But the study showed a real disconnect in terms of what is important to consumers versus what is important to the companies surveyed. Consumers stated that that their priority was clear transparency into how data is being used. Organizations were focused on compliance with privacy laws with transparency taking second place.

The big surprise came when 90 per cent of consumers seemed to prefer global data storage providers in terms of security. In prior studies consumers have strongly preferred the idea of local storage or what has come to be termed data sovereignty.

Source: Cisco

According to an article in Vice, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Google have discovered a “apparently mysterious” phenomenon where AI systems appear to be learning new tasks they have not been trained for – what they have referred to as “in-context” learning.

Normally, to learn how to perform a new task, machine learning models need to be retrained with new data —a tedious and time-consuming process. But what if these systems could learn new tasks from only a few examples, essentially picking up new skills it hasn’t been explicitly trained for?

That’s exactly what these researchers appeared to have observed. If true, this means their model isn’t just copying training data, it’s building on previous knowledge, doing just what humans would do.

The researchers weren’t using ChatGPT or other popular tools, but they are smaller version of the same types of models, so their work does offer insights into these larger tools and data sets.

The researchers fed their model synthetic data, and gave it prompts that the program never could have seen before. “Despite this, the language model was able to generalize and then extrapolate knowledge from them”, according to one of the researchers.

The team hypothesized that AI models that exhibit in-context learning actually create smaller models inside themselves to achieve new tasks. This may be possible due to a concept called “self-attention” used by transformer models, like ChatGPT to track relationships in sequential data, like words in a sentence.

The paper is just being posted and undoubtedly will be the subject of further research, but unraveling how and why this occurs could be a huge step forward in understanding how large language models learn and store information.

Source: Vice

Many companies are reporting that one of the biggest challenges in hybrid and remote work is the on-the-job training and integration of junior employees. A report in Forbes claims that remote and hybrid mentoring may be the solution to this problem.

The article notes that in an effective structured mentoring program companies need to pair up senior staff members with junior staff members for virtual mentoring sessions. They should also be part of a team that also includes two members from outside the employees regular work group. One should be from the junior staff members’ business unit, and another from a different unit. At least one should be from a different geographical area.

The team composition will address one of the key problems in remote and hybrid work – not just helping junior staff build their network, but increasing cross functional connections for staff.

Staff members from the person’s own team should meet with their mentee monthly in a brief 20-30 minute meeting, and go through a checklist that includes a check up on their progress, a list of questions to determine how the employee is feeling and how confident they are in their role. In addition, it should look at what obstacles they are facing and what further things they need for their progress and growth.

The article has a list of questions, but suggests that each company or even team should customize these for their own use.

Source: Forbes

That’s the top tech news stories for today.

Links to these stories can be found in the article posted on itworldcanada.com/podcasts. You can also find more great stories and more in- depth coverage on itworldcanada.com or in the US on technewsday.com.

If you’re trying to keep up on cybersecurity, you might want to follow our sister podcast, CyberSecurityToday.

Hashtag Trending goes to air five days a week with a daily newscast and we have a special weekend edition with an interview featuring an expert in some aspect of technology that is making the news.

Always love to hear from you, you can find me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, Twitter or just leave a comment under the article for this podcast at ITWorldCanada.com

I’m Jim Love – Have great Monday.

The post Hashtag Trending Feb.13th-Google employees criticize “botched” announcement of Bard, AI learns without being trained and coping with the biggest issue with hybrid and remote work first appeared on IT World Canada.

I used to cringe when I’d hear people say, data is the new oil.  Like any of these phrases that get tossed around and often misused, it just bugged me.

But then I thought about it some more.  Maybe this metaphor works better than I originally thought.

The first discoveries of oil were almost accidental.  How it would be used was not immediately apparent. Then someone got a bright idea and applied it, making initial products that had some value.  For example, oil was discovered in 1858 a place in Ontario, Canada called, fittingly, Oil Springs.  Later additional discoveries were made around a town that came to be called Petrolia.

Initial discoveries were by chance and they were noted in the Geological Surveys of the time.  The oil was close to the surface, not like the wells of today.  And the wells were dug by hand.

Remember, this was before the first gas powered automobile, made by Karl Benz in 1885 – so the oil was refined by some pretty primitive processes and used for kerosine for lamps.  It was a smaller industry than what we know today, but if fulfilled a real need.

It wasn’t until the gas fired automobile came into existence in the 1890’s that the real demand for petroleum began in a big way and oil discoveries led to untold wealth.  By that time, the “easy” discoveries were made.  If you wanted to find oil sufficient to be part of the new automobile and industrial demand, you had to invest what would be today, hundreds of millions of dollars. And there was a risk. You could do the planning, the development and invest all that money – and have little or nothing to show for it.

Actually this sounds a lot more like data exploration than I thought.