At a glance.
- Chinese intelligence services are a threat to privacy as well as intellectual property.
- Businesses still groping toward an understanding of CCPA and GDPR.
- Privacy considerations on Safer Internet Day.
Indictments in Equifax breach expose espionage threat to privacy.
China’s government has denied, Fifth Domain says, the well-supported US accusations of cyber espionage that came to light with this week’s indictment of four PLA officers in the Equifax breach. The Boston Globe and others have highlighted the intellectual property theft Chinese intelligence services have long conducted. That’s indeed a problem, but it’s important not to overlook the direct threat to individual privacy Chinese government cyber espionage presents. Almost half the US population had PII compromised in the Equifax breach.
Most workers unsure whether CCPA and GDPR apply to their business.
A MediaPRO survey says that more than half of workers who responded didn’t know whether either the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) apply to their workplace and how data are handled there. While both regulatory regimes are geographically bounded--CCPA being specific to California, GDPR to the European Union--they apply to citizens of both, and to business whose operations touch either jurisdiction. The safest default position is to assume that yes, they both apply to your business.
Privacy on Safer Internet Day.
While official “days” dedicated to particular issues always have more than a whiff of artificiality and marketing about them, they can afford people an opportunity to consider important issues. Data privacy is one concern that can be usefully improved by some relatively simple one-time actions. Naked Security offers five suggestions for families, and all five can enhance privacy:
- Use strong, difficult-to-guess, passwords.
- Turn on two-factor authentication.
- Keep patches and security updates current.
- Backup important files.
- “Revisit privacy settings.”
The last is particularly important. Apps differ widely in their privacy settings, their terms and conditions, and the permissions they exact. Take a look at the ones you use and set them for maximal privacy.