As Ransomware Grows, So Does Need for Cyber Insurance

Despite the lurking threats, many small businesses still don’t have cyber insurance coverage, said Michael Carr, a certified information privacy professional (CIPP/US) and technology practice leader at Argo Group International, who has been involved with the industry for more than a decade. Carr recommends small business owners purchase cyber insurance for multiple reasons, mainly because it may not be covered by traditional insurance policies. He says the ever expanding industry now covers “any kind of liability arising out of network security perils,” as well as data restoration costs, business interruption, regulatory fines, ransomware demands and obligations to third-parties.

Woman Receives $500,000 Judgment in Internet Revenge Porn Case

In what might be Michigan's first revenge-pornography case resulting in a monetary judgment, a woman was awarded $500,000 after her ex-boyfriend posted nude photographs of her on multiple Internet sites. Revenge-pornography cases usually involve someone else obtaining photos of a former partner and posting them on the Internet in a retaliatory matter.

China Lets Foreign Tech Companies Join Cybersecurity Group

China is taking a more inclusive tack in instituting cybersecurity standards for foreign technology companies, allowing them to join a key government committee in an effort to ease foreign concerns over the controls. The committee under the government’s powerful cyberspace administration is in charge of defining cybersecurity standards.

Group Exploits Apple Security Vulnerabilities to Spy

One of the world’s most evasive digital arms dealers is believed to have been taking advantage of three security vulnerabilities in popular Apple products in its efforts to spy on dissidents and journalists. Investigators discovered that a company called the NSO Group, an Israeli outfit that sells software that invisibly tracks a target’s mobile phone, was responsible for the intrusions.

British Lawmakers Say Social Media Firms Ignoring Terrorist Threats

Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Twitter Inc. are deliberately shirking responsibility in the fight against Islamic State and other terrorist groups, an influential committee of British lawmakers said in a report, reigniting a war of words over the role social media plays in radicalization. “Huge corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter, with their billion-dollar incomes, are consciously failing to tackle this threat and passing the buck by hiding behind their supranational legal status, despite knowing that their sites are being used by the instigators of terror,” said lawmaker Keith Vaz, a member of the opposition Labour Party, who heads the committee.

Hackers Deface Actress Leslie Jones's Website

Leslie Jones, a co-star of this year’s “Ghostbusters” movie who has been besieged in the past month by online abusers who have targeted her appearance and her race, was victimized again when her personal website appeared to have been hacked. The hackers inserted a picture of the gorilla Harambe on the site, and exposed what appeared to be explicit photos of the actress, along with pictures of her driver’s license and a passport, and images of her with stars like Rihanna, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West.

France, Germany Want EU to Require Message Decryption

France and Germany  urged the European Union’s executive body to propose new rules that would compel operators of internet messaging services to help authorities decrypt private communications as part of terror investigations. French and German intelligence services are struggling to intercept messages of Islamic State militants and other terrorists, who increasingly use chat apps like Facebook’s WhatsApp, Apple Inc.’s iMessage or privacy-centric app Telegram to plan their attacks.

Canada, Australia Say Ashley Madison Violated Privacy Laws

The parent company of infidelity dating website Ashley Madison was responsible for numerous violations of privacy laws at the time of a massive release of customer data in a cyber attack last year, privacy watchdogs in Canada and Australia said. The two countries launched an investigation after the 2015 breach of Avid Life Media Inc's computer network, when hackers exposed the personal details of millions who signed up for the site with the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair."

WikiLeaks Inadvertently Exposes Private Medical, Financial Info

WikiLeaks' global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press has found. In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web.

Judge Pushes State Dep't to Release More Clinton Emails

Questions surrounding Hillary Clinton’s email practices flared up again, with a Federal District Court judge ordering the State Department to provide a timetable for releasing nearly 15,000 new emails uncovered by the FBI investigation of her personal email account and server while she was secretary of state. The judge, James E. Boasberg, pressed the State Department to accelerate its review of those emails, which were on a disc that the FBI turned over to the department in late July.

ACLU Opposes Homeland Security's Social Media Visa Plans

A coalition of 28 organizations including the ACLU and the Center for Democracy and Technology signed a letter expressing opposition to the Department of Homeland Security’s proposal to include social media in its review of visa-waiver applicants. The groups argued that such a proposal would not be effective, would cost too much and would impinge on privacy.

Judge Rejects Uber's $100 Million Settlement with Drivers

A California federal judge knocked down a proposed $100 million settlement in a class-action suit over whether Uber's drivers should be classified as contractors or employees. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen's order rejecting Uber's offer noted that the settlement amount was only 10 percent of what lawyers for the drivers estimate that Uber could owe them and provided only $1 million toward state penalties that could add up to more than $1 billion.

Attacks on Bitcoin Industry Expected to Continue

Even as a $65 million hacking incident on Bitfinex has triggered calls for audits in certain parts of the bitcoin industry, experts don’t anticipate the investigations will unearth new ways of radically strengthening protection. What’s more telling, they say, is that the community’s willingness to vilify targets while shrugging off the need for industry-wide solutions is a sign it’s doomed to happen again.

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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.