Last updated at Fri, 21 Jul 2017 19:24:23 GMT
Happy Friday Federal friends! We're creeping closer and closer to summer, which means Boston will have about 2 weeks of Spring to look forward to. For those of you that were able to join our webcast yesterday I want to thank you for attending and please let me know if you have any questions, I'm here to help.
Piggy-backing on the recent M-Trends report, and the latest DBIR, an article on DarkReading dives into the nasty issue of identity theft within the military. While this can happen to anyone, in any organization, the author points out that within the military this happens at twice the rate of civilians. Why? Well there are a few good reasons. First, as I previously pointed out, the military will report incidents more often than other organizations due to federal mandates. Additionally, the military is still one of the remaining organizations that have been identified in potential overuse of SSN numbers. While both civilian and DoD organizations are making the shift away from SSN, as an ID number, the fact is a lot of that information is already out there and criminals do take advantage of it. These criminals, and the organizations they work for, will build up databases of this information and begin to use them as revenue generation tools at applying for loans and credit cards in the service members name. On top of that your network can be vulnerable to compromise, and the risk that these stolen credentials pose can run deep within your perimeter. It's important to educate those within your agency, both Civ and DoD, about not only protecting their creds, but also make sure to secure any documents that may highlight these credentials. No matter how innocent the document is, may contain critical information and securing this data is key both for Network and personal security.
I spoke a few weeks ago in regards to double checking where you send information, as it was highlighted in the DBIR this is a major source of government breaches. Well, nobody listened, and it happened again. This time with drone parts, which is pretty "awesome." As reported in Boston Magazine, and news outlets everywhere, a drone that was meant for monitoring wetlands for NOAA was delivered onsite in Mass but missing it's wings and a control device. The package was part of a larger delivery of 8 boxes sent via UPS, but one of the boxes ended up in NY at the door of a college kid, with the package labeled specifically for him. The good news is he only posted pics and a write up on Reddit, while following up with NOAA as well. The bad news, this is a completely avoidable mistake that continues to repeat itself.
In some interesting news Norway's armored units have a whole new vie won the battlefield. According to an article from CNET,the Norwegian is begging to use the Oculus Rift in way that Facebook might not have imagined. By using outboard cameras on the tank, a driver can use the Oculus Rift to view the battle from the safety of the inside of his tank which would no longer require them to open the hatch and steer visually during battle. While the Rift is still in it's early stages, especially with regards to this type of use-case, the potential real-world application is already here. That being said given the amount of money Facebook can bring a technology such as this, improvements to the design should pick up speed.
Something like this would've helped Sly as he took on Wesley back in the '90's, instead he had these two.
