Health services vendors have been partnering with various organizations to gain a foothold in the cloud and to test out their solutions. One of the cloud's major selling points is security -- but it is not as safe as it's made out to be. Google Cloud "recently announced a significant expansion in HIPAA compliance across our portfolio of cloud products," noted Google Cloud's Joe Corkery.

The cloud offers a host of potential uses, according to the healthcare industry and academic medical center representatives who participated in a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society survey. Application hosting was the top use, identified by 90 percent of the respondents. Disaster recovery and backup, and hosting application data were among other uses cited.

Cisco has reduced the poaching of endangered rhinos in Africa by a whopping 96 percent. This success comes at a time when kids appear to be increasingly at risk from rogue school shooters and the United States government seems deadlocked on gun control. The focus of Cisco's tech is on catching the poachers who kill around 1,000 endangered rhinos a year, rather than on taking away their guns.

A newfound flaw in email clients that use PGP and S/MIME to encrypt messages can be exploited to expose the plain text of the missives, according to a new paper. By injecting malicious snippets of text into encrypted messages, attackers can use the flaw to make the email client exfiltrate decrypted copies of the emails, explained the authors, a team of researchers from three European universities.

"It's only a few times in the history of the U.S. and in specific domains do you have the opportunity to make decisions and have a lasting effect on that domain," said Circadence VP Keenan Skelly. "In terms of information cybersecurity, we're right in the middle of it right now. We're just figuring out what global norms should be."

I spent a day with BlackBerry last week and it brought back memories of how Apple displaced the company around a decade ago. I, like a lot of folks, thought what Apple was attempting was impossible. However, after the fact, it didn't even look difficult. BlackBerry largely has completed its pivot to software and services, but a wave of new phones from its partners suggests new possibilities.

A flaw in certain electronic hotel door locks could allow hackers to access guest rooms and other secure locations at millions of properties around the world, F-Secure researchers have discovered. Software updates were issued to fix the flaw in the smart locks after F-Secure notified and worked with the manufacturer over the past year. The researchers had found a way to make a master key.

Google has rolled out a number of new features designed to make its G Suite collaboration and productivity apps more efficient and safer to use. G Suite currently has more than 4 million paying business customers. The updates include a new design, enhanced security and AI components, and better integration of G Suite apps -- including Gmail, which is getting a brand new look.

Microsoft has opted to use its own version of a Linux operating system instead of Windows 10 to drive its new Azure Sphere solution for securely connecting Internet of Things devices. Microsoft introduced Azure Sphere last week at the RSA security conference in San Francisco. Azure Sphere is a platform that connects microcontroller units, or MCUs, embedded in cloud-connected devices.

Microsoft, Oracle and Facebook, along with 31 other companies, have signed the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, an agreement aimed at defending against cyberattacks, whether coming from rogue hackers or nation-states. The 34 tech firms committed to stronger defenses, no offensive attacks, capacity building and collective action. Security remains a major issue in the tech world.

The security skills gap has become a topic of acute interest among practitioners responsible for building security teams for their organizations -- and keeping them running smoothly. It impacts everything from how they staff, how they cultivate and develop their workforces, and how they train, to the operational controls they put in place, and potentially numerous other things.

McAfee has introduced its Cloud Workload Security v5.1, which represents the first solution for open source containers. McAfee CWS v5.1 secures Docker workload and servers in public and private cloud environments by quarantining infected workloads and containers in a single click. McAfee CWS addresses "key security, compliance and governance requirements," said SVP Rajiv Gupta.

We should start discussing what's beyond CRM. I chose the word "beyond" advisedly. CRM is far from dead or even in decline, so "after" would be incorrect. However, CRM already has changed so much that it may be time to rethink it. Also, many of the tangential technologies that have turbocharged CRM in the last few years, like social media, have drawn so much attention that some analysis is due.

An alarming number of major U.S. retailers, industrial firms, government agencies and other organizations have been hit in a recent wave of cyberbreaches that may signal increasing vulnerability for consumers and businesses alike. The attacks have exposed millions of consumer payment cards to fraud. Cyberthieves have used a variety of methods to infiltrate corporate computer systems.

The DoJ has charged nine Iranian nationals for engaging in a massive phishing campaign on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The allegations include the theft of $3.4 billion in research and intellectual property from 320 colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad, as well as from 47 foreign and domestic companies, plus several federal agencies, state governments, and the UN.

Kali Linux, a penetration testing app from Offensive Security, has become available in the Microsoft Store. Windows 10 users can download and install the Kali Linux app onto the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Microsoft last summer announced that WSL, which makes it possible to run operating systems like Ubuntu, would become a fully supported part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

It's a truism that just like organizations adapt, so too do criminals. Anyone who has ever seen a Wells Fargo commercial knows that there was a time when stagecoaches were a normative method for transporting cash and valuables. But what modern criminals in their right mind would attempt robbing a Brink's truck on horseback? That strategy might have worked well in the days of the Pony Express.

As beneficial as AI can be, it has its dark side, too. That dark side is the focus of a new 100-page report. AI will be used by threat actors to expand the scale and efficiency of their attacks, it predicts. They will employ it to compromise physical systems and to broaden their privacy invasion and social manipulation capabilities. Novel attacks are to be expected.

SentinelOne this week announced a partnership with Microsoft to bolster threat protection for mixed platform users, making computing safer for Linux machines in a multiplatform workplace. SentinelOne will integrate its Endpoint Protection Platform with Microsoft's Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection service to cover Mac and Linux device platforms.

Most WiFi router vendors have not patched numerous firmware vulnerabilities discovered more than two years ago, according to a new report. OEM firmware built into WiFi routers use open source components that contain numerous known security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers. Insignary conducted comprehensive binary code scans for known security vulnerabilities in WiFi routers.

Alphabet has launched Chronicle, a new cybersecurity venture, following two years of development at the Alphabet X research lab. Chronicle will include VirusTotal, a Google-owned cybersecurity and intelligence platform and malware intelligence service. The idea behind Chronicle stems from the fact that many companies receive many more security alerts per day than they can handle.

If you follow security news, you may have noticed a disturbing trend. Last year, we learned that Uber paid attackers $100,000 to keep under wraps their stealth of the personal information of 50 million Uber riders. More recently, we learned that Hancock Health paid approximately $55,000 in bitcoin to bring hospital systems back online. The payment of ransoms could be more common than it appears.

SentinelOne has released Blacksmith, a free Linux tool that can detect Meltdown vulnerability exploitation attempts. The company has been working on a similar tool to detect Spectre vulnerability attacks. Though free, Blacksmith is not open source. SentinelOne decided to expedite its development in-house to save time, said Raj Rajamani, vice president of product management.

Intel appears to have encountered some daylight in its struggle to fix performance issues related to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. The company has identified the root cause on its older Broadwell and Haswell platforms, according to Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel's data center group. Intel has begun rolling out a solution to its industry partners for testing, Shenoy said.

A new Apache Struts campaign that researchers named "Zealot" has come to light in recent weeks. Zealot loads Windows or Linux-based machines by installing a miner for Monero, which has become one of the hottest cryptocurrencies used in recent malware attacks. Zealot uses NSA-linked EternalBlue and EternalSynergy exploits, according to the F5 Labs researchers who discovered the campaign.

If you've been keeping up with the news, you've probably noticed a few recent reports about companies that may have been a little less than candid about security issues. For example, we recently learned that Uber experienced a breach in 2016. As we've also learned from subsequent press reports, the company may have paid the attacker to remain silent about that breach.

The United States on Tuesday accused North Korea of responsibility for a global ransomware attack that locked down more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries earlier this year. The U.S. now has enough evidence to support its assertion that Pyongyang was behind the WannaCry attack in May, Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert told reporters at a White House press briefing.

Many federal government IT managers used to be wary of the shortcomings of migrating to cloud technology because of potential data security problems affecting email, business systems, personal data records and, especially, national security operations. However, after the federal "cloud first" initiative's six-year effort, there are signs that federal IT managers have changed their assessment.

As powerful men drop like flies due to their inability to resist abusing their authority, it's clear that the problem is widespread. Similarly, it's likely that we'll find the problem of alleged industrial espionage is not limited to Uber. You see, when people misuse authority -- and the sexual harassment problem is a massive misuse of authority -- folks typically don't just misuse it in one area.

Apple has released a security update to fix a serious flaw revealed via Twitter. The patch is available for macOS High Sierra 10.13.1. macOS 10.12.6 and earlier versions aren't affected. "This morning, as of 8 a.m., the update is available for download, and, starting later today, it will be immediately automatically installed on all systems running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.1," Apple said.