Report: Government secrecy dips slightly
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Federal officials unsealed more classified documents in 2005 but shrouded data elsewhere by claiming more legal privileges in court, a coalition of watchdog groups reported Saturday.
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China's secretive government is drafting rules to promote official transparency, including releasing currently confidential commercial information, officials helping to write the rules said in reports on Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - More than half of U.S. government employees unofficially work at home on nights or weekends, raising concerns about the security of the data they're working on, according to a study released Monday. Fifty-eight percent of government employees work from home without permission, according a survey by the Telework Exchange, a group that advocates for more telecommuting opportunities. One year after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced thatÂ a laptop and hard drive were stolenÂ from an employee's home, many U.S. agencies still lack plans for dealing with teleworking employees, the survey suggests. Fifty-four percent of these unofficial teleworkers carry files home, according to the survey. The VA hardware, later recovered, contained the personal information of 26.5 million military veterans and family members. Even after the breach, 13 percent of U.S. agencies do not put encryption on new laptops issued, compared to 11 percent that did not include encryption before the VA breach, according to the survey. Less than half of agencies updated their encryption and protection technologies, and less than half provided security training to employees after the VA breach, the survey said. Sixteen percent of agencies did not react at all, the survey said. "It's kind of alarming ... that people still are not doing everything they can do to protect their mobile devices," said Joshua Wolfe, director of federal sales for Utimaco Safeware, a cybersecurity vendor that underwrote the survey. "You've got a lot of unofficial teleworkers out there who are taking information out of the agency and working from home on unsecured computers." Teleworking itself isn't the problem, Wolfe said. U.S. government workers who have permission to telework generally have more security training and more security tools on their work computers than those unofficial teleworkers. For example, 94 percent of survey respondents who are official teleworkers said they have antivirus software on their work computers. Only 75 percent of respondents who don't officially telework said they had antivirus software on their work computers. Sixty-seven percent of teleworkers said they had encryption on their work computers, while only 60 percent of non-teleworkers said they did. The major problem is that U.S. agencies don't seem to be keeping up with the trend toward mobile computing, Wolfe said. "Over the past year, more and more people have been given mobile devices," he said. "At the same time, [they] have not been given the tools from a policy perspective." Utimaco and the Telework Exchange recommended that U.S. agencies determine how many of their employees are unofficially teleworking. All employees, not just teleworkers, should receive cybersecurity training, and agencies should use encryption and other data security protections on all desktops and laptops, they recommended. The Telework Exchange conducted the survey of 258 U.S. agency employees in May. The survey has a margin of error of 6.1 percent.
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Law enforcement officials are targeting fewer than 100 people in the United States for secret court-approved wiretaps aimed at disrupting terrorist networks, the top U.S. intelligence official said in an interview published yesterday.
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Decision is latest setback to efforts to force disclosure of warrantless wiretapping details.
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Incidents of identity theft are decreasing, and the average loss as a result of fraud has dropped, a new study suggests. The improvement may reflect a higher awareness of the problem by consumers and businesses, say experts.
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The Bush Administration is none too happy with legislation that is making its way through Congress which could shield many news gatherers from revealing their confidential sources, calling it a security risk.
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Few precise details of the product are known although the company has been releasing tidbits of information.
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Opinion: Whether they realize it or not, many people leave sensitive information out in plain view on Web sites. But sooner or later, a Google search will dig it up.
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By Geoffrey Lean Mobile phone companies and the Government's official regulator are keeping information about the siting of radiation-emitting masts secret, despite rising concern about effects they may have on health.
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While some statistics suggest improvements have been made, others point to disturbing developments--and to the weakest link in the security chain.
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The Bush administration on Monday released new guidelines aimed at protecting the privacy of U.S. citizens as the government moves to enhance its sharing of information as part of post-September 11 reforms.
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Lawmakers on House and Senate intelligence committees say that while the National Security Agency has amassed a huge database of Americans&#039; calling records, cooperation with the NSA by telephone companies was not as widespread as USA Today initially reported, the newspaper said Friday.
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A new Internet security analysis finds that computer vulnerabilities decreased last year for perhaps the first time, though the researchers behind the report caution that there has been no improvement in Web safety.
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As surveillance has increased, violations of wiretap law have become a regular if little-noticed occurrence.
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has made progress on data security since last May's laptop theft, but still needs to address a variety of shortcomings, government auditors say.
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A memo sent last week by the While House Office of Management and Budget gives federal agencies 120 days to develop and implement security notification policies, and to start planning to reduce or eliminate the unnecessary use of Social Security numbers and similar personal data.