Cybersecurity

The banning and purging of TikTok from U.S. college networks and devices continues apace, with federal officials expressing bipartisan concern about the app's data collection and potential for nefarious use by China.

After stealing the data of tens of thousands of people, extortionists from the Karakurt group have contacted their employees, business partners and clients with harassing emails and phone calls to pressure the victims to cooperate.

EC-Council University is making Certified Ethical Hacker and Certified Network Defender qualifications, as well as IT management training, part of a new online master’s degree program in computer science.

A Texas district attorney asked a local school district on Dec. 9, and again on Dec. 19, to notify up to 30,000 people that a security breach had exposed their confidential information, before making the announcement himself.

Following Idaho Gov. Brad Little's ban of TikTok on state-owned devices and networks, the state's colleges and universities are deleting their accounts and blocking access to the app on campus Wi-Fi networks.

During a recent Brookings Institute event, a former FCC chair and a former chief of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau said that features that make 5G compelling also create different kinds of cybersecurity risks to address.

Following a memo from Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey last week banning use of TikTok on state networks and devices, the university has made the app inaccessible on campus housing networks and warned employees not to install it.

This past year will be remembered as another year of ransomware attacks, data breaches impacting critical infrastructure and, most of all, global cybersecurity impacts from the Russian war with Ukraine.

Attack vectors in critical infrastructure are always changing, and agencies must move beyond just preventing cyber attacks and toward resiliency. Digital twin modeling can help governments prepare to work through any scenario.

Roughly half of Kansas government agencies — including key departments, public universities and K-12 schools — investigated by state auditors have significant information security weaknesses.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., underscores concern that the social media platform and its parent, ByteDance Ltd., could share information on U.S. users with Chinese authorities.

Ashley Bolton, the city of Littleton, Colo.'s former CIO, has taken a new IT role with the city and county of Denver, where she is serving as the chief data and information security officer.

Gov. Charlie Baker has created the Cyber Incident Response Team in a Dec. 14 executive order. The group will be comprised of members from state government public safety and cybersecurity organizations.

The New Mexico state Regulation and Licensing Department has mailed letters informing customers of a cyber breach in October that potentially exposed personal information in about 225,000 accounts.

TikTok, the popular social video platform owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has been banned on government-owned devices in several states for security concerns. The latest governors to ban it are in Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.

The international ransomware group LockBit claims to have stolen 76 gigabytes of data from the California Department of Finance. The data is said to include confidential and financial documents, and other sensitive information.

A survey by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers has identified the top priorities for state technology leaders for the coming year — and cybersecurity remains at the top of the list.

The university is complying with Gov. Kevin Stitt's executive order banning the TikTok app on government networks and government-issued devices, citing cybersecurity concerns and data collection by China.