Privacy, Data Protection & Information Management – Page 23

Mark Zuckerberg to testify to US Congress as Facebook indicates Cambridge Analytica accessed data from up to 87 million accounts

Apr 05 2018

By Warwick Andersen, Rob Pulham, Allison Wallace and Sarah Goegan

Facebook indicated in a blog post yesterday that information of up to 87 million people – 37 million more than originally revealed – may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook also reported that this may have included data of more than 300,000 Australians. The company’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, said the company would make major changes to the way third-parties can access data on the platform. He also said users would be informed if their information could have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Apple Watch data leads to arrest of suspected murderer

Apr 05 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

Last month we blogged about the potential for data from our smart devices being used against us in court. Well, that potential has now been realised in Australia, with prosecutors in a murder trial in Adelaide telling the court that data from the victim’s Apple Watch helped pin down her suspected murderer.

Travel-booking site Orbitz hit with major data breach

Mar 29 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan

Travel-booking site Orbitz confirmed that it has suffered a major data security breach, in which details of up to 880,000 credit cards were compromised.

Facebook’s privacy breach puts spotlight on Australian election campaigns

Mar 28 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Georgia Mills

News of Facebook’s involvement in the United States’ elections is nothing new, especially with the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal, so it should come as little surprise that the social media giant has extended its reach into the Australian electoral sphere.

Facebook approached Australia’s major political parties during the 2016 Federal election offering a powerful data matching tool. This “advanced matching” tool would allow parties to match data they had collected about voters- including names, dates of birth, contact details, and postcodes- against similar information provided by users on their Facebook profiles. The combined data would allow parties to identify swinging voters and target them with tailored ads when they use Facebook.

Facebook ‘hack’: fake news or a serious breach of privacy?

Mar 21 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Samantha Tyrrell

It has been alleged that Cambridge Analytica, a political data analytics firm specialising in psychological profiling, has tapped more than 50 million users’ Facebook profiles without their consent and subsequently used the data to assist Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign.

Bug Bounty Programs – your company’s friend or foe?

Mar 20 2018

By Cameron Abbott, Keely O’Dowd and Samantha Tyrrell

Bug Bounty Programs (BBPs) actively encourage hackers to explore a company’s systems and report back on any vulnerability they discover. Often, pre-determined financial incentives are offered to the “security researcher” in return for their findings. The attraction of this process is obvious; rather than suffering a cyber incident that could – and for many organisations has – cost millions of dollars and resulted in reputational damage, companies can instead make a comparatively small payment to ethical “white hat” hackers with the intention of pre-empting an incident.

The Sydney Declaration: ASEAN and Australia commit to cooperate on cybersecurity and digital trade issues

Mar 19 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Keely O’Dowd

Over the weekend our closest neighbours agreed to greater cooperation on cyber security. The Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Secretary-General of ASEAN and Australian leaders met in Sydney to strengthen the ASEAN-Australia relationship. The leaders discussed issues of regional importance.

“Hey Google, could you be used against me in court?”

Mar 13 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

Smart home devices like the Google Home and Amazon Echo were popular gifts this past Christmas – just like Fitbits have been the Christmases past.

But could these smart devices that we rely on to seek out and relay information to us, turn on our favourite music, or count our calories and steps, be used to produce evidence against us, if we were to commit a crime? Read More

De-identification of Data and Privacy

Feb 28 2018

By Cameron Abbott, Keely O’Dowd, Giles Whittaker and Harry Crawford

As promised in a previous blog post, K&L Gates have performed an in-depth analysis of the risks of relying on de-identification of data to protect privacy, in the wake of researchers successfully re-identifying de-identified medical data that was released by the Australian Department of Health in 2016.

Read the article on the K&L Gates HUB here.

Cybercrime most costly to financial services

Feb 27 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Keely O’Dowd

A study by Accenture and Ponemon Institute – Cost of Cyber Crime Study: Insights on the security investments that make a difference – found cyberattacks cost financial service firms more to address and contain than in any other industry. The rate of breaches in the industry has tripled in the past five years. On average, the cost of cybercrime for financial services companies globally has increased by more than 40% over the past three years, from $12.97 million per firm in 2014 to $18.28 million in 2017.

Catagory:Privacy, Data Protection & Information Management