Category Archives: Intellectual Property

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The Cost of Intellectual Property Theft

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Intellectual property is the lifeblood of any organization. It is what distinguishes one company from another and is the main reason customers buy the products and services that they do. This is why IP theft is so important and can have such an impact on individual businesses and the economy as a whole. In fact, reportedly, IP theft costs the U.S. economy more than $300 billion every year. The infographic below, created by software provider i-Sight, takes an interesting look at the scope of the problem and the efforts to prevent it.

For more on the topic, be sure to check out our special section on IP risks in the latest issue of Risk Management magazine.

Copy(right) Cats: How Intellectual Property Theft Affects Everyone, Including You [INFOGRAPHIC]

 

Copy(right) Cats: How Intellectual Property Theft Affects Everyone, Including You from i-Sight

Twitter’s Data Mining Profits Show Lesser-Known Social Media Risk

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Data Mining

In an interview for this month’s issue of Risk Management magazine, lawyer and social media specialist Adam Cohen cautioned businesses that the risks of social networking sites extend beyond explosive posting faux pas.

“In most cases, corporations don’t realize that what they put on these social media services is all subject to the privacy policies and terms and conditions of the services,” said the eDiscovery expert and author of Social Media: Legal Risk and Corporate Policy. “Those provide a shocking amount of access by the social media services where they may take your data.”

As Twitter prepares for its much-anticipated IPO, the social media giant has released a torrent of information on its financial standing and practices. One of the most important tidbits for users concerns the site’s lesser-known side-business: data mining. In the first half of 2013, Twitter made $32 million by selling its data—namely, tweets—to other companies, a 53% increase from the year before.

So far this year, the company has raked in $47.5 million from selling user data to companies that analyze the social media posts for insights into news events and trends. Because of its real-time nature, Twitter is the primary contributor to data mining, though other social networks are frequently used in professional analysis.

This analysis is then sold to businesses for a slew of uses. “The types of ways that businesses are using Twitter data has gone deeper and deeper,” Chris Moody, the CEO of original Twitter data mining company Gnip, told Time. “We’re seeing it in supply chain and inventory management. It’s not just consumer brands that are engaging on Twitter.”The United Nations uses Twitter algorithms to pinpoint areas of social unrest. Burger chain Five Guys used “social intelligence technology” from New Brand Analytics to monitor quality in restaurants across the country and evaluate the appeal of a new fry size offering. Wall Street subscribers to one service, Dataminr, got a leg up on the S&P Index drop following the Navy Yard shooting. Five minutes before the news broke, users received an alert to take action after the company’s algorithms picked up on eyewitness reports and deduced from their timing, influence, and location that something urgent was taking place.

Clearly, there’s money to be made on both sides. According to the Wall Street Journal, the “social listening” business is booming, partially funded by millions of dollars in venture capital. Research firm IDC estimates that the entire “big data” market has grown seven times as quickly as the information technology sector as a whole, and may be valued at $16.9 billion in two years.

Data is mined for a variety of purposes – ones your company may even want to explore – but while there are benefits to the ends, the means translate into cyber exposures of which you may never know the details or depth. While the reputational risk of social media garners a lot of the attention – and rightfully so – there are increasingly tremendous exposures that lay in the forms just to sign up. With Twitter going public, there will only be further incentive to maximize revenue by selling user data, and more reason to approach corporate social media with caution.

The Apple/Samsung Smartphone Patent War Continues

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 Last December in Risk Management, we reported about the ongoing smartphone patent war being waged between Apple and Samsung that has seen each side seek injunctions throughout the world in an effort to stop their rival from selling products that they believe infringe on their patents. It’s a battle made all the more interesting by the fact that throughout all the legal manuevering, Apple remains Samsung’s biggest customer for smartphone parts.

Today the fight continues as many observers are anticipating that Apple will file for a restraining order banning Samsung from selling its hotly-anticipated Galaxy S III phone, which is expected to make its U.S. debut on June 21. The phone went on sale in Europe last month and in a CNET UK review it was dubbed the “Ferrari of Android phones” and was expected “to give the iPhone a good run for its money.” However, Apple claims that the Galaxy S III violates two of its software patents and wants to prevent its domestic launch from happening (especially since it would give Samsung the chance to gain some market share ahead of a new iPhone release). Samsung disagrees of course, and says that it will “demonstrate to the court that the Galaxy S III is innovative and distinctive.”

The decision to ban the Galaxy S III will need to be made by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who is already set to preside over another Apple vs. Samsung patent trial involving other Samsung phones and tablets expected to begin next month. Koh has said that if Apple seeks the new injunction, it will likely force her to push back the other trail date as she will be forced to reshuffle the other cases on her docket.

“I cannot be an Apple v. Samsung judge,” she said.

So it would seem that Apple’s next move will be based on what case it considers to be of higher priority–the longer-standing issue or the new threat? Either way, the smartphone wars show no sign of a cease-fire.

DDoS Attacks “Have Never Been Easier to Launch”

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As was heard throughout the speeches, sessions and networking chatter at the recent RIMS 2012 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Philadelphia, the biggest worry to business owners, CEOs and managers is that of cyber threats. And rightly so. It seems like each day we are inundated with reports of a new way hackers can gain control of company information and/or take down systems. Today is no exception.

This morning, Prolexic Technologies released a threat advisory on the use of booter shells, which allow hackers to readily launch DDoS attacks without the need for vast networks of infected zombie computers.

“Increased use of techniques such as booter shells is creating an exponential increase in the dangers posed by DDoS attacks,” said Neal Quinn, chief operating officer at Prolexic. “For hackers, DDoS attacks have never been easier to launch, while for their victims, the power and complexity of attacks is at an all-time high. The threat of a DDoS attack has never been more likely or its potential impact more severe. We’ve entered the age of DDoS-as-a-Service.” The increased use of dynamic web content technologies, and the rapid deployment of insecure web applications, has created new vulnerabilities — and opportunities — for hackers to use infected web servers (instead of client machines) to conduct DDoS attacks. Traditional DDoS attacks make use of workstations infected with malware, typically infected through spam campaigns, worms or browser-based exploits. With these traditional tactics, hackers needed multitudes of infected machines, to mount successful DDoS attacks.

Where boot scripts differ is in the fact that they are standalone files, meaning DDoS attacks can be launched more readily and can cause more damage, with hackers using far fewer machines. Even more alarming, people don’t need as much skill to launch such attacks. A DDoS booter shell script can be easily deployed by anyone who purchases hosted server resources or makes use of simple web application vulnerabilities (i.e., RFI, LFI, SQLi and WebDAV exploits). This, in essence, puts attacks within reach of even novice hackers. Companies should take note, especially financial firms.

According Prolexic’s quarterly global DDoS attack report released a few weeks ago, there was an almost threefold increase in the number of attacks against its financial services clients during Q1 compared to Q4 2011. “This quarter was characterized by extremely high volumes of malicious traffic directed at our financial services clients,” said Neal Quinn, Prolexic’s vice president of Operations. “We expect other verticals beyond financial services, gaming and gambling to be on the receiving end of these massive attack volumes as the year progresses.”

So what should companies do to protect their information and IT infrastructure? Though organizations can never be 100% protected from an attack, they can help by continuously testing proprietary web applications, as well as constantly testing known vulnerabilities in commercial apps.