In a post in the Federal Register, the FCC announced that it will seek comments for a proposed three-year Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program to determine schools and libraries that should be considered eligible and how it can measure the program’s effectiveness.
The program would provide up to $200 million for K-12 schools and libraries in rural and low-income communities and would gather information on “cybersecurity and advanced firewall services” to protect schools and libraries against cyberattacks.
The agency said that participants would need to use free or low-cost cybersecurity resources, such as those provided by the Department of Homeland Security’s, CISA and the Department of Education, to “make the most effective use of pilot program funding.”
The FCC also noted that it will also continue to promote its E-Rate program, which provides schools and libraries discounts on internet service.
“Kudos to the FCC for taking this crucial step in securing our schools and investing in the future. By emphasizing the use of free or low-cost resources coupled with continued support for the E-Rate program, this program aims to maximize impact and signals a holistic strategy to safeguard educational entities against cyber threats.”
This is a good move by the FCC. As we’ve seen, schools are often the prime target for cyberattacks. And the Toronto Public Library system is still crippled because of one. Anything that can be done to should be done because as it stands at present, both libraries and schools are low hanging fruit for threat actors.
Posted in Commentary with tags Hacked on January 2, 2024 by itnerd
Recently, Europol notified over 400 online merchants that their online shops were infected with scripts aimed at stealing payment information from customers making purchases. This operation to identify infected e-commerce sites also resulted in the identification of 12 new digital skimmers.
Pedro Fortuna, CTO and Co-Founder at Jscrambler had this to say:
“Digital skimming attacks can often result from a company’s use of tag management systems to add functionality and heighten the user experience by going around established change control processes. Many would think of these third-party tags as the culprit, with the answer being their removal. However, this is not a realistic way for security to approach this challenge as it threatens business continuity. Organizations must distinguish themselves by finding a balance of protection and operation, which means deploying the right client-side protections that can control third-party JavaScript based on behavior. That way, security does not have to impede the growth and success of a business.”
This is really scary given the amount of purchases made online. Vendors need to make sure that the payment infrastructure that they use is 100% safe 100% of the time.
Elon Musk is likely not having a good start to his 2024. On top of all his other problems which are too many to list here, Fidelity Investments who owns a stake in Twitter has written down that stake by a huge amount:
By the numbers: Fidelity believes that X is worth 71.5% less than at the time of purchase, according to a new disclosure that runs through the end of November 2023 (Fidelity revalues private shares on a one-month lag).
This includes a 10.7% cut during November, during which time Musk told boycotting X advertisers to “go f**k yourself” during an on-stage interview with the New York Times.
In terms of publicly traded comps, Meta stock rose 4.9% in November while Snap shares climbed 38.2%.
The big picture: Fidelity began marking down its Twitter shares the first month after Musk’s buyout. It increased the share value or kept it stable for a few months earlier in 2023.
Behind the scenes: Fidelity doesn’t necessarily have much, if any, inside information on X’s financial performance, despite being a shareholder in the privately held business. Other shareholders may value their X stock differently.
So. If we accept that Fidelity doesn’t have inside info on Twitter, they’re likely marking this stake in Twitter down based on the same things that you and I are seeing. Which is Twitter being a train wreck next to a dumpster fire because of Elon Musk’s “leadership” and behaviour. That’s not good for Elon because Fidelity likely invested in Twitter for the same reasons that we all make investments. Which is to make money. At some point it’s going to call Elon onto the carpet to get a path forward from him that will allow it to make money. Or they’re going to do something more drastic like saying that they’re bailing out of investing in Twitter. Either way, Elon has to be concerned. Especially since he has no plan “B” seeing as he told advertisers who are Twitter’s main source of income to do something that is anatomically impossible.
Since my wife and I switched to Freedom Mobile, I’ve got a number of questions in my inbox about how does their network work, and how does it impact upon the type of service that you can expect to see. To me it’s pretty straightforward. But as my wife loves to point out to me, it’s straightforward to me. Meaning that because of what I do, everything tech related is crystal clear to me. But it may not be the same for the average person. Thus I spent a couple of days to document and test Freedom Mobile’s network and the speeds that I experienced. And I did this by going to a variety of places in the Greater Toronto Area to do this testing, which enabled me to experience the full breadth of Freedom Mobile’s network.
Let’s start with the types of networks that Freedom Mobile has. You can expect to see any or all of the following in your travels:
Freedom 5G – This is their 5G network that they own and control. When you’re on this network, you’ll see this on your phone:
Now I did some testing previously and the speeds were decent. However I did take this speed test in uptown Toronto:
The big three carriers, meaning Rogers, Bell, and TELUS do have faster 5G speeds. But there’s nothing that Freedom’s 5G speeds will stop you from doing. And what did surprise me is that I got 5G in places that according to this coverage map shouldn’t have 5G coverage. This suggests to me Freedom Mobile is rolling out 5G as fast as they can as they likely see that as being part of their critical path to success. As a result, their maps aren’t up to date. So if you sign up for Freedom, you may get a surprise in terms of their 5G coverage.
Freedom LTE – This is their 4G LTE network that they own and control. During my testing, I was on the on the 5G network most of the time. But sometimes I would flip to the LTE network briefly which makes sense because I live in the Greater Toronto Area and phone carriers try to spend a lot of time and effort to have the best network quality in urban areas or areas where there are a lot of people. When you’re on their LTE network, you’ll see this on your phone:
Thus to test how fast LTE is, I had to drive to a place that was LTE only. And this is the sort of speed that I got:
While this was on the low side of LTE speed, it’s still a decent speed test result as this sort of speed won’t stop you from watching videos or doing a video call for example.
Nationwide LTE – This is the network that Freedom Mobile fall back to which is controlled by Rogers and Bell. You will switch to this network when you are not within any of Freedom Mobile’s networks. When you’re on this network, this is what you will see on your phone:
Now some concerns that were expressed to me by people who emailed in about what happens when you’re on this network. Specifically Will Rogers or Bell throttle your speeds? Based on my testing, that does not appear to be the case:
This speed is faster than any of the results that I got on Freedom Mobile’s LTE or 5G networks. That says to me that Rogers and Bell aren’t throttling Freedom Mobile customers. It also suggests that Freedom Mobile needs to work on the speeds of their network. Now I say that not because I am trying to “throw shade” as the kids say on Freedom Mobile. I say that because consumers are of the belief due to the advertising that telcos do that they should want the fastest speeds regardless of whether they need that speed or not. I would argue not. But the point I’m making here is that Freedom Mobile is going to get caught up in that even though they’re doing nothing wrong per se. Having said that I will highlight this again, you’re not going to be limited in terms of what you want to do on Freedom Mobile based on the speeds that I see here.
I should also mention that Freedom Mobile also has a 3G network that I saw pop up a couple of times for maybe a minute or two when I was doing my testing. Specifically when I was way outside of Toronto. I’m guessing that Freedom has 3G support to fill in holes in LTE coverage and to provide support for older devices. I didn’t do any speed tests on their 3G network as I don’t think that there are many people on it for the reasons I mentioned previously. Thus there would be no value in doing so.
One final observation is that any time my phone (an iPhone 14 Pro for the record) switched networks, it was seamless, which is the way things should work. I note that because when I’ve tested this sort of thing with any of the big three carriers, I would have the odd occasion where I would lose data service when the network switched. At that point I would have to toss myself into airplane mode for a minute and back to get my data service back. Now maybe I was lucky over the two days that I was doing this testing. I don’t know. But I thought I would mention it.
Hopefully this gives you a better understanding of how Freedom Mobile’s network works. If you’re thinking of getting Freedom Mobile, I would check their coverage map and see if their coverage fits your needs. For a lot of Canadians, I suspect that it might. And if you have any questions about Freedom Mobile, please leave a comment or email me as others have and I will try and answer your question.
FCC Proposes $200M Cyber Pilot-Program For K-12 And Libraries
Posted in Commentary with tags FCC, Security on January 2, 2024 by itnerdIn a post in the Federal Register, the FCC announced that it will seek comments for a proposed three-year Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program to determine schools and libraries that should be considered eligible and how it can measure the program’s effectiveness.
The program would provide up to $200 million for K-12 schools and libraries in rural and low-income communities and would gather information on “cybersecurity and advanced firewall services” to protect schools and libraries against cyberattacks.
The agency said that participants would need to use free or low-cost cybersecurity resources, such as those provided by the Department of Homeland Security’s, CISA and the Department of Education, to “make the most effective use of pilot program funding.”
The FCC also noted that it will also continue to promote its E-Rate program, which provides schools and libraries discounts on internet service.
Mike Barker, CCO, HYAS Infosec:
“Kudos to the FCC for taking this crucial step in securing our schools and investing in the future. By emphasizing the use of free or low-cost resources coupled with continued support for the E-Rate program, this program aims to maximize impact and signals a holistic strategy to safeguard educational entities against cyber threats.”
This is a good move by the FCC. As we’ve seen, schools are often the prime target for cyberattacks. And the Toronto Public Library system is still crippled because of one. Anything that can be done to should be done because as it stands at present, both libraries and schools are low hanging fruit for threat actors.
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