Shorts: CEOs Out of The Loop on Security?

CEOs are often never told by their IT chiefs about many significant cyber threats, says a major new study released this week by Ounce Labs and Ponemon Institute and covered in the current issue of Forbes, in an article, “What CEOs Don't Know About Cybersecurity,” written by Andy Greenberg. About half the companies were under daily and sometimes hourly assault, and all are regular targets, but almost half the CEOs believed they were “rarely attacked” …


New Hampshire consumers aren’t doing any better, it seems. LexisNexis sent out you’ve-been-hacked letters to 1,600 users in the “Live Free or Die” state in June, months after the actual data theft. However, according to the Nashua Telegraph’s Ashley Smith reports today, “Data Breach Finally Made Known in NH,” the media and other LexisNexis users first learned of the data theft problem last week – and then only because the state’s Attorney General decided to make the on-line scam attack public. 13,000 nationwide were affected by the data thieves, one of whom has pled guilty to the crime …


U.S. road warriors may get a security break, reports Bloomberg’s Bill Schmick, in yesterday’s article, “Homeland Security to Reconsider Color-Coded Terror-Alert System.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano intends to simplify the elaborate five-color alert disclosure system which has been disclosing mostly nothing at all. The threat level has never been blue (guarded) or green, and is almost always and inexplicably stuck on yellow (elevated) or orange (high). The alert level was at red only once – in August 2002 – but was back to orange just six days later.