The Weekly Cypher is specially curated to keep you up-to-date on the latest in cybersecurity, biometrics, and related news and innovations. Here are a few of the headlines you might have missed this week.
HSBC suffers data breach on small number of online accounts | American Banker
A small number of HSBC online banking customers — less than 1% of accounts — were breached last month by unauthorized users, the bank acknowledged Tuesday. HSBC sent a disclosure notice Nov. 2 to customers saying the breaches occurred between Oct. 4 and Oct. 14 of this year. The bank suspended all affected accounts. Customer information that may have been accessed includes full names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, account numbers, account types, account balances, transaction history, payee account information, and statement history.
Chinese authorities use ‘gait’ surveillance to identify people by their body shape and walk | ABC.net
Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool called “gait recognition” software that uses people’s body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras. Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, “gait recognition” is part of a push across China to develop artificial intelligence and data-driven surveillance that is raising concerns about how far the technology will go.
Identity Security and the Digital Perimeter in Mobile Devices | Solutions Review
More and more enterprises across the United States are switching to a Bring Your Own Devices culture (BYOD), presenting security teams with a far more amorphous and diverse digital perimeter. In cybersecurity discussions, this problem is generally filed under endpoint security; the challenge appears to lie in securing the new endpoints being added to the network, after all. However, this is only one half of the equation. If your enterprise is considering or already switching to a BYOD culture, then you need to consider your identity and access management solutions as well. Why should you consider identity security when dealing with your enterprise’s mobile devices? It all relates back to the digital perimeter.
Someone posted private Facebook messages from 81,000 accounts | Wired
It’s true: Facebook has experienced a number of security-related issues lately, including a breach disclosed in September that compromised at least 30 million accounts. But that incident doesn’t explain why tens of thousands of private Facebook messages reportedly ended up for sale on an internet forum the same month, according to the BBC Russian Service. The culprit likely responsible for the leak, Facebook says, is a pest outside of the social network’s direct control: malicious browser extensions. Google, which has over 60 percent of the browser market share, has saidthe number of malicious Chrome extension downloads has decreased significantly over the past several years, but this breach proves malware-packed browser tools remain an issue.
National biometric database could be on the way (and in private hands) | ZDNet
When a national fingerprinting company joins forces with a startup that authenticates identity using AI-based facial recognition and behavioral prediction in natural settings, the future of human identification tech starts to look an awful lot like sci fi. That’s the new reality as SureID, a biometrics and fingerprinting firm, partners with Robbie.AI, a Boston-based startup, on R&D that could result in the United States’ first nationwide biometrics gathering system.
