“Factors that made a noticeable difference in the amount of information collected were clean desk policies, standardized document shredding policies, suspicious reporting processes, and mandatory training and awareness.”

By Maria Korolov, CSO online

Researchers were able to get sensitive corporate information just by looking around corporate offices in 88 percent of attempts, according to a new study.

Michigan based Ponemon Institute sent researchers to 43 offices belonging to seven large corporations who had previously agreed to participate in benchmarking research. The researchers had valid identification as temporary employees, and management knew they were coming — though the office staff did not.

The researchers spent up to two hours in each office, wandering around, taking pictures of computer screens, and picking up documents marked “confidential” and putting them in their bags — all deliberately within full view of the regular employees.

In the vast majority of the cases, the regular office staff did not […]

We’re not sure how this eavesdropping was accomplished, whether through a bugging device or perhaps just through the phone. Phone call recording is often a built in feature for phone systems, but can also be performed through the use of external devices. Phone technicians could have access to the recordings. Even digital phones and VOIP phones can be recorded easily. It could be legal in many locations, if the person doing the recording is part of the conversation. What happens with the content of recordings, on the other hand, could be illegal and can often lead to detrimental results. Wayward employees or staff often think they acting righteously as whistle blowers when committing eavesdropping, but they could be breaking the law and end up in prison.

By Hailey Branson-Potts, LA Times;

A West Hollywood City Council aide has been suspended and is being investigated by sheriff’s detectives on charges of eavesdropping on […]

NBC’s new spy drama “Allegiance” was previewed at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, along with a panel discussion with former intelligence officers including Vince Houghton, historian and curator at the Spy Museum, CIA analyst Mark Stout, and former KGB General Oleg Kalugin. Their comments offer some insight into the real world of spying.

10 Things We Learned Watching Allegiance at The International Spy Museum,
By Nancy Dunham, February 7, 201, pastemagazine.com

If you watched the premiere of Allegiance, NBC’s new spy drama, on Thursday night, you likely wonder what the creators can possibly do to top it. Modern day sex, lies and videotape—not to mention some pretty gnarly torture and a spy-within-a-spy plots—kept us on the edge of our seats when we previewed it at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

Still, questions arise as to whether or not the show, which centers on a 40-something Brooklyn couple (she’s Russian-born, […]

From McClatchyDC by T. Johnson

PANAMA CITY — When the United States rejected former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s request for spying equipment to eavesdrop, U.S. diplomats feared, on his political enemies, the former supermarket baron turned to another source: Israel.

Now scores of Panama’s political and social elite are learning that the eavesdropping program that Martinelli’s security team set in place sprawled into the most private aspects of their lives – including their bedrooms. Rather than national security, what appears to have driven the wiretapping was a surfeit of the seven deadly sins, particularly greed, pride, lust and envy.

Nearly every day, targets of the wiretapping march to the prosecutors’ office to see what their dossiers contain, often emerging in distress. Martinelli, who left office in July, is facing a rising tide of outrage not only over the wiretapping, but also over reports of vast corruption. His personal secretary has left […]

...companies now no longer face just external threats. Employees may give in to threat or greed, and with their access to information, can cause a data breach without specialized knowledge or cyber security skills. Staff are often given far-reaching data access rights, but with this power, rouge employees can prove to be a serious risk to corporations. While the threat of insiders is unlikely to wane, companies can protect themselves more effectively by setting in place access restrictions to sensitive data and monitoring employee access to information caches.

From Fortune, by Tom Huddleston, Jr.

The massive scale of the cyber attack shows why top executives need to be more involved in shaping cyber strategy at companies.

Spooked by the Sony Pictures hack and the leak of sensitive documents, companies of all kinds are now scrambling to shore up their cyber defenses.

The movie studio’s breach is just the latest in a series of hacks in recent years, including attacks on Target, Home Depot, and JPMorgan Chase that collectively compromised the personal information of tens of millions of customers. But Sony’s hack stands out as a more frightful example because of hackers’ unfettered access, the huge damage they caused and the ultimate capitulation to their demands, seen by Sony’s controversial — albeit short-lived — decision to shelve the comedy film The Interview.

“I think the scale of this impact on Sony is what’s going to make a lot of […]

Ontario professor Laura Pinto thinks the popular “Elf on a Shelf”  toy is conditioning children for growing up in a surveillance state. Is that any different than Santa knowing when you are sleeping, when you’re awake, and if you’ve been naughty or nice?  It is apparently quite sinister.  

from the Inquisitr.com

Laura Pinto is a digital technology professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Pinto recently published an academic report which argues that the Elf On The Shelf book fosters a “sinister” message. The “Who’s The Boss” paper claims that the idea of an elf reporting back to Santa Claus each night in regards to the behavior of children, “sets up children for dangerous, uncritical acceptance of power structures.”

What you looking at?

Elf on the Shelf is a story about how

by Drew Harwell, Washington Post

The massive heist from the world’s biggest sportswear firm was, as Nike attorneys allege, an inside job.

Nike vs Adidas

Faking a broken laptop, one of the sneaker giant’s top directors is said to have met secretly with an interloper to copy some of what a Nike lawsuit this week called the firm’s “most important and highly confidential” intelligence.

Days later, the director and two other elite designers defected to the firm’s bitter rival, allegedly scrubbing e-mails and text messages that, attorneys said, hid “evidence of their betrayals.”

Consumer technology eventually encroaches on ideas that were only dreamed of in the past. Developments come quickly these days, so it’s worthwhile to keep an eye on where things are going. An eavesdropping technique that has been difficult to deploy in the past, could also be built right into an iPhone if this reported patent comes to fruition. Lasers can be used for eavesdropping by beaming onto a distant object or window pane, then interpreting reflections of vibrations of that beam in order to get audio from the target room. If the lasers described below get built into a smart phone, I’m sure it wouldn’t be long until an app is developed for using them for eavesdropping as well. As it is, though, a pocket-sized 3D laser mapping device would also be a spy’s delight. 

“such technology may result in museums and other public venues [not to mention engineering and […]