The Yomiuri Shimbun

The National Police Agency will soon team up with the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry to fight industrial espionage.

Joint measures will include visits by police officers to about 10,000 domestic corporations with cutting-edge technology to give them advice, according to NPA sources.

Under the plan, which will be implemented as early as this autumn, companies with state-of-the art technology will also be provided with the latest information about how industrial spying is conducted, according to the NPA sources.

The move reflects growing concerns that the theft of leading technology from domestic companies could lower the international competitiveness of Japan’s corporate sector.

The economy ministry will list companies with sophisticated technologies or products that might be targeted by industrial spies from overseas and provide the information to the NPA.

Based on instructions from the NPA, officers of prefectural police forces will visit the companies’ head offices, plants and laboratories.

They will […]

An article in The Register explains that a new Windows 10 feature could be opening up your wifi for others to use without your knowledge.

A Windows 10 feature, Wi-Fi Sense, smells like a security risk: it can share access to Wi-Fi networks with the user’s contacts.

Those contacts include their Outlook.com (neeHotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, their Facebook friends. There is method in the Microsoft madness – it saves having to shout across the office or house “what’s the Wi-Fi password?” – but ease of use has to be teamed with security. If you wander close to a wireless network, and your friend knows the password, and you both have Wi-Fi Sense, you can log into that network.

Wi-Fi Sense doesn’t reveal the plaintext password to your family, friends, acquaintances, and the chap at the takeaway who’s an […]

If your building boasts beautiful large glass walls and windows, you may want to follow Canada’s CSEC’s plan and find ways to darken the glass to prevent spying eyes.

From the Ottawa Citizen:

The government’s new billion-dollar spy palace in Ottawa has a problem that doesn’t sit well with the employees of one of the most secretive buildings in the world – it’s built like a fish bowl that might allow prying eyes to see inside.

The new Communications Security Establishment Canada complex, located in Ottawa.

The former head of the Communications Security Establishment once called the Ogilvie Road complex – with its massive glass walls – an “architectural wonder.”

But now CSE officials are realizing that all that glass could potentially allow foreign intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on Canada’s electronic eavesdroppers.

Specialized darkened screens are now going to be added to the windows to prevent such […]

From The Washington Post, 6/11/15

It began with something so small: a tiny microphone hidden near a dining table in a fancy Warsaw restaurant.

But after the bug caught Polish government ministers discussing private deals, Cuban cigars and off-color jokes — including a comparison of U.S.-Poland relations to oral sex — over expensive meals, a scandal that began as small-talk quickly spread. There were arrests, accusations of international spying and sealed documents leaked on social media.

On Wednesday, almost exactly a year after they first emerged, the secret recordings claimed their biggest scalp yet when four Polish government ministers and the speaker of parliament abruptly resigned.

Polish parliament speaker Radoslaw Sikorski, who stepped down on Wednesday. (European Pressphoto Agency)

The resignations are bad news for the already embattled governing party, Civic Platform, which two weeks ago narrowly lost its grip on the presidency. Its chances to retain control of parliament in elections four months from now are disappearing faster […]

Times Live, Graeme Hosken

Industrial espionage is at an all-time high in South Africa, with an increase in requests for debugging services coming from gaming firms, research and development companies and those tendering for multimillion-rand contracts.

Driving fear in the world of Spy vs Spy are tough economic times and the ease with which South Africans can buy listening devices online.

The unregulated eavesdropping industry had led to an apparent surge in spying by businessmen on one another, according to Justicia Investigations, a company specialising in surveillance.

Its operations director, Alan Carey, said the number of inquiries about debugging services had increased rapidly since November, indicating a spike in South Africans spying on each other.

“In the past we received maybe two inquiries every fortnight. Now we are receiving at least three a week.

“The majority are from the gaming industry, research and development firms, cellular communication companies and businesses bidding for […]

Reported in The Hacker News, the passwords and login credentials for a London railway station were posted on the top of a computer monitor and broadcast on a BBC TV documentary. Company security policies should include never displaying your credentials where they might be viewed by unauthorized personnel… or TV cameras!

The Weakest Link In the Information Security Chain is still – Humans.

Scientists Create Secure Communications By Slowing Down Light

Ubergizmo.com

Have you always wanted a more secure way of transmitting your information and not be worried about it being intercepted or eavesdropped along the way? While there are various security measures available at the moment, such as encryption, scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have come up with a way that could technically make eavesdropping impossible.

How they achieved this is by slowing down the speed of light from its typical speed of 300 million meters per second to a much more manageable 180kmph, and they did this using fiber optics which is a system that is currently in place around the world, thus making their findings even more applicable and viable.

To slow down the speed of light, the scientists grafted cesium atoms to the fibers which allowed it to slow light […]

“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 […]