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While imperative to the protection of critical infrastructure, securing portable media devices is not easily done

According to research performed by Lloyds of London insurer, Aegis London, in the first half of the 2013 fiscal year, the US Department of Homeland Securitys Industrial Control SystemsComputer Emergency Readiness Team responded to more than 200 incidents, 53% of which were in the energy and utility sector, and many of them sponsored by states such as China.

Efforts to improve the security of critical infrastructure systems like nuclear power plants and water treatment facilities have accelerated at a rapid rate since the issuance of US Executive Order 13636, 'Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity', on February 12, 2013.

As attacks become more sophisticated and digital control systems increase in complexity and levels of automation, it is increasingly difficult to prevent threats from impacting the operation of critical infrastructure. As a security measure, most critical infrastructure systems are air-gapped, or isolated from external networks.

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Because of this, portable media is a primary vector for cyber-attack; it is often the only way to transport files to and from secure areas. As key attack vectors for malware, it is extremely important that extra attention is placed on securing the portable media devices that are brought in and out of a secure facility.

While imperative to the protection of critical infrastructure, securing portable media devices is not easily done, and there are many requirements that can impact the portable media security policies for operators of critical infrastructure. In many cases, there is no single source for an organisations portable media security policy, and individual facilities may require unique security policies.

Security balancing act

When making decisions about security policies for a critical infrastructure facility, the costs of implementing a stricter policy need to be weighed against the potential costs that could result from the failure of a weaker policy. The solution for each organisation will vary based on the requirements necessary to meet their security and business objectives.

Increases in digital security rarely come without a corresponding increase in operating costs. These costs include purchasing a security solution, implementing this security solution, and finally managing and maintaining the solution. Initial costs often include the physical infrastructure necessary to deploy the solution, such as servers, kiosks and networks, as well as the consulting services that are often required to implement the solution correctly.

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How to pin down tricky portable media in your security policy

By Neil J. Rubenking

These days, before trying a new restaurant, movie, or concert venue, you probably check relevant social media sites first, to see what other people are saying about it. The free Web of Trust service aims to give you that same experience as you wander the Web. Web of Trust goes beyond simple vote-counting with an algorithm that incorporates user reputation, and it pulls in data from third-party blacklists as well. You can even use it for a degree of parental control, though it won't replace a dedicated parental control utility.

When I first reviewed Web of Trust over five years ago, it was still relatively new. I reported that its 5 million users had rated over 23 million websites. The service has matured quite a bit, and now has over 130 million users, or at least, over 130 million downloads, and a correspondingly larger reach in terms of rated websites.

Links Rated To start using Web of Trust, just navigate to the company's website. You'll find there's a big button to install the add-on for the browser you're using. Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari are supported, on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. If you use multiple browsers, you'll want to install Web of Trust for each.

The add-on marks up links in popular search engines and social networking sitesnearly three dozen sites all told. You'll find it's active in expected locations like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter, but it also supports international sites including Yandex, Baidu, and Wirtualna Polska Szukaj. Like SiteAdvisor (included in McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2015 and other McAfee products), Web of Trust marks safe links with a green icon and dangerous ones with a red icon. For example, if your friend posts an article on Facebook, and the link might lead somewhere fishy, Web of Trust puts a red icon next to it.Iffy sites get marked yellow, and as-yet-unrated ones get a gray icon with a question mark. You can hover over the icon for more detail, or click for Web of Trust's full analysis page.

There's one important difference between SiteAdvisor and Web of Trust. SiteAdvisor's Web crawlers perform various analyses of websites, noting, among other things, whether the site hosts malware, sends spam to visitors, or links to bad sites. Web of Trust primarily relies on its millions of users to define site reputation, though it does pull in data from some third-party sources, among them SURBL and PhishTank.

The floating detail box conveys a lot of information visually. Two colored rings indicate the site's reputation level for overall trustworthiness and for child safety. A crowd of people-shaped icons serves to give you an idea of how many have rated the site. In addition, you get a summary of reasons for the sites rating, for example, "malware or viruses."

The full detail page lets you know if any third-party data went into the rating, anddisplays any reviews left by users. Other useful data include the site's popularity and ranking, the geolocation of its server, and links to whois information about the site.

Here's an interesting twist. For those with color vision deficiency, Web of Trust can be configured to flag sites using easily-distinguished black-and-white icons. The red-yellow-green sliders on the site rating page change to use colors that are clearly distinct even for those who don't perceive certain color ranges.

Sites Blocking Options By default, Web of Trust always shows site reputation icons for links on supported search and social media sites. You can set it to only show icons for problematic sites, or skip the icons completely.

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Web of Trust

Media companies may take a huge leap of faith into a new phase of the Digital Age, or at least if everything goes according to Facebooks plan they will, The New York Times reported this week. Over recent months, the social media giant has been holding closed-door discussions with at least half a dozen media mammoths such as The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic, etching out the details of a proposed plan to host news content inside Facebook, instead of making users go to an external site.

The plan has been touted as a sure-fire way to streamline user experience by allowing links to load more quickly and letting users avoid the pesky ads that make news consumption cumbersome.

But some media observers are skeptical, saying it could destroy incentives for journalistic integrity and prevent small publishers from reaching their audience.

The companys [Facebooks] news feed algorithm is an increasingly important news filter, particularly for younger 'millennials.' That means any deeper partnerships with media groups to host their stories could be controversial, with publishers that do not sign up likely to complain vociferously if Facebooks algorithm penalises their stories as a result, wrote Stuart Dredge for the Guardian.

The ability of small publishers to reach their audience has already diminished even without the preferential treatment that Facebooks potential media collaborators could receive. In 2012, Facebook announced that organic page reach was just 16 percent. In other words, a single article posted by a news organization probably appeared in only 16 percent of the organization's followers' news feeds. By February 2014, that number had declined to 6.15 percent, and by January 2015, organic reach was practically nonexistent, the tech website Dazeinfo.com reported.

In such [a] scenario, if Facebook ties up with a bunch of leading publishers and hosts their news content, those publishers who are already facing warmth due to the fall of organic reach, will become more distressed, wrote Dazeinfo research analyst Pritha Bose.

Even for media giants, the proposed change has been characterized as a leap of faith. Most media companies are accustomed to driving traffic back to their own sites and collecting their own data on users, not to mention ad revenue. While BuzzFeed has pioneered a policy of spreading content outside its site, The New York Times uses a subscription model that accounts for a growing percentage of its revenue. Ad revenue sharing plans for the new deal with Facebook would still need to be hashed out and solidified, anonymous sources confirmed to The New York Times.

Nevertheless, some analysts say that Facebooks ability to reach a vast audience may make it worth the risk. Facebook currently has more than 1.3 billion active monthly users, about a fifth of the worlds population, and already has become the leading source of traffic for many digital publishers.

It [a media company] would have to weigh the benefits of reaching Facebooks users and the ad revenue that comes with them against the prospect of giving away its content and losing the clicks on its own site that would instead stay within Facebook, The New York Times reported.

But while Facebook has little experience participating in revenue sharing with content providers, it has been experimenting with revenue sharing options. Some of these experiments, one of which prioritizes video hosted on Facebook over other content, could be an example of what the future will hold.

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Facebook woos media giants: Will social media control the future of news? (+video)

Launch their Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled for 2:42 pm CDT Friday, March 27. Media should pick up credentials by 12:30 p.m. Friday, and must be escorted and in place before NASA TV launch coverage begins at 1:30 p.m. Accredited media wishing must ensure seating to watch the final hour of the countdown by calling the JSC Newsroom at 281-483-5111 before 4 p.m. Thursday, March 26.

Offering one of Mission Controls actual flight control rooms provides a rare opportunity to observe the launch, taking place half a world away at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazhakhstan. Seated in the Blue Flight Control Room, media may watch the countdown and launch from the same seats occupied by flight controllers during early station assembly, and more recently last Decembers first test flight of the Orion spacecraft.

Meanwhile, Space Center Houston, the official visitor center for Johnson Space Center, invites space buffs, NASA employees and media to watch the launch live on the largest giant screen in Texas.Space Center Houstons mission briefing officers will provide background on the launch and one-year crew. Discount tickets are available on-line.

Kelly and Kornienko are leaving Earth on a one-year mission to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. Obtaining data to determine ways to further reduce the risks during future long-duration missions to an asteroid and eventually Mars. The crew will support several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science research that impacts life on Earth. Data and samples will be collected throughout the year from a series of studies involving Scott and his twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly. The studies will compare data from the genetically-identical brothers to identify any subtle changes caused by spaceflight.

Joining Kelly and Kornienko will be Gennady Padalka, who will spend six months aboard the outpost. During that time he will become the first four-time station commander and world record holder for most cumulative time ever spent in space.

For more information about the International Space Station, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/station

For more information about the One-Year Crew, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/oneyear

For more information about NASA Television, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about Space Center Houston, visit:http://spacecenter.org

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NASA Invites Media to View One-Year Crew Launch in Mission Control

The media world has undergone a seismic upheaval over the last 20 years, with new tremors shaking the landscape seemingly every week. The latest: TheNew York Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic and perhaps other well-known publishers are in negotiations that could result in social media giant Facebook hosting news stories and other content they produce directly on its own servers.

The shift, reported by The New York Times itself, would allow Facebook users to see content from those outlets without having to click through to their sites a shift that would represent a sea change in the relationship between Facebook and the news media, and one that could leave publishers even more reliant on the social media service than they are now.

Facebook, with more than a billion users, currently drives a tremendous amount of traffic directly to news sites via links that appear in its users news feeds. The social media giant sent nearly a quarter of the total visits publishers received in December 2014, according to Shareaholic, up 18 percentage points from three years earlier. Yet as Facebooks users increasingly turn to mobile platforms such as phones and tablets, it wants to streamline the browsing experience for users and keep them from clicking away, in the process becoming much more than a place to watch ice bucket challenge videos or keep tabs on friends, family and ex-girlfriends.

If Facebook essentially wants to become the Internet for its users, it knows it still has work to do. Facebook officials have said that the process of opening a news link on a web browser generally takes about eight seconds, an eternity in an era when users have more content choices than they can possibly consume. It also frequently forces the reader to deal with inconvenient pop-up advertisements and other features of news sites that are difficult to navigate, or even just plain dismiss, on a phone screen. If Facebook were able to host the content itself, it argues, it would make for a much smoother user experience, making the reader more likely to actually, well, read the story he or she clicked on.

Its a compelling argument, and if maximizing readership was the sole imperative of news organization, it would be a no-brainer. But its not. News organization in general need advertising revenue to survive, and also value the information they are able to collect by tracking the activity of readers on their sites. To make the idea more appealing to media companies, Facebook is reportedly considering a new revenue-sharing scheme that would pay the content publishers a portion of ad revenue generated.

This would not be the first time that the Internet upended the business model of traditional news media. A decade ago, Craigslist was the bogeyman of newspaper advertising departments, as revenue from classified advertising began to crater with the rise of the free, local message board that gave advertisers control over how and when their ads were displayed. To some extent, its arguable that newspaper still havent really recovered.

Whether publishers embrace Facebooks new scheme remains to be seen. Content producers large and small have reason to be wary of ceding too much control over their fates to the social media giant but publishers desperate to reverse rapidly declining revenues might be willing to give up some control for the right amount of money, and Facebook might be able to offer key players enough blandishments to make the program worth their while. It is also possible that Facebook-hosted content could receive enough traffic to make advertising revenue sharing more popular for some smaller sites than hosting content on their own had been.

In any case, should a deal with Facebook be struck, it could fundamentally change the news and media worlds once again. What else is new?

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:

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Will Facebook kill the news media or save it?