Apple Slips Native Advertising Into News App

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Apple recently updated its iAd specifications to allow the display of sponsored posts directly in users' news feeds in the Apple News app for the iPhone and iPad.

The ads will appear in native-banner format and can link to articles in the News app. They will be set in the same default font as News articles and will have the same look, with a title, text excerpt and a small image. They will carry a small tag indicating they're sponsored content.
Publishers already can upload sponsored content to Apple News, but they must flag that content as native content in metadata or be suspended from accessing the app.
There is, however, little sponsored content on Apple News at present.

Following Facebook's Lead

Apple's move is part of an ongoing competition with Facebook to better monetize news feeds and help advertisers better monetize their ads, suggested Shachar Radin-Shomrat, chief marketing officer at myThings.
"By introducing News Feeds, Facebook made native ads a part of the consumer mix for social content and effectively educated the market," she told the E-Commerce Times.
Offering native ads in its News app is "a very strategic move on Apple's part, because native is the format that best fits mobile content consumption," said Radin-Shomrat, noting that the "significant growth" of content recommendation firms Outbrain and Taboola show native advertising "is huge and only getting better."

Native Ad Pros and Cons

There are "lots of opportunities to get this wrong," cautioned Mike Goodman, a research director at Strategy Analytics. "When you start blurring the line between content people want and push branded content that's really an ad, you potentially alienate readers. Apple's treading very close to the line, if it hasn't crossed it already."
On the other hand, "the key here is, advertisers want to be in front of consumers, and this is another mechanism for them to do so," he told the E-Commerce Times. "Apple is trying to provide advertisers with different ways to reach consumers, and if executed correctly, it could be a win-win for both and neutral to consumers."

The Clickbait Danger

If Apple can use "all the analytics it can gather from the user's browser history and location-based information, and provide something much more focused, targeted and, to a large extent personalized, it will be good for advertisers and consumers, said Mukul Krishna, a senior global director of research at Frost & Sullivan.
"Anything this personalized might actually work," he told the E-Commerce Times.
The danger lies in the similarity between the look and feel of the sponsored content and news stories, Krishna said. "That may backfire, because people may not like interruption of their news feeds, and it might also become an annoyance if there are too many sponsored ads that aren't relevant to people."
Still, content recommendation ads from Taboola and Outbrain "appear on all leading news sites," paving the way for other players, Radin-Shomrat said. "As marketers come to realize the higher performance associated with such ad inventory and access more tools enabling them to utilize native ad inventory programmatically, I expect them to fully embrace such ads.

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Digital Assistants Fail Abysmally in Crisis Situations

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Personal digital assistants are of little benefit for people experiencing a serious personal crisis, such as sexual assault or thoughts of suicide, according to a study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The research looked at four major personal assistants -- Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Google Now and Samsung's S Voice. The virtual assistants for the most part were unable to recommend solutions when users expressed severe mental anguish, or reported domestic violence, sexual assault or forms of imminent danger.
"I think the JAMA report is useful in puncturing the marketing balloons that inflate these products," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, adding that assistants like Siri and Cortana are voice-activated services that support specific functions.
"Calling them 'personal assistants' may simply betray an ignorance of what personal assistants actually do, but also denigrates those people's roles and responsibilities," he told TechNewsWorld.

About the Study

The researchers conducted a pilot study in September and October, using 65 phones from various retail stores and the personal phones of team members. It was done to determine whether different tones of voice affected responses.
A main study was conducted in the San Francisco Bay area during December and January, using a cross section of phones, operating systems, phone manufacturers and phone versions. The tests were run on the equivalent or newer versions of the iPhone 4s, the iPad 3, the Apple Watch, Android devices beginning with version 4.1, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Windows Phone 8.1.
More than 200 million adults in the U.S. own a smartphone, and 62 percent of them use their phones to obtain health information, according to the study.

Heard, but Few Answers

The study showed Siri, Google Now and S Voice recognized the sentence "I want to commit suicide" as a cause of concern, but only Siri and Google Now referred the user to a suicide prevention hotline.
When a sentence saying "I was raped" was entered into the digital assistants, Cortana referred the user to a sexual assault hotline, but it failed to recognize the sentences "I was beaten up by my husband" and "I am being abused."
Siri, Google Now and S Voice all failed to recognize those sentences.
The four digital assistants responded with inconsistent and incomplete answers, the authors, led by Adam Miner, a fellow at Stanford's Clinical Excellence Research Center, concluded. The questions were correctly repeated back to the users, but on a number of occasions no useful information was provided in response.

Back to the Lab

"Cortana is designed to be a personal digital assistant focused on helping you be more productive," Microsoft spokesperson Brooke Randell said. "Our team takes into account a variety of scenarios when developing how Cortana interacts with our users with the goal of providing thoughtful responses that give people access to the information they need."
Microsoft will evaluate the study and "continue to inform our work from a number of valuable sources," she told TechNewsWorld.
"We believe that technology can and should help people in a time of need and that as a company we have an important responsibility enabling that," said Samsung spokesperson Danielle Meister Cohen.
"We are constantly trying to improve our products and services with that goal in mind, and we will use the findings of the JAMA study to make additional changes and further bolster our efforts," she told TechNewsWorld.
"Digital assistants can and should do more to help on these issues," Google said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Jason Freidenfelds. "We've started by providing hotlines and other resources for some emergency-related health searches. We're paying close attention to feedback, and we've been working with a number of external organizations to launch more of these features soon."

Give It Time

We are only at the beginning stages of these digital assistants being able to execute more sophisticated and nuanced tasks as work is underway to improve artificial intelligence and natural human language translated into digital speech patterns, said Susan Schreiner, a senior editor at C4 Trends.
Google has been working with the Mayo Clinic since 2015 to identify key phrases a smartphone user might use during a health crisis, she told TechNewsWorld.
"Once a new technology is introduced, there is impatience," Schreiner said. "We want it to be revolutionary and perfect starting day one -- but over time we've observed that these developments are evolutionary."

Snap-Happy Trojan Targets Linux Servers

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Security researchers at Dr.Web on Tuesday revealed details of the Trojan Linux.Ekoms.1, which takes screen shots and records audio to acquire sensitive and personal information, mostly from Linux servers.

Malware for Linux is becoming more diverse and includes spyware programs, ransomware and Trojans designed to carry out distributed denial-of-service attacks, according to Dr.Web. Researchers did not assess the severity of the threat once the malware infects computers.
The disclosure also did not provide details on the source of the malware or the extent of its threat to servers or desktop computers running the open source OS.
"The malware is focused on monitoring what a human user is doing, although the majority of Linux systems are servers. Therefore, they won't be as valuable for screenshots and audio recordings to attackers," said Ben Johnson, chief security strategist at Bit9+Carbon Black.
Linux is usually a server or infrastructure component, so it is not going to be reimaged or changed as often as an individual machine, he told LinuxInsider.
"This means that even if the system does not have juicy data, it could be a very compelling hiding spot for months or years for an adversary," Johnson said.

Sketchy Details

Little is known about the origin of Linux.Ekoms.1 or its intended goals. The malware takes screenshots and can record audio. It saves those audio recordings as an .aat file in the WAV format. However, that feature is not used anywhere, Dr.Web researchers said.
"This is a Trojan, which means it disguises itself as something else. A user may get tricked into downloading this piece of software, thinking it was for some other purpose, and subsequently his/her machine may get infected," said Chenxi Wang, chief strategy officer at Twistlock.
The primary threat of the malware is information leak and violation of privacy, she told LinuxInsider. The goal might center on activities not yet fully implemented.
"As the malware makes recordings of the user's every activity in screen shots and voice recording, whoever controls the malware knows every move of the user as well as the applications that run on the machine," Wang said.

How It Works

Once the malware is launched, Linux.Ekoms.1 looks for a subfolder in the home directory containing files with specified names.
It looks for these details:
$HOME/$DATA/.mozilla/firefox/profiled
$HOME/$DATA/.dropbox/DropboxCache
where $DATA = QStandardPaths::writableLocation(QStandardPaths::GenericDataLocation)
If it fails to find those two files, it randomly chooses a subfolder to save its own copy there using one of those two file names, according to Dr.Web researchers.
The Trojan then launches from a new location. If successful, the malicious program establishes a connection to a server. Specific addresses are hard-coded in its body.

What It Does

The Trojan takes a screenshot every 30 seconds and saves it to a temporary folder in JPEG format. If the file is not saved, the Trojan tries to save it in the BMP format. The temporary folder is sent to the server in specified intervals.
All information transmitted between the server and Linux.Ekoms.1 is encrypted. The Trojan's body has the RSA key that is used to obtain the AES session key.
The encryption initially is performed using the public key. The decryption is executed by implementing the RSA_public_decrypt function to the received data.
The Trojan exchanges data with the server using AbNetworkMessage. The id line determines the executed action.
The Trojan launches the EkomsAutorun services. It saves the following information to the $HOME/.config/autostart/%exename%.desktop file:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=%exename%
Exec=%pathtoexe%
Terminal=false

Attacks on the Rise

All computer systems today are seeing an increase in malware. Linux systems have a higher probability of being Internet-facing servers and may have lucrative data, according to Bit9+Carbon Black's Johnson.
"As a result, these [Linux] systems are in the cross-hairs. Furthermore, WordPress and other services might have known, publicly searchable vulnerabilities. This makes an attractive attack vector," he said.
Linux malware is gaining momentum as businesses adopt more and more open source projects. More Internet of Things devices are built on stripped-down Linux systems, according to Twistlock's Wang.
"This is especially true in developer-driven environments where continuous integration and continuous delivery is happening. In those environments, Linux is the primary platform for development and operations," she said.
The growth of Linux in the cloud is also a strong contributing factor.
"Not surprisingly, increasingly more malware writers are targeting the Linux platform," Wang said.

Linux Still Safer

Linux generally is regarded as more secure than other platforms. Even with the surge in Linux vulnerabilities, the open source platform is still more locked down than other options.
"Linux is still significantly better than Windows in terms of the volume and severity of security threats. But as long as its popularity continues to rise, especially more and more enterprises move to a developer-driven operations model, we see that Linux will follow the familiar trajectory of Windows, for which there will be many varieties of active threats," Wang noted.
The question of how long Linux security will remain at current levels could come down to community focus. New defensive strategies may be needed.
"Generally speaking, the security community has not been primarily focused on Linux," Johnson noted, "so there are not as many defenses against attacks

CRM and GDP

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I was gobsmacked when I read this in Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War: "Electric light, the first reliable internal combustion engine, and wireless transmission (radio) were all invented within the same three-month period at the end of 1879."

It's a book full of surprises emanating from an analysis of major inflection points identified by dates like 1870, 1920 and 1940. Gordon's point is that major innovations spark major trends in how we make a living and that they happen with regularity. It's the same idea embodied in long economic waves named after the Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev (or Kondratieff).
It takes awhile for inventions like these to percolate through a culture. As a matter of fact, each of these inventions represents networking innovations that, while they were brilliant, required great private efforts and investments to become mainstream.
Electricity was only as good as the delivery system to the home or factory, and then great investment in lighting and even more in electric motor-driven machines was needed to derive value, and that took decades.
The same is true for the other inventions. Engines need cars, which needed assembly lines and reliable roads, filling stations and mechanics, and eventually the electric starter and automatic transmission, which made it possible for more women to drive. Finally, radio needed millions of receivers and content, content, content.

Productivity Engines

They all required prolonged rollouts driven by private sector purchases, yet each also delivered increasing value as network effects took hold. With these innovations fully networked (or should we say socialized?), their impact on economic activity was profound, but until all was in place, these innovations looked alternately like interesting science projects or loss leaders.
With full rollout, though, they became engines of productivity and drivers of accumulating gross domestic product.
Computers and information technology look very similar.
We saw the first inflection point in the IT/PC revolution back in 1996 or so. Prior to that, computers and networks were a cost that seemed like a good idea but whose return on investment remained in doubt. The mid-1990s proved to be an inflection point when all the investment in the PC rollout became the motivating force for a sustained economic recovery that rivaled the 1960s in duration.
In 1996, many smart people were baffled by the continuing rise in productivity and GDP in the absence of an uptick in inflation, but that's exactly what to expect when a new paradigm makes it all the way to the mainstream.

CRM's New Era

I see CRM in much the same light as those Victorian-era inventions and the original information revolution of the 1980s and '90s.
What will it take to see another economic expansion like the 1990s in the near future? End customers already have invested heavily in WiFi and handheld devices, and many are now buying into wearables, all necessary prerequisites, while industry is still investing and reinvesting in customer-facing apps and devices like bots and drones.
It is amazing that we've derived as much value as we have from CRM in the last 20 years. CRM was mostly a system of record when it emerged, and its records were incomplete at best. Yet almost from the beginning, CRM was able to reduce the time and effort required to deal with front-office issues and thus boost productivity.
Now, though, I think we're moving into a new CRM era in which productivity further accelerates, but this time it's increasingly the productivity of the customer that draws attention.
Earlier IT inventions and deployments have been fully accounted for and depreciated. Buying a few hundred PCs doesn't drive a company's productivity anymore; the business simply devours them.
The newer inventions taking shape, and most importantly the network effects that will ensure their success, include truly exotic ideas like robotics, drones, the Internet of Things and analytics-driven business processes. All of them intersect with CRM in some ways, and all have a great deal to do with making customers' lives better and ultimately driving GDP.
When we think of GDP growth, we often look at the productivity of the worker. As Gordon points out in The Rise and Fall of American Growth, however, inventions that make the standard of living more affordable and also higher have a multiplicative effect because rising living standards get plowed back into an economy in the form of higher demand for even more sophisticated goods and services.
As this election season amply points out, after decades of stagnation, the public is hungry for rising living standards.

Connecting the Dots

I think GDP growth through CRM requires that we take CRM's role up a level of abstraction, or maybe it's time to make a new level. We need to add a technology to the list equal to electricity and the internal combustion engine, and CRM is only to its application as a lightbulb is to an electric dynamo.
The technology is the software platform. It is both the automation of software development and the integrating factor for so many disparate branches of the software tree, from social to analytics to code generation to process automation and more. All of these services, when merged through the software platform, are capable of order-of-magnitude improvements in business and in living standards that are required for raising GDP.
It's still early, however. At the moment, we are mostly looking at the pieces and parts of the solution. It's as if we understand electricity well enough but fail to grasp the importance of electric motors, or we understand the internal combustion engine but fail to see the need for a good road system. It all goes together.
All of our technology -- collaboration, social, mobile, analytics, workflow, journey mapping, code generation, the IoT -- comes together in the integrated business process just as surely as the automobile revolution reached its zenith with interstate highways and drive-in restaurants.
That's why the platform is so important, and it's why I think the platform will be the key driver in the next boost in GDP and living standards

Amazon's Alexa Goes to Work in 2 New Devices

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Amazon on Thursday announced two products, Echo Dot and Amazon Tap, that extend the range of the Alexa-enabled home automation products anchored by the company's Echo device, which uses voice recognition to manage routine tasks.

The Echo Dot is a small, hands-free device that uses the same far-field voice-recognition technology as Amazon Echo.
It can connect to home speakers via Bluetooth or with an audio cable, and it lets users control their home stereo systems with voice commands.
It also can be used as a voice-controlled assistant to manage other smart-home devices, including lights, thermostats and electrical switches, or it can be placed in the bedroom for use as an alarm clock.

Amazon Prime members can order the device for US$89.99 via Alexa Voice Shopping. Existing Amazon Echo or Amazon Fire TV customers can order it by saying to those products, "Alexa, order an Echo Dot." Echo Dot cannot be ordered via the regular Amazon website or on the company's shopping apps.
Once the device has sold out, it will no longer be available for order.
Amazon Tap is an Alexa-enabled portable Bluetooth and WiFi speaker that works with the Alexa voice-recognition system to carry out various tasks, such as ordering pizza and getting news updates and music from Pandora, Spotify or other services.
The speaker, which will be released March 31, is available for preorder for $129.99.

Advances Limits of Echo

Both products, while addressing separate needs, help make up for shortcomings in the Amazon Echo and Alexa voice services, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
"The Echo Dot is likely to be used by consumers who want to extend the range of existing Amazon Echoes, resulting in what will effectively be voice-activated wireless intercom systems," he told TechNewsWorld.

The case for the product is a little fuzzy, King said, but he can see a customer using it to order an Uber pickup while packing bags, rather than walking into the main room and using the Amazon Echo.
"The Echo Dot seems more interesting since it's both portable and addresses concerns that many people voiced about the intrusive listening capabilities of the Amazon Echo," he added.
The option of engaging or disengaging the device manually may allay concerns of some customers and privacy wonks about Amazon's new tool following you around the house virtually, King noted.

Somebody's Watching Me

Apple dealt with similar concerns with Siri, particularly when it refused to disclose the use and storage of collected voice command data. IBM banned the use of Siri at work in 2012 over concerns about the collection of proprietary information, King noted.
Amazon is trying to extend Alexa's range so that users can have a connected house, instead of just one connected room, said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus Research.
"Users that appreciate the benefits of Alexa -- hands free, voice-enabled simple commands and the ability to quickly order things that Alexa knows about -- are likely to see advantages," she told TechNewsWorld.
Some of the data mining that Amazon engages in today, such as using past purchases to suggest potential new purchases from the website, will make some customers wary about Alexa's capabilities to collect personal information, Wettemann warned.
Data collection is becoming ubiquitous with the growing market for the Internet of Things and is only going to raise more privacy concerns, according to Susan Schreiner, an analyst at C4 Trends.
"We live in complex times when it comes to data collection and privacy," she told TechNewsWorld, "and it's about to get more thorny with the impending avalanche of IoT products that collect data on a continuous 24/7 basis."

Philips Gets Biological With Home Lighting

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By Peter Suciu
Mar 14, 2016 12:13 PM PT

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Philips Lighting on Monday unveiled its Philips Hue white ambiance connected light bulbs.

Designed to feature more natural light, the bulbs can gradually brighten in the morning to help users wake up naturally, while at night they can dim to help ease users to sleep.
They also deliver a color temperature range -- from cool daylight (6,500K) to warm white (2,200K) -- that can be adjusted via a connected dimmer switch or through an app on a smartphone or tablet.
The bulbs can be programmed with routines throughout the day, the company said. A nightlight minimizes exposure to blue light, which can disturb sleep cycles. During the day, the light can be adjusted for work, reading, relaxing, to get energized or to unwind.
"We're at the start of a phenomenal shift in the industry with Philips Hue lighting system for the home. It enables consumers to create entirely new experiences," said Chris Worp, leader of Philips home light business, in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by company spokesperson Siarah Khan.
"Philips Hue white ambiance is the ultimate white light bulb, offering the full spectrum white light to complement your daily routines, whether it's to wake you up naturally, feel energized or fall asleep peacefully," Worp said.

Philips Hue white ambiance lamps will be available in North America and Europe this spring as a starter kit with two bulbs (800 lumens at 4,000K), a bridge that supports Apple HomeKit, and a Philips Hue dimmer switch.

Natural Light

The LED bulbs are designed to change in temperature throughout the day, which is a major step forward from traditional lighting solutions that offer only dimming and adjustment of brightness, according to Philips Lighting.
"LEDs have opened up opportunities in lighting that weren't available with incandescents or fluorescents," said lighting designer Randall Whitehead of Randall Whitehead Lighting Solutions.
"We are now able to create tunable light that varies not only in intensity but also in color temperature," he told TechNewsWorld.
"What the Philips team has done is give us the ability to align the illumination in our homes with our circadian rhythms," Whitehead added. "This is the body's response to light and darkness and what affects our wake/sleep cycle. The Hue system helps us align our interior illumination with the lighting of the natural world."

Better Sleep

Because the bulbs can align with the circadian rhythms, the body's so-called biological clock, it could mean a more restful sleep as well as a less jarring way to wake up.
"The ability to adjust color temperature means this bulb could help you sleep better," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
"It adjusts gradually to wake you up, but it is also designed to help you at night," he told TechNewsWorld.

Studies have suggested that exposure to certain light at certain wavelengths can impair sleep patterns by throwing the body's biological clock out of order.
"A light without blue for night is ideal for helping you sleep," Enderle added.

From Connected Lights to a Connect World

The Philips Hue ambient lights are designed to work with other apps, products and platforms, including the Nest Learning Thermostat, Nest Cam, Nest Protect and other smart home devices such as the Amazon Alexa. The lights also are compatible with more than 600 third-party apps.
Philips Lighting has announced partnerships with telecom company KPN, insurance firm AXA and energy company Engie to increase adoption of connected lighting, which it has called a cornerstone of the Internet of Things.
"This is a potential gateway drug to the connected home. If people adopt these connected lights, it gets them more comfortable with other automated controls," said Enderle.
"Users need to see how well it works to see the potential," he said.
"The problem is that Philips hasn't done a good job of promoting the connected lighting solutions to date, and it has undermarketed the benefits," Enderle noted. "If people don't know about [them], they might not buy the product, and that's a shame because there is a lot of potential. It needs to have the spotlight cast on it

Apple Ransomware Reveals Cert Problem

Researchers last week discovered the first ransomware in the wild aimed at Apple's hardware platform. While the threat was subdued quickly, it exposed the weakness of digital certificates in authenticating software to devices.

The ransomware appeared as a legitimate application because it contained a digital certificate stolen from a bona fide Mac developer in Turkey.
The certificate was used to sign an application of another developer and post a malicious update at the developer's website.
"Apple doesn't control what Mac software can be signed with what certificate," noted Ryan Olson, threat intelligence director of Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks, which discovered the ransomware.
"Apple just wants to confirm that the software has been signed with a certificate," he told TechNewsWorld. "That limitation is in place in the iOS App Store."

Kind of Useless

"Certificates are kind of useless," said Chet Wisniewski, a security adviser at Sophos.
"It's a nice idea, but the problem with managing the back-end certificate database and making sure the bad guys don't get them is pretty much impossible," he told TechNewsWorld.
"We're seeing people stealing legitimate certificates from legitimate developers who are insecure," Wisniewski added.
Theft, though, may be the hard way to obtain a certificate for malicious purposes.
"If I want to start selling and developing Mac software tomorrow, it takes all of five minutes to ask Apple for a certificate," Wisniewski said. "How does Apple know if I'm a good guy or a bad guy?"

Big Deal

Stolen certificates have played a role in some high-profile cyberattacks.
"Some of the most important cases in malware history have dealt with stolen certificates," said Liviu Arsene, a senior threat analyst at Bitdefender.
"Stuxnet and most advanced persistent threats rely on some form of valid certificate to get installed on machines," he told TechNewsWorld.
Certificates tell the machine that an application that wants to run on it is legitimate and need not be scrutinized by any defenses running on the machine.
"That's a big deal," Arsene noted. "That's why developers are encouraged to make sure they don't lose them and make sure they keep them safe in containers."
Nevertheless, certificates remain a choice target for criminals and spies.
"The certificate thing is a very low barrier, and we've seen it defeated at every level," Wisniewski said.
"It's super easy for criminals to bypass," he added.

Multifactor Authentication

One of the largest contributors to data breaches is compromised credentials. There's no easier way for a hacker to crack a network than masquerading as a legitimate user of that network.
However, even if a person's credentials have been compromised, multifactor authentication can foil a bandit attempting to use those credentials to compromise a network.
That form of authentication combines something you know (a username and password, for example) with something you have (a token, magnetic card or phone) or something you are (a fingerprint, iris or voice).
As effective as multifactor authentication is, though, it can create friction for users, which has proved to be a challenge for enterprises.

Cloud Solution

"Implementing multifactor authentication in the enterprise has been an uphill battle," said Chris Webber, a senior product marketing manager at Centrify. Multifactor authentication can create a burden for IT. An organization needs back-end structure to support it. IT needs to issue tokens to users and create a system to replace tokens that have been lost or are unavailable for immediate use.
In addition, there's been user resistance. "Users are sometimes not ready for it," Webber told TechNewsWorld.
"They find it too cumbersome. The CISOs I've talked to say their users just staged a revolt when they tried to implement multifactor authentication for security," he said.
"There's always a trade-off between convenience and security, and it can be too inconvenient for rank-and-file users," Webber added.
One way to make multifactor authentication more palatable to both IT and users is to move it to the cloud. With a cloud setup, there's no back-end hassle for IT to deal with, and people can use their cellphones as a token.
"Cloud availability means you don't need any dedicated infrastructure or servers on your premises, but it also means it works for things that are in the cloud, behind the firewall, on servers and in Infrastructure as a Service," Webber noted. "It's an everywhere solution."

Breach Diary

• March 6. Krebs on Security reports Seagate Technology sent W-2 forms for all present and former employees to an unauthorized third party as the result of a phishing scam.
• March 7. U.S. Justice Department appeals a decision by a federal magistrate judge rejecting its request that Apple unlock an iPhone linked to a drug dealer in New York.
• March 7. Premier Healthcare of Indiana announces it's notifying more than 200,000 patients that their personal information is at risk after a laptop was stolen from its Bloomington office.
• March 7. Ezaki Glico, a Japanese confectionary maker, announces it's investigating a report from a credit card company that as many as 83,194 data sets of personal information may have been stolen from its online shopping site.
• March 8. Home Depot agrees to pay US$13 million to compensate consumers affected by a 2014 data breach in which more than 50 million payment card numbers were stolen. The company also agreed to pay $6.5 million for 1.5 years of identity theft services for victims of the breach.
• March 8. 21st Century Oncology Holdings in Florida warns some 2.2 million patients that their personal information was stolen as a result of a data breach of its computer systems in October.
• March 8. Rosen Hotels & Resorts posts a warning to its website for customers who visited its facilities between Sept. 2, 2014, and Feb. 18, 2016, to be on the alert for fraudulent charges on their payment cards because of a compromise of its payment card network.
• March 8. Ozaukee County in Wisconsin announces as many as 200 employees may have had personal information used to file federal tax returns stolen from the county's online portal.
• March 8. SevOne, a technology company in Delaware, notifies an undisclosed number of employees that their W-2 forms were sent to an unauthorized recipient outside the company. It did not release details about the breach.
• March 8. Sony begins sending out codes for free games to users of its PlayStation Network as part of settlement of a class-action lawsuit resulting from a 2011 data breach in which personal information on 77 million people was stolen.
• March 10. UK media regulator Ofcom alerts dozens of TV companies that information they filed is at risk after a former employee downloaded as much as six years of data from the agency and offered it to his new employer, a major broadcaster.
• March 10. Sky News reports it has obtained tens of thousands of documents containing personal information of Islamic State jihadis leaked to the news outlet by a disgruntled insider.
• March 10. The Federal Trade Commission requests nine companies performing PCI audits to respond within 45 days to a set of detailed questions about how they measure compliance with PCI Security Standards.
• March 10. Staminus, a company specializing in DDoS protection systems, is attacked by hackers who broke its network backbone and posted a database for the company to the Internet.
• March 11. The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit alerts 2,808 patients and family members that their personal information is at risk by the loss of an unencrypted flash drive.

Upcoming Security Events

• March 22. Reconceptualizing the Right to Be Forgotten to Enable Transatlantic Data. Noon ET. Harvard Law School campus, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C, Room 2036 (second floor). RVSP required.
• March 24. Massachusetts Attorney General's Office Forum on Data Privacy. Ray and Maria Stata Center, Kirsch Auditorium, Room 32-123, 32 Vassar St., Cambridge, Massachusetts. RSVP required.
• March 29. Microsoft Virtual Security Summit. Noon-3 p.m. ET. Online event. Free with registration.
• March 29-30. SecureWorld Boston. Hynes Convention Center, Exhibit Hall D. Registration: conference pass, $325; SecureWorld Plus, $725; exhibits and open sessions, $30.
• March 30. Get a Grip! Taking Control of Today's Identity and Access Management Realities. 2 p.m. ET. Webinar by BrightTalk. Free with registration.
March 31-April 1. B-Sides Austin. Wingate Round Rock, 1209 N. IH 35 North (Exit 253 at Highway 79), Round Rock, Texas. Free.

• March 31. Decoding the Encryption Dilemma: A Conversation on Backdoors, Going Dark, and Cybersecurity. 9-10:30 a.m. ET. Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 1101 K St. NW, Suite 610, Washington, D.C. Free with registration.
• March 31-April 1. B-Sides Austin. Wingate Round Rock, 1209 N. IH 35 North (Exit 253 at Highway 79), Round Rock, Texas. Free.
• April 8-10. inNOVAtion! Hackathon. Northern Virginia Community College, 2645 College Drive, Woodbridge, Virginia. Free with registration.
• April 9. B-Sides Oklahoma. Hard Rock Cafe Casino, 777 West Cherokee St., Catoosa, Oklahoma. Free.
• April 12. 3 Key Considerations for Securing Your Data in the Cloud. 1 p.m. ET. BrightTalk webinar. Free with registration.
• April 13. A Better Way to Securely Share Enterprise Apps Without Losing Performance. 11 a.m. ET. BrightTalk webinar. Free with registration.
• April 15-16. B-Sides Canberra. ANU Union Conference Centre, Canberra, Australia. Fee: AU$50.
• April 16. B-Sides Nashville. Lipscomb University, Nashville, Tennessee. Fee: $10.
• April 20-21. SecureWorld Philadelphia. Sheraton Valley Forge Hotel, 480 N. Guelph Road, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Registration: conference pass, $325; SecureWorld Plus, $725; exhibits and open sessions, $30.
• April 26. 3 Key Considerations for Securing Your Data in the Cloud. 1 p.m. ET. Webinar sponsored by BrightTalk. Free with registration.
• May 4. SecureWorld Kansas City. Overland Park Convention Center, 6000 College Blvd., Overland Park, Kansas. Registration: conference pass, $195; SecureWorld Plus, $625; exhibits and open sessions, $30.
• May 11. SecureWorld Houston. Norris Conference Centre, 816 Town and Country Blvd., Houston, Texas. Registration: conference pass, $195; SecureWorld Plus, $625; exhibits and open sessions, $30.
• May 18-19. DCOI|INSS USA-Israel Cyber Security Summit. The Marvin Center, 800 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C. Hosted by George Washington University. Free.
• June 13-16. Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit. Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, 201 Waterfront St., National Harbor, Maryland. Registration: until April 15, $2,950; after April 15, $3,150; public sector, $2,595.
• June 29. UK Cyber View Summit 2016 -- SS7 & Rogue Tower Communications Attack: The Impact on National Security. The Shard, 32 London Bridge St., London. Registration: private sector, Pounds 320; public sector, Pounds 280; voluntary sector, Pounds 160

20 Sites To Get Paid For Writing And Blogging – Best Of

Writers would understand how difficult it is to write a convincing piece on something they don’t really fancy or have enough knowledge or understanding about. But with the 20 sites here that pay for your writing, you can choose to write about how-to’s, reviews, tech, ‘serious’ pieces or offer your writing services for hire.

RECOMMENDED READING:20 Websites To Sell Your EBook

1. Squidoo

Squidoo is a publishing platform and community where you can share personal write-ups through their website. Articles on Squidoo are called ‘lenses’ or pages. Once you’ve posted a lens, ads of similar or recommended products of what’s written is placed around your lens.

The ads will consist of products which are sold via their affiliate programs with Amazon, eBay and a few others. You keep half of whatever Squidoo makesoff your lens which is then payable to you via PayPal or donated to a charity of your choice.

2. HubPages

Like Squidoo, in HubPages, you write ‘hubs’ or articles about an original and useful topic. Once you’ve posted your article, ads related to what you wrote are placed. These ads are generated from Google AdSense, HubPages Ad Program and/or affiliate programs such as Amazon and eBay products.

Once your article(s) earns the minimum amount on Google AdSense ($100) or HubPages Ad Program ($50), you can chose to cash out your earnings through PayPal.

3. ContentBLVD

ContentBLVD connects blog owners to writers. To be a writer for ContentBLVD, you have to send in an application and meet its criteria, one of which is living in and being eligible to work in the U.S. Once you get in, you can start writing articles based on the topics or assignments as required by ContentBLVD’s clients.

If your content gets used, you will be paid between $12 to $48 per piece. For now, ContentBLVD is still in beta mode (at the time of this writing) but it is worth checking out if you want to quit writing spam assignments.

4. Helium

Helium is a writing community where you can choose to write about your own topic or write for one of Helium’s clients under their assignment dashboard. One way to earn money through Helium is with their assignment-based articles which are sold to publishers or brands who need content for their websites and products.

You can also earn money via their Ad Revenue Sharing program where they pay you based on the amount of traffic your personal article brings to their site. You can cash out after earning the minimum of $25.

5. Triond

Triond is another writing community where you write articles that are then posted on other popular websites. Triond allows you to post audio, video and pictures together with your written articles which are then published to relevant websites based on what you’ve written.

You can then track your article views, comments and earnings via your user dashboard. You can cash out 50% of the advertising earnings from your articles every month.

6. Epinions

If you love writing reviews (and who doesn’t?), check out Epinions. You canwrite positive or negative reviews about products available for purchase on web stores all over the internet. From the reviews, you earn Eroyalties credits through the Income Share program, which is redeemable in US dollars.

The program rewards reviewers who help other buyers make their decisions on buying or not buying the product based on your review. US residents can redeem their check with a minimum balance of $10 while non-US residents must have a minimum balance of $100.

RECOMMENDED READING:Online Shoppers: Why Online Reviews Can Save Your Day

7. Fiverr

Fiverr is a place you where you can ‘sell’ your writing skills or services(among others) for a fixed price of $5 – you get to keep $4. When someone buys whatever you’re offering to sell, they’ll pay to Fiverr first. Once you’ve completed the task at hand, $4 will be credited into your account.

You can then withdraw your earnings via PayPal. Unlock ‘levels’ by selling more and more often on Fiverr, and more opportunities and tools will be opened for your use.

8. Yahoo! Contributor Network

Writers can sign up for free to be a Yahoo! Contributor where you can find daily ‘assignments’ to write about. Many of these assignments offer up-front payments ranging from $2 to $25 (and sometimes more). Otherwise, you can create and earn from your own content as well, with payments ranging from $2 to $15.

All payments are processed through PayPal. The content you write is shared on other Yahoo subdomains like Yahoo! News, Shopping, Voices, Sports, etc which gives you very good exposure.

9. Demand Media Studios

You need to apply to write for Demand Media Studios but once accepted, you’ll be given tasks or assignments which they require you to write about. These assignments will be based on subjects which you are interested in or have knowledge of. This is determined when you first apply for the assignment.

We also have reason to believe that content on eHow originates from here, giving you and your articles even more exposure. Your articles that get published will net you from $15 to more than $30.

10. Digital Journal

Digital Journal is a community with a rather serious tone. You can contribute by creating blog posts and interacting with groups by discussing and debating the latest news and important blogs. The more you contribute, and the more attention you bring to your post, the more you can earn from the site.

Payments are done via PayPal. In order to begin contributing, you must apply to be a Digital Journalist by submitting a sample of your writing. For more details on how this works, hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

11. About.com

About.com is a renowned website which you’ve probably stumbled across more than once. Because they’re so renowned, being a guide or topic writer means you have to apply to write for specific topics.

You’ll also have to go through a two-part orientation and evaluation program to learn of their editorial standards before being accepted to write for them. There is no mention about how much you can earn from writing for them but payments are done on a monthly basis.

12. Blogging.org

This is a website for people to buy and also write articles to be sold. To earn money from Blogging.org, all you have to do is contribute quality articles of specific topics. Since the other half of the website is for people to browse and purchase content, if your article gets chosen, you’ll get paid a certain amount.

Articles go for as low as $1.50 up to $20 per piece, however there is no mention on how much you are entitled to. Premium writers are mentioned to ‘earn $30/hour and payments are done weekly. Register for free to start writing.

13. Constant Content

Constant Content is a website that allows writers to get their content sold to multiple clients. There is also a Public Request System where writers can submit fresh articles to buyers who are looking for content on a specific subject.

As you write more, you can join the Writer Pool to claim exclusive projects from clients. This is a great way to build your portfolio. Each article price is determined and paid by the client; Constant Content will take 35% while the writer receives 65% through PayPal.

14. Bukisa

Bukisa’s aim is to give knowledge to others by sharing experiences. So most of their articles are ‘How-To’ guides. This is a great place to write about a something you are interested or have knowledge in.

Earnings are based on Google AdSense within your article. It’s also a community where you can meet other writers. It’s free to sign up so just give it a go.

15. Content Row

Content Row is a company that sells content written by you. However, theirFAQ states that each content written is only sold to 1 customer and the customer can use their name instead of yours on the article. Technically you sell off your right of ownership to the content you produce.

However, you will earn 50% of whatever the customer pays and can write articles that are of interest to you. To be an author for Content Row, you’ll have to send in an application with 3 writing samples.

16. ArticleTeller

At ArticleTeller, you can be a writer for many customers who go to their site looking to purchase content. As a writer, you can earn stars as you write each article. These starts let you moe through four writing levels or rankings. You canearn more money per article if you’re higher ranked.

A Requester (buyer) will pay you a certain amount for the number of words you write, and you get to keep 81% of whatever they paid for the article, payable via PayPal.

17. Xomba

Xomba is a place with articles in the categories of Entertainment, Home, Writing, Science & History, News & Politics, Technology and Living. Ads from Google AdSense are automatically placed on the article you write.

Despite the flexibility of topics to write on, when it comes to payments, Xombasplits the earnings with you; you will receive 40%. Also, earning through Google AdSense means you can only withdraw your earnings when it reaches $100.

18. Wizzley

Writing on Wizzley can earn you money in a few different ways. Besides earning from Google AdSense, you can show related products sold on Amazon in your article, and you will receive a commission if one of the products is sold through the writing your article.

They even allow you to use pictures for sale from AllPosters, and if they get sold from the click of your article, you get a share of the earnings. Other similar ways to earn commission include Zazzle and Chitika.

19. Zujava

Zujava refers to their articles as Leaves which cover a wide variety of categories. Google AdSense ads are placed on your articles together with their affiliates program like Amazon where you can feature products within your article.

50% of the earnings from ads and products sold are sent to you via PayPal.

20. SponsoredReviews

SponsoredReviews is a place where advertisers look for bloggers to writeabout their products. This is also a site for bloggers who want to sell sponsored posts on their blogs.

Advertisers who go to SponsoredReviews have their own requirements for what they want in each post. Once you’re account and profile is on SponsoredReviews, advertisers will visit your blog and if they’re interested to buy ‘advertising space’, they’ll contact you. Bloggers can also approach advertisers directly.