Facebook Inc. on Tuesday said it is banning ads promoting bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as well as those about initial coin offerings (ICOs) and binary options.
The social networking giant said in a blog that it is making the move because these are “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception,” the Menlo Park-based company said in the blog. “That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.”
The move comes a few weeks after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said he would look into cryptocurrencies as part of a promise to correct persistent problems at his social networking business — including the proliferation of hate speech and misinformation.
He cited encryption and cryptocurrency as “important countertrends” that could help in the fight against those problems at that time. But he also warned “they come with the risk of being harder to control. I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.”
Facebook said it is being intentionally broad now in the new ban, barring any advertising for crypto, ICOs and binary options on all of its platforms, including Instagram.
“We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve,” it said.
A report from Ernst & Young last week said that about 10 percent of the $3.7 billion raised through ICOs last year was stolen. It also said that only 25 percent of ICOs hit their fundraising goals in November, versus 90 percent in June.
Binary options trading involves betting on whether certain financial indices will rise or fall by a certain time. It’s the type of all-or-nothing investment that U.K. regulators earlier this month cracked down on, saying that many were operating illegally.
Hacking and data breaches have been in the public mindset for a long time. But as more technology is integrated into our daily lives and the workplace, you and your firm have become even more susceptible to a hack – highlighting the importance of cybersecurity, an industry Arizona is on the frontline of shaping. You’ve probably seen the splashy headlines about data breaches hitting big names like Banner Health, Chick-fil-A, Equifax, Target, the U.S. Postal Service, Sony, Yahoo! and the list goes on. Like many other people, you might have brushed off those headlines or yawned, thinking you’re glad not to have to manage those damage control teams. But in this growing world of cybercrime and technology, it’s no longer a matter of if you’ll be playing damage control after a data breach at your firm, it’s a matter of when. “Small and medium-sized businesses are drastically underestimating the risk by just thinking, ‘They’re not interested in me,’” says Michael Cocanower, founder and president of Phoenix-based itSynergy. “In fact, hackers are very interested in you. They realize, ‘I can spend six months hacking into Target, or I can spend this afternoon hacking into your 20-person company and make $10,000 off that.’” Cybercrime has cost businesses, individuals, governments and the world game-changing amounts of money. Cost of cybercrime Cybersecurity Ventures, a research and market intelligence firm, reports the cost of cybercrime will grow from $3 trillion in 2015 to $6 trillion by 2021. United Kingdom-based research firm Juniper Research predicts cybercrime will cost businesses alone more than $2 trillion by 2019. However you cut it, cybersecurity will only get more serious and more important as time moves on. Many businesses are unprepared, with 87 percent of small businesses reporting that they do not have a formal written Internet security policy, according to the National Cyber Security Alliance. Also, The National Cyber Security Alliance reports that 60 percent of small companies are unable to stay in business six months after a cyberattack. Cocanower says business owners need to be much more aware of cybercrime and the importance of having their cybersecurity systems up to snuff. There are a variety of ways hackers can infiltrate your business and you need to be aware of them, Cocanower says. Phishing scams and downloading malware or viruses are probably the most common and known. But you could also be compromised by inputting your password on a website you think is real, using open Wi-Fi, the list of risks goes on. Nothing Web-connected is safe either. Your smart phone, watch, car and Web-connected toaster oven are just the newest items susceptible to attack. Sure, you can download the latest anti-virus software, hire a skilled cybersecurity team (if you can find people who are qualified and available) and do 100 different things to keep your company secure, but that’s still not enough. Why? “The weakest link in any system is the human being,” Cocanower says.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Wednesday told U.S. government agencies to remove Kaspersky Lab products from their networks, saying it was concerned the Moscow-based cyber security firm was vulnerable to Kremlin influence and that using its anti-virus software could jeopardize national security.
Rivetz.com is a company that I have been following very closely for several years now.
There have been a number of high-profile hacks recently, evidently demonstrating that hiding and using secrest on the Internet is still really difficult. From the $5 million in bitcoin lost at Bitstamp to the Sony hack, it is clear that a new approach to the problem is required. Recently, I was at CES, and the IoT is moving along at breakneck speed, with barely and afterthought for cyber security. All of the things end up controlled by a smartphone or PC. The integrity of the connection from your computing device to your house, car or medical equipment will need the same peer-to-peer security that bitcoin requires. So how should we all be approaching the problem? All private keys should be protected by tamper-resistant hardware — a device, not the operating system. Smart cards or USB tokens are great solutions, but the embedded trusted execution environment provides the built-in solution we all desire. It also provides the tamper-resistant security to match that of a SIM module, but it is not controlled by the carrier. In addition to access, the instruction sent to a cloud service or another device should be encrypted (for privacy) and signed (for integrity), assuring that the intended action is not corrupted. This critical step is mostly overlooked on today’s systems. Protecting the instruction assures that the intended action is actually what happens. Instructions are critical interactions between the client and the cloud. Rivetz leverages the trusted execution environment to assure the formation of the highest quality instructions. Trusted user input and output is by far the hardest piece of the puzzle. This is where an uncorrupted presentation of the intended transaction to the user and the proper collection of the user’s consent is executed. Secure display in combination with a secure PIN or secure biometrics is ultimately required to be fully effective. The technology to do this is just now being integrated but is not available on most platforms. Intel has been at the forefront of trusted display for a number of years. Rivetz is now demonstrating the trusted user interface on Intel and on some Samsung Galaxy Note 4 phablets released in December.
BRIVAS LABS brings advancements to revolutionize USER identity in the privacy ecosystem. Identity management is vital in our new cyber and BRIVAS PHALANX v 1.0 solves the user identity problem leveraging existing thru augmented authentication with real-time + contextual biometric encryption. Biometrics are increasingly used as a way to verify a person’s identity. As organizations become more security-conscious, biometric-based solutions are set to grow in terms of usage and importance as ability to accurately capture and compute increase. Given the growing global security threats, governments around the world have long known that the biometric elements of identity verification increase security, augment accountability, and provide risk and liability mitigation. BRIVAS is a computer vision and machine learning specialist dealing in biometric fusion and contextual, real time verification on smartphone technology. Our digital needs require a continuous search for a cost-effective means of reducing fraud and gaining accurate USER information. BRIVAS accomplishes this with GPU and CLOUD processing at an extremely affordable and scalable approach. BRIVAS is able to pattern the events leading up to an authentication, then qualify a real-time, singular event data structure actually encrypted with our proprietary biometric facial verification technology.
The human face plays an important role in our social interaction, conveying people’s identity and now in BRIVAS’ man & machine binding qualities. Using identity as a key to security, coupled with trusted computing adds greater accuracy to the entire security system. As compared with other biometrics systems using fingerprint/palmprint and iris, face recognition has distinct advantages because of its non-contact process which leverages our streaming methods to detect liveness, intent to authenticate, 3D verification, and real-time contextual existence. Beyond authentication and verification, we hold patent pending on a unique method to generate secret encryption/decryption keys tied specifically to the unique architecture of an individual’s unique facial structure to generate keys. BRIVAS’ contextual face recognition process has a highly diverse range of applications, extending from crime fighting, border control, to access control for sensitive areas and (limited access control) that blend to a smart, elastic format to provide greater accuracy and assurances while keeping cost in mind Right now, we are implementing our solution in the electronic medical records industry for a one-touch release of people’s medical records. We would market to EMR/health technology companies who sell to Healthcare providers. we would be using the EMR/Health technology companies as a strategic partner channel to go after the Accountable Care Organizations, mid-sized and small hospitals and independent physician/clinics. To summarize, BRIVAS IDENTITY’ technology is the future and companies are quickly responding to the ease of use as well as the many different uses for it.
The Cyber Security Report 