Tag Archive for: Benefits

Federal computer chip funding to require security restrictions, worker benefits

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Commerce Department is opening the application process for computer chip manufacturers to access $39 billion in government support to build new factories and expand production.

All companies seeking the funds will need to show how they plan to develop a local workforce, with firms getting $150 million or more also required to provide affordable and accessible child care for their workers.

WATCH: Biden touts semiconductor technology policy in California amid tight midterm race

The funding is part of the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law last August. Grants, loans and loan guarantees are meant to revive domestic production of computer chips.

It’s aimed at sharpening the U.S. edge in military technology and manufacturing while minimizing the kinds of supply disruptions that occurred in 2021, after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when a shortage of chips shut down factory assembly lines and fueled inflation.

“This is fundamentally a national security initiative,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said as the application process began Tuesday. “We are not writing blank checks to any company that asks.”

WATCH: Biden gives speech in Ohio on boosting American manufacturing

The money is meant to support private investment in new factories and can be clawed back if companies use it on stock buybacks instead. Major companies such as Intel, TSMC, IBM, Micron and Texas Instruments have already launched aggressive expansions tied to the support, which will total $52 billion when coupled with funding for research.

Raimondo said that any company that receives support cannot expand its manufacturing capacity in foreign countries that are a source of national security concerns, a restriction that would appear to apply to China. Nor could recipients partner with firms based in those countries for the purposes of developing advanced technologies.

The Commerce Department said companies can start submitting their statements of interest on Tuesday. That’s the first step in a process that includes a draft proposal, a final proposal and a government evaluation of the proposal before reaching a final award.

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BYOD and Mobile Security Management

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Benefits of Building a Multi-prong Mousetrap for WAF Policies with ML

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The reason behind buying a market-leading Web Application Firewall (WAF) is to protect your website and web applications from malicious attacks, plus complying with industry or regional data and privacy standards. In addition to the typical OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, WAFs need to address a litany of cyber-threats from simple attacks like SQL injection to more sophisticated Advanced Bot Attacks. With the average cost of a data breach nearing 4 million dollars and the average time to identify and contain a breach nearing 280 days, enterprise security teams have an uphill battle to fight as the number and complexity of breaches grow. Fortunately, many security vendors are leveraging technologies – from automation and analytics to AI and crowdsourcing – in order to replace traditionally resource-intensive processes, for faster response times and for newer threat models. At Imperva, we recognized the growing threats of Bots from both the activity-level and threat complexity. To combat this, we’ve introduced Advanced Bot Protection (learn how Advanced Bot Protection is integrated into Imperva’s Cloud Application Security, here) that uses Machine Learning – this collects and analyzed data behavior for anomalies, and also incorporates advances in biometric data validation (e.g., mouse movements, mobile swipe, and accelerometer data, etc.) to catch malicious Botnets that attempt to hijack devices. We’re proud to say that we’ve become the industry leader in protecting and providing insights on advanced bots (download the 2021 Bad Bot Report).

Cybercriminals today are using AI, which typically runs on a supercomputer and is programmed to attack at any moment. Enterprise security professionals know the adage of ‘not bringing a knife to a gunfight’ and are continuing to seek out security solutions with advanced technologies to make their response a fair fight. Unfortunately, due to digital transformation initiatives or the post-covid era, the attack surface for enterprise continues to grow as threats continue to innovate, with the likes of botnet swarms and crypto-mining malware. Whether these threats are from individuals or nation-states, the intent to exploit has…

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Unemployment Benefits Fraud Could Cost $300 Billion Nationwide – NBC 7 San Diego

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Billions of dollars have been stolen from California’s unemployment benefits. Criminals have targeted the state’s Employment Development Department, which was unprepared for the wave of applications it received because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Those benefits have attracted the largest cyber attack in terms of fraud in American history,” said Blake Hall, CEO of the authentication company ID.me. “The fraud rates that we’re seeing are over 10 times what we usually see at federal agencies.”

ID.me is a company used to verify that people are who they say they are. Hall says they’ve worked to verify identities everywhere from the Social Security Administration to doctors writing prescriptions for medication.

“Identity verification is an enormously complex space,” said Hall.

Hall says if you had talked about increasing the security of California’s unemployment department’s computer systems a year and a half ago, no one would have taken you seriously.

“EDD, like many of the other state workforce agencies we work with, are on 1980s technology,” said Hall. “We have a duty to sound the alarm bell to say if you’re going to distribute $600, $700 billion in aid, you better make sure you have the right security measures in place.”

Part of the problem is many of our authentication systems are out of date.

“We have been focusing on where the bad guys were, not where they are,” said James Lee, COO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. “The whole unemployment fraud situation has been the biggest wakeup call in a decade.”

That fraud is hurting people who actually need the money. Hall says criminals are applying for the checks in California because it is a richer state. That means the fake applications are clogging up the system.

“We have always seen a fraud rate north of 50% every single time,” said Hall. “If a criminal files in the name of somebody who needs unemployment, if that person files second, they’re going to get locked out.”

That means if someone has your information, they could steal the money that you qualify for. Hall showed NBC 7 screenshots from chat rooms on the dark web listing drivers licenses and other identifying information for sale.

“When you…

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