Tag Archive for: Cohen

Congressman Cohen Announces Internet Privacy Research Grant to the University of Memphis

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Work on encrypted data over wide-area networks supported by the National Science Foundation

MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) today announced that the University of Memphis will receive a $220,133 grant from the National Science Foundation for research on privacy in the transmission of encrypted data over wide-area networks. The research is being conducted by Professor Christos Papadopoulos, who holds the Sparks Family Chair of Excellence in Global Research Leadership in the Department of Computer Science.

Congressman Cohen made the following statement:

“I congratulate the University and Professor Papadopoulos on this prestigious National Science Foundation grant award. Clearly, privacy concerns must be addressed as more personal data travels over the internet and I am pleased to see this innovative research addressing them is being undertaken at the University.”

According to the National Science Foundation abstract of the research:

“The PIMAWAT (Privacy in Internet Measurements Applied to WAN And Telematics) project will demonstrate new methods to provide data networking datasets that respect end-user privacy, while still being able to support new research in network protocols, security, privacy, and machine learning. The main insight is that *most data today sent over the wide-area network (WAN) is encrypted*; thus, the challenge is to demonstrate what data is encrypted, detect and scrub any remaining leaks, and finally anonymize the metadata (who talks to whom) before sharing data.

“The intellectual merit of PIMAWAT will be to develop new methods to anonymize network traffic at scale, then use those new algorithms to evaluate potential data leakage, and demonstrate that real-world data sources can be scrubbed for sharing while respecting privacy. PIMAWAT plans to focus the investigator’s prior work on wide-area network data traffic. As possible, it will also explore vehicle telematics as a recently developing dataset that poses unique privacy opportunities and challenges, with a device (not person) focus, yet with geolocation and application details.

“The broader impacts of PIMAWAT will be to democratize the potential to collect and share network data through…

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Cohen Milstein says cyber incident may have affected ‘small subset’ of firm’s data

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Signage is seen at the law firm of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC in their legal offices in Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S., April 28, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a plaintiff-side complex litigation firm, experienced unauthorized access to its computer systems in January, according to a notice on its website. The firm said it investigated the incident and isn’t aware of any misuse of information.

The firm disclosed Friday that it “discovered unusual activity on certain computer systems” on Jan. 23, potentially risking the security of some data. A Cohen Milstein representative said on Monday that a “small subset” of the firm’s servers and cases may have been affected.

“An exhaustive review of the data was conducted and concluded that only a small subset of Cohen Milstein’s servers and cases were potentially impacted and there is no evidence that any of the potentially impacted data was misused or that there was any attempt to misuse it,” the representative said in an email statement.

The 100-lawyer firm is the latest law firm to suffer a data security incident, as the legal industry is increasingly targeted. In the past year, firms including Jones Day, Goodwin Procter, Seyfarth Shaw and Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy have revealed they were affected by cybersecurity incidents. Firms and other legal services providers and vendors hold sensitive and confidential data about their clients and their own businesses.

Cohen Milstein, which handles large-scale class action litigation for plaintiffs across the country, has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Raleigh and Palm Beach Gardens.

When the firm discovered the unusual activity, it disconnected the affected systems from the network and launched an investigation, which found that its systems “were subject to unauthorized access by someone not connected with Cohen Milstein” on that date, the notice said.

The firm said it is notifying anyone who had personally identifying or personal health information on the systems “out of an abundance of caution,” reviewing and beefing up its policies and procedures and notifying regulators.

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Jones Day is latest major law firm…

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