Tag Archive for: names

TrueFort Names Jill Richards Chief Marketing Officer

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WEEHAWKEN, N.J.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TrueFort, the application and cloud workload protection company, today announced Jill Richards has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer. Jill has successfully built and taken several enterprise technology brands to market leadership positions.

“Jill is an award-winning marketer with a proven track record of success taking new technologies to market, building awareness, and driving revenues,” said Sameer Malhotra, CEO of TrueFort. “We are very excited to add her blend of brand and technical marketing expertise to our executive team as we scale TrueFort’s leadership in cloud and application workload protection.”

Prior to joining TrueFort, Jill was Chief Marketing Officer for mobile security innovator Appthority until its acquisition by Symantec. She has served as CMO for disruptors in the philanthropy, e-commerce and big data spaces including Fluxx, Stitch Labs and Terracotta. Jill also co-founded and was Managing Director of boutique strategy and marketing consultancy Gray Wolf Partners, served as Vice President of Marketing at Visto Corporation (now Blackberry) and directed member acquisition and product marketing at Netscape Communications and America Online. Jill holds a BA in International Relations from Pomona College and an MBA from The Anderson School at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“TrueFort has developed truly outstanding technology for reducing enterprise business risk and security team overload with its innovative zero trust application protection platform,” said Jill. “The company is addressing a growing and unmet need for gaining real-time visibility into how applications behave and preventing data breaches before it’s too late. I’m thrilled to join the team to help build TrueFort’s market leadership.”

This hire rounds out a strong fiscal year for TrueFort which saw bookings growth of 700% in 2020 as well as the addition of top tier advisors Motti Finkelstein, former CTO of Citi and Robert Strickland of M37 Ventures. The company also received several major industry awards, including being named one of the Top 25 Cybersecurity Companies of 2020 by TSR, Top Enterprise Threat…

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Trump Vetoes Defense Policy Bill Over Base Names, Unrelated Internet Law

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President Trump on Wednesday followed through on his long public threats and vetoed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, citing complaints with provisions to rename military bases named for Confederate generals and the lack of change to an unrelated law governing Internet companies.

The annual defense policy bill passed by overwhelming, veto-proof margins in both the House and Senate earlier this month. The bill also included several provisions improving federal workers’ paid leave benefits.

The bill includes a technical fix to the paid parental leave program adopted as part of last year’s Defense authorization act, to ensure all federal employees have access to up to 12 weeks of paid time off in connection with the birth, adoption or foster placement of a child.

It also increases the cap on the amount of annual leave federal workers can carry over at the end of this year by 25%. That provision came in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has made it more difficult for employees to use their leave. The waiver of the normal leave cap will not apply to lump sum payments made to employees for unused leave when they exit federal service.

Trump vetoed the bill because of a provision requiring the Pentagon to rename military bases named for Confederate military leaders, and the lack of a provision repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that shields internet companies from liability for what users post online. Although lawmakers in both parties have dismissed this complaint as unrelated to national security, Trump has insisted the NDAA include changes to the law.

“The act fails even to make any meaningful changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, despite bipartisan calls for repealing that provision,” Trump wrote. “Section 230 facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online, which is a serious threat to our national security and election security. It must be repealed.”

The House has already scheduled votes for next week to override the veto threat, although it is unclear whether Republicans will continue to support the bill’s passage. Earlier this month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said that…

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Canada names China, Russia as key cyber-crime threats

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Canada’s electronic spy agency for the first time named countries such as China and Russia as the greatest “strategic threat” to this country, warning they are developing cyber capabilities to disrupt critical infrastructure such as electricity supply.

The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) released its annual threat assessment report Wednesday, identifying China, Russia, North Korea and Iran as the most active nations attempting to steal technology or create divisions within Canadian society.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, large medical and biopharmaceutical companies in Canada and abroad have been targeted by state-sponsored cyber threat actors attempting to steal intellectual property related to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines,” CSE said.

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“We assess that it is almost certain that state-sponsored actors will continue attempting to steal Canadian intellectual property related to combatting COVID-19 in order to support their own domestic public health response or to profit from its illegal reproduction by their own firms.”

Since the start of COVID-19, these countries have also gained access to hospitals in Canada and around the world “compromising both IT networks and…imaging products used in the healthcare industry.”

These countries are also developing cyber capabilities to disrupt Canadian critical infrastructure, such as electricity supply, but are unlikely to act in ways to cause major damage unless there is an outbreak of “international hostilities,” the report said.

In a foreword to the report, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan warned the internet is at a “crossroads” because Russia and China are pushing to change the way it is governed and “to turn it into a tool for censorship, surveillance and state control.”

CSE said Russia and Iran are also active as online trolls, using fraudulent Twitter accounts to highlight divisions in Canadian society over immigration, pipeline politics or terrorism. It cited the January 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting and the June 2019 approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project as examples of events that were targeted by trolls.

The…

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Twitter names famed hacker ‘Mudge’ as head of security

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Peiter Zatko, widely known by his hacker handle Mudge has been given the position of Twitter's head of security

Peiter Zatko, widely known by his hacker handle Mudge has been given the position of Twitter’s head of security

Social media giant Twitter Inc, under increased threat of regulation and plagued by serious security breaches, is appointing one of the world’s best-regarded hackers to tackle everything from engineering missteps to misinformation.

The company on Monday named Peiter Zatko, widely known by his hacker handle Mudge, to the new position of head of security, giving him a broad mandate to recommend changes in structure and practices. Zatko answers to CEO Jack Dorsey and is expected to take over management of key security functions after a 45- to 60-day review.

In an exclusive interview, Zatko said he will examine ‘information security, site integrity, physical security, platform integrity — which starts to touch on abuse and manipulation of the platform — and engineering.’

Zatko most recently oversaw security at the electronic payments unicorn Stripe. Before that, he worked on special projects at Google and oversaw handing out grants for projects on cybersecurity at the Pentagon’s famed Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA).

Computer hackers from International;LOpht. a 'hacker think tank,' (left to right) Brian Oblivion,Tan,Kingpin,Mudge,Weld Pond,Space Rougue and Stefan Von Neumann testified in 1998 before the Senate Governmental Affairs hearing on government computer security

Computer hackers from International;LOpht. a ‘hacker think tank,’ (left to right) Brian Oblivion,Tan,Kingpin,Mudge,Weld Pond,Space Rougue and Stefan Von Neumann testified in 1998 before the Senate Governmental Affairs hearing on government computer security

Mudge is pictured testifying before the Senate Governmental Affairs hearing on government computer security in 1998

Mudge is pictured testifying before the Senate Governmental Affairs hearing on government computer security in 1998

Zatko’s colorful career began in the 1990s, when he simultaneously conducted classified work for a government contractor and was among the leaders of Cult of the Dead Cow, a hacking group notorious for releasing Windows hacking tools in order to goad Microsoft into improving security.

Zatko will answer directly to CEO Jack Dorsey and is expected to take over the management of key security functions

Zatko will answer directly to CEO Jack Dorsey and is expected to take over the management of key security functions

‘I don’t know if anyone can fix Twitter’s security, but he’d be at the top of my list,’ said Dan Kaufman, who supervised Zatko at DARPA and now leads the advanced products group at Google.

Stamos, who once worked for Zatko’s security consultancy, called him…

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