Tag Archive for: review

Review board to issue report detailing Microsoft’s lapses in China hack: report

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The US Cyber Safety Review Board is expected to issue a report detailing lapses by Microsoft that led to a targeted Chinese hack of top US government officials‘ emails last year, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The intrusion, which ransacked the Microsoft Exchange Online mailboxes of 22 organizations and more than 500 individuals around the world, was “preventable” and “should never have occurred”, the Washington Post said, citing the report.”While no organization is immune to cyberattack from well-resourced adversaries, we have mobilized our engineering teams to identify and mitigate legacy infrastructure, improve processes, and enforce security benchmarks,” Microsoft said.

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“Our security engineers continue to harden all our systems against attack and implement even more robust sensors and logs to help us detect and repel the cyber-armies of our adversaries. We will also review the final report for additional recommendations,” it added.

The Cyber Safety Review Board did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Last year, the tech giant said the Chinese hack of senior officials at the US State and Commerce departments stemmed from the compromise of a Microsoft engineer’s corporate account penetrated by a hacking group it dubbed Storm-0558.

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The hack is alleged to have stolen hundreds of thousands of emails from top American officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink.

The Cyber Safety Review Board’s report blames shoddy cybersecurity practices, lax corporate culture and a deliberate lack of transparency over what Microsoft knew about the origins of the breach, according to the Washington Post.

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Quick Heal Total Security Review

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Graduating from a simple antivirus to a security suite gets you such added features as a firewall, spam protection, parental control, and more. The entry-level suite from Quick Heal has all the expected features, though they don’t all deliver top-of-class performance. An upgrade to Quick Heal Total Security, reviewed here, adds a nice collection of useful security features, all of which work as promised, though at a high price. While it is Quick Heal’s best offering, it doesn’t challenge Editors’ Choice winner Bitdefender Total Security for top security mega-suite. Bitdefender’s feature set is even broader, it gets great lab scores, and its pricing is more in line with the competition.

How Much Does Quick Heal Total Security Cost?

A one-year license for Quick Heal Total Security lists for $75. That’s not a lot, but several competing top-tier suites come in even lower. You pay $59.99 per year for ESET or ZoneAlarm Extreme Security, for example. G Data Total Security runs $49.95 per year, and you can take home K7’s top suite for just $35.

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Buying protection for just one computer is less common these days, so most security companies offer discounted packs of three, five, or more licenses. Three-packs of ESET, G Data, K7 Ultimate Security, and ZoneAlarm come in below Quick Heal’s one-device price, and Trend Micro Internet Security is just over, at $79.95. As for Quick Heal itself, there’s no volume discount, so protecting three devices has a list price of $225.

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Bitdefender Total Security charges $99.99 per year to protect five devices, and $109.99 for 10—the company doesn’t bother selling single or three-pack licenses. Norton 360 Deluxe runs a bit more, $119.99 per year, but that gets you five suite licenses, five powerful VPN licenses, and 50GB of online storage for your backups. Even at the current discount price of $30, Quick Heal would cost $150 for five licenses and $300 for 10.

Like other Quick Heal products, the lack of a volume discount makes this suite expensive if you…

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TikTok faces national security review in Canada: minister

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TikTok faces national security review in Canada: minister

by AFP Staff Writers

Ottawa (AFP) Mar 15, 2024






Canada is conducting a national security review of Chinese-owned TikTok’s proposed expansion of the popular video app in this country, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Friday.

In a teleconference from Italy after meeting with his G7 counterparts, Champagne said the review under the Investment Canada Act had been quietly initiated in September 2023.

“We have launched a national security review (of TikTok),” he told reporters.

“Once we have completed that,” he said, “we’ll inform Canadians about any actions that we decide to take with respect to that particular topic.”

“I’ll have more to say when our review is completed,” the minister added without saying when that would be.

Champagne noted a March 2023 announcement that foreign investments in Canada’s interactive digital media sector would face “intense scrutiny.”

Those found to be “propagating disinformation or manipulating information in a manner that is injurious to Canada’s national security” could face mitigation measures or even a ban, according to the policy statement.

The Canadian review is not related to a proposed US bill that would force its Chinese owners to sell or see it banned in the United States.

That bill is partly fuelled by concerns over Chinese national security laws that compel organizations to assist with intelligence gathering.

TikTok is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd.

“We’re watching, of course, the debate going on in the United States,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday after the US House of Representatives passed the bill, which still needs approval from the Senate.

Ottawa banned TikTok from federal government mobile devices in February 2023.

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Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus – Review 2024

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Every antivirus app must handle the core capabilities of removing existing malware infestations and defending against future attacks. Some stick with those core features, while others layer on so many bonuses that they resemble security suites. Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus, as the name suggests, sticks with the essentials. It doesn’t receive much attention from the independent testing labs, but it earned worthy scores in our hands-on tests. Even so, it can’t compete with our Editors’ Choice winners, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus and Norton AntiVirus Plus, both of which receive excellent lab scores and go way beyond the basics of antivirus protection.

How Much Does Total Defense Antivirus Cost?

Commercial antivirus utilities’ prices are most commonly just under $40 for a year of protecting one PC. A Total Defense subscription costs $49.99 per year, but that gets you three licenses. A three-device subscription for ESET or ZoneAlarm costs about the same. Three licenses for Bitdefender, Emsisoft, or Malwarebytes will run you $10 more. McAfee’s antivirus costs $64.99 per year, but with that subscription, you can install protection on every Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and ChromeOS device in your household.

Like Trend Micro, Total Defense doesn’t offer a broad range of pricing options. If you want more licenses, you upgrade, moving higher up the food chain. For example, you pay $79.99 for Total Defense Premium Internet Security if you want five licenses.

Need more than five? For $99.99 per year, you get 10 licenses to install Total Defense Ultimate Internet Security on your Windows, macOS, or Android devices. Most competitors charge more for 10 security suite licenses.

While not as well-known as McAfee, Norton, or ZoneAlarm Extreme Security, Total Defense matches these companies’ virus-free guarantees. If malware gets past the antivirus, Total Defense techs will remotely dig in to remove it….

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