Category Archives: 2020 RSA conference

Two Exabeam employees who attended RSA Conference contract coronavirus

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Two Exabeam employees who attended the RSA Conference last month have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a statement released Tuesday. While it remains unclear when the employees began developing symptoms, Exabeam is asking anyone who came into contact with its personnel to “please be vigilant in monitoring yourself for symptoms and follow recommended guidelines to prevent possible infection.” A 45-year-old man working for Exabeam began experiencing symptoms upon his return home to Connecticut, Bloomberg first reported Tuesday. The man, who was predisposed for pneumonia because of a pre-existing heart condition, was hospitalized for respiratory distress on March 6. He is now on a ventilator in a “guarded condition,” according to Bloomberg. RSA attracted some 36,000 participants in 2020, despite some concerns about the infectious nature of the virus. Sponsors including IBM, Verizon and AT&T withdrew from the event in the days before it started on Feb. 25. Still, […]

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Huawei execs admit they don’t know whether their tech is used for surveillance

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Huawei has had a lot to deal with over the last few years. Primarily, U.S. government officials have warned that the Chinese technology firm could be used as a tool for government surveillance or other intelligence operations, specifically via backdoors in its mobile networks. The Trump administration has banned Huawei technologies’ use in the federal government and made it difficult for the company to do business in the U.S. In recent months, the Department of Justice has alleged a Huawei subsidiary, has helped Iran run surveillance operations. Huawei technicians have also been accused of helping surveil targets in Africa. In order to answer to each and every accusation, Huawei sent two of its top cybersecurity officials — Chief Security Officer Andy Purdy and Vice President of Risk Management and Partner Relations Tim Danks — to the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week. In an interview with CyberScoop, the company’s executives continued toeing the […]

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A psychiatrist fights the cyber industry’s mental health stigma — and appeals for help

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Beyond the spotlight of the cybersecurity industry’s IPO-fueled paydays and reputation-making research lives the slow burn of daily anxiety. In just about every industry, mental health is overlooked and under-appreciated. But in cybersecurity, “it’s even more stigmatized,” according to psychiatrist Ryan Louie. “Nobody wants their security clearances or career advancements somehow impacted because of perceptions about mental health,” he told CyberScoop. And so Louie, who works at a 30-bed psychiatric ward in San Francisco, took to the 2020 RSA Conference, one of the biggest cybersecurity conferences in the world, to start a conversation about mental health. “We want to get more people [from] all different industries to start thinking about this,” Louie said after his presentation at the conference on Friday. Alert and bespectacled on stage, Louie explained why, as a psychiatrist who treats patients of all stripes, he became interested in cybersecurity. “Fundamentally, I’ve always felt that the most […]

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New WiFi chip bug affects everything from Amazon’s Echo to home routers

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A large swath of internet-of-things devices are affected by a new vulnerability that could let a criminal or spy decrypt data sent over wireless connections, researchers said Wednesday. The flaw in widely used WiFi chips made by Broadcom and Cypress essentially disables the encryption key used to secure communications over popular wireless standards. Everything from certain classes of the iPhone to Amazon’s Echo could be vulnerable to attacks tested by researchers at antivirus company ESET, who discovered the vulnerability. One billion devices are affected, ESET estimated. ESET hasn’t seen any attacks in the wild exploiting this vulnerability. Yet it’s the latest reminder that, while governments in the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere are urging IoT vendors to build more security into their products, they are up against a market that often prioritizes low costs, and convenience. “These consumer IoT devices are expanding the attack surface for enterprises,” said Robert Lipovsky, senior malware researcher at ESET, […]

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