So I have the new ADT Pulse system. It’s pretty amazing. I’ve had a “plain old” system for the past 15 years, which has been upgraded 3 times. The standard home alarm system covers monitoring, doors, windows, motion and glass.

This system has all that plus wireless cameras inside, remote controlled thermostats, remote controlled/timed light controls, flood sensors in the mechanical room and laundry, full web access to the cameras, an iPad looking touchpad that controls it, an iPhone app to control/monitor its cameras/stat it from anywhere, and a web dashboard that lets you control every single aspect of each control to inform you of activity or to set up a “reaction” to an incident.

This home alarm system is very simple and easy to program and once you dive into the system it give you a tremendous amount of “awareness” of the goings on in and around your home and it does it automatically.

I haven’t spent a lot of time on the programming just yet, but just by default the basic settings will alert you via text and email whenever anything happens. You also have the Full Article…

A California lawmaker has introduced a bill that would update the state’s current data breach notification law, SB-1386.  The new bill would include additional requirements for organizations that lose sensitive data.  This is the third time the bill has been proposed.

The proposal, introduced Thursday by Democratic state Senator Joe Simitian would require breach notification letters contain specifics of the incident.  This would include the type of personal information exposed, a description of what happened, and advice on steps to take to protect oneself from identity theft. The new law would also require organizations suffering a breach affecting 500 or more people to submit a copy of the alert letter to the state attorney general’s office.

The proposed bill has gone to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger twice now, but both times was vetoed. 

Simitian said in a news release that he hopes the new administration, led by Governor Jerry Brown, “will give this issue a fresh look.”

“This new measure makes modest but helpful changes for consumers,” Simitian said. “By requiring n

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Writing in American Banker this week, ITAC President Anne Wallace challenged RSA conference-goers to rethink computer security in a way that compels consumers to embrace it. It’s time they think more like consumer product developers and marketers, and makes her case in the excerpt below:

Consumer electronics companies are masters at understanding human behavior and creating products that anticipate and respond to human wants and needs. The most successful devices, and the applications that support them, are indispensable to their owners. By understanding how we behave today and what we will want tomorrow, Apple, Motorola and Research In Motion create compelling relationships between device and user.

The smartest processes, and the best technologies, are not effective if people do not want to use them, avoid them or will not update them.  Technology and processes depend on user adoption and consistent use to be effective. Th

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A group of hackers calling themselves Goatse Security claimed they had exploited a security flaw in AT&T’s 3G network and had gained access to personal information belonging to thousands of iPad users.  On Tuesday, Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer were arrested in connection with this June incident.

While the original number of compromised accounts was thought to have been 114,000, new figures reveal that personal data was obtained from 120,000 iPad 3G users. Ac

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Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post from the ITAC blog.  There have been a number of stories this week that point to the simple fact that hackers are gaining traction, momentum and some would even say getting more powerful.

We recently wrote a post about a PandaLabs report that highlights how hackers are getting able to be more financially successful these days. And, as we all know, were there are dollars people will follow — even if that have a weaker morale code than the rest of us. On top of that, we also did a post about a report from Symantec that stated that cyber attack toolkits are becoming more accessible and easier to use, allowing criminals with little technical expertise to turn to cybercrime. As a

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Now more than ever, criminal hackers are hacking into databases that contain Social Security numbers and using the numbers to open new financial accounts. Criminals use stolen Social Security numbers to obtain mobile phones, credit cards, and even bank loans. Some victims whose Social Security numbers fell into the hands of identity thieves have even had their mortgages refinanced and their equity stripped.

WTEN.com reports an arrest has been made of an individual alleged to have illegally downloaded personal information, including Social Security numbers of about 15,000 people.

Police arrested a man “for stealing the collection of Social Security numbers from computers belonging to contractors working for the Office of Disability and Temporary Assistance, which is the New York state agency that decides some initial disability claims for Social Security.”

As in most cases of data theft, the Office of Disability and Temporary Assistance will notify and provide credit monitoring services to affected individuals.

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s Chronology of Data Breaches, more than 500 million sensitive records have been breached in the past five years. The Chrono Full Article…