We round up interesting research and reporting about security and privacy from around the web. This month: healthy GDPR, gender rebalance, cookie walls crumble, telecom threats and incident response par excellence.

A healthy approach to data protection

Ireland’s Department of Health is now considering amendments to the Health Research Regulations, with data protection as one of the areas under review. The Health Research Consent Declaration Committee, which was formed as part of the Health Research Regulations made under GDPR, confirmed the possible amendments in a statement on its website.

GDPR triggered significant changes to health research because of the obligations on data protection impact assessments. Our senior data protection consultant Tracy Elliott has blogged about this issue.

The newly announced engagement process may lead to changes to the Health Research Regulations “where any such amendments are sound from a policy perspective and legally feasible”, the HRCDC said. There’s a link to a more detailed statement on the proposed amendments at this link.

A welcome improvement

Women now make up almost a quarter of information security workers, according to new figures from ISC(2). For years, female participation in security roles hovered around the 10-11 per cent mark. The industry training and certification group’s latest statistics show that figure is much higher than was generally thought.

Some of this increase is due to the group widening its parameters beyond pure cybersecurity roles. The full report shows that higher percentages of women security professionals are attaining senior roles. This includes chief technology officer (7 per cent of women vs. 2 per cent of men), vice president of IT (9 per cent vs. 5 per cent), IT director (18 per cent vs. 14 per cent) and C-level or executive (28 per cent vs. 19 per cent).

“While men continue to outnumber women in cybersecurity and pay disparity still exists, women in the field are buoyed by higher levels of education and certifications, and are finding their way to leadership positions in higher numbers,” ISC(2) said.

The trends are encouraging for any girls or women who are considering entering the profession; as the saying goes, if you can see it, you can be it. (The report’s subtitle is ‘young, educated and ready to take charge’.) After the report was released, Kelly Jackson Higgins at Dark Reading tweeted a link to her story from last year about good practice for recruiting and retaining women in security.

Great walls of ire

You know those annoying website pop-ups that ask you to accept cookies before reading further? They’re known as cookie walls or tracker walls, and the Dutch data protection authority has declared that they violate the General Data Protection Regulation. If visitors can’t access a website without first agreeing to be tracked, they are being forced to share their data. The argument is that this goes against the principle of consent, since the user has no choice but to agree if they want to access the site.

Individual DPAs have taken different interpretations on GDPR matters. SC Magazine quoted Omar Tene of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, who described the Dutch approach as “restrictive”.

This might be a case of GDPR solving a problem of its own making: The Register notes that cookie consent notices showed a massive jump last year, from 16 per cent in January to 62.1 per cent by June.

Hanging on the telephone

Is your organisation’s phone system in your threat model? New research from Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre and Trend Micro lifts the lid on network-based telecom fraud and infrastructure attacks. The Cyber-Telecom Crime Report includes case studies of unusual attacks to show how they work in the real world.

By accessing customers’ or carriers’ accounts, criminals have a low-risk alternative to traditional forms of financial fraud. Among the favoured tactics are vishing, which is a voice scam designed to trick people into revealing personal or financial information over the phone. ‘Missed call’ scams, also known as Wangiri, involve calling a number once; when the recipient calls back, thinking it’s a genuine call, they connect to a premium rate number. The report includes the eye-watering estimate that criminals make €29 billion per year from telecom fraud.

Trend Micro’s blog takes a fresh angle on the report findings, focusing on the risks to IoT deployments and to the arrival of 5G technology. The 57-page report is free to download from this link. Europol has also launched a public awareness page about the problem.  

From ransom to recovery

Norsk Hydro, one of the world’s largest aluminium producers, unexpectedly became a security cause célèbre following a “severe” ransomware infection. After the LockerGoga variant encrypted data on the company’s facilities in the US and Europe, the company shut its global network, switched to manual operations at some of its plants, and stopped production in others.

Norsk Hydro said it planned to rely on its backups rather than paying the ransom. Through it all, the company issued regular updates, drawing widespread praise for its openness, communication and preparedness. Brian Honan wrote: “Norsk Hydro should be a case study in how to run an effective incident response. They were able to continue their business, although at a lower level, in spite of their key systems being offline. Their website contains great examples of how to provide updates to an issue and may serve as a template for how to respond to security breaches.”

Within a week, most of the company’s operations were back running at capacity. Norsk Hydro has released a video showing how it was able to recover. Other victims weren’t so lucky. F-Secure has a good analysis of the ransomware that did the damage, as does security researcher Kevin Beaumont.

Links we liked

Remember the Melissa virus? Congratulations, you’re old: that was 20 years ago. MORE

New trends in spam and phishing, whose popularity never seems to fade. MORE and MORE

For parents and guardians: videos to spark conversations with kids about online safety. MORE

A look behind online heists on Mexican banks that netted perpetrators nearly $20 million. MORE

While we’re on the subject, more cybercriminal tactics used against financial institutions. MORE

This is a useful high-level overview of the NIST cybersecurity framework. MORE

This campaign aims to hold tech giants to account for fixing security and privacy issues. MORE

How can security awareness programmes become more effective at reducing risk? MORE

An excellent security checklist for devices and accounts, courtesy of Bob Lord. MORE

Shodan Monitor alerts organisations when their IoT devices become exposed online. MORE