On June 5, 2014, individuals and organizations around the world will rally to support Fight For Freedom’s “Reset the Net” initiative. This effort suggests that users adopt tools that provide end-to-end encryption as one mechanism to counter mass surveillance efforts by government agencies.
Government entities like the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) cast a wide net in their surveillance efforts. As country and world citizens, we all benefit from the legitimate success of these agencies — when they counter criminal or terrorist elements that intend harm to us. However, it’s important to find the right tradeoff between privacy and protection — a challenging question that the framers of US Constitution wrestled with over 200 years ago when writing the Fourth Amendment. Fight for Freedom advocates end-to-end encryption as a mechanism to counter passive, widespread, un-targeted surveillance and preserve personal privacy, while allowing government agencies to continue the targeted surveillance of specific individuals or organizations that pose a threat to their citizens.
But, government agencies are not the only entities in the unprotected seas of the internet. Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev was identified Monday as the leader of a vast group of internet criminals that compromised hundreds of thousands of computers, leading to over $100 million in identified losses to date.
A recent United States federal lawsuit against a popular cloud and email provider asserted that email sent through the cloud provider’s servers had been scanned and indexed in order to provide targeted ads. Indeed, the privacy policies of all the major cloud providers usually contain language that allows the provider to “use” data uploaded to their services to generate derivative services.
The end-to-end encryption recommendations of the Fight for Freedom’s Reset the Net are important because they help individuals and companies ensure that their data is ONLY used for approved purposes. It helps us set a fair and reasonable bar for the tradeoff between privacy and legitimately beneficial services (in the case of government agencies and service providers). And it protects us without compromise for dangerous, criminal elements that inhabit the Internet in abundance.
Ohanae is proud to support the Reset the Net initiative with Ohanae's cloud privacy protection software. Our software provides end-to-end encryption for data at rest locally, during transmission to cloud storage, and at rest in the cloud. It prevents unauthorized use by ANYONE except the owner at all points. Ohanae also provides secure file sharing for similar protection when you need to collaborate with others, and secure password management to protect against damaging account compromises.
Ohanae software is free for the first device, and available on iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac OS. Through referral bonuses, up to five complimentary years of premium service may be easily earned. Please navigate to http://www.ohanae.com to learn more about Ohanae and get started today!
Showing posts with label nsa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nsa. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Trust No One
The fundamental fabric of the Internet has been destroyed.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and intelligence agencies in allied countries have found ways to circumvent the encryption used on the Internet, according to stories published by the New York Times and the Guardian.
According to the reports, NSA and other spy agencies have used a variety of means to defeat encryption, including supercomputers, court orders and behind-the-scenes agreements with technology companies. In an era in which businesses, as well as the average consumer, trust secure networks and technologies for sensitive transactions and private communications online, it is incredibly destructive for the NSA to add flaws to such critical infrastructure. The NSA seems to be operating on the assumption that any vulnerabilities it builds into core Internet technologies can only be exploited by itself and its global partners.
It appears that any possible way that the NSA might have bypassed encryption was almost certainly due to faulty, incomplete or invalid key management processes or simple human error, rather than through the cryptography itself. The new revelations raise major concerns from Internet users over who they can trust. We should assume that all big companies are now in cahoots with the NSA and cannot be trusted. You cannot trust any company that makes any claims of the security of their products. Not one cloud provider, not one software provider, not one hardware manufacturer.
Businesses are acutely sensitive to government information requests because they are also beholden to privacy laws, such as HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. So, in highly regulated industries, such as financial services and healthcare, businesses must strike a balance between government oversight and consumer privacy. They feel they cannot comply with local privacy laws and have their data subject to the Patriot Act.
The U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 came along in the early days of the Internet. The act did not require government investigators to obtain a search warrant for requesting access to emails and messages that are stored in online repositories. In 2001, the Patriot Act further added to the authority of the federal government to search records under its "Library Records" provision, offering a wide range of personal material into which the government could delve.
At Ohanae, we believe that ultimate security and compliance boils down to being able to protect data and logins. Trying to control the device (especially BYOD), in many cases, is neither necessary nor sufficient. At the end of the day, if you have the ability to protect the data and make sure that your data is not leaking, you do not have to touch the rest of the device.
Ohanae® Cloud Privacy Protection is a patent pending technology for securing data and logins without requiring storage of any associated credentials by the user either locally or in the cloud. Users’ data is transparently encrypted in the cloud and locally on their devices, and passwords cannot be guessed, phished, or stolen with Ohanae’s sophisticated endpoint protection mechanism.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and intelligence agencies in allied countries have found ways to circumvent the encryption used on the Internet, according to stories published by the New York Times and the Guardian.
According to the reports, NSA and other spy agencies have used a variety of means to defeat encryption, including supercomputers, court orders and behind-the-scenes agreements with technology companies. In an era in which businesses, as well as the average consumer, trust secure networks and technologies for sensitive transactions and private communications online, it is incredibly destructive for the NSA to add flaws to such critical infrastructure. The NSA seems to be operating on the assumption that any vulnerabilities it builds into core Internet technologies can only be exploited by itself and its global partners.
It appears that any possible way that the NSA might have bypassed encryption was almost certainly due to faulty, incomplete or invalid key management processes or simple human error, rather than through the cryptography itself. The new revelations raise major concerns from Internet users over who they can trust. We should assume that all big companies are now in cahoots with the NSA and cannot be trusted. You cannot trust any company that makes any claims of the security of their products. Not one cloud provider, not one software provider, not one hardware manufacturer.
Businesses are acutely sensitive to government information requests because they are also beholden to privacy laws, such as HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. So, in highly regulated industries, such as financial services and healthcare, businesses must strike a balance between government oversight and consumer privacy. They feel they cannot comply with local privacy laws and have their data subject to the Patriot Act.
The U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 came along in the early days of the Internet. The act did not require government investigators to obtain a search warrant for requesting access to emails and messages that are stored in online repositories. In 2001, the Patriot Act further added to the authority of the federal government to search records under its "Library Records" provision, offering a wide range of personal material into which the government could delve.
At Ohanae, we believe that ultimate security and compliance boils down to being able to protect data and logins. Trying to control the device (especially BYOD), in many cases, is neither necessary nor sufficient. At the end of the day, if you have the ability to protect the data and make sure that your data is not leaking, you do not have to touch the rest of the device.
Ohanae® Cloud Privacy Protection is a patent pending technology for securing data and logins without requiring storage of any associated credentials by the user either locally or in the cloud. Users’ data is transparently encrypted in the cloud and locally on their devices, and passwords cannot be guessed, phished, or stolen with Ohanae’s sophisticated endpoint protection mechanism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)