Australia's buoyant market for security products and services is outpacing the world and continues to attract international attention, with DNS-protection firm Infoblox ramping up its local team – addressing an issue becoming more pointed with the likes of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. Also pushing into the Australian market was iSIGHT, a threat-intelligence firm that opened its first local office this month and is predicting strong growth as demand accelerates.
Security issues due to too-complacent mobile users are nothing new – and experts were warning of potentially choppy waters ahead as the new iPhone 6S hit the streets – but vulnerabilities involving Apple removed a number of malware-infected apps from its App Store – are. Apple followed up with an effort to wean Chinese developers off of the malware-laden pirated version of Xcode that they had used to build the apps, offering faster access to legitimate copies of Xcode.
In more business-as-usual news Adobe fixed 23 critical flaws in its September Flash Player update, while a Google security researcher flagged ongoing bugs in security software from Kaspersky Labs.
Copyright holders were keeping quiet on a decision by new prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to push responsibility for online piracy regulation from the Attorney-General's office back to the communications portfolio.
Even as a report suggested healthcare firms are three times as likely to see data breaches than other companies, IBM is working to stop the siphoning of corporate information onto cloud-based storage systems. It was a trend also addressed by Taiwanese service provider Datiphy, and might be a good idea for the likes of recently-hacked US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) revised upwards the number of people whose fingerprints were stolen to 5.6m, up from 1.1m.
Cisco was reportedly developing a partnership with a Chinese partner to improve access to the local market. India's draft laws on encryption – suggesting that service providers keep unencrypted copies of all communication – drew concerns and were eventually withdrawn. The draft policies were in stark contrast to recommendations that US Congress members use encrypted smartphone apps like WhatsApp and Signal instead of conventional mobile networks.
Also on the international front, US national security advisor Susan Rice warned China on cyberespionage, even as a mooted US law requiring tech companies to report terrorist activity was dropped amidst concerns its provisions were overbroad and under-specific.