The week in security: Customers want to share, but they want privacy too

Apple CEO Tim Cook was on a privacy offensive as he called for GDPR-styled legislation in the US and warned that Apple’s contemporaries were weaponizing customers’ personal information against them.

No wonder customers are opting out of data collection – and, one recent survey found, creating problems for SMBs that rely on customer data to improve customer service and responsiveness.

The conflict between privacy and data sharing was also the underlying theme for the Digi.Spark Hackathon, a weekend-long event that tasked participants with a range of cyber challenges.

This, as London’s Heathrow Airport announced plans to expand biometrics scanning across the entire airport from next year.

It’s almost as though there is nowhere people can go without being identified anymore. US president Donald Trump was having his own issues, according to reports, and Chinese firm Huawei was quick to offer advice after reports that Trump’s iPhone was being spied upon.

Poor understanding of risk-management best practices was creating “confusion” amongst firms that inherit security risks when they forge relationships with third parties.

Security researchers were considering the role of Italian hacking firm Hacking Team in a malware revival.

There were warnings about another dangerous flaw within Advantech’s WebAccess SCADA software, with the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) distributed-computing protocol posing potential issues.

Meanwhile, Apple’s new Mojave operating system was tightening security restrictions on macOS apps – a pincer movement for developers who must lift their security game or risk being unable to move their applications.