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Category: security – Page 54

Face recognition tools are computational models that can identify specific people in images, as well as CCTV or video footage. These tools are already being used in a wide range of real-world settings, for instance aiding law enforcement and border control agents in their criminal investigations and surveillance efforts, and for authentication and biometric applications. While most existing models perform remarkably well, there may still be much room for improvement.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have recently created a new and promising for face recognition. This architecture, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, is based on a strategy to extract from images that differs from most of those proposed so far.

“Holistic methods using (CNNs) and margin-based losses have dominated research on face recognition,” Zhonglin Sun and Georgios Tzimiropoulos, the two researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore.

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Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here.

The adoption of a password-free future is hyped by some of the biggest tech companies, with Apple, Google, and Microsoft committing to support the FIDO standard this past May. Along with the Digital ID Bill reintroduced to Congress this past July, we’re poised to take a giant leap away from the password to a seemingly more secure digital future. But as we approach a post-password world, we still have a long way to go in ensuring the security of our digital lives.

As companies continue developing solutions to bridge us to a passwordless world, many have prioritized convenience over security. Methods of two-factor authentication (2FA) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) such as SMS or email verification — or even the use of biometrics — have emerged as leading alternatives to the traditional username/password. But here’s the catch: Most of these companies are validating devices alone and aren’t properly leveraging this technology, leaving the door open for bad actors.

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Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here.

On September 15, 2022, the Ethereum network migrated from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism called the Merge. Apart from reducing energy consumption by 99%, the Merge laid the foundations for building a highly secure and scalable blockchain. However, despite the benefits of the Merge, it also marks a regression in privacy, which is a significant concern for Ethereum users.

Privacy generally takes a backseat to other core blockchain topics such as decentralization and scalability. In fact, blockchain networks’ zeal for data transparency often comes at the cost of compromising individual and enterprise privacy. But without a privacy-focused approach — even one that gives users optional privacy — Ethereum decentralized applications (dapps) will repeat the same mistakes of Web2 applications.

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Leading Canada’s Bio-Safety & Security R&D — Dr. Loren Matheson PhD, Defence Research and Development Canada, Department of National Defence.

Dr. Loren Matheson, Ph.D. is a Portfolio Manager at the Center For Security Science, at Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC — https://www.canada.ca/en/defence-research-development.html), which is a special operating agency of the Department of National Defence, whose purpose is to provide the Canadian Armed Forces, other government departments, and public safety and national security communities with knowledge and technology.

With a focus on the chemical and biological sciences at DRDC, Dr. Matheson develops and leads safety and security R&D projects with government partners, industry and academia. In addition, she spearheaded an effort to establish a virtual symposium series, developed communications products to explain their program to national and international partners, and helped established a science communication position.

Dr. Matheson previously served as both a senior science advisor within the Office of the Chief Science Operating Officer, and National Manager, Plant Health Research and Strategies, at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

After 10 years consulting as a grants facilitator in clinical research, Dr. Matheson moved to the public service to pursue interests in science policy and security science.

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The US government may have made a major scientific breakthrough in fusion energy, paving the way for creating a limitless supply of energy with zero carbon emissions or radioactive waste, The Financial Times reported, citing people with knowledge of a recent experiment’s results.

The fusion process is a landmark step of progress in the quest to achieve a limitless supply of environmentally-friendly energy.

According to The Financial Times, the US Energy Department will have US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Undersecretary for Nuclear Security Jill Hruby announce a “major scientific breakthrough” sometime on Tuesday.

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Microsoft today announced that it acquired Lumenisity, a U.K.-based startup developing “hollow core fiber (HCF)” technologies primarily for data centers and ISPs. Microsoft says that the purchase, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, will “expand [its] ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure” and “serve Microsoft’s cloud platform and services customers with strict latency and security requirements.”

HCF cables fundamentally combine optical fiber and coaxial cable. They’ve been around since the ’90s, but what Lumenisity brings to the table is a proprietary design with an air-filled center channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes. The idea is that light can travel faster through air than glass; in a trial with Comcast in April, a single strand of Lumenisity HCF was reportedly able to deliver traffic rates ranging from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps.

“HCF can provide benefits across a broad range of industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government,” Girish Bablani, CVP of Microsoft’s Azure Core business, wrote in a blog post. “For the public sector, HCF could provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments across the globe. In healthcare, because HCF can accommodate the size and volume of large data sets, it could help accelerate medical image retrieval, facilitating providers’ ability to ingest, persist and share medical imaging data in the cloud. And with the rise of the digital economy, HCF could help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a broad geographic region.”

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Terahertz (THz) radiation is electromagnetic radiation ranging from frequencies of 0.1 THz to 10 THz, with wavelengths between 30μm and 3mm. Reliably detecting this radiation could have numerous valuable applications in security, product inspection, and quality control.

For instance, THz detectors could allow law enforcement agents to uncover potential weapons on humans or in luggage more reliably. It could also be used to monitor without damaging them or to assess the quality of food, cosmetics and other products.

Recent studies introduced several devices and solutions for detecting terahertz radiation. While a few of them achieved promising results, their performance in terms of sensitivity, speed, bandwidth and operating temperature is often limited. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Minnesota, and other institutes in the United States and South Korea recently developed a that can reliably detect THz radiation at room temperature, while also characterizing its so-called polarization states. This camera, introduced in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, is based on widely available complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS), enhanced using (i.e., nm-sized semiconductor particles with advantageous optoelectronic properties).

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