December 3, 2021
Security: IKEA Hit by Email Reply-Chain Cyberattack
Threatpost
As of Friday – as in, shopping-on-steroids Black Friday – retail titan IKEA was wrestling with a then-ongoing reply-chain email phishing attack in which attackers were malspamming replies to stolen email threads.

BleepingComputer got a look at internal emails – one of which is replicated below – that warned employees of the attack, which was targeting the company’s internal email inboxes. The phishing emails were coming from internal IKEA email addresses, as well as from the systems compromised at the company’s suppliers and partners. Read more
Healthcare IT: Pandemic Stress, Cyberattacks Are Compounding Degradation of Care delivery
Healthcare IT News
This past September, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency published a report designed to assess the health of the nation's hospitals and health systems.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report doesn't offer encouraging news. It finds the nationwide infrastructure enabling provision of medical care – one of CISA's 55 National Critical Functions – to be severely strained by the COVID-19 pandemic and all the clinical, financial, workforce and supply chain challenges it has brought, Read More
Homeland Security: Preventing and Responding to High-Consequence Biological Threats
Homeland Security Today
A new NTI | bio report offers actionable recommendations for the international community to bolster prevention and response capabilities for high-consequence biological events.

The report, “Strengthening Global Systems to Prevent and Respond to High-Consequence Biological Threats,”written by NTI | bio Senior Fellow Dr. Jaime M. Yassif, Dr. Kevin P. O’Prey, and Christopher R. Isaac, summarizes key findings and recommendations from a March 2021 tabletop exercise on high-consequence biological threats, jointly hosted by NTI and the Munich Security Conference. This report, and the exercise that informed it, are the third in a series of collaborations between NTI and the Munich Security Conference—which have focused on reducing global catastrophic biological risks and building stronger systems for pandemic prevention and response. Read More
Transportation: D.C. Is on Track to Issue Electronic Versions of Driver’s Licenses
The Washington Post
D.C. residents could soon carry a digital version of their driver’s license or identification card on their phones, using it to enter a bar, a government building or when pulled over by police.

The D.C. Council is poised this month to approve legislation that would allow the city to issue electronic driver’s licenses and IDs, joining a growing number of states — including Maryland and Virginia — that are embracing digital credentials. The legislation would allow people to present identification in an electronic format, such as on a smartphone, instead of a physical credential, except when prohibited by federal law. Read More
Human Resources: Pandemic-Driven Employee Surveillance May Hurt Retention, EU Report Says
HR Dive
Employee surveillance "intensified" during the pandemic and could have a negative impact on key workplace metrics, according to a report produced by the University of St. Andrews and published by the European Commission's Joint Research Council.

Workplaces in the U.S., U.K. and Europe saw accelerated deployment of monitoring methods such as keystroke, webcam, desktop and email monitoring, researchers found. One source found that the demand for employee monitoring software had increased by 108% between April 2019 and April 2020. Monitoring in remote work environments was linked to perceptions that work both interfered with home life and increased the likelihood of work-family conflict, per the report.

Excessive monitoring's negative impacts may include increased resistance, decreased job satisfaction, increased stress, decreased organizational commitment and increased propensity for turnover, per the report. Read More
Business & Technology: Are You Using the Right Data to Power Your Digital Transformation?
Harvard Business Review
Data per se is not a new, but its power to drive business value in modern times is unprecedented. This power is most evident in the business models of digital platforms such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google. But, for a vast majority of legacy firms operating with value-chain-driven business models, this newfound power of data remains untapped. A key reason that’s holding them back is their traditional approach to collecting and using data.

Most legacy firms rely on episodic data, generated by discrete events such as the shipment of a component from a supplier, or the sale of a product. The explosive power of the digital platforms, on the other hand, stems from their use of interactive data, streamed by users interacting with their platforms — such as by posting likes on Facebook or searching on Google. Read More