Australian Government agencies will be required to vet their staff on an ongoing basis in order to protect sensitive government data against the kind of "insider threat" posed by the likes of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning.

Attorney-General George Brandis this morning unveiled revised mandatory requirements for how agencies should screen employees, which could potentially see periodic staff security assessments replaced by dynamically pushed information, to keep tabs on staff on an ongoing basis.

Brandis recently directed his department to review the existing personnel security policy under the Australian Governments protective security policy framework (PSPF), which sets out the controls government agencies are expected to take to protect their people, information and assets.

The changes to the personnel security policy aim to reduce the risk of loss, damage or compromise of Commonwealth resources by providing assurance about the suitability of personnel authority to access those resources in response to risks posed by insider threats such as Edward Snowden and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, Brandis said.

They aim to minimise the potential for misuse of those resources either by inadvertent or deliberate disclosure, he told delegates at the Security in Government Conference today.

To address the risks that could arise from a trusted insider, the importance of security vetting, contact reporting and ongoing monitoring of our employees suitability to access information should never be underestimated.

Brandis also asked the Attorney-Generals department to explore vetting in a paradigm of evolving threat, specifically dynamic vetting in which information about an employee requiring clearance is pushed to the vetting agency, rather than being provided by the employee themselves.

There is a need to change our focus from point-in-time suitability assessments to continuous monitoring and assessments of each persons ongoing suitability, Brandis said.

The new and emerging threats we face require Government to constantly revisit and revise our approach to national security. This should be extended to personnel security and vetting, where it is not enough to simply tick and flick an application every few years.

We must take a dynamic, not a static approach, to the assessment of suitability."

Read the original:
Brandis boosts vetting of APS staff to prevent insider threats

It is the hottest leak since Bradley Manning got busted. An anonymous hacker claims to have hacked iCloud accounts for a number of celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Victoria Justice, Ariana Grande, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and several other stars. The hacker clims he has nude photos from these iCloud accounts, and is starting to leak them online.

While some of the celebs he claims to have nudes of have come forward to say that the pics are fakes, not everyone is so lucky, including Jennifer Lawrence.

A spokesperson for Jennifer Lawrence gave a statement to Huffington Post, saying, This is a flagrant violation of privacy. The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence.

However, something seems to be amiss since the L.A. Police Department claims to have no knowledge of the whole situation. It might all sound like a case of a hoax, with Lawrences reps playing along for the publicity, but we can confirm that the pics have indeed been posted on Imgur.

Another celeb is also confirming her own pics authenticity, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves, she said. Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked.

And that is how this sort of thing happens. People take nude pictures, then delete them from their devices, not realizing that their devices are uploading them to iCloud accounts or syncing them across other devices. This is not a flaw, it is how iCloud and other such sync services are designed to work.

The moral of the story here is simple: never take a nude photo with any device that can be connected to the Internet in any way. In fact, the better course is to do what The Boss suggests.

Bruce Springsteen tells the story of a photographer girlfriend who was shooting a private photo session with him. Jokingly, Bruce started peeling off his clothes. His girlfriend stopped him with a warning: Never strip for photos, no matter how much you trust the photographer. As the years go by, you never know where those shots may end up, and how.

Go here to read the rest:
Jennifer Lawrence Nude Photos Leaked by Hackers