The FTC started providing hypothetical examples of security practices based on closed investigations to help businesses improve, said a Friday news release. Through its "Stick with Security" effort, the agency will blog every Friday about lessons learned. The agency has held workshops and issued a guide to help businesses with security (see 1606150016).

Privacy Shield still has "deficiencies" that must be "urgently resolved" so the trans-Atlantic data sharing arrangement "doesn't suffer from critical weaknesses," said the head of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee, in a Friday news release. The assessment by the committee, which previously has been critical of the agreement (see 1703290015), comes ahead of a required review in September to ensure Privacy Shield is functioning adequately. LIBE Chair Claude Moraes, who last week led an eight-member delegation to Washington to meet with various U.S. government officials (see 1707140018), pointed to problems with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and the State Department's ombudsperson position. Since January, the five-member PCLOB, which has four vacancies, has lacked a quorum (see 1612270051), while the ombudsperson role to handle Europeans' complaints about U.S. government access to their personal data has been filled by a State Department official in an acting capacity. The delegation also focused on the ongoing review of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Presidential Policy Directive 28 and other law enforcement elements, the release said. Moraes said Privacy Shield will need to comply with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the general data protection regulation that is going into effect in May. U.S.-based privacy groups have told the EU that the agreement has problems (see 1707050019 and 1707060006).

To steer people from violent extremist propaganda, YouTube rolled out a feature wherein searches for certain keywords will display a playlist of videos aimed at debunking violent extremist recruiting narratives, it blogged Thursday. It said the feature comes from the joint Jigsaw/Moonshot CVE Redirect Method, which redirects people from violent extremist propaganda and toward video content confronting those messages. YouTube said it hopes in coming weeks to expand the new functionality with more search queries in other languages, use machine learning to update the search query terms dynamically, expand the Redirect Method in Europe and work with nongovernmental organizations to develop video content aimed at countering violent extremist messaging.

The FTC will host roundtables with small business owners on cybersecurity across the country. In a Thursday news release, the agency said the first event will be held Tuesday in Portland, Oregon, in partnership with the National Cyber Security Alliance, the Small Business Administration and others. That will be followed by a Sept. 6 discussion in Cleveland and another that month in Des Moines, Iowa, the FTC added. The discussions are part of FTC acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen's initiative, which includes a website, to help small businesses protect themselves from cyberattacks and avoid scams. The SBA estimates there are 28 million small businesses employing nearly 57 million people, the release said.

AlphaBay and Hansa, two of the top three dark web criminal marketplaces trading more than 350,000 commodities such as drugs, firearms and malware combined, were shut down by two major law enforcement operations led by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Dutch National Police, Europol, which supported the operations, said in a Thursday news release. AlphaBay, which had more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors, is considered the largest illegal online market with 100,000-plus listings for stolen and fraudulent identity documents and access devices, malware and computer hacking tools and other illicit services and goods, the release said. The FBI and DEA shut down the site July 7 and arrested its creator and administrator, a Canadian citizen living in Thailand, the release said. No. 3-ranked Hansa was taken over June 20 by Dutch police, who covertly monitored criminal activities until the site was closed Thursday, Europol said. About "10,000 foreign addresses" of buyers were passed on to Europol, it added.

WannaCry and other recent cyberattacks affected how 60 percent of companies protect themselves, said a Neustar-commissioned survey of 290 security executives in 11 countries. Senior Vice President Rodney Joffe said in a Wednesday news release that while a majority acknowledges the problem exists, there's "a disconnect between the concern of attacks and companies actually taking action." The survey, completed in May and conducted by Harris Interactive, found 28 percent ranked ransomware as "most concerning," while 21 percent said it was "system compromise." Forty-four percent said they're focused on addressing both ransomware (see 1705180032 and 1707060041) and distributed denial-of-service attacks, the release said.

Pandora features for artists can help them reach their fans directly, the company said. This builds on Pandora’s Artist Audio Messages platform launched in 2015.

To battle the problem of botnets that attack IoT devices, a Communications Sector Coordinating Council (CSCC) paper recommends nine preliminary steps, which include shifting all devices to IPv6, sharing tailored and actionable threat information with internet stakeholders, streamlining law enforcement efforts to take down automated attacks, and applying machine learning to detect botnets in real time. Besides mitigating threats, the paper, which talks about botnets from the viewpoint of ISPs, recommends devices adhere to industry-developed security standards, are operating with up-to-date software and latest security patches and are using network isolation and-or network-based filtering techniques. CSCC helps coordinate initiatives to improve cyber- and physical security across the communications infrastructure and is comprised of broadcasting, cable, satellite, utility and other companies. Members include AT&T, Comcast, NAB, NCTA and Verizon.

Consumers should be aware of internet-connected toys and other entertainment devices that could pose a cybersecurity and privacy risk to their children, said an FBI public service announcement issued Monday. The PSA provides reasons why parents should be concerned, what makes some toys vulnerable and the laws to protect families. The FBI encourages parents to better research a connected toy's security measures, updates it may need and where their child's data is being stored and with whom. They should monitor their children's activities with the toys such as making voice recordings, use strong and unique passwords, and provide minimal amount of data for user accounts, the agency said, adding consumers should read disclosures and privacy policies regarding notifications of problems. Privacy groups and some lawmakers, like Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in recent months have sounded an alarm on such interactive toys (see 1705220057, 1704260007 and 1703220045).

​Netflix streaming membership in Q2 “grew more than expected due to our amazing content,” the company said Monday in its quarterly letter to shareholders. Netflix added 5.2 million subscribers in Q2, including 1.1 million in the U.S, and 4.1 million internationally, it said. That compared favorably with the 1.7 million new members it added in Q2 a year earlier, including 1.5 million internationally and only 200,000 in the U.S. “It was a good quarter,” the company said. “The competition for entertainment time is always intense, but the silver lining is that the market is vast and diverse,” Netflix said. Linear TV “is still huge, piracy still substantial, and there are thousands of firms and approaches around the world earning some fraction of consumers’ entertainment time.” So “broad” is the entertainment market opportunity that Netflix has grown from zero to more than 50 million streaming homes in the U.S. in the past decade, “and yet HBO continues to increase its US subscriptions,” the company said. “It seems our growth just expands the market. The largely exclusive nature of each service’s content means that we are not direct substitutes for each other, but rather complements.” The “large-cap tech companies, especially Amazon, are investing heavily in original and licensed content around the world,” Netflix said. “Creating a TV network is now as easy as creating an app, and investment is pouring into content production around the world. We are all co-pioneers of internet TV and, together, we are replacing linear TV. The shift from linear TV to on-demand viewing is so big and there is so much leisure time, many internet TV services will be successful. The internet may not have been great for the music business due to piracy, but, wow, it is incredible for growing the video entertainment business around the world.”