Three recommendations from a recent Department of Health and Human Services task force report on enhancing cybersecurity in the healthcare sector "stand out," blogged Internet Security Alliance CEO Larry Clinton and Senior Director Stacey Barrack. They are: identifying scalable governance best practices and developing executive education programs; requiring current and future federal cybersecurity regulations be harmonized; and incentivizing the sector to implement leading practices. Increased regulation "may actually be hurting" efforts to improve security since few experts have time to address compliance, they wrote Monday. Plus, a "dynamic system" -- possibly with grant and tax incentives and "good actor credits" -- is "desperately" needed to motivate the sector to implement improvements, they said. The report, promoted in HHS officials' testimony during a House hearing last week (see 1706070040), shows government "is slowly, but surely" starting to understand the problem and its need to work with industry, wrote Clinton and Barrack.

President Donald Trump and his advisers “should not wait to force a showdown with China” over that country’s recently implemented cybersecurity law, said American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Claude Barfield blogged Friday. The law, which took effect in early June, drew opposition from many U.S.-based interests because it includes data localization rules (see 1612080077, 1703080067 and 1705150067). “The Trump administration should elevate the new Chinese cybersecurity law to top priority” in the two countries’ bilateral negotiations, Barfield said. “The administration should make it clear that if regulations under the new law damage US companies’ ability to compete in the Chinese market, the United States will not just protest -- it will act to institute reciprocal actions that close off the US market to top Chinese technology companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.”

NTIA is seeking comment on how to improve industry's ability to lessen threats from automated and distributed attacks like botnets and what role government should take. The agency posted the request Thursday on its website, and comments will be due 30 days after it's published in the Federal Register. "Left unchecked, without meaningful progress, these new classes of automated and distributed attacks could be a serious risk to the entire ecosystem," the notice said. "Since poorly considered action would likely create significant unnecessary costs and unintended consequences, substantial, carefully considered action must be considered." NTIA also said the Department of Commerce will host a public workshop on improving communications systems and outcomes to help guide implementation of Executive Order 13800 (the Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure). The workshop will be at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence July 11-12.

Global annual IP traffic will total 3.3 zettabytes by 2021, up from 1.2 in 2016, Cisco reported. Monthly global traffic in 2021 is expected to reach 278 exabytes, up from 96 exabytes per month last year. That will parallel an expected rise in the total number of internet users to 4.6 billion people, from 3.3 billion in 2016. Increased adoption of personal devices and machine-to-machine connections and increased video streaming are among primary drivers of the global IP traffic increase, Cisco said. “As global digital transformation continues to impact billions of consumers and businesses, the network and security will be essential to support the future of the Internet,” said General Manager-Service Provider Business Yvette Kanouff in a news release.

A lawsuit against Twitter for allegedly allowing ISIS to use its network for extremist ideology, leading to deaths of two American contractors, threatens the company's and internet users' free speech rights and is prohibited by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), said two civil liberties groups, a tech think tank and major industry organization in amicus filings to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy and Technology, Internet Association (in Pacer) and the Copia Institute (in Pacer) filed briefs in Tamara Fields v. Twitter. The families of two U.S. government contractors killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Jordan sued Twitter last year in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for "knowingly" permitting ISIS to use the company's platform "for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits," they said in an amended complaint (in Pacer). "Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible," they said, adding the number of the group's Twitter accounts have grown at an "astonishing rate" since 2010. They accused Twitter of not doing anything to prevent ISIS from using its platform and of giving the group "material support" by allowing members to sign up for accounts. In a November decision (in Pacer), District Judge William Orrick said he dismissed an initial complaint because it was barred by CDA and then the amended complaint because "no amount of careful pleading can change the fact that, in substance, plaintiffs aim to hold Twitter liable as a publisher or speaker of ISIS’s hateful rhetoric, and that such liability is barred by the CDA."

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will be among speakers Tuesday at the #InternetIRL forum in Atlanta on the importance of net neutrality for minority communities, said online civil rights group Color of Change in a news release. The forum -- 6-8 p.m. -- will be available via livestream, said Clyburn's office.

PC shipments in the U.S. are expected to grow 2.3 percent annually in the next five years, Daniel Research Group said in a Tuesday report. Though shipments of desktop PCs and laptops are expected to decline 0.8 percent this year, “we anticipate healthy growth” in 2018, when shipments increase 4.3 percent, the company said. It forecasts an economic slowdown in 2019 and 2020 that will keep growth rates under 2 percent in each of those years, before shipments rebound with 5 percent growth in 2021, fueled by consumer demand for replacement models.

President Donald Trump's planned renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement should include policy positions supported by the tech sector, the Internet Association said Tuesday. Trump said last month he plans to update the 1994 deal (see 1705180050). A NAFTA revamp should include a specific e-commerce chapter that would “maintain an open internet,” language protecting the fair use doctrine and Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512 safe harbors, IA said. The update should ensure trade rules protect e-commerce because the agreement's existing rules “do not accommodate package-level e-commerce export, the industry group said. “Promoting internet-friendly disciplines in NAFTA on data flows, balanced copyright, intermediary liability, and customs represents a massive opportunity for the internet sector and the U.S. economy as a whole,” said President Michael Beckerman.

President Donald Trump's blocking of certain Twitter users violates the First Amendment, wrote the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Tuesday's letter addressed to Trump said clients Holly O'Reilly and Joseph Papp were blocked from @realDonaldTrump "because they disagreed with, criticized, or mocked you or your actions as President." The letter said Trump's account is a "designated public forum" just like open city council or school board meetings. The institute said blocking O'Reilly and Papp is "unconstitutional" and it wants the president to unblock them and any others. The letter was written by Jameel Jaffer, the institute's founding director, and attorneys Alex Abdo and Katherine Fallow. It was also sent to White House counsel Donald McGahn, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Director of Social Media Dan Scavino. The White House didn't comment.

Short, low-volume distributed denial-of-service attacks aimed at masking “more serious network intrusions” are the “greatest DDoS risk” for most entities, Corero Network Security reported Monday. Ninety-eight percent of DDoS attack attempts that Corero measured during Q1 were less than 10 Gbps in volume and 71 percent lasted 10 minutes or less, the cybersecurity firm said. “Short DDoS attacks might seem harmless, in that they don't cause extended periods of downtime,” said CEO Ashley Stephenson in a news release. “IT teams who choose to ignore them are effectively leaving their doors wide open for malware or ransomware attacks, data theft or other more serious intrusions.”