Facebook is talking with the Association of National Advertisers on how the company and ANA can work more closely together, emailed a Facebook spokesman, in response to criticism the company overestimated video viewing for two years (see 1609290075). "Trust and transparency with our partners are paramount to the operation of our company," emailed a spokesman Thursday. "Our focus has always been on driving business results for our clients, and we strongly believe in third-party verification. We have a history of working with industry leaders including Nielsen, Moat, and comScore -- and we continue to explore more partnerships.” ANA President Bob Liodice said Thursday in a blog post that Facebook should be audited and accredited by the Media Rating Council or another third party, which he called "table stakes" for digital ads.

The oneM2M global standards initiative issued the second release of oneM2M specifications for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and IoT, said oneM2M founding partner ATIS in a Thursday announcement. Release 2 is based on contributions from more than 200 member companies and builds on oneM2M's first set of official specs enabling basic connectivity between applications and devices, said ATIS. The new specs open the IoT ecosystem to devices that lack the protocol and enable interworking among systems using AllSeen Alliance's AllJoyn, Open Connectivity Foundation's OIC (Open Interconnect Consortium) and the Open Mobile Alliance's Lightweight M2M (LWM2M), it said. The 17 specs in Release 2 address security by enabling end-to-end secure information exchange between any devices or servers, it said. The specs implement attribute and role-based dynamic access control in consumer-oriented IoT scenarios and allow granting temporary authorization to devices during operation, it said. Semantic interoperability enables meaningful data exchange for secure distribution and reuse, said ATIS. As a result of the latest spec, the number of devices that can connect in the IoT ecosystem “is greatly expanded” beyond the 50 billion devices Cisco estimates will be connected by 2020, ATIS said.

Clarification: What NTIA reported about non-Asian minorities, people with disabilities, lower-income and those with lower levels of educational attainment is that they are among groups "most likely not to use the Internet at home" (see 1609280025).

Facebook's recent disclosure that it overestimated video viewing for two years is "troubling," and the site hasn't reached "the level of measurement transparency that marketers need and require," said Association of National Advertisers President Bob Liodice in a Thursday blog post. He said Facebook's metrics aren't accredited by the Media Rating Council and it's time for the company and others to be audited and accredited, since marketers spend billions of dollars on Facebook. Last week, the company said in a post it discovered an error in how it calculated video metrics on its dashboard and fixed it. The company didn't comment.

Four initial voluntary documents providing guidelines for information sharing and analysis on cybersecurity risks, incidents and best practices will be published Friday, said the Information Sharing and Analysis Organization Standards Organization (ISAO SO) in a news release Thursday. Led by the University of Texas at San Antonio, the ISAO SO is a nongovernmental group established a year ago through executive order 13691 to spur private sector cybersecurity sharing (see 1502130048). The group said the four publications will offer: an overview of ISAOs; a set of guidelines on how to create one and make it effective; a conceptual framework on information sharing, types of cybersecurity-related information that may want to be shared, how to facilitate sharing and privacy and security concerns; and resources related to federal laws and regulations, plus state and local perspectives. "We anticipate updating and expanding these guidelines based on feedback from their implementation," said Rick Lipsey, the ISAO SO's deputy director. "The ISAO Series will evolve in the coming months to serve the community with additional publications that will allow all organizations and individuals to better defend themselves against emerging cyber threats.” More than 160 experts collaborated on the documents, with public feedback, the release said. The group will host its next online public meeting Oct. 20 to address the publications, among other things.

The average internet connection speed globally increased 14 percent year-over-year to 6.1 Mbps in Q2, Akamai said in a news release Thursday. But the average speed decreased 2.3 percent compared with the previous quarter, the networking vendor reported. Global average peak speed increased 2.5 percent year-over-year to 36 Mbps, Akamai said. Adoption of above 10 Mbps speeds increased 0.7 percent to 35 percent quarter-over-quarter, but adoption of above 15 Mbps speeds dropped 0.8 percent to 21 percent and above 25 Mbps speeds dropped 2.1 percent to 8.3 percent, it said.

Domain name registry Donuts said its new enhanced Domains Protected Marks List (DPML) Plus trademark protection tool will allow brand owners to better protect their marks across the registry's 197 top-level domains. DPML Plus will allow users to block their trademark and three related terms from being registered for an initial 10-year period, Donuts said Wednesday. Users also will be able to block trademarks in premium second-level domains and can seek to block misspellings of their mark-related terms for an additional fee. DPML Plus registration begins Saturday and will be open through Dec. 31, said a blog post.

Special Assistant to the President-Economic and Tech Policy David Edelman Wednesday credited the White House’s 2009 global cyberspace policy strategy for setting the tone for President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity focus. Cyber has become “a priority for this administration,” with cybersecurity issues now playing a prominent role in “every bilateral agreement” the U.S. signs, Edelman said during a Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies event. The 2009 cyberspace strategy also guided the Obama administration’s approach to dealing with thorny privacy issues after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks about controversial surveillance programs, Edelman said. “Tremendous change domestically” on privacy issues, including passage of both the USA Freedom Act and the Judicial Redress Act, aided in development of the U.S.-EU Privacy Shield, Edelman said. “For all the political posturing that might exist on one side of the Atlantic or the other, the reality is that the U.S. did have a winning partner in the form of the European Commission” on the Privacy Shield, Edelman said.

About 33 million U.S. households, or more than a quarter of them, didn't use the Internet at home last year, with 26 million households, or a fifth all households, offline entirely, meaning no member used the Internet from any location, said NTIA in a Wednesday blog post based on the July 2015 Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey. Fifty-five percent of households -- up 8 percentage points from 2013 -- said they didn't use the internet at home because "they did not need it or had no interest in going online," wrote Maureen Lewis, director of NTIA minority telecommunications development. About 25 percent, down 4 percentage points from 2013, said internet service cost too much, and 7 percent, down 6 percentage points from two years ago, said they didn't have a functional computer, she said. Since 2001 when NTIA first started collecting such data, those have been the top reasons households don't use the internet at home, she said. Reducing cost could help narrow the digital divide, she said, but "overcoming the perception that home Internet access lacks relevance in households that have never used it could, however, prove to be a more difficult challenge." As NTIA had previously reported, non-Asian minorities, people with disabilities, lower-income and those with lower levels of educational attainment typically don't use the internet at home. Lewis noted the administration has a goal of connecting 20 million more Americans to high-speed internet service by 2020 (see 1603090082 and 1608310068).

The FTC cleared the way for Oracle’s $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite, and the $1.8 billion deal joining Citrix's GoTo product line with rival LogMeIn, said early termination notices ending the transactions’ Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting periods. Oracle/NetSuite “will proceed as planned assuming the minimum required number of shares are tendered,” the buyer said in a Monday news release.