The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency should assess the effectiveness of its programs related to communications sector security, GAO recommended Tuesday. CISA’s director should coordinate with sector stakeholders and deliver a revised sector-specific plan, the auditor said. The Department of Homeland Security concurred.

Zoom exited Q3 with 512,100 customer accounts with 10-plus employees each, up 18% year over year, said Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg on an analysts’ call Monday. Customers with more than 10 employees generated 66% of Q3 revenue, up sequentially from 64% and 62% in Q3 last year, she said. These trends suggest that customers with more than 10 employees are expanding their use of the platform, adding more products and seats, she said. The company’s “net dollar expansion rate” for customers with more than 10 employees exceeded 130% for the 14th straight quarter, as existing customers “increased their spend with Zoom,” she said. “For Q4, we expect this metric to be modestly below the 130% mark.” Zoom’s online churn in Q3 “performed better than our expectations coming in at the beginning of the quarter,” said the CFO. “We were happy to see that it was more seasonality aligned rather than true potential departures, as people were making other choices or going back to meeting in person.” Q3 revenue of $1.05 billion was up 35% year over year. Quarter-on-quarter revenue growth is expected to be flat in Q4. "Our online business will be a headwind in the coming quarters as smaller customers and consumers adapt to the evolving environment," said Steckelberg. The stock closed down 15% Tuesday at $206.64.

Comments are due Jan. 31 for a National Institute of Standards and Technology study on advancing a “more productive tech economy,” said a Federal Register notice Monday. NIST is seeking input about “public and private sector marketplace trends, supply chain risks, and the legislative, policy and future investment needs of eight emerging technology areas.” That includes AI, IoT, quantum computing, blockchain technology and unmanned delivery services. The study was directed by the American Competitiveness of a More Productive Emerging Tech Economy (Compete) Act (HR-8132).

Organizations need to “remain vigilant” against ransomware attacks and other cyberthreats, warned the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI Monday. Groups and enterprises need to deploy “multi-factor authentication” for remote access and administrative accounts, and should mandate “strong passwords and ensure they are not reused across multiple accounts,” said the agencies. “Remind employees not to click on suspicious links, and conduct exercises to raise awareness,” they said. “Review and, if needed, update incident response and communication plans that list actions an organization will take if impacted by a ransomware incident.” Though CISA isn't aware of a specific threat, “we know that threat actors don’t take holidays,” said Director Jen Easterly. Cybercriminals “have historically viewed holidays as attractive times to strike,” said FBI Cyber Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran. “We urge network defenders to prepare and remain alert over the upcoming holiday weekend.”

Energous got approval from a European notified body for its 1W WattUp PowerBridge transmitter for over-the-air charging at any distance, it said Friday, following recent FCC approval (see 2110190036). This opens opportunities in Europe for battery-less IoT devices and wearables, said Sanjay Gupta, AirFuel Alliance president.

Nearly six in 10 consumers plan to shop via a mobile device this holiday season, up from 47% last year, and 43% will shop from a computer or laptop, reported Applause Thursday. Some 69% of respondents said they felt comfortable returning to stores; 45% of those plan to spend less than they did in 2020, per an October survey. Of the 91% who plan to shop online, 68% plan to spend the same or more than in 2020. Digital experiences are gaining with shoppers, with 58% using services like curbside pickup, buy online pickup in store and buy online return in store; 66% are more likely to shop a brand that offers omnichannel options. Applause cited “work to be done,” with 24% of shoppers who used curbside pickup reporting problems with finding where to park and having trouble identifying the curbside pickup option on their phone. Price remained the biggest factor for online purchases for 39%. A disruption in checkout is the top reason shoppers abandon e-commerce purchases, it said.

A bipartisan group of state attorneys general is investigating whether Meta violated consumer protection laws by promoting Instagram despite knowledge of the platform’s association with physical and mental health harms, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) announced Thursday. AGs from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont joined the investigation. Ohio filed a lawsuit separately (see 2111150052). The new probe targets the “techniques utilized by Meta to increase the frequency and duration of engagement by young users and the resulting harms caused by such extended engagement,” said the office for Missouri's Eric Schmitt (R). "These accusations are false and demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the facts,” a Meta spokesperson emailed. “While challenges in protecting young people online impact the entire industry, we’ve led the industry in combating bullying and supporting people struggling with suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and eating disorders.”

Top U.S. cable and wireline telcos added about 630,000 net additional broadband subscribers in Q3, in line with Q3 growth in 2018 and 2019 and about 41% of their Q3 2020 growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, Leichtman Research Group said Wednesday. Combined, LRG said, they have about 107.9 million subscribers, about 96% of the market. Cable has about 75.2 million, with 32.7 million at wireline telcos. Cable operators added 590,000 of the 630,000 subs; telcos had about 475,000 net adds via fiber, and about 435,000 non-fiber losses.

The holiday season is also cybercrime season, reported fraud deterrence platform Arkose Labs Tuesday. “Attacks have steadily increased over 2020, becoming more frequent, launching on a larger scale, and initiating with greater sophistication,” it said. It projects that 8 million attacks will occur daily during the 2021 holiday shopping season. Fraud “has a new face” in the form of digital businesses “experiencing a massive surge of fake new accounts,” said Arkose. It detected 560 million malicious attempts on “registration flows last quarter,” four times more than at the beginning of the year, it said: “These fake accounts open the doors to downstream fraud that directly impacts the bottom line of e-commerce firms.” As more customers open digital accounts, “account takeover attempts fueled by large-scale credential stuffing soon follow,” it said. In a credential stuffing attack, cybercriminals funnel stolen user names and passwords through an automated process to try to gain access to online accounts. Arkose said it stopped 3 billion credential stuffing attacks over the past year, nearly double the rate of the previous 12 months.

Apple’s “unlawful monopolization” of the iOS apps market enabled the iPhone maker to charge and collect a “supracompetitive” 30% fee from device owners “for each and every one of the billions of iOS apps they have bought since the iPhone’s launch” 13 years ago, alleged a complaint Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that seeks class-action status. “Consumers nationwide have paid hundreds of millions of dollars more for iOS apps than they would have paid in a competitive market.” Apple’s “anticompetitive scheme” generated “enormous supracompetitive profits” for the company, it said. It offers more than 2.22 million apps in the App Store, and iOS device owners “have downloaded apps more than 200 billion times since July 2008,” it said. Apple didn’t comment Monday.