Insider Threat / Espionage

The Government Accountability Officer has put out no fewer than 38 recommendations on how federal agencies can improve their cybersecurity risk management. All but one of the 23 agencies reviewed had already designated an executive responsible for security but none evidently had a risk management strategy in place and there was a general lack of coordination between cybersecurity in particular and agency-wide management functions in general. [node:read-more:link]

Pending the outcome of an RCMP investigation, the University of Manitoba suspended Xiangguo Qiu, a Chinese researcher who has been recognized for her role in developing an Ebola vaccine. She was escorted from the high-security National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg earlier this month. [node:read-more:link]

Britain's MI6 has launched a new recruitment drive on Google and YouTube so as not to miss out on potential employees that might switch channels from a TV advertisement. The new advertisement, launched yesterday, says being a spy is 'not about finding the button for the ejector seat'. [node:read-more:link]

The NDP is trying to prod the federal government into launching an investigation into whether the RCMP used invasive – and possibly illegal – techniques to eavesdrop on one of their own during a harassment lawsuit. [node:read-more:link]

A disgruntled employee at Quebec-based financial institution, Desjardins, is being blamed for a data privacy breach affecting nearly 2.7 million individual customers and 173,000 businesses. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security recalled from parliamentary summer break July 15 to address concerns pending results of a police investigation. [node:read-more:link]

The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says his agency is "more and more preoccupied" with the threat of violent right-wing extremism and white supremacists. [node:read-more:link]