Women are a minority in tech, with an average of three men for every one woman. When it comes to cybersecurity, the imbalance is even more acute. A 2020 report shows that female cybersecurity experts are outnumbered five to one by their male counterparts. Inside the National Security Agency, cybersecuritys inner sanctum, the ratio is anyones guess.

So, the fact that a woman not only entered, but conquered and emerged victorious from the NSAand with the rights to market the ultimate encryption treasureis a feat worthy of attention.

How did she do it? Simple

Math, said Ellison Anne Williams (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of Enveil Inc. Math and grit.

Williams spoke withJohn Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Medias mobile livestreaming studio, during the RSA Conference in San Francisco. They discussed her time at the NSA and how homomorphic cryptography provides the missing link in the cybersecurity chain.

The treasure Williams carried from the NSA is one that has often been described as the Holy Grail of cryptologists: Homomorphic encryption. Developed within the NSA by researchers wanting to maintain security for data in-use,the technology enables data to be handled securely while remaining encrypted.

This week theCUBE spotlights Williams in our Women in Tech feature.

Data security has three parts: data at rest, data in transit, and data at use, explained Williams. The first part involves securing data at rest on the file system and the database.This would be your more traditional in-database encryption, she said.

The second part is securing data as its moving around through the network, known as data in transit. The third part of the data security process is securing data that is in-use data under analysis or search. This is when the data is both at its most vulnerable and its most valuable.

While there are many security solutions for both data at rest and in transit, protecting data while it is being processed has always been the weak point. Data was secure before and after processing but had to be decrypted in order to be accessed, then re-encrypted. Homomorphic encryption solves that issue.

It means we can do things like take searches or analytics, encrypt them, and then go run them without ever decrypting them at any point during processing, Williams explained.

With her blonde curls and Southern charm, Williams doesnt match the stereotype of a socially awkward cybersecurity specialist. But while her looks may cause some to double-take at business meetings, her intelligence and expertise are indisputable. Williams holds adoctorate in mathematics (algebraic combinatorics) from North Carolina State University and two masters degrees, one in mathematics from the University of South Carolina and another in computer science from Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

As an undergrad, Williams was a pre-med student with a plan to study infectious diseases. Instead, she fell in love with math and became an expert in distributed computing and algorithms, cryptographic applications, graph theory, combinatorics, machine learning, and data mining.

After graduating from North Carolina State, Williams joined the research team at the NSA, where she spent 12 years doing a little bit of everything, including large-scale analytics, information security and privacy, computer network exploitation, and network modeling. She also advocated for women to join the NSAs team and mentored her male colleagues.

During her last few years at the NSA, she had the opportunity to work at The John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. It was there that she worked on homomorphic encryption as part of a larger project for the NSA.

Although she had worked in research her whole career, Williams had always harbored entrepreneurial dreams. So when she learned she could declassify some of her research through the NSA Technology Transfer Program, she jumped at the chance to create a homomorphic encryption solution for the marketplace.

The idea of homomorphic encryption is not new. The concept has been around since 1978, but a first-generation fully homomorphic solution wasnt proposed until 2009. Research continued, and second- and third-generation fully homomorphic solutions were proposed. But problems remained with implementing these solutions at scale.

With the launch of Enveil Inc. in 2016, Williams took a bet that by combining the entrepreneurship in her DNA with the results of her years of research at John Hopkins and the NSA she could change that.

Less than a year after founding, the company got the cybersecurity communitys attention at the finals of theRSA Innovation Sandbox. Thats where the conversation really started to change around this technology called homomorphic encryption, the market category space called securing data in use, and what that meant, Williams said.

Williams expected a surprised reaction when the community discovered Enveil had a market-ready homomorphic encryption solution. She didnt expect that big-name early adopters, such as Bloomberg Beta, Thomson Reuters Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., and Mastercard Inc., would be eager to strategically invest in the company.

The enthusiasm is because homomorphic encryption solves the problem of secure data sharing. New technologies such as machine learning rely on ingesting massive amounts of data. Being restricted to just one data source limits the potential for powerful insights, but sharing data resources for analysis is a risky business.

There are also codes and regulations that govern data sharing, such as Europes General Data Protection Regulationand the California Consumer Privacy Act, which limit how data can be managed.Not to mention, people can get upset if they discover a company has a cavalier attitude tosharingpersonal data; as Google discovered withProject Nightingale.

This makes the ability to maintain anonymity and security while sharing data critically important for businesses, especially those in the financial sectors, where the payoff and the risks are high stakes. Say a bank suspects a client of financial misconduct, such as money laundering, and as part of establishing the trail, it needs to verify transactions with other institutions.

[Banks] cant necessarily openly, freely share all the information. But if I can ask you a question and do so in a secure and private capacity, still respecting all the access controls that youve put in place over your own data, then it allows that collaboration to occur, Williams stated.

Homomorphic encryption enables the data to be searched while remaining encoded, so no personally identifiable information is ever revealed and regulation compliance and security is ensured.

Current use casesamong Enveils clients include financial regulation, with banks able to securely share information to combat money laundering and other fraudulent activity. Global transactions are simplified by allowing collaboration regardless of national privacy restrictions. And in healthcare, hospitals and clinics can share patient details to research facilities and remain confident that they are not disclosing sensitive personal data.

After just over three years in operation, Williams is proud of what her company has accomplished. Its really pretty impressive, she said.

It is. Breaking the male-dominated culture of cybersecurity, Williams has created a company that is at the forefront of data in-use security, recently announced $10 million in Series A funding, and is looking to expand globally with new product lines that enable advanced decisioning in a completely secure and private capacity.

Were creating a whole new market, Williams said. [Were] completely changing the paradigm about where and how you can use data for business purposes.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLEs and theCUBEs coverage of theRSA Conference.

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How a girl grasped the Holy Grail of encryption and changed the paradigm for safely sharing data - SiliconANGLE

Intelligence agencies are trying to adapt to social distancing guidelines, but thats leaving many employees and contractors in limbo.

Like any other vital institution, the U.S. intelligence community is grappling with the disruptive effects of the coronavirus including unconventional working hours and uncertainty among the employee and contractor workforces.

At NSA and CIA, some departments and functions have adjusted schedules and adopted unconventional working hours in a bid to implement social-distancing measures while fulfilling their missions. Some employees who used to work regular hours are now working in shifts, such as three days on and three days off, or one week on and one week off, etc., sources within the intelligence community told DefenseOne.

Spokespeople for the CIA and the NSA declined to say whether full-time employees or contractors were working diminished hours or in altered shifts. But they did say that any changes they might have made had not hurt their ability to carry out critical intelligenceactivities.

Given CIAs unique mission, were always prepared to preserve our mission capability, no matter the circumstances, while also protecting the well-being of our global workforce. In response to COVID-19, our officers are exercising tremendous creativity and flexibility, and were delivering on our mission, a CIA spokesperson told Defense One in anemail.

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NSA maintains and rehearses comprehensive plans to remain effective and achieve our missions across a variety of challenging situations, an NSA spokesperson said. We continue to monitor the potential risks presented by COVID-19, and are taking appropriate steps such as workplace distancing and increased cleaning to ensure NSAs people remain safe, secure, and healthy without impacting our operationalcapabilities.

The pandemic is also affecting the large group of contractors who serve the intelligence community. Many have found themselves in a difficult situation because their contracts require them to work in a specific Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF a generally small facility that is built to keep invasive signals intelligence collection out. In fact, a lot of work that deals with open source or even unclassified material still usually occurs in classified settings, simply because thats common practice now, according to an intelligence community contractor who spoke to Defense One.

The new work schedules are also causing confusion among contractors who wonder whether they will be paid for working shifts, part-time, or not at all. Theres been no detailed IC-wide guidance about this to agencies, and little given by agencies to contracting officers, the contractorsaid.

From where should that guidance come? Probably the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, according to retired CIA officer John Sipher. He called that contractor confusion exactly the kind of thing the DNI should be dealing with. It impacts the entire IC. ODNI has put out a letter on the subject but the relevant portion, on section 3610 of the CARES Act, still leaves big questions unanswered said thecontractor.

The ODNI could, for example, tell agencies that contractors should get their full wages even if they cant work where the contract says they should. Or it could tell them to allow workers to work from company SCIFs, or adopt othersolutions.

One problem is that the ODNI has not had a Senate-confirmed director since Dan Coats left last August. In February, the President nominated Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-TX, for the position, but he hasnt yet been confirmed by theSenate.

According to a March 21 letter from the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the risks of not compensating contractual intelligence workers could decimate the so-called Trusted Workforce. The community could lose people that it needs both now and in thefuture.

Agencies have begun to send both government and contract staff home and are considering limiting the number of workers who can come to government facilities for as long as eight weeks, notes the letter. The number of cleared contractors alone is about 500,000 and they are supported by thousands more colleagues who do not require a clearance. If these contract employees cannot continue working during the COVID crisis, there is a significant risk that they will not rejoin the Trusted Workforce when the crisis is over, leaving the national security industrial baseless able to support critical governmentmissions

Of course, the other thing that the intelligence community could do to make it easier to retain top talent during a period of unusual work-from-home arrangements is reforming the clearance process. Less classified intelligence material means more material that analysts can work with at home or from other non-SCIF locations. Reforming that process means processing clearance applications for workers much faster, not classifying as much material, and ensuring that analysts work with non-classified material in non-classified settings, even if it eventually goes into a classified report or product. The problem of over-classification of intelligence is one national security leaders have been highlighting with increasingurgency.

Bottom line: it may well take a massive global disaster to bring the intelligence community into the new era. But it could lose important talent along theway.

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Weird Hours, Contractor Concerns: How the Intelligence Community Is Grappling with Coronavirus - Defense One

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to deepen its impact on law enforcement agencies across the nation, the National Sheriffs Association (NSA) has formed an industry action group in order to better coordinate with and assist sheriffs offices in getting vital supplies to deputies working the frontline of the outbreak.

The initiative is a collaboration between the NSA and numerous corporate and industry partners, including Home Depot, Motorola Solutions, AWS and dozens more.

They have been very gracious to serve on an advisory group and help us identify what they may have in their tool belt and connections they may have to better provide services and supplies to agencies, Jonathan Thompson, NSAs CEO and executive director, told PoliceOne.

The group recently held its first meeting, discussing how the NSA can help industry leaders expedite partnerships with agencies during the crisis, improve agency access to critical supplies through those partnerships, and tackle potential slowdowns at the state level or federal level.

Thompson says the most immediate concern being voiced by sheriffs is the need for medical supplies, including personal protective equipment and disinfectants. While PPE and other medical supplies are the tier one focus, agency needs during the pandemic extend far beyond that.

Everything from I.T. support for a shortfall of people working in their offices to do the work to equipment that needs to be replaced on an urgent basis and expediting that replacement of equipment, Thompson said. We're also seeing a serious level of long-term planning regarding jail operations. How do we make sure inmates are still getting housed, clothed and fed in an efficient and effective way? While we're seeing a number of depopulation efforts, there are still several hundred thousand people in jails across the country and they have to be fed, clothed and taken care of.

As for what needs to be done now to protect deputies, Thompson says hes most concerned about PPE and testing.

Reliable tests are vital because we need to know if someone has been exposed, where they are in the infection cycle and where they are in the shedding cycle, Thompson said. We want to make sure that once we have people tested and their symptoms are becoming more acute, that they know, number one, you can't work. Number two, you need to get yourself taken care of whether rest and staying at home can suffice or if it's more dangerous or risky than that, getting them to a hospital as soon as possible. Those are the things that are keeping me awake at night getting more PPE and getting test equipment to sheriff's offices immediately.

I think it's going to be incumbent upon the federal government and state governments to make certain we don't expose first responders, Thompson continued. And when they are exposed, we've got to be able to respond to them and support them. So, we're urging governors to evaluate every day those tier one personnel that need to be protected with PPE, as well as tested. Those are the essential factors.

For companies or individuals who would like to provide support to the initiative, they can follow this link. Sheriffs offices in need of support can contact the NSA via the member website or through their state association.

Law enforcement and first responders have been helping people in this country for hundreds of years, Thompson said. We need help now, too. We need our leaders to recognize first responders are vulnerable and we need their help. We need the private sector to step up and we know they can, and we know they want to. We're eager to accept that help.

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How the National Sheriffs' Association is working to assist agencies in the COVID-19 crisis - Police News

The National Sheep Association (NSA) is calling for the public to observe the lockdown rules more closely.

NSA Chief Executive Phil Stocker explains: There is no doubt this lockdown is difficult. We are all feeling the effect, and NSA completely understands the frustration and the want to get outside. However, we mustnt forget that the fields were walking across are where our food is produced, and by being there we put the people producing our food at risk.

NSA has heard some extreme and concerning stories from its members of people still arriving in cars for walks, picnics and more.

Mr Stocker continues: By travelling to farms you are risking passing on this dangerous virus to a food producing farmer, and that is simply not acceptable. We all know the rules and simply put, travelling to walk somewhere a car drive away from your home is not necessary. We implore the British public to obey these rules and respect other peoples homes and lives particularly as we approach the Easter weekend.

With little still known about the virus, NSA is concerned about viral transmissions on gates, fences and other surfaces. Mr Stocker adds: These risks are very real and if people continue to flout the rules, we have no doubt the Government will be prepared to step things up to protect lives.

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Walkers asked to heed rules - Craven Herald

Anindya Banerjee(IANS)-

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a video conference with Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and the chiefs of army, navy and air force on April 1. The armed forces and the MoD are fully prepared to face any situation, Singh tweeted.

Only issue was that Singh was using an app that has created the worldwide security scare due to its links to China.

Citizen Lab, a Canada-based independent research organization, has found that Chinese servers are being used to distribute encryption and decryption keys for video links on Zoom. In all probability, the Chinese servers were used by Singh for the video conference with the security forces brass, leaving it vulnerable to breach.

Its not just Singh, more Indian leaders are using this easy-to-use medium. In one such video conference with high-ranking officials, Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal can be spotted using the same platform Zoom. It shows Goyal talking to officials while using his MacBook Air.

On April 10, ICCR chief Vinay Sahasrabuddhe organized a virtual press conference with the Agriculture Minister where Narendra Tomar talked about how the government planned to minimize the loss for the sector. This too was organized through Zoom. In fact, a link for the same was also sent to participating journalists.

But why is Zoom problematic? We suspect keys may be distributed through these (Chinese) servers. A company primarily catering to North American clients that sometimes distributes encryption keys through servers in China is potentially concerning, given that Zoom may be legally obligated to disclose these keys to authorities in China, the Citizen Lab researchers warned.

The suspicion proved to be true. The chief executive of the video conferencing app apologized for falling short on security issues and promised to address concerns. Eric S Yuan, the founder, himself is a Chinese American.

Ex-NSA (National Security Agency) hacker Patrick Wardle identified a series of issues, including a flaw that leaves Mac users vulnerable to having webcams and microphones hijacked, the BBC reported.

In other words, Goyals MacBooks webcam and microphone could also be vulnerable, if this assertion of the former NSA hacker is true.

Meanwhile, Google has reportedly banned the Zoom app from all employees computers over security vulnerabilities and Singapore has banned teachers using Zoom after hackers posted obscene images on screens.

Earlier this month, according to a report by Reuters, Elon Musks SpaceX had also banned employees from using Zoom over security concerns.

According to a report by social media platform Blind, 12 percent users have reportedly stopped using Zoom and 35 percent professionals are worried that their information may have been compromised.

Pawan Duggal, Indias foremost cyber security expert, calls Zoom a glitzy timebomb. It looks nice, but its deadly, he reasons.

But Indian leaders seem oblivious to these statistics. Not only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but the Congress also holds video conferences through Zoom, where likes of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has taken part. She used it to address the Congress Working Committee (CWC) as well as a meeting of state party chief.

In fact, all the virtual pass conferences of the Congress that take place at 1 p.m. are through Zoom. Chief Ministers Captain Amarinder Singh and Bhupesh Baghel, and senior leaders, like Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad, continue to use Zoom.

Ever since the government announced a 21-day nationwide shutdown, forcing not just companies but also political parties to work from home, the company has seen a huge boom in India. The daily downloads for Zoom have increased from around 1,70,000 in the middle of February to nearly 2.5 million in late March.

Duggal told IANS, If you are a policymaker, public figure or corporate honcho, Zoom is not your go-to place. Its proven Zoom is not end-to-end encrypted. Its China link is concerning. It has a dubious privacy record. Indian leaders should learn from Britain where cabinet meetings on Zoom came online.

Though, government sources indicate the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has stepped in to suggest what app scan be used as mode of secure video conference.

However, the use of Zoom by the government, the security and the trade honchos as well as top politicians, that is conceded to be routed through China, should ring alarm bells across the corridor of power.

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Use of Zoom app with security weaknesses cause of concern - indica News

The all-new OnePlus 8 series is here, and it includes two smartphones: OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro. While both devices have the same Snapdragon 865 chipset at their core, they do differ in some other aspects. For instance, the screen size 6.55-inch vs 6.78-inch; refresh rate 120Hz vs 90Hz; cameras quad vs triple, to name a few. So heres a quick roundup of all the features that the latest offerings from OnePlus have to offer.

1. Display a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED display with 90Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support on the OnePlus 8 and a slightly bigger, 6.78-inch panel on the Pro, which comes with 120Hz refresh rate, QHD+ resolution, and HDR10+ support along with MEMC for a seamless viewing experience. Besides, the two offer a blue-light filter and adjust the brightness accordingly for low-light environments to ensure some level of eye protection.

2. Performance both, the regular OnePlus 8 and the Pro pack in the latest chipset, the Snapdragon 865 (with Adreno 650 GPU) from Qualcomm, which comes with the X55 modem to offer 5G connectivity with support for SA (Standalone) and NSA (Non-Standalone) modes. Moreover, both come coupled with the same 8/12GB of RAM and 128/256GB of UFS 3.0 internal storage. However, the RAM on the regular model is an LPDDR4X, compared to the LPDDR5 on the Pro.

To power the internals, the phones come with a 4300mAh and 4510mAh battery, respectively. But, the way they fuel up the juice is what separates the two. The vanilla OnePlus 8 comes with the OnePlus Warp Charge 30T charging, whereas, the Pro also gets two more charging modes in addition, namely: Warp Charge 30 Wireless and Reverse Wireless charging.

3. Camera a triple-camera array with a 48MP (Sony IMX586) primary sensor, a 16MP ultra-wide, and a 2MP macro lens, on the OnePlus 8, and a quad-camera setup with a 48MP (Sony IMX689) primary sensor, accompanied by a 48MP ultra-wide, an 8MP telephoto, and a 5MP color filter. The addition of color filter on the 8 Pro brings alongenhanced filters and effects to allow you to experiment with photography.

Moving to the front, the two devices share the same 16MP (Sony IMX471) sensor for selfies and face unlock.

4. Connectivity 5G (SA / NSA) and 4G VoLTE on both models, along with WiFi 6 (a/b/g/n/ac/ax), NFC, and Bluetooth 5.1 with support for aptX, aptX HD, LDAC, and AAC audio codecs.

5. Miscellaneous

Thats the all-new OnePlus 8 series for you!The OnePlus 8 starts at $699 for the 8GB + 128GB model and $799 for the 12GB + 256GB, whereas, the OnePlus 8 Pro comes at a premium and is priced at $899 for the 8GB + 128GB and $999 for 12GB + 256GB variant. Both phones will be available starting April 29.

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All you need to know about the all-new OnePlus 8 Series - TechPP