About 7.9 million new domain names were registered globally in Q2, domain registry Verisign said Thursday. The new registrations indicated a 2.4 percent growth rate over Q1 (see 1607200047) and 12.9 percent growth over the same period in 2016, the company said. The new registrations brought the global number of domain names up to 334.6 million as of June 30, including more than 143 million names using the .com and .net top-level domains, Verisign said: There were 127.5 million .com domain names and 15.8 million .net domain names June 30.

NTIA plans the first meeting of its multistakeholder process on cybersecurity upgradeability of the IoT Oct. 19 in Austin. NTIA said in August it was launching the IoT cybersecurity multistakeholder process on developing ways to improve consumers’ understanding of cybersecurity upgrades to IoT products (see 1608020060). The meeting will focus “on security upgradeability and patching, and to establish more concrete goals and structure of the process,” NTIA is set to say in Monday's Federal Register. The meeting also will be on how the process will be structured, including forming working groups on specific issues, and setting out “concrete goals” for the process, NTIA said. Future meetings will “encourage and facilitate continued discussion among stakeholders to build out a mapping of the range of issues, and develop a consensus view of a consolidated set of potential definitions,” NTIA said. “Discussions will also cover best practices for sharing security information with consumers. This discussion may include circulation of stakeholder-developed strawman drafts and discussion of the appropriate scope of the initiative.” The meeting is 10 a.m.-4 p.m. in the Renaissance Austin Hotel's Trinity Ballroom.

Dish Network, Frontier Communications, Charter Communications, Hughes Network and EarthLink and sales agents Infinity Sales Group and GoDish.com were part of a broadband "bait and switch advertising scheme" involving RedPlum advertising mailers, said an amended complaint (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida. Consumers routinely get RedPlum mailers advertising broadband offerings at particular speeds and prices, but none of those offers was available as a free-standing service at the lowest-advertised prices, alleged plaintiff TruthInAdvertisingEnforcers.com -- "a fictitious business name" registered to Gerald Collette, a Holiday, Florida, resident, said the lawsuit. RedPlum can target mailings down to the sub ZIP code level, Collette said, but none of the defendants advertising their services at special prices provided a means by which consumers could get the advertised services at advertised price. Fine print in the ads may refer to limited availability of product, but "the size, position and lack of prominence of ... the fine print in such advertisements were, in comparison to the material statements promoting the Advertised Bargains, inadequate," Collette said. Defendants didn't comment Thursday. The complaint was the fourth amended complaint filed by TruthinAdvertisingEnforcers.com.

Government managers surveyed said they were largely satisfied by the technological assistance received from the General Services Administration's 18F team and the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), which is part of the Office of Management and Budget, in helping agencies address problems with IT projects, GAO reported Wednesday. Of the 32 18F projects and 13 USDS projects underway or completed as of August 2015 across 11 agencies, respondents said they were "very satisfied" with 22 projects and "moderately satisfied" with 10. There were no responses for nine projects. The teams provide consulting services including quality assurance, identification of problems and software engineering.

Control4 will hit CEDIA Expo Thursday with three software announcements: an operating system refresh, dealer remote management tool and voice control integration, starting with Amazon’s Alexa voice engine, said Brad Hintze, senior director-product marketing. New features in the latest Control4 v2.9 operating system give dealers an opportunity to upgrade existing customers, and provide bug fixes and software enhancements, Hintze said. The company also worked with Amazon engineers to expand what was possible within the Alexa smart home skill and is the first company to release Alexa scene capability, Hintze said. Control4 is enabling voice control of lighting, including scenes, thermostats and the ability to add, remove and rename devices without dealer involvement. The Control4 platform supports 9,900 devices, he said, including Sonos speakers and Comcast/Xfinity’s latest set-top boxes.

Most of the two dozen hospital cyberattacks globally in the first half of 2016, including 13 in the U.S., involved ransomware, said a McAfee Labs threats report Wednesday: Those attacks, which largely infected systems through phishing, weren't executed by malicious actors normally seen. "The code and attack was effective but not very sophisticated," the report said. But money can be made quickly through these attacks; the report said ransom paid in Q1 attacks against hospitals was about $100,000 total. The report said most hospitals didn't pay ransom, but those targeted by one threat called "samsam" did seem to pay. McAfee, which is part of Intel Security, said hospitals are easy targets due to a "combination of legacy systems with weak security, a lack of employee security awareness, a fragmented workforce, and the pressing need for immediate access to information." Experts at an FTC event last week on ransomware (see 1609070044) said it's a growing threat that's spreading to sectors beyond healthcare.

One in three Americans was hit with a computer virus, hacked or suffered some other cyberattack over the past year, said a Zogby Analytics survey Tuesday. A news release on the survey, commissioned by Munich Re’s Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance, said adults 18 to 24 were the most likely victims. Overall, in one-quarter of the cases, people spent up to $5,000 per incident to recover. About 56 percent spent less than $500. Sixty-six percent said they were concerned about potential cyberattacks, and 62 percent worried about online fraud. The online survey polled 1,500 U.S. adults.

A dramatic increase in commercial and recreational drones -- expected to triple in four years -- will create bigger safety risks from collisions, cyberattacks and terrorism, said insurer Allianz in a report released Tuesday. Use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) likely would result in fewer work accidents and worker compensation losses, and speed up insurance claims, it said. But millions more drones in widespread use also could increase risks -- mainly mid-air collisions and loss of control -- resulting in potential multimillion-dollar claims against businesses, operators and manufacturers, Allianz added. Concerns that drones could be used for malicious acts and other "risk scenarios include the prospect of hackers ‘spoofing’ a UAS radio signal, potentially leading to a crash, the potential loss or theft of valuable recorded data when the device is transmitting information to the control station or after the flight by cyber-attack when the data has been stored," the report said. Registering drones and operators, training and educating pilots and using on-board cameras, flight communications and system maintenance are crucial to improving safety, said Allianz. Separately, ABI Research said in a Tuesday news release the small drone commercial market will exceed $30 billion by 2025.

Lack of compelling content and user-experience “issues” are still among the “main impediments” to the mainstream consumer adoption of virtual-reality and augmented-reality products and services, said a Perkins Coie survey report Monday. The law firm teamed with Upload, which runs a San Francisco “collective” dedicated to helping VR and AR startups get off the ground, to canvass 653 startup founders, tech company executives and investors. Thirty-seven percent cited inadequate content offerings as the most significant “obstacle” blocking VR and AR adoption, the report said. “Just as content was the fuel that launched many successful technology products, our respondents clearly believe that high-quality and robust content is key to moving the AR/VR industry forward.” Thirty-eight percent said they see “bulky hardware and technical glitches” as the top industry impediments, the report said. “Mobile VR taps into the continued proliferation of mobile devices to combat some of the barriers identified in the survey related to cost and the need for bulky equipment.”

More than 300 educational technology companies have signed the Student Privacy Pledge, which lists legally enforceable commitments designed to protect K-12 student data, said the Future of Privacy Forum and the Software & Information Industry Association in a Monday news release. Major signatories include Apple, AT&T, Blackboard, Google and Microsoft. FPF and SIIA launched the initiative in 2014 with 14 companies. Companies commit to 12 obligations, including not to sell students' personal information or collect or use such data for anything else other than educational purposes, said the release. “The Pledge’s enforceable provisions have also driven a rapid growth of the privacy-minded culture within companies today that places privacy first in the development process alongside functionality,” said Brendan Desetti, SIIA director-education policy, in the release. In December, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint with the FTC against Google, alleging the company has been collecting and data mining personal data of school children in violation of the pledge. Google maintained it does comply (see 1512010068). The FTC didn't comment on the status of the complaint.