Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[Genz2]

Ex-DHS inspector general indicted for allegedly stealing government software

https://www.cyberscoop.com/fomer-inspector-general-indicted-charles-edwards/

Federal prosecutors on Friday announced charges against the former acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security for allegedly stealing proprietary software from the watchdog and trying to profit from it.

Charles K. Edwards, who served as acting DHS inspector general from 2011 to 2013, and his former associate Murali Yamazula Venkata, are accused of aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, and conspiring to steal government property to defraud the United States.

The alleged scheme took place from 2014 to 2017, after Edwards had already left DHS’s inspector general (IG) office. But the head-turning indictment accuses Edwards of coordinating with Venkata, who still worked at the IG’s office, to steal the IG’s software. Edwards and Venkata also allegedly took “sensitive government databases” containing the personal identifiably information of DHS and U.S. Postal Service employees.

Edwards then allegedly used the stolen code to improve software made by his company, Delta Business Solutions, and tried to sell it to the Department of Agriculture’s inspector general office.

Edwards needed some IT support to finish the operation, prosecutors said. Venkata and other unnamed individuals allegedly helped Edwards reconfigure his laptop so he could upload the stolen software and databases. The IT hands built a test server at Edwards’ residence that contained the stolen PII, and Edwards enlisted software developers in India to help him commercialize the software, according to the indictment.

Neither Edwards, Venkata nor Delta Business Solutions could be immediately reached for comment Friday. The DHS’s IG office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An inspector general is supposed to be an independent check on federal waste and abuse. But a 2014 Senate investigation found that, as acting inspector general, Edwards had delayed and altered investigations at the behest of senior Obama administration officials.
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https://www.wavesys.com/data-protection

Excerpts:

Security = data protection

When we talk about security, what we really mean is protecting data from theft and misuse. Proprietary information, R&D, corporate strategy, customer names and phone numbers, social security numbers, passwords … All have potential monetary value, and all are targets. Data theft is a growth industry. As an example, tens of thousands of new malware strains pop up daily. With online tools, even a non-technical person can create one in minutes.

The IT perimeter has vanished

Data protection is easy enough when your data is sitting in secure servers. But today, it’s not. The workforce is increasingly mobile. More than 60 percent of corporate data lives not on servers but on laptops, tablets, and other devices (and more and more of those devices are owned by employees). Data is dispersed, constantly moving, and constantly exposed to the Internet and all the malware, viruses, and hackers lurking there.

Wave’s solution: start with the device

The Wave approach to this challenge is to make the IT perimeter irrelevant. Wave turns on and manages the self-encrypting drives (SEDs) and trusted platform modules (TPMs), or security chips, that are already embedded in many of your devices. The upshot is that each and every device is equipped with its own data protection system—while being centrally managed. This gives you unprecedented yet straightforward control over exactly who has access to your data, with what devices, over what networks.

We cost less too. Wave works on your existing hardware, across platforms. That’s because our solutions are based on an open standard that’s already been implemented on 600 million–plus laptops and is now working its way onto mobile devices. Our software is all you need to reach a whole new level of data protection. It’s one of the big reasons why total cost of ownership can be almost half that of a traditional software-based system that doesn’t even work very well.