Replies to post #106375 on Coffee Sipping Big Board Stocks

[fuzzy]

Wishing the best too you...

[capgain]

Take care stuffie, wishing you the best also.

[EZ2]

Apple CEO Tim Cook may have violated SEC rules with Jim Cramer email

MARKETWATCH 1:23 PM ET 8/24/2015
Symbol Last Price Change
AAPL 107.37 +1.61 (+1.52%)
QUOTES AS OF 01:23:39 PM ET 08/24/2015

Lawyer: 'The SEC will undoubtedly want to take a look at this'

Apple Inc. (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook's decision to give a rare mid-quarter update on the company's performance in a private email to CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday may have violated federal disclosure rules, lawyers said Monday.

In the email, confirmed by Apple(AAPL) to MarketWatch, Cook said that iPhone activations have accelerated over the last few weeks, despite growing economic concerns in China and the government's moves to devalue the Yuan. He also said Apple's(AAPL)App Store recorded the best performance of the year in China during that time.

"Obviously I can't predict the future, but our performance so far this quarter is reassuring," Cook wrote.

However, the private disclosure, which was tweeted out by CNBC reporter Carl Quintanilla and then read on air at CNBC, may have violated the Securities and Exchange Commission's Fair Disclosure regulation, white-collar lawyers told MarketWatch. The rule, deemed murky and often contested by companies, addresses how publicly-traded companies disclose material non-public information to certain individuals or entities.

"The SEC will undoubtedly want to take a look at this," said Thomas Gorman, a partner at Dorsey focusing on defending SEC and other regulatory investigations. At the very least, the SEC will contact Apple(AAPL) to seek context for the disclosure, he said.

(https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/635799629947404288)

While the media typically gets a pass under the disclosure rules (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB989414276167378622), Cramer also co-manages a portfolio, Action Alerts PLUS, that has a long position in Apple(AAPL), according to a recent disclosure on TheStreet (http://www.thestreet.com/story/13250111/1/cramer--this-is-why-you-hold-apple-stock.html).

Bill Singer, another lawyer and owner of the BrokeAndBroker.com (http://www.brokeandbroker.com/) industry blog, said the SEC has long grappled with regulation in the age of social media, and will likely investigate Cook's email to determine whether the CEO overstepped his bounds with the private exchange.

"I certainly could see, in some circumstances, where the SEC would want to review the conduct and think it is a violation of Reg FD," Singer said. "It constitutes a disclosure giving certain individuals the benefit before it was percolated by the rest of the public, during a fast-moving, extraordinary market."

The SEC declined to comment on the Cook email and any investigation it may perform.

In 2013, the SEC ruled that companies could make public disclosures on social media platforms such as Facebook Inc. (FB) and Twitter Inc. (TWTR) after Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings disclosed record streaming user growth via a Facebook post (http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2013/04/02/sec-clears-netflixs-reed-hastings-says-social-medias-ok-for- sharing/)that sent the company's stock skyrocketing.

Shares of Apple(AAPL) climbed 1.7% to $107.51 in recent trade, paring losses after the stock fell as much as 13% (http:// www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-leads-decline-in-dow-jones-industrial-average-2015-08-24) earlier in the session. Its stock is down 19% in the last three months, underperforming the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average's 11.7% decline. The Dow was down another 150 points on Monday.

-Jennifer Booton; 415-439-6400; [e-mail]

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires


(END) Dow Jones Newswires
08-24-151323ET
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

[EZ2]

Poll Shows Americans United in Need for Police Body Cameras: Vast Majority of Americans Prefer 2nd Generation Police Body Cameras

Imperative That Police Departments Use Reliable, Transparent and Accountable Technology to Build Trust Within Their Communities

MARKET WIRE 11:12 AM ET 8/31/2015

ATLANTA, GA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/31/15 -- In a time of deep partisan divide, no other issue has united Americans like the need for police body cameras that will reliably record interactions with citizens and criminal suspects. A new nation-wide poll released today by Utility shows nearly 9 out of 10 people (89%) support equipping officers with body cameras. This unanimity crosses all political divides among Democrats (91%), Republicans (88%) and Independents (90%).

"I know of no other significant issue facing this country in which almost all Americans are in agreement," said Keith Frederick, of FrederickPolls. The poll not only examined people's views on police body cameras, but also the competing technologies that are now available.

Assuming the cost is about the same, 94 percent of respondents recommend having a police body camera that can send an automatic "Officer Down" emergency location report to Central Police Dispatch. 87 percent of survey participants want body cameras with automatic recording Start compared to a body camera that uses a manual on-off switch controlled by the officer. 86 percent of respondents want police body camera video recorded in High Definition. 80 percent prefer officers to have the body camera embedded in the officer's body armor vest as opposed to a camera clipped onto the uniform that can easily fall off during a struggle as indicated by several recent news reports.

"It is notable the public considers automatic location reporting of 'Officer Down' situations to Police Central Dispatch as the most important and desirable feature of an advanced police body camera," said Frederick. "This shows the public has a very strong concern and support for police officer safety. Furthermore, 89 percent of U.S. voters, regardless of demographic, express a decisive preference for advanced technology included in 2nd Generation police body cameras," stated Frederick. "There is a near-universal awareness of controversial police-citizen incidents over the past year, and a desire to fix what many reportedly view as a flawed system. Such unified opinion creates a strong political imperative for action."

"This survey proves people feel more comfortable with police officers wearing body cameras that automatically start video recording than they are with manually controlled video recording devices," said Robert McKeeman, CEO of Utility. "Americans overwhelmingly want police departments to use body cameras, but the public needs to trust the technology. They need to be sure it's capable of reliably enhancing transparency and accountability between officers and the community. Police department policy-based recording software control eliminates human error and racial bias, and is the only reliable way to make full transparency and accountability a reality. The opinion of the people is clear; ignoring this consensus cannot be justified."

The findings were the result of a national survey conducted by FrederickPolls, LLC -- one of the country's leading issue and political campaign polling firms. FrederickPolls interviewed a random nationwide sampling of 1,000 registered voters -- ranging in demographic, location and political affiliation -- to provide a representative cross section of the American population.

Along with a strong preference for automatic policy-based video recording, 72 percent of those polled indicated they prefer a system capable of automatically uploading video immediately as it is recorded, as opposed to officers after the end of their shift back at the police station manually plugging their body camera into a docking station to upload video. 89 percent of the public sees a benefit in Police Central Dispatch being able to remotely start video recording for all police body cameras in an area, as well as sending immediate Be On The Lookout (BOLO) alerts with pictures and text to all body cameras within a specified area for incidents such as the Boston Marathon bombing. In a similar manner, Silver and Amber alerts can be sent to all police officer body-worn cameras immediately rather handing out paper flyers at the next police shift Roll Call.

"A lot of the findings were common sense. If a body camera is intended to build trust through transparency and accountability, then the body camera cannot have transparency and accountability shortcomings that could break that trust," said McKeeman. "Being a police officer is a dangerous job that deserves our appreciation. But serious transparency and accountability doubts will be raised if video is not recorded because an officer in the heat of the moment forgets to press a manual video recording start button, or video of an incident where a citizen is shot and killed is not captured because the camera gets knocked off the officer's head or uniform at the start of an altercation, as happened recently in Draper, Utah. These are scenarios police departments across the nation encounter daily and need to consider when making a major investment in police body camera technology."

Detailed survey results can be found at Bodyworn.com/survey.

Utility is a venture-capital funded software developer headquartered in Decatur, Georgia in metropolitan Atlanta. The company provides real-time Situational Awareness and Police Video Management Software as a Service and vehicle wireless communications hardware solutions for Police, Fire, EMS, Electric and Gas Utility, and Public Transit customers across the US. Utility owns US patents 6,831,566; 7,768,548; and 8,781,475; and has numerous patents pending with the US Patent Office, the Canadian Patent Office, and the European Union Patent Office.

Documents and/or Photos available for this release:

Vast Majority of Americans Prefer 2nd Generation Police Body Cameras

To view supporting documents and/or photos, go to www.enr-corp.com/pressroom and enter Release ID: 390731

Contact:
Jake Mendlinger
Zimmerman/Edelson, Inc.
Phone: [phone]
E-Mail: [e-mail]

Source: Utility

[EZ2]

McAfee Labs Report Reviews Five Years of Hardware and Software Threat Evolution

BUSINESS WIRE 12:01 AM ET 9/1/2015

Symbol Last Price Change
INTC 28.54up 0 (0%)
QUOTES AS OF 04:15:00 PM ET 08/31/2015

Report Provides Five-Year Threat Retrospective, GPU Malware Assessment, and Techniques for Exfiltrating Data from Corporate Networks; Ransomware Rises 127% from Q2 2014 to Q2 2015

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Intel® Security today released its McAfee Labs Threats Report: August 2015, which includes a critique of graphics processing unit (GPU) malware claims, an investigation of the top cybercriminal exfiltration techniques, and a five-year retrospective on the evolution of the threat landscape since Intel(INTC) Corporation’s announcement of the McAfee acquisition.

McAfee Labs commemorates the five-year anniversary of the Intel-McAfee union by comparing what researchers thought would happen beginning in 2010 with what actually happened in the realm of hardware and software security threats. Key researchers and executives reviewed our predictions on the security capabilities of silicon, the challenges of emerging hard-to-detect attacks, and our 2010 expectations for new device types versus the reality of the marketplace.

The five-year threat landscape analysis suggests:

Intel Security foresaw threats targeting hardware and firmware components and threatening runtime integrity
Increasingly evasive malware and long-running attacks did not surprise us but some of the specific tactics and techniques were unimagined five years ago
Although the volume of mobile devices has increased even faster than we expected, serious broad-based attacks on those devices has grown much more slowly than we thought
We are seeing just the beginnings of attacks and breaches against IoT devices
Cloud adoption has changed the nature of some attacks, as devices are attacked not for the small amount of data that they store, but as a path to where the important data resides
Cybercrime has grown into a full-fledged industry with suppliers, markets, service providers, financing, trading systems and a proliferation of business models
Businesses and consumers still do not pay sufficient attention to updates, patches, password security, security alerts, default configurations, and other easy but critical ways to secure cyber and physical assets
The discovery and exploitation of core Internet vulnerabilities has demonstrated how some foundational technologies are underfunded and understaffed
There is growing, positive collaboration between the security industry, academia, law enforcement and governments to take down cybercriminal operations
“We were impressed by the degree to which three key factors – expanding attack surfaces, the industrialization of hacking, and the complexity and fragmentation of the IT security market – accelerated the evolution of threats, and size and frequency of attacks,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president, Intel Security’s McAfee Labs. “To keep pace with such momentum, the cybersecurity community must continue to improve threat intelligence sharing, recruit more security professionals, accelerate security technology innovation, and continue to engage governments so they can fulfill their role to protect citizens in cyberspace.”

The August report also probes into the details of three proofs-of-concept (PoC) for malware exploiting GPUs in attacks. While nearly all of today’s malware is designed to run from main system memory on the central processing unit (CPU), these PoCs leverage the efficiencies of these specialized hardware components designed to accelerate the creation of images for output to a display. The scenarios suggest hackers will attempt to leverage GPUs for their raw processing power, using them to evade traditional malware defenses by running code and storing data where traditional defenses do not normally watch for malicious code.

Reviewing the PoCs, Intel Security agrees that moving portions of malicious code off of the CPU and host memory reduces the detection surface for host-based defenses. However, researchers argue that, at a minimum, trace elements of malicious activity remain in memory or CPUs, allowing endpoint security products to detect and remediate threats.

McAfee Labs also details techniques cybercriminals use to exfiltrate a wide variety of information on individuals from corporate networks: names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit and debit card numbers, health care information, account credentials, and even sexual preferences. In addition to tactics and techniques used by attackers, this analysis examines attacker types, their motivations, and their likely targets, as well as the policies businesses should embrace to better detect exfiltration.

The August 2015 report also identified a number of other developments in the second quarter of 2015:

Ransomware. Ransomware continues to grow very rapidly – with the number of new ransomware samples rising 58% in Q2. The total number of ransomware samples grew 127% from Q2 2014 to Q2 2015. We attribute the increase to fast-growing new families such as CTB-Locker, CryptoWall, and others.
Mobile slump. The total number of mobile malware samples grew 17% in Q2. But mobile malware infection rates declined about 1% per region this quarter, with the exception of North America, which dropped almost 4%, and Africa, which was unchanged.
Spam botnets. The trend of decreasing botnet-generated spam volume continued through Q2, as the Kelihos botnet remained inactive. Slenfbot again claims the top rank, followed closely by Gamut, with Cutwail rounding out the top three.
Suspect URLs. Every hour in Q2 more than 6.7 million attempts were made to entice McAfee customers into connecting to risky URLs via emails, browser searches, etc.
Infected files. Every hour in Q2 more than 19.2 million infected files were exposed to McAfee customers’ networks.
PUPs up. Every hour in Q2 an additional 7 million potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) attempted installation or launch on McAfee-protected networks.
For more information, please read the full report: McAfee Labs Threats Report: August 2015.

For guidance on how organizations can better protect their enterprise from the threats detailed in this quarter’s report, please visit: Enterprise Blog.

About McAfee Labs

McAfee Labs is the threat research division of Intel Security and one of the world’s leading sources for threat research, threat intelligence, and cybersecurity thought leadership. The McAfee Labs team of more than 400 researchers collects threat data from millions of sensors across key threat vectors—file, web, message, and network. It then performs cross-vector threat correlation analysis and delivers real-time threat intelligence to tightly integrated McAfee endpoint, content, and network security products through its cloud-based McAfee Global Threat Intelligence service. McAfee Labs also develops core threat detection technologies—such as application profiling, and graylist management—that are incorporated into the broadest security product portfolio in the industry.

About Intel Security

McAfee Labs is now part of Intel Security. With its Security Connected strategy, innovative approach to hardware-enhanced security, and unique McAfee Global Threat Intelligence, Intel Security is intensely focused on developing proactive, proven security solutions and services that protect systems, networks, and mobile devices for business and personal use around the world. Intel Security is combining the experience and expertise of McAfee with the innovation and proven performance of Intel(INTC) to make security an essential ingredient in every architecture and on every computing platform. The mission of Intel Security is to give everyone the confidence to live and work safely and securely in the digital world. www.intelsecurity.com.

No computer system can be absolutely secure.

Note: Intel(INTC) and the Intel(INTC) and McAfee logos, are trademarks of Intel Corporation(INTC) or McAfee, Inc. in the US and/or other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.




View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150831005241/en/

Source: McAfee Labs

Copyright Business Wire 2015