On March 10th, the Wall Street Journal reported on a recent test conducted by Anthropic PBC to gauge the hacking prowess of its artificial-intelligence model, Claude Opus 4.6. According to the Journal, within 20 minutes the software identified the first bug in Mozilla’s Firefox software. Over the two-week period during which the test was run, more high-severity bugs were found than are typically reported to Mozilla in two months. Ultimately, more than 100 bugs were...
The Identity Theft Resource Center® (ITRC) reported that in 2025 the frequency of data compromises requiring identity theft breach notifications continued a three-year annual trend of more than 3,000 incidents. This resulted in over three quarters of a billion victim notifications being sent in 2025 alone, although the “mix” of compromises has changed with a decrease in “mega-breaches.” The IRTC predicts that the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) will result “in an environment of...
Mass shootings in schools, houses of worship and retail/commercial/entertainment spaces tend to receive the most media attention. However, this may lead to a skewed perception of of what might be more correctly termed as “mass killing events.” Culling the data can be challenging, as can be getting up-to-the-minute data. Fortunately, a database maintained by a partnership with The Associated Press, Northeastern University and USA TODAY does much of the data collection and analysis. The Mass...
Sadly, the US is experiencing a wave of gun violence. Whether the result of an uptick in shootings in big cities, or high-profile shootings such as those recently in the New York City subway system, Buffalo, NY or Uvalde, TX, all have common denominators: needless loss of life and suffering. This begs the questions: Could steps have been taken to mitigate the loss of life? If so, what are they? Is public access bleeding control...
ASIS International, the premier global community of security practitioners, published Public Access Bleeding Control and the Standard of Care: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats on March 17, 2022 as an online exclusive to Security Management magazine. The article, co-authored by our team members, examines at the impact the widespread availability of public access bleeding control equipment and the related training could have on negligence actions. The article can be accessed here. More about ASIS...
The U.S. Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, Global Trade and Investigations division recently announced that it has seized over 11 million counterfeit N95 respirators as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. The seizures were part of Operation Stolen Promise which targets COVID-19 related fraud. A description of that initiative can be found here: https://www.ice.gov/topics/operation-stolen-promise. N95 respirators offer the highest level of protection against infection and as such are in demand. The counterfeit respirators...
“Bystander Effect,” “Bystander Apathy” or “Genovese Syndrome” are all social psychological terms used to describe the observed behavior that the greater the number of witnesses to an emergency the less likely it is that any one individual will intervene. Perhaps the most famous example of the behavior is the murder of Kitty Genovese in the Kew Gardens, Queens neighborhood of New York City. Early in the morning of March 13, 1964, Ms. Genovese was returning to...
On May 18th of 2018, seventeen year old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a student at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, opened fire in an art classroom at the high school killing 10 and wounding 13. The firearms used in the shooting, a shotgun and .38-caliber revolver, were both legally owned by Pagourtzis’ father. Although Pagourtzis’ choice of firearms is somewhat atypical for mass school shootings, the source is not. As it turns out, it...
The Master replied, “What is necessary is to rectify names.” . . . “If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.” –The Analects of Confucius, Book 13 Chapter 3 Although the above quote applied to the ordering of political and social status, as well as the rights and responsibilities occasioned...
An earlier post introduced the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), a public-private partnership between the United States Department of State and the Private Sector. See http://www.excelsioradvisory.com/overseas-security-advisory-council/. While OSAC’s focus is on international security issues, there are a number of additional open source intelligence resources available to organizations contemplating doing business overseas. The World Fact Book. Published by the Central Intelligence Agency, the World Fact Book (WFB) provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography,...
