Adam Breeden/ZDNETFor many people, motion smoothing on TVs is only appropriate for gaming and watching live sports; enthusiasts typically prefer turning off the feature to watch anything else because it can detract from the filmmaker’s original intent, making on-screen images seem artificial or hyper-realistic. This is what’s called the “soap opera effect.” Also: I changed 6 settings on my Samsung TV to instantly improve the performanceIt’s a perfectly descriptive metaphor that probably requires no explanation. You can see it all too well: the cinematic film should not look like a daytime soap; you shouldn’t feel like you’re on the set with the actors. But it is appealing to feel like you’re in the stadium watching your team with thousands of fans. The soap opera effect makes sense for live sporting event broadcasts. More

on May 4, 2022

| Topic: Legal

In an Australian first, the Federal Court has found that financial services firm RI Advice breached its licence obligations by failing to implement adequate risk management systems to manage cybersecurity threats. This was the first case brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) against any licensee and, subsequently, sets a new legal standard for how financial service providers should seek to execute cybersecurity management plans. The company has been ordered by the court to pay AU$750,000 toward ASIC’s costs, and to engage a cybersecurity expert within the next month to advise and assist RI Advice’s authorised representative network.The decision comes after a significant number of cyber incidents affected authorised representatives of RI Advice between June 2014 and May 2020, leading ASIC to file against the company for breach of its licence obligations. In a statement, ASIC detailed that one of the incidents involved an unknown malicious agent who obtained access to an authorised representative’s file server, through a brute force attack, from December 2017 to April 2018 before being detected. ASIC claimed that this resulted in the “potential compromise of confidential and sensitive personal information of several thousand clients and other persons”.In her judgment, federal court justice Helen Rofe said that cybersecurity risks pose a significant threat to the conduct of a business and its provision of financial services. “It is not possible to reduce cybersecurity risk to zero, but it is possible to materially reduce cybersecurity risk through adequate cybersecurity documentation and controls to an acceptable level,” said justice Rofe. ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court said the cyber attacks allowed third parties to gain access to sensitive personal information. “It is imperative for all entities, including licensees, to have adequate cybersecurity systems in place to protect against unauthorised access. “ASIC strongly encourages all entities to follow the advice of the Australian Cyber Security Centre and adopt an enhanced cybersecurity position to improve cyber resilience in light of the heightened cyber threat environment,” Court said.Prior to October 2018, RI was a wholly-owned subsidiary of ANZ Bank. It then became a wholly-owned subsidiary of IOOF Holdings Limited as one of four financial planning dealer groups sold by ANZ under a AU$975 million deal.   Related Coverage More

Ring has launched a technical preview of video end-to-end encryption to bolster the security of home video feeds.

This week, the Amazon-owned smart doorbell maker said the feature is currently being rolled out to customers in order to elicit feedback, and if it proves to be successful, end-to-end video encryption could eventually be offered to users that want to add an “additional layer of security to their videos” as an opt-in feature. 
“We will continue to innovate and invest in features that empower our neighbors with the ability to easily view, understand, and manage how their videos and information stay secure with Ring,” the company says. 
End-to-end encryption aims to protect data from being hijacked, read, or otherwise compromised by preventing anyone other than an intended recipient from being able to unlock and decrypt information — whether this is messages, video feeds, or other content.
Ring says that videos are already encrypted in transit — when footage is uploaded to the cloud — and also when at rest, which is when footage is stored on Ring servers. However, the new feature will implement encryption at the home level, which can only be recovered by using a key stored locally on user mobile devices. 
The company says the feature has been “designed so that only the customer can decrypt and view recordings on their enrolled device.”
In order to enable the feature for Ring devices, users involved in the rollout can select this option from the Video Encryption page in the Ring app’s control center. 

Ring has come under fire in recent months due to security concerns. In December 2020, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Ring following “dozens” of customers experiencing death threats, blackmail attempts, and verbal attacks. The lawsuit claims that shoddy security opened the door for their devices to be hijacked by harassers, leading to distress and invasions of privacy.
As noted by sister site CNET, Ring confirmed that any end-to-end encrypted videos cannot be viewed by Ring, Amazon, or any law enforcement official. If the feature is enabled, this also impacts the Ring Neighbor program, in which customers can voluntarily share video feeds with law enforcement — as end-to-end encrypted footage will not be viewable. 
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