In reaction to the NSA’s interception campaign Cisco will ship to fake identities for its most sensitive customers, in the hope that the NSA’s interceptions are targeted and exposed. Cisco has been pro-active and has inspected their routers for possible embedded spy chips, but to date has not found anything because it necessarily does not know precisely what NSA taps may look like. According to security chief John Stewart of Cisco Borg boss John Chambers of Cisco wrote a letter to US President Barack Obama saying the spying would undermine the global tech industry. But is seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Mike Burgess, chief security officer for Australia’s dominant telco Telstra, says the carrier is confident it will be able to secure the swelling pools of data the nation’s government will force it to collect under soon-to-be-enacted data retention laws. However, the swelling data pools will turn companies into honeypots for hackers, and staff with access to the databases as prime targets for phishing campaigns. There was not much clarity over how much data retention will cost the telco, but it would impose a significant monetary overhead and that prompted telcos to write to Federal Attorney General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull requesting additional government subsidizes. John Stewart of Cisco points out that hacking groups are likely with sufficient time and effort be successful at targeting systems specifically government mandated data retention databases. Imposing a greater security risk. And goes on to say
