Security Round-Up

China Training Army for Cyberwar

According to the state-sponsored news outlet Xinhua, the Chinese military will begin digital war games next month in order to train new military units focused on digital warfare.

This will be the first time the army "has focused on combat forces including digitalized units, special operations forces, army aviation and electronic counter forces," says Xinhua.

The ramp-up comes amid allegations of cyber-espionage from other world powers.

Facebook Introduces ‘Verified’ Pages

Facebook is introducing a new system that promises to verify the authenticity of pages — particularly those of celebrities.

Starting this week, Facebook will go through their pages and verify them one-by-one. Successfully verified celebrities will receive a blue check mark on their page.

Though the authentication process will start off as invite-only, Facebook says they plan to allow for applications in the near future.

Evernote Offers Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication is quickly becoming the hot security trend of the season. Now note-taking service Evernote is hopping on the bandwagon as the latest vendor to offer the feature.

Like Twitter — which also recently added two-factor authentication — Evernote’s second factor will come as an SMS to users’ mobiles. When users look to use Evernote from the web or to install it on a new computer, they’ll be prompted to input a numerical code the service will provide via text message.

“This combination of something you know (your password) and something you have (your phone) makes two-step verification a significant security improvement over passwords alone.”