What you need to know
- U.S. Senators sent a letter to the Amazon-owned Ring about its security policies back in November.
- In response to the Senators' questions, Ring revealed that it had fired four employees over the past four years for accessing videos from customers beyond what their job required.
- Ring also detailed how it has made changes requiring new users to enable two-factor authentication and will warn users when an unknown IP logs into their account.
Ring has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately — most recently for a string of hacks where Ring owners were being antagonized after info from thousands of customers was leaked online.
However, nearly a year ago, the Amazon-owned company was in the hot seat after employees were caught spying on users. It comes as no surprise that these instances caught the attention of lawmakers here in the U.S., which then sent a letter to Ring about its security policies.
In response to the Senators' letter, Ring answered a series of questions, and in the process, revealed that it has fired four employees for unauthorized access to video data from customers over the past four years. According to the letter, the employees were all authorized to view the data, but they attempted to view more than what was required to do their jobs.
In each instance, once Ring was made aware of the alleged conduct, Ring promptly investigated the incident, and after determining that the individual violated company policy, terminated the individual.
Furthermore, Ring has since limited the access to customers' stored video data to only three employees and made some changes to what videos it's Ukrainian R&D team can view.
The R&D team in Ukraine can only access publicly available videos and videos available from Ring employees, contractors, and friends and family of employees or contractors with their express consent.
In regards to all of the recent compromised Ring cameras and accounts, the company has instituted some new security policies. For starters, all new accounts will be required to set up two-factor authentication. While that does nothing to help protect all of the current Ring customers, you can still enable two-factor authentication on the Ring camera you already own, and we recommend that you do so.
There will also be a new warning to inform customers when someone logs in from an unknown IP address, giving you a heads up in case someone new is accessing your account without your expressed permission.
