Face masks will be required at all times at CEDIA Expo 2021, said show owner Emerald Holding in a health and safety plan sent Monday to prospective attendees. Masks will be provided for attendees “if one is needed.” Conferences are to begin Aug. 31, and the Expo is scheduled for Sept. 1-3 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis.

Privacy and cybersecurity need to be factored into connected home building amid the growth in consumer adoption of connected devices, reported Frost & Sullivan Friday in a research project for the Continental Automated Building Association. The $130,000 project was funded by CABA members Acuity Brands, CommScope, Community Smart Living, CSA Group, CTA, National Research Council, Resideo Technologies, SnapAV and UL with the goal of setting a “measured response plan” for the industry to fast-track solutions that treat cybersecurity protections “as the norm.”

The FCC should do more to ensure a smooth rollout of its $3.2 billion emergency broadband benefit program, consumer advocates said in recent interviews (see 2102250066). The commission’s website isn’t sufficiently user-friendly, and it should be more transparent on when the program will actually start, they said. Others praised the FCC for the consumer outreach actions it has already taken.

Intel “generally” opposes the U.S. putting “unilateral export controls” on foreign tech companies suspected of threatening U.S. national security, Tom Quillin, senior director-security and trust policy, told a virtual forum convened Thursday by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to identify risks in the semiconductor supply chain. BIS said it will use feedback from the forum, plus comments received in its notice of inquiry, to help shape recommendations to the White House on President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order to relieve supply chain bottlenecks (see 2103110054).

U.S. officials sent the European Commission an initial offer to replace the Privacy Shield and address concerns in the Schrems II decision, industry officials and advocates told us (see 2103250023). An initial U.S. offer was sent a few weeks ago, but it “wasn’t as strong" as the European Commission hoped, said Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, a former adviser to the European Data Protection Supervisor in Brussels. Now senior counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum, Zanfir-Fortuna advised in the development of the first Privacy Shield agreement and the general data protection regulation.

Computer malware detections were down over 43% year on year in 2020, partly due to work-from-home trends, said Rick Meder, solutions architect at SonicWall, at a Home Technology Specialists of America session Monday, referencing the company’s annual cyberthreat report. But remote desktop protocol attacks soared from just over one per day worldwide in January 2020 to eight attacks per second in September, Meder said at HTSA's virtual spring meeting.

When consumers around the world are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, “the daily routine that came screeching to a halt in 2020 will not be reprised, but rather, rearranged,” an IBM study found. Though crowded trains and concert halls were an accepted part of pre-pandemic life, “many people have a new threshold for public interaction and expectations of personal space,” said the company Thursday.

NTIA should designate a single coordinator within the agency to oversee spectrum policy on drones, said the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Subcommittee in a report, approved unanimously by the full CSMAC Thursday. Currently, oversight is spread across the federal government, the report said. CSMAC held its first meeting under President Joe Biden's administration. The FCC has considered but has yet to clear specific spectrum for drones.

NAB President-CEO Gordon Smith will step down at the end of 2021 and be replaced by current NAB Chief Operating Officer Curtis LeGeyt, the group announced Wednesday. Broadcasters and broadcast attorneys told us LeGeyt is seen as having extensive contacts among Capitol Hill Democrats.

Federal funding and public-private partnerships and subsidies are key to building long-term U.S. competitiveness in the semiconductor industry, commented PC market share leaders HP and Dell Technologies, plus contract manufacturer Foxconn, in postings Tuesday in docket BIS-2021-0011. Comments were due Monday in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security inquiry to help shape recommendations to the White House on President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order to relieve semiconductor supply chain bottlenecks (see 2103110054).