►Cyberattacks against U.S. infrastructure are on the rise. Officials say there has been a “17-fold increase in computer attacks [1] on American infrastructure between 2009 and 2011, initiated by criminal gangs, hackers and other nations,” The New York Times reports.

►At the 2012 Black Hat hacking conference, a former member of the FBI provided five tips to strengthen cybersecurity [2] in the private sector: Assume you’ve been breached, be proactive, consider what things actually need to be on the network, change how you measure success, and share notes with the government and other businesses.

►Skype says rumors that it has given law enforcement a backdoor to monitor users [3] since being acquired by Microsoft is not true. The company released a statement on its blog saying that there is no back door and Skype has not changed its policies on law enforcement access [4] to users. The statement also says that Skype does not monitor or record audio or video that goes on between users.

►In other news, surveillance footage [5] is released of a man who stole around $10,0000 of computer equipment from a hospital in Waco, Texas. ♦ Global Payments, a payment processing company says it lost millions after the fallout from a recent data breach. The company recently reported that profits fell 90 percent [6]. ♦ And DHS endorses using UAVs domestically for disaster response [7].