August 08, 2014

Sysinternals new Sysmon tool looks for intruder traces
Sysinternals is a set of Windows utility programs first released in 1996, long before Russinovich joined Microsoft. Almost all were written by Russinovich and his then-partner Bruce Cogswell. Sysmon, written by Russinovich and Thomas Garnier, also of Microsoft, is the 73rd tool in the set, and has been used internally at Microsoft for some time. The point of Sysmon is to monitor for three specific system events which are often used by malicious processes and which can be difficult to separate from the flood of events in a normal Windows system. Sysmon runs as a service using the Local System account and loads very early in the boot process in order to give the best chance of finding the origin of any problems.


8 Reasons Big Data Projects Fail
Big data is all the rage, and many organizations are hell bent on putting their data to use. Despite the big data hype, however, 92% of organizations are still stuck in neutral, either planning to get started "some day" or avoiding big data projects altogether. For those that do kick off big data projects, most fail, and frequently for the same reasons. ... Because so many organizations are flying blind with their data, they stumble in predictable ways (including thinking that a data scientist will magically solve all their problems, but more on that below). Gartner's Svetlana Sicular has catalogued eight common causes of big data project failures, including:


Continuous Improvement Of Your Compliance Program, Part II
While many companies will look at continuous monitoring as a software solution that can assist in managing risk, provide reporting metrics and, thereby, insights across an organization, it should be viewed more holistically. You will need to take many disparate systems, usually across a wide international geographic area, which may seem like an overwhelming process. Justin Offen, explained this in his article, entitled “Mission Impossible? Six steps to continuous monitoring”, where he detailed a six-point program to ensure that your “CM solution doesn’t become part of the problem” rather than a solution.


Technology and marketing disconnect hinders customer analytics success
“What tends to happen and what we have seen in recent years, is that there’s a fundamental disconnect in the way business leaders think about data, and how technology leaders think about it,” she told CMO in an interview before the event. “We see lots of lost opportunities. There has been a focus on big data projects and platforms and solutions by technology teams, or vendors are wooing marketing leaders, but they’re not so good at solving business problems. Business and technology are not working together towards a common purpose, which is using that data for customer engagement.”


How SaaS solutions help CFOs get IT right
With the widespread acceptance of SaaS, it’s easier to evaluate technology based on what your business needs rather than getting bogged down in details about functional alignment with existing technology. And this rings true for many types of business solutions, including finance. Leading CFOs have realized they are uniquely positioned to consider potential TCO, ROI and use-case factors to determine how well solutions fit with the overall business strategy, even if they are non-technical. At the same time, CFOs are increasingly embracing cloud computing. 72 percent of CFOs believe that “disruptive” technologies such as cloud, social and mobile will change the way they structure and run finance.


Car Security Is Likely to Worsen, Researchers Say
Because of the proliferation of wireless access in vehicles, especially Bluetooth and cellular connectivity, remote execution is increasingly possible. The feasibility of sending commands to the electronic control units that manage different vehicle functions depends on the design of the car. Car companies need to design their systems to detect exploitation attempts and prevent security from being compromised, Miller said: “You want to make each of these three steps harder for the attacker.” But with car manufacturers competing on features, the addition of in-car applications from navigation to streaming music could leave more vehicles vulnerable, Miller added. “In-car apps and desktop-like features pose huge upcoming threats,” he said.


5 Priorities For Chief Data Officers
How can CDOs ensure their own relevance and success? Finch said the key is making sure that data projects are for the sake of business objectives, not for the sake of data. For example, too many companies take the approach of putting a big data lake in place just hoping somebody will find a use for it. There should be a clear business objective, such as reducing data warehousing costs by a targeted amount, comparing same-store sales to weather patterns to improve merchandising, or streaming real-time information into the lake and finding more fraudsters.


Seven data science lessons from McGraw-Hill Education analytics guru
Practice, practice, practice, Essa said, citing Ezra Pound's classic guide to writing poetry, ABC of Reading. "His idea was read lots of poetry to prepare," Essa said. "So we do that with data scientists." He gives data scientists all kinds of data sets (on education and beyond) and instructs them to "do some descriptive analytics and just tell me what questions you can answer." In some cases, data scientists work individually; in others, they operate as part of a team. "A very important part of doing data science is interactive data exploration," he said."


Architecting a High Performance Storage System
A good data storage system is a well-balanced: each individual component is suited for its purpose and all the components fit together to achieve optimal performance. Designing such a system is not straightforward. A typical storage system consists of a variety of components, including disks, storage controllers, IO cards, storage servers, storage area network switches, and related management software. Fitting all these components together and tuning them to achieve optimal performance presents significant challenges. Experienced storage designers may employ a collection of practical rules and guidelines to design a storage
system.


Cyber Risk Strategy Must Evolve to Match Changing Threats
The bad guys are winning, primarily because they can keep one step ahead by deploying a wider array of attack methods. In a recent Deloitte survey, 75 percent of global financial institutions believed their info security program was at a maturity level 3 or higher (on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being best), but only 40 percent were confident that they would be protected from outside attack. That’s a scary number, but completely understandable. The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, and cybersecurity must transform itself to keep pace. The basis of this new approach is easy to understand. An effective cybersecurity strategy includes three legs: security, vigilance and resilience.



Quote for the day:

"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself." -- Henry Ward Beecher

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