August 26, 2016

Financial Networking Company Prepares for ‘Post-Quantum’ World

Traditional computers process information encoded in a binary format — represented by either 0 or 1. Quantum computers, by contrast, work on quantum mechanical principles, including the concept of “superposition” — the idea that a particle can be in two different states, representing both a 0 and 1, simultaneously. This is what potentially gives quantum computers their incredible processing power, theoretically carrying out trillions of calculations per second. And that is what has cybersecurity experts worried. Most digital encryption systems rely on numerical keys that are tens or hundreds of digits long. To break one by trying every possible combination, or by searching for numerical patterns that would allow the encryption algorithm to be reverse-engineered, is beyond the capability of conventional computers — at least in reasonable timescales.


Data lakes security could use a life preserver

The most important security functions with regard to data lakes are authorization and access. Research firm Gartner has warned companies not to overlook the inherent weaknesses of lakes. Data can be placed into a data lake with no oversight of the contents, Gartner analyst Nick Heudecker noted at the firm’s Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit last year. Many data lakes are being used by organizations for data whose privacy and regulatory requirements are likely to represent risk exposure, Heudecker said. The security capabilities of central data lake technologies are still emerging, and the issues of data protection will not be addressed if they’re left to non-IT personnel, he said. Many of the current data lake technologies on the market “don’t have fine-grained security controls that allow for multi-faceted control at the object level,” Hockenberry says.


The AI revolution is coming fast. But without a revolution in trust, it will fail

Deploying AI will require a kind of reboot in the way companies think about privacy and security. AI is fueled by data. The more the machine learns about you, the better it can predict your needs and act on your behalf. But as data becomes the currency of our digital lives, companies must ensure the privacy and security of customer information. And, there is no trust without transparency – companies must give customers clarity on how their personal data is used. It turns out that the capability of AI to detect and remedy security breaches plays a critical role in protecting user privacy and building trust. AI is going to unleash a whole new level of productivity and augment our lives in many ways.


The Most Practical Big Data Use Cases Of 2016

Timely analysis of real-time data is seen as key to driving business performance – as Walmart Senior Statistical Analyst Naveen Peddamail runs Wal Mart’s Data Cafe and tells me: “If you can’t get insights until you’ve analysed your sales for a week or a month, then you’ve lost sales within that time. Our goal is always to get information to our business partners as fast as we can, so they can take action and cut down the turnaround time. It is proactive and reactive analytics.” Peddamail gives an example of a grocery team struggling to understand why sales of a particular produce were unexpectedly declining. Once their data was in the hands of the Cafe analysts, it was established very quickly that the decline was directly attributable to a pricing error. The error was immediately rectified and sales recovered within days.


SD-WAN, NFV deployment leads software-defined networking charge

SD-WAN products combine the power of big data analytics and traditional networking. They monitor traffic flows and network latency and jitter, making real-time decisions on traffic management. A common comparison to SD-WAN is voice traffic management. A PBR approach may dictate leveraging aMultiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connection for all voice traffic and a lower-quality Internet VPN for non-latency sensitive traffic. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule; if an MPLS connection is congested on the far side, the Internet VPN is the more viable option. Trying to create a routing policy for this type of dynamic traffic routing wasn't feasible -- at least not until SD-WAN vendors combined the power of general compute with inexpensive network links. Using real-time traffic analysis, middleboxes direct traffic over the best available link.


Threats on Every Side

Some of VMware's liveliest competition is coming from open source communities and suppliers that have based their offerings on open source projects. This includes competitors such as Red Hat Inc., SUSE, Canonical Ltd. and others. The open source communities have addressed all seven layers of the Kusnetzky Group model. The technology coming out of these efforts often are well-tested and quite sound; but they do require some IT background and flexibility. The suppliers in these communities typically ask, "Why pay the xtax on your business?" (where "x" is whatever commercial supplier they're competing with at the moment) when speaking about any commercial vendor. Red Hat, for example, is known to speak about the "Red Hat discount" that other vendors would offer when they learned that Red Hat was one of the competitors.


Mozilla launches free website security scanning service

The tool doesn’t only check for the presence of these technologies, but also whether they’re implemented correctly. What the tool doesn’t do is scan for vulnerabilities in the actual website code, something that already exists in a large number of free and commercial tools. In some respects, achieving a secure website configuration—using all the available technologies developed in recent years by browser makers—is even harder than finding and patching code vulnerabilities. “These technologies are spread over dozens of standard documents, and while individual articles may talk about them, there wasn’t one place to go for site operators to learn what each of the technologies do, how to implement them, and how important they were,” King said in a blog post.


Apple May Be Too Late To Make A Big Social Impact

"Apple is behind in social media," said Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst. "This does not mean they will ever be a significant player in social media, but I'm sure that's a target they would like to achieve... If they can marry a successful social media app with their technology, it will help them grow further and faster." Judith Hurwitz, an analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, said it might be easier for the company to buy its way into the social networking world. "It would be interesting to see if Apple will buy a company like Twitter," she told Computerworld in an email. "Starting from scratch may be difficult." However, Hurwitz also noted it might make sense for Apple to focus on a social network based on photos since that would tie into the use of the iPhone's camera.


Blockchain: It's not just for finance anymore

Use of blockchain in financial systems continues to expand and will be an increasingly important technology going forward. But blockchain capability may actually be as or more important to enabling a growing number of high value IoT functions that must also be effectively protected. In the important field of the Enterprise of Things (EoT), having proof of unaltered data is often mission critical and can make the difference in a life or death situation, in hazardous response requirements, or in many other high value interactions/operations. For example, imagine health related data from some monitors that could control life or death situations, being sent to the cloud for processing. How do you know that data is legitimate and unaltered?


Person-to-object interface: Next gen bionics for amputees

In practice CBAS’s aim is to replace the cup and socket system that usually connects prosthetics to the body. This socket is customised to the patient – so expensive – but still doesn’t work very well. People experience pain, their limbs lack functionality and it is hard to track gradual everyday wear and tear. CBAS wants to “standardise the interface” explains Hewage. And using advanced bioengineering and monitoring technologies it aims to create the “USB connector” of prosthetics. This is the next wave of integrated bionics and allows complex interactions between a range of different devices and a number of the body’s organs and systems. The benefit of this standardisation is clear. There is an immediate decrease in the cost of amputee care.



Quote for the day:


"It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." -- Steve Jobs


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