Daily Tech Digest - June 20, 2017

How to make sure your big data solution actually gets used

To gain visibility and automate steps at every stage of the food pick, pack, ship and deliver process, food producers, shippers, warehouses and retailers use handheld devices, barcode scanners, hands-free, voice-based technology and even sensors placed on pallets, packages and refrigeration compartments in trucks. These sensors track temperature, humidity and tampering of the containers for perishables and other goods, and also issue auto alerts to supply chain managers as soon as one of these conditions is violated. Everyone in the food supply chain knows where every shipment is. Along the way, big data is collected in a central data repository where queries and reports are subsequently run to assess how well the supply chain is performing.


Intel Core i9 review: The fastest consumer CPU prepares for Ryzen war

Like most major Intel launches, the Core i9 family represents a new platform, not just a new CPU, which means a new chipset, the X299, and a new socket, the LGA2066, all incompatible with previous CPUs.  The new platform also does something no previous one did by unifying two CPU families. Before today, if you wanted the company’s latest Kaby Lake core, you had to buy a motherboard using the LGA1151 socket. And if you wanted to buy, say, a 6-core Skylake CPU such as Intel’s Core i7-6800K, you had to buy an LGA2011 V3-based motherboard. With X299 and LGA2066, you can now pick your poison, because the platform encompasses everything from a 4-core Core i5 Kaby Lake CPU to an 18-core Core i9 Extreme Edition, which is a Skylake CPU.


Enlightened shadow IT policy collaborates with users

Now, the advantages of cloud services are changing shadow IT policy in many enterprises. The flat-out blocking of cloud services is unacceptable in most organizations today because team collaboration apps, for example, are useful to lines of business and work groups that use them to improve productivity. These apps are quick to deploy and eliminate the need for IT's permission or deployment. "Any IT leader who stands in the way of productivity probably isn't going to hold the job too long," Schilling said, adding that cloud services typically represent an opportunity, not a hindrance. Just like on-premises shadow IT efforts, however, Schilling knows that if something goes wrong and business users find themselves in trouble, IT will have to come to the rescue. "Rather than fighting it, we have to offer users governance and guidelines, he said.


The Rising Business Risks of Cyberattacks and How to Stay Safe

According to 2017 Internet Security Threat Report by Symantec, cyber criminals have revealed new levels of ambition and malice. Data breaches are now driven by innovation, sophistication, and organization to produce ominous results. Cybersecurity has become more of concern for businesses. This year, continue to face complex security threats. There is a growth of new malware that can bypass your antivirus and other levels of protection. Ransomware is on the rise. More than 4,000 ransomware attacked have occurred every year over the last one year. Ransomware and phishing work together with statistics from PhishMe showing a rising trend. When it comes to data breaches, the risk for organizations is high. The risks can range from the easily calculable costs of notification and business loss to the less tangible effect on a company’s brand and customer loyalty.


What you need to know about Power BI now

Starting in an Excel-like table view of your raw data, you use the query tools to construct a series of transformation steps, adding columns and changing data types using a formula-like approach. Once you’ve constructed a query, an advanced editor shows the resulting Power Query code, ready for additional editing or adding new steps. Power BI’s visual editing tools also help simplify your data, removing unwanted columns and changing names. Data from other sources can be merged into your query, adding additional information where necessary. Other tools pivot data into aggregate tables or add custom columns based on calculations. Sharing reports is as important as building them, and Power BI gives you several options. Perhaps the most useful is the ability to build and publish web dashboards that show key performance indicators and tie them to appropriate visualizations.


Excel 2016 cheat sheet

Excel has never been the most user-friendly of applications, and it has so many powerful features it can be tough to use. Excel 2016 has taken a good-sized step towards making it easier with a new feature called Tell Me, which puts even buried tools in easy reach. To use it, click the "Tell me what you want to do" text, to the right of the View tab on the Ribbon. (Keyboard fans can instead press Alt-Q.) Then type in a task you want to do, such as "Create a pivot table." You'll get a menu showing potential matches for the task. In this instance, the top result is a direct link to the form for creating a PivotTable -- select it and you'll start creating the PivotTable right away, without having to go to the Ribbon's Insert tab first. If you'd like more information about your task, the last two items that appear in the Tell Me menu let you select from related Help topics or search for your phrase using Smart Lookup.


Data should be stored in space, firm says

Data security will be another advantage when it comes to space-held data, the company says. It says “leaky internet and leased lines” are subject to “hijacking, theft, monitoring and sabotage” and that its dedicated telecom backbone network won’t be. In fact its “network-ring” won’t be connected to the internet it says. Better throughput, too, is obtained by “avoiding traditional terrestrial ‘hops,’” it claims. SpaceBelt’s still-to-be-launched data center platform will operate in low-earth orbit (LEO). That’s the area between the Earth’s surface and 1,200 miles up, and it is the same zone that SpaceX and the OneWeb Internet infrastructures will use for their upcoming broadband constellation roll-outs. Cloud Constellation Corp. expects to build eight satellites for testing at the end of 2018, according to an interview chief executive Scott Sobhani gave with SpaceNews Magazine last year.


5 Steps to Prepare for the Inevitable Cyber Security Attack

To determine how much insurance coverage you need, use a calculator, assessment tool, or modeling to assess your overall risk. Paez recommended using an interruption worksheet, similar to what you may see for property insurance. Your insurance can provide templates, employee awareness training, regulatory preparedness, and PCI compliance readiness. Look at cyber attack risks from a business interruption perspective. “There may be organizations that are not in the, what I would term ‘high hazard’ class– business retail, hospitality, financial institutions, healthcare,” Paez explained. “If you’re outside of that realm looking at it from a business interruption standpoint or supply chain perspective, or utility or critical infrastructure, that’s a different conversation altogether in terms of assessing that risk. ...”


Cybersecurity spend: ROI Is the wrong metric

While this article has focused on helping board members and C-suite executives understand how to quantify the value of their cybersecurity investment, the InfoSec team may need to assist in the effort. If management is making the mistake of asking IT to justify its cybersecurity budget in terms of ROI, the InfoSec team needs to educate management as to why the ask is wrong and refocus them on the correct one. Furthermore, when making your argument against focusing on ROI, you need to provide the right data to support your point. Based on my experience, when asked to report on the security readiness of the network, most teams simply provide management with an exhaustive list of every potential threat that could harm the network; the strategy being that, when management sees a list of thousands of potential threats, they’ll agree to any budget out of fear and misunderstanding.


Enterprise network monitoring tools address companies of all sizes

GroundWork offers a manual process for overlaying network infrastructure on geographic maps. Users can upload the image of a floor plan, topology, architectural software diagram or geographic map. Then, they can overlay GroundWork's performance and availability indicators on the image and drill down into those indicators for further analysis. The system's performance visualization features enable users to set dynamic thresholding and spot performance bottlenecks. The system gathers data from the network via SNMP, APIs, intelligent platform management interfaces, and a variety of other protocols and interfaces. Via these APIs, GroundWork has added the ability to monitor hybrid cloud environments. It integrates with cloud providers via a REST API, and it has out-of-the-box support for Amazon Web Services and OpenStack.



Quote for the day:


"It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself." -- Eleanor Roosevelt


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