Daily Tech Digest - February 19, 2018


The problem is that employee satisfaction can be a double-edged sword. While satisfied employees are good for current activities, that very satisfaction can inhibit innovation. Transformative innovation is difficult. It is far easier to stick with what we know works and tweak the current process than it is to start over. People who are satisfied with the current way of doing business are not likely to transform it. People who transform their organizations must be aggravated enough with the current situation that they’re willing to bear the effort and risk to change it. Leaders who want their organizations to continuously transform must not only look for dissatisfaction on which to capitalize, but also be willing to cultivate dissatisfaction in their employees. ... The right kind of dissatisfaction is a mindset of constantly questioning the status quo and striving for more-than-incremental change. The wrong kind is constantly finding fault with the current situation, arguing that it is somebody else’s fault and assuming it’s somebody else’s responsibility to fix.



Dear IT security pros: it's time to stop making preventable mistakes

5 fumbling dumb mistake
Just think about it – how many log analysis services do you know? They generally all have a nice UI. Same goes for SIEMs. But the confusion comes with the graphic and alert overload – red and green icons telling analysts there are numerous findings that require attention. Security analysts usually don’t know which alerts to start executing on – and it’s hard to determine which alert is of the highest risk and which is just noise because no personnel changed its threshold. And to make matters worse, once a security analyst has opened an alert to start vetting it, they’re usually too scared to close down wide-open-to-the-internet ports because they don’t know the extent of the impact that will have on the company’s production environment. As a security advisor, the thing that really irritates me is just how preventable most (if not all) of the 2017 attacks I researched were. Companies like Equifax are not being decimated by unusually savvy hackers, they are being exposed by their own internal mistakes. Most of these errors are straight out of any “Tech Security 101” textbook.



Global cyber risk perception: Highest management priorities

The survey also found that a vast majority – 75% – identified business interruption as the cyber loss scenario with the greatest potential to impact their organization. This compares to 55% who cited breach of customer information, which has historically been the focus for organizations. Despite this growing awareness and rising concern, only 19% of respondents said they are highly confident in their organization’s ability to mitigate and respond to a cyber event. Moreover, only 30% said they have developed a plan to respond to cyber-attacks. “Cyber risk is an escalating management priority as the use of technology in business increases and the threat environment gets more complex,” said John Drzik, president Global Risk and Digital, Marsh. “It’s time for organizations to adopt a more comprehensive approach to cyber resilience, which engages the full executive team and spans risk prevention, response, mitigation and transfer.”


Meaningful AI Deployments Are Starting To Take Place: Gartner

Meaningful AI deployments are starting to take place: Gartner - CIO&Leader
Meaningful Artificial Intelligence (AI) deployments are just beginning to take place, according to Gartner. Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda Survey shows that 4% of CIOs have implemented AI , while a further 46% have developed plans to do so. "Despite huge levels of interest in AI technologies, current implementations remain at quite low levels," said Whit Andrews, research vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "However, there is potential for strong growth as CIOs begin piloting AI programs through a combination of buy, build and outsource efforts," As with most emerging or unfamiliar technologies, early adopters are facing many obstacles to the progress of AI in their organizations. Gartner analysts have identified the following four lessons that have emerged from these early AI projects


Hacking critical infrastructure via a vending machine? The IOT reality

Many are currently, and rightly, concerned about protection from outside threats getting into important networks. The latest firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, advanced protection systems all play a part in defence, but as more and more connected devices enter networks, it is now critical to look at threats from within as well.  If firms do not have proper infrastructure to support IoT devices, they risk exposing their corporate networks to malicious activities. This can lead to devastating effects, especially if hackers uncover vulnerabilities in IoT devices within critical infrastructure. A good starting point for businesses as they take their network security efforts seriously in today's hyper-connected world, is to increase awareness of all the devices on the network and implement centralised management systems that help ensure compliance.


Ok, I Was Wrong, MDM is Broken Too: Insular, Dictatorial MDM Doesn’t Work

Ok, I Was Wrong, MDM is Broken Too: Insular, Dictatorial MDM Doesn’t Work
In master data management, fundamentally, your data problems are not technology problems. They are not even MDM problems. Your data problems aren’t even really well … data problems. They are business problems. They are the problem of getting four business people, three data stewards and several application managers into a room to formally agree on what revenue is for a customer record stored in the sales, marketing, ERP, and finance systems. MDM problems are about getting the right people educated, motivated and in agreement. And this can be messy and difficult. When you succeed with MDM you succeed by working from the business down. When you fail you fail because you design and implement something around a technology first and then you ‘release’ your master data solution to various practitioners around your company and expect them to comply. Like my peers in my freshman programming course we race to implement without spending enough time planning, negotiating and understanding.


Dissect the SQL Server on Linux high availability features


The availability group configurations that provide high availability and data protection require three synchronous replicas. When there is no Windows Server failover cluster, the availability group configuration is stored in the master database on participating SQL Server instances, which need at least three synchronous replicas to provide high availability and data protection. An availability group with two synchronous replicas can provide data protection, but this configuration cannot provide automatic high availability. If the primary replica has an outage, the availability group will automatically fail over. However, applications cannot automatically connect to the availability group until the primary replica is recovered. You can have a mixed availability group that contains both Windows and Linux replicas, but Microsoft only recommends this for data migration.


“Less is More”: Four Steps to Aligning Your Project Queue and Goals Today

aligning-project-queue
Today, as grown ups, “busywork” no longer holds the cachet it once may have. With corporate belts tightening and analytics available that expose the efficacy of each and every tactic, bloat can be harmful or fatal to even the most well intentioned of marketing professionals. And with 40 percent of corporate enterprises still bemoaning the fact that they can’t prove the ROI of their marketing activities, it’s clear that in many marketing departments, the project queue may be filled with plenty to keep the team busy – but is it hitting the mark? I recently spent time with a financial services client that was struggling to define growth, as it battled for market share in a crowded segment. Upon evaluating its marketing portfolio, it was clear that it had completed many projects in the recent past – but only a handful had yielded what one would consider to be “big wins.” 


How to connect to a remote MySQL database with DBeaver

dbeaverhero.jpg
If your database of choice is MySQL, you have a number of options. You can always secure shell into that server and manage the databases from the command line. You can also install a tool like phpMyAdmin or adminer to take care of everything via a web-based interface. But what if you'd prefer to use a desktop client? Where do you turn? One possible option is DBeaver. DBeaver is a free, universal SQL client that can connect to numerous types of databases—one of which is MySQL. I want to show you how to install and use DBeaver to connect to your remote MySQL server. DBeaver is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. I'll be demonstrating on a Ubuntu 17.10 desktop connecting to a Ubuntu Server 16.04. The installation of DBeaver is fairly straightforward, with one hitch. Download the necessary .deb file from the downloads page and save it to your ~/Downloads directory. Open up a terminal window and change into that directory with the command cd ~/Downloads.


5 things that will slow your Wi-Fi network

snail rocket fast speed
The 2.4 GHz frequency band has 11 channels (in North America), but only provides up to three non-overlapping channels when using the default 20 MHz wide channels or just a single channel if using 40 MHz-wide channels. Since neighboring APs should be on different non-overlapping channels, the 2.4 GHz frequency band can become too small very quickly. The 5 GHz band, however, provides up to 24 channels. Not all APs support all the channels, but all the channels are non-overlapping if using 20 MHz-wide channels. Even when using 40 MHz-wide channels, you could have up to 12 non-overlapping channels. Thus, in this band, you have less chance of co-channel interference among your APs and any other neighboring networks. You should try to get as many Wi-Fi clients as you can to use the 5 GHz band on your network to increase speeds and performance. Consider upgrading any 2.4 GHz-only Wi-Fi clients to dual-band clients.



Quote for the day:



"Learn to do favors not for the people that can later return the favor but for those that need the favor." -- Unknown


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