December 21, 2014

2014 Is Ending, but This Wave of Technology Disruptions Is Just Beginning
The sun is setting on 2014, but we're about to watch a new wave of technologies rise and remake the world. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Changes in technology are happening at a scale which was unimaginable before and will cause disruption in industry after industry. This has really begun to worry me, because we are not ready for this change and most of our leading companies won't exist 15-20 years from now. Here are five sectors to keep an eye on:


Data science handbook: 3 tips for becoming a data scientist
To get a clearer picture of the state of data science, how employers and employees alike can take advantage of it, and how you can enter the field, we spoke with some of the field’s most prominent voices: DJ Patil, co-coiner of the term “data scientist”; Michelangelo D’Agostino, formerly of Obama 2012’s data team; and Clare Corthell, creator of The Open Source Data Science Masters. We’ve distilled their insights into three main pieces of insight that we will share below.


New Ransomware Avoids Hitting the Same Victim Twice
OphionLocker uses infected websites to install itself on unpatched computers, then encrypts the victim's data with strong opensource Cropto ++ elliptical curve cryptography. The cost to recover the files is typically around 1 Bitcoin, or about US $333. According to KnowBe4, the ransom amount varies based on the victim's country, with the U.S. having the highest rates. After victims are infected and their files encrypted, the malware sends the victims to the ransomware site where they are given payment instructions. However, the ransomware does not secure delete the files or remove shadow volume copies, so a file recovery tool or a program like Shadow Explorer could be used to recover the files.


Policy frameworks can help or hinder India's tech revolution
By 2025, India could reach a "tip ping point," where the economic benefits of large-scale technology adoption accrue at an accelerating rate. For example, digital tech nologies such as verifiable digital ID and the mobile Internet used in concert will enable universal financial inclusion, potentially raising incomes of people who lacked access to banking and credit by 5 to 30%, which could add economic value of $32 billion to $140 billion per year in 2025. The administration of school and online teacher certification and training, along with blended learning--using online systems and MOOCs can boost the quality of K-12 and post-secondary institutions, and deliver $60 billion to $90 billion in economic value per year by 2025 through a better skilled workforce.


New Chip Points the Way Beyond Silicon
The semiconductor industry is finding that scaling any smaller introduces a range of problems. At one panel held during the IEDM conference, Mark Bohr, a senior fellow at Intel, estimated that silicon scaling would end in about a decade. “My general response is wild enthusiasm for any new idea,” he said. With superb electrical properties, germanium has always promised to make speedier circuits than silicon. But engineers were unable to use it to make compact, power-efficient circuits based on the industry’s established manufacturing technique, known as complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, technology.


Coder, sell thyself
Assuming that you have your goals in mind and are serious about the pursuit of new business, you now have to create the space to allow your business to develop. If you are currently employed by someone, you have to quit your job. If you are currently engaged in a 100% on-site contract position, you have to step away. You must create a vacuum in order to draw in new clients and project work. If you are mentally in a space where you want to find new work, but are physically occupied by an opposing force, you will repel potential opportunities. You must be aligned mentally and physically in order to draw new clients and paid project work to you.


Setting Up a Redundant Internet Connection With BGP
Many organizations have identified the Internet as a critical resource that should never be down. As a result, a redundant Internet connection is configured to help ensure there’s at least one connection to the Internet up at all times. In this post, we’ll consider the topology for a network with a redundant Internet connection that uses Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing. Here, BGP will do two things: learn the Internet routing table, and announce the local, publicly accessible network to the Internet. To keep things as simple as possible for those of you who’ve never worked with BGP before, we’ll do this with a single Internet router.


Point-to-Point Generic Routing Encapsulation ( GRE ) over IP Security ( IPSEC )
Diverse multi protocol traffic requirements forces the use of a Generic Routing Encapsulation ( GRE ) envelope within the IPSEC tunnel. The p2p GRE tunnel is encrypted inside the IPSEC crypto tunnel. Native IPSEC is not multi protocol and has no support IP multicast or broadcast traffic. As a result, proper propagation of routing protocol control packets cannot take place in a native IPSEC tunnel. With a p2p GRE over IPsec design, all traffic between hub and branch sites is firstly encapsulated in the p2p GRE packet BEFORE the encryption process takes place.


Organizational Resilience: The Business Continuity Institute's View
The Business Continuity Institute realises the value of BS 65000 and the thinking that comes behind it. It affirms its premise of strengthening the collaboration among ‘protective disciplines’ in order to create a coherent approach to achieving resilience. Business continuity as a discipline has resilience at its heart and the BCM Lifecycle explicitly relates to building resilient organizations. In participating in the ongoing development of organizational resilience, the BCI makes a positive case for the ‘protective disciplines’ and enabling top management buy in into our work. It also makes practitioners responsible for resilience more visible to top management, taking their work as a matter of strategic importance to the organization.


Don’t trivialise the internet of things
Walport said IoT could have a much greater impact on society than the first digital revolution, with the potential to support “an extraordinary range of applications and economic opportunities”. However, he warned there will also be potential for significant challenges around security and privacy breaches, and it will be critical that scientists, programmers and entrepreneurs behave and act responsibly. “Equally,” wrote Walport, “policy makers can support responsible innovation and decide whether or how to legislate or regulate as necessary. Everyone involved in the IoT should be constantly scanning the horizon to anticipate and prevent, rather that deal with unforeseen consequences in retrospect.”



Quote for the day:

"The problem with being a leader is that you're never sure if you're being followed or chased." -- Claire A. Murray

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