Why Data-Driven Cultures Outperform Rivals
Proactive organizations take steps to address unstructured data growth before it escalates. The sheer volume of unmanaged unstructured data can become extremely costly in terms of storage. Additionally, data that is not properly managed quickly turns into a liability if information cannot be located in the event of an e-Discovery request for legal matter. To add to the complexity, customer expectations have changed as a byproduct of new technology advancements and the emergence of mobile, BYOD and the commercialization of IT resulting in additional data security and privacy concerns. These changing customer expectations around data and how organizations use it also lead to a further secondary use for large repositories of unstructured data;The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Data Quality and Business Intelligence
Business processes should also be established to ensure data manually entered into systems is of the highest quality possible. As we learned previously in our example of the pregnant men, many organizations experience data errors when information is manually entered, at a rate of 2% and 8%. Even one wrong number entered incorrectly can cause a payment to fail, a wrong part number to be shipped, or apparently a man to become pregnant. Data validation controls can be integrated into on-line forms, using rules to check the validity of data sets. For example, an on-line website form may require a visitor to enter data in specified formats. Or an IRS form may utilize controls to check that positive numbers are being entered into fields.Hacker steals Bitdefender customer log-in credentials, attempts blackmail
The hacker, who uses the online alias DetoxRansome, first bragged about the breach on Twitter Saturday and later messaged Bitdefender threatening to release the company’s “customer base” unless he was paid US$15,000. To prove his point, the next day he published the email addresses and passwords for two Bitdefender customer accounts and one for an account operated by the company itself. Travis Doering and Dan McPeake claimed in a blog post that they contacted the hacker, who offered to sell the data to them. The hacker provided a list of user names and matching passwords for over 250 Bitdefender accounts, some of which were confirmed to be active, the two wrote Wednesday.Disrupting beliefs: A new approach to business-model innovation
Executives can begin by systematically examining each core element of their business model, which typically comprises customer relationships, key activities, strategic resources, and the economic model’s cost structures and revenue streams. Within each of these elements, various business-model innovations are possible. Having analyzed hundreds of core elements across a wide range of industries and geographies, we have found that a reframe seems to emerge for each one, regardless of industry or location. Moreover, these themes have one common denominator: the digitization of business, which upends customer interactions, business activities, the deployment of resources, and economic models.Critical BIND denial-of-service flaw could disrupt large portions of the Internet
There is no configuration workaround to protect against the BIND vulnerability or a way to prevent its exploitation through access control lists. Patching is the only option, the ISC said in an advisory. “Screening the offending packets with firewalls is likely to be difficult or impossible unless those devices understand DNS at a protocol level and may be problematic even then,” said Michael McNally, an ISC engineer and the incident manager for this vulnerability, in a blog post. The bug is difficult to defend against without installing the patch and it’s likely that attack code will appear soon because it’s not hard to reverse-engineer the patch and figure out how to exploit the flaw, according to McNally.Open Container Initiative Nears Container-Spec Goal
For a Docker container to be able to do the things that its user wishes it to do (that is, intersect with a given host and connect the application that it contains to the host server) it needs to be able to rely on a sandboxing environment that allows some of the details of how the application runs to match up with the way the host runs. The main requirement to getting the two together is relatively simple: The host server needs to run the same Linux kernel as required by the application code in the container. Since the Linux kernel is a highly defined and labeled set of code, matching up the two is usually a given. With the initiative's specified runC runtime, a Docker container and a CoreOS Rocket container will be able to run in the same environment in the same way, without glitches, if both continue to adhere to the OCI runtime standard.What Can The United Airlines Hack Tell Us About IT Security?
“Perhaps United Airlines should reconsider its choice of technologies and vendors that provide controls for privileged access to their systems and databases. The US Government could also serve a useful purpose in providing appropriate consequences to the attackers and their assets. There seems to be little incentive for this attacker to stop these attacks.” “As investigators identify fragments of evidence from these intrusions, they are not only finding needles in the haystack, but also the threads connecting these needles across some of the biggest breaches we have seen. Through this discovery they see these threads weave together to form a rather disturbing tapestry revealing patterns of a much more strategic and sophisticated attack than we could have imagined.WebSocket: Bringing Desktop Agility to Web Application
The first reason for lack of WebSocket adoption has been a limited support in application servers and browsers. However with new generation of application servers and browsers, this issue is significantly addressed. The second, and the more important reason, is that opening the full potential of WebSocket requires significant web application redesign. The redesign involves going from a basic primitive of request – response to a more sophisticated primitive of bi-directional messaging. Application redesign is typically a costly process and vendors do not see clear benefits of going that route.Why Google’s enterprise pitch is a confusing mess
Let’s try to follow Google’s logic here, but be patient because first you need to get through a series of familiar Google product names with “for Work” simply added to them. Confusion sets in almost immediately on the Google for Work homepage where solutions such as Google Apps for Work, Google Cloud Platform, Chrome for Work, Google Maps for Work and Google Search for Work are all listed prominently. Each of those services is sold and marketed to business customers separately, and Google Apps for Work is the only one with public-facing pricing. Regardless of what Google calls it, Google for Work appears to be a basic platform the company uses to upsell a host of services to prospective clients.Cisco Mid-Year Security Report: Bad Guys Getting Badder
The main problem with enterprise and personal data security now is that users have a plethora of security products that don't interact well and that leave holes open for hackers to walk through. "The users are left with what we call this 'sprawl of security,' meaning devices that don't communicate well and don't share intelligence," Williams said. "These allow the bad guys blind spots to hide in. Does anybody have an IPS (intrusion prevention system) or anti-malware solution that can talk to their firewall? Until we have an integrated threat defense, those problems are going to allow adversaries easier access to networks."Quote for the day:
“Leaders always choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong.” -- Orrin Woodward
