Daily Tech Digest - December 20, 2016

Privacy groups complain to FTC over Google’s 'deceptive' policy change

“Google is a serial offender, and the action that the FTC has taken to date has done nothing to slow Google’s intrusive violations of its users’ privacy,” according to the groups. Google could not be immediately reached for comment. Describing the June move as highly deceptive, the groups said the announcement “intentionally misled users,” who had no way to figure from the wording that Google was in fact asking users for permission to link their personal information to data reflecting their behavior on as many as 80 percent of the Internet’s leading websites. The groups have asked the FTC to investigate the changes to Google’s data collection policies as a result of the June policy shift, stop the combination of data from DoubleClick without proper user consent


IP Reputation and Mitigation API

Knowing that your network is under attack or may come under attack by certain hosts doesn’t do a lot of good if your network can’t use that information. When a host or connection is known to be a bad actor, your network must mitigate the situation. This is where Mitigation Cybersecurity comes into play. The basic concept is that there is some intelligence gathering application or service (either internal or external) is providing information about current threats. Cybersecurity intelligence can then be used in a variety of places to help protect your hosts. This information should be used wherever it can to protect your network. Ideally, the mitigation of attacks and threats should be layered from your Internet routers and firewalls right down to the hosts with each providing protection using their greatest strengths.


Privacy in the digital age: honouring the customer

Using customer data in the right way but also to the benefit of the organisation is achievable. Personalising offers or customising promotions is not an abuse if a company is transparent about how it will use a person’s data. It shouldn’t be moving in the shadows. The ICO highlights the necessity of transparency in complying with both the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and, even more so, the impending GDPR. The most common way to provide this information to a customer is via a privacy notice. Under the current law of the DPA, an organisation must detail who they are, what they are going to do with a person’s information and who the information will be shared with. These are the basic foundations on which all privacy notices should be built. Post-GDPR, however, these basic moral principles, like the more stringent financial consequences, will be expanded and enhanced.


Digital marketing's biggest wins and losses in 2016

“The biggest advancement [in digital marketing is] the shift to and adoption of video and particularly live streaming,” Jake Schneider , Director of Digital Strategy and Innovation at The Marketing Arm told Marketing Dive. “Brands and marketers can no longer rely on static content to make an impact with audiences,” he said. “Live streaming provides an authentic and immersive experience that resonates with audiences, giving brands an opportunity to connect in a more intimate way.” ... “[The biggest surprise was] the perfect storm — i.e. the summer season, the power of brand nostalgia, etc. — that helped propel Pokémon Go to the top of mind and home screen of consumers and brands,” said Fishman Zember. “...it was a powerful moment for augmented reality and a chance for consumers to engage with technology, even if they didn't know they were, that has incredible potential to add new layers, dimensions to their everyday realities and very real world.”


Shedding Light on Dark Data: How to Get Started

We have at our disposal all manner of unstructured data for which text analytics are uniquely suited to organize and understand, including images and video—without any enrichment or visual content analysis. ... Dark data can be Big Data. And very Big Dark Data can prove daunting (that’s partly why it stays dark in the first place). But dark data can also be quite small we’ve found. And just as Big Data isn’t necessarily valuable just because it’s big, dark data certainly isn’t valuable just because it’s dark. Lastly, technology can’t make garbage data valuable and the complexities involved in analyzing some forms of dark data often require taking a sample or deciding exactly which parts of the data might prove most interesting to analyze. There are tons of ways to start putting dark data to work for your organization. Here are recent examples of how clients are using OdinText currently to shed light on their dark data.


A DevOps Approach To Digital Transformation Success

In this digital age, it has been estimated that 6 of the top 20 companies in every industry will face serious disruption. Now more than ever, organisations are measured by the speed at which they deliver new products and services. A failure to digitally transform the enterprise could be catastrophic. ... DevOps addresses the missing element that many Agile projects suffer at the execution stage, (when code is released into production) - by including operational teams early enough in the development cycle - thereby avoiding deployment bottlenecks. • Digital Transformation needs to be underpinned by a solid platform to deliver and support new applications, services and technologies. DevOps provides this, allowing organisations to release updates frequently, glean customer feedback, improve and iterate.


Why Technology Won't Displace Human Artists

It's possible to teach a machine Van Gogh's painting technique, but only if it already exists. An algorithm can write chorales like Bach because it can "study" Bach. Even when the work produced by AI is less specifically derivative than it is today -- say, when the algorithms learn to combine various techniques they learn in an intelligent manner -- they will never rise above previous work because the way they work is based on experience. They are constrained by Hume's piece of wisdom. The one way in which we're radically different from machines is in our ability to step into the unknown, to do things that have never been done before with paint, form, sound and the written word. Most of the rewards to creative professionals today accrue to that ability, not to skill or the extensive knowledge of predecessors' work.


Virtual reality is actually here

Virtual reality is an excellent tool when the task is dangerous or the equipment involved is expensive. The U.S. Army is piloting a fully immersive VR system to augment soldier training. The Army asserts that VR makes training more efficient and effective; the military scenario can be changed dynamically to provide different challenges. The actions of each participant can be tracked for later analysis. Moreover, after the initial scenario is developed, the system requires very little time to restart. Practicing the demolition of a building, for example, used to require days to rebuild the target structure before the next training exercise could occur. With VR, the scenario is just restarted, saving time and money and reinforcing trainees’ performance as they repeat the exercise.


Cyber Insurance Now Critical as Data Breaches Wreak Havoc

Nonetheless, insuring against data breaches and other attacks presents its own set of challenges and complications. In particular, the constantly changing range of perpetrators, targets and exposure values, a lack of historical actuarial data and the interconnected nature of cyberspace, combine to make it difficult for insurers to assess the likely severity of future cyberattacks. While most traditional commercial general liability policies do not cover cyber risks, standalone cyber insurance policies typically address a number of risks associated with data breaches or attacks. Chief among these is liability insurance to help companies cover costs, such as legal fees and court judgments, that may be incurred following the theft of enterprises data and the unintentional transmission of a computer virus that causes financial harm to a third party.


5 Data Governance Pitfalls to Avoid

Data Governance can be looked upon as building standard practices, processes and frameworks to facilitate the collection, identification, storage and usage of business information that an organization holds. The concept revolves around a simple objective – to make the right data available at the right time, to the right people, and in the right format. Data governance program is an important step to establish control over information flow by putting up rules, policies, and procedures to safeguard the access and usage of data. Lots of organizations have tried to implement enterprise data governance practices, but only a handful have succeeded in reaping the rewards. What’s the reason behind all these failures? In this article, we will take a look at the crucial mistakes that you must stay away from while implementing a data governance program for your organization.



Quote for the day:


"The hard part isn't making the decision. It's living with it." -- Jonas Cantrell


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