Daily Tech Digest - July 04, 2017

The Internet of Things for banks: it’s here, it’s real, and it’s set to grow exponentially

Overall, with access to the unique data of individual homes, IoT has the potential to create personalised mortgages, factoring in both the property and the person. In fact, the financial sector can bring progress to the housing market with a whole range of technologies. The immediacy of transactions run on distributed ledger technology could verify house purchases more efficiently; processing time can be improved by big data stored in the cloud. But with the rise of data and connected devices, CIOs and CISOs are clearly under increasing pressure. Not only from the demands for increased scalability, as the sources of data presented by the rise of the IoT grows, but also building trust around security. So how can financial services firms manage and analyse the huge amount of data the IoT generates, while exploiting the flexibility of on-demand services, without compromising security?


The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Why you need a global IoT strategy

Get past the pilot stage of IoT that many organizations seem to be stuck in. Even if you are just trialing IoT technology, you should already know the next step you will take if the trial works. For instance, if you are trialing sensors to track goods flows through your warehouse, your next step might be to place sensors on goods and on trucks so you can track transport. Your end goal might be 360-degree visibility of all goods in your supply chain from point of origin to point of shipment. Adopt IoT technologies that can interoperate with each other. There are still incompatibilities between IoT products from different vendors. Find vendors that participate in standards groups that promote device interoperability. Keep your focus on security. Botnets like Mirai will continue to attack IoT. Your security should be regularly updated so you have the best possible protection.


Should organisations be switching their certificate authority?

To ensure the security of your cryptographic assets, agility is key. Let’s say your CA is compromised by a cyber attack and your certificates from that CA move to an untrusted state. First, you have to be able to locate all impacted certificates. You’ll then need to reissue certificates from another CA. Which CA’s management console will you use to complete this arduous task? Can you expect any CA to provide the functionality that helps you move certificates to a competing CA? Granted, a compromise is probably the worst-case scenario for switching CAs. However, there may be other cases which are less dramatic, but are still as important to address. Let’s say the employees at your CA make an (all too human) mistake such as mis-coding a batch of certificates or accidentally revoking a root certificate. You’re basically left in the same situation; you experience a service outage.


Get started with the Windows Subsystem for Linux

Technically, WSL is for console-only applications, providing shell support for developer tools and remote access to Linux servers running on-premises and in the public cloud. But it’s turned out to be a lot more flexible, and although this is not officially supported, users have installed and run X-based GUI applications, using Windows X Servers to bring a full Linux desktop experience to WSL. Working with any of the WSL personalities is like working with native Linux. You’ve got access to a shell, and through it the command line. Installing applications is as simple as using apt-get on Ubuntu or yast and zypper on Suse. When Fedora makes its way to Windows, you’ll use yum. Early WSL builds had problems running some applications, because the key dependencies weren’t supported. But since the Windows 10 Anniversary Update release, it’s been a lot easier, and now even complex packages like Docker install and run.


The Hidden Pitfalls Of Going Freelance In IT

“This is exacerbated in the IT world, because more often than not, you are going to be working remotely,” says Brattoli, who’s been freelancing on and off for his entire IT career. “Technology is wonderful in that it makes it possible for us to work from anywhere with an Internet connection. But there is still value in being able to meet face-to-face, and many companies are hesitant to trust someone they haven’t met.” In addition, at many companies the tech-savvy people running a project will know what needs to be done to meet the desired outcomes. “But once that’s all figured out, it is very hard to convince the people above them to go through with it,” Brattoli says. “Where technology is concerned, people who are less tech-savvy are going to be wary of any new changes to infrastructure.”


Analysis: Top Health Data Breaches So Far in 2017

As of July 3, 149 breaches affecting a total of nearly 2.7 million individuals have been reported to federal regulators so far in 2017, according to the Department of Health and Human Services' so-called "wall of shame" website of breaches affecting 500 or more individuals. Of those 2017 breaches, 53 are listed as hacking/IT incidents. And although they only represent about one-third of the breaches reported in 2017, those incidents are responsible for affecting 1.6 million individuals, or about 60 percent of the victims impacted. Those incidents include a ransomware attack reported to HHS on June 16 by Airway Oxygen, a Michigan-based provider of oxygen therapy and home medical equipment. That incident is listed on the federal tally as affecting 500,000 individuals, making it the second largest health data breach posted so far this year.


10 tips for mastering PowerPoint

With an estimated 500 million users worldwide, PowerPoint remains a key presentation tool in many enterprises, with Microsoft recently adding collaboration tools to further enhance its utility in the workplace. However, the platform includes many features that often fly under the radar, but can give your slide decks a boost. "We all know how easy it is to create and deliver a bad, mind-numbing presentation," wrote TechRepublic feature editor Jody Gilbert. "Fortunately for both presenters and their hapless victims, various add-ons are available to make presentations more functional and compelling." Here are 10 popular TechRepublic articles with tips for becoming a Microsoft PowerPoint expert and getting the most out of the presentation program.


The Growing Role of Machine Learning in Monitoring

While the adoption of machine learning in DevOps is relatively slow compared to other industries, the potential is huge. To start understanding what has to gain from this rapidly developing field, one needs only to look at the world of monitoring and log analysis, where machine learning can be used to alleviate some of the main pain points experienced by DevOps teams — namely, the analysis of vast volumes of data and the extraction of actionable insights from this data. Based on the monitoring solutions on show at Monitorama this year, I can safely claim that in this space at least, the machine learning revolution is well under way. ... Using a combination of supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms, Moogsoft promises to decrease the signal-to-noise ratio of alerts and correlating those alerts across your toolsets in real-time.


Make room for AI applications in the data center architecture

"If you look at the deep learning algorithms, they're extremely communication-intensive," Dekate said. "Trying to architect solutions for such a chatty application stack is going to be very hard for organizations to get their heads around." As data center networking architects prep their infrastructures for AI they must prioritize scalability, which will require high-bandwidth, low-latency networks and innovative architectures, such as InfiniBand or Omni-Path. The key is to keep all options open for automation, Perry said. The market is quickly maturing with automated data center infrastructure management technologies, a sign that automation is becoming more widely accepted in data centers. "Once more automation features are in place … this will help set the stage for the introduction of AI," Perry said.


Digitisation to transform the UK’s criminal justice system

Digitisation provides the opportunity to re-build the processes of the justice system around the citizen. Pilot initiatives such as the digital case file and online plea submissions have begun to prove the concept in practice, showing how digitisation can increase access to justice whilst reducing costs, streamlining processes and improving quality. Liz Crowhurst, policy officer, The Police Foundation and the report’s author, said: “At a time when justice agencies are under pressure to reduce costs, even as the complexity of cases increases, digitisation offers significant opportunities to radically improve services while increasing cost-efficiency and transparency. This, in turn, will deliver improved outcomes for victims, witnesses, defendants and offenders.”



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