Daily Tech Digest - March 10,2020

How can companies thrive under CCPA regulation?

How can companies thrive under CCPA regulation? image
One major challenge that Manley says companies deal with when it comes to data management under CCPA is dealing with consumer data that’s located across a number of devices and software infrastructures. He explained: “I think the biggest challenge we see a lot of people having is that they often don’t understand how many places are holding customer data. “They were thinking very much about the data that they had on their premises, maybe things that are in file servers, databases, corporate laptops, that sort of thing, and it takes a while to then realise that they’ve got a number of SaaS applications, whether it’s Salesforce, Slack or Office 365. ... According to Manley, the companies that manage to succeed while staying within CCPA boundaries use the regulation as an opportunity to reflect on their operations. “Regulations like CCPA are a good baseline for what your company should be doing anyway,” he said. “For a lot of the better organisations, we see them saying that the goal isn’t just to hit the baseline, but it’s to use this as a starting point for discussion about what we want to be as a business.



Impactful, but Overhyped AI

IoT AI
Many companies struggle with how to successfully integrate AI into their businesses. Lux Research released a report called “Artificial Intelligence: A Framework to Identify Challenges and Guide Successful Outcomes” that analyzes the market, outlines several challenges companies face in integrating AI, and hones in on several factors businesses should consider before investing in AI. The four factors the research firm suggests to help businesses make wise AI investments and decisions include: clearly understanding the outcomes implementing AI will provide for their businesses; focusing on an AI product’s capabilities instead of flashy marketing; knowing when the technology is mature enough to mitigate risk; and identifying practical challenges to both implementation and maintenance of the technology once it is in place. There’s no doubt that AI technologies can be impactful in helping companies achieve digital transformation, but there is also a lot of hype that is not necessarily helping the space and the players within it.


Multiple nation-state groups are hacking Microsoft Exchange servers

Microsoft Exchange
These state-sponsored hacking groups are exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange email servers that Microsoft patched last month, in the February 2020 Patch Tuesday.The vulnerability is tracked under the identifier of CVE-2020-0688. ... This Exchange vulnerability is not, however, straightforward to exploit. Security experts don't see this bug being abused by script kiddies (a term used to describe low-level, unskilled hackers). To exploit the CVE-2020-0688 Exchange bug, hackers need the credentials for an email account on the Exchange server -- something that script kiddies don't usually have. The CVE-2020-0688 security flaw is a so-called post-authentication bug. Hackers first need to log in and then run the malicious payload that hijacks the victim's email server. But while this limitation will keep script kiddies away, it will not stop APTs and ransomware gangs, experts said. APTs and ransomware gangs often spend most of their time launching phishing campaigns, following which they obtain email credentials for a company's employees.


3 cloud architecture problems that need solutions


Many push as much as they can to the edge, but realize that you’re moving away from a centralized system (the public cloud), to many decentralized systems (the edge devices or servers). You need to understand that you must maintain these edge systems, and they are much more difficult to monitor, govern, secure, update, and configure. Multiply that effort by hundreds of edge computing devices and you've got an operational nightmare. Second, what to containerize? Many enterprises say containers are their strategy and not just an enabling technology. This almost religious belief in the power of containers has pushed many an application to the cloud in containers, but that’s really not how business should be moving there. The issue is that there are no hard and fast rules as to what can—and should—exist in a container. Legacy applications that will take a great deal of effort to refactor (rewrite) for containers are not likely candidates; however, in many instances, the cloud migration team attempts to move them first. This means that enterprises will fail to find value in containers for some of their applications that move to the cloud.


How to break down data silos: 4 obstacles and solutions

Silos
With the growth of shadow IT, vendor software and databases can come through virtually any departmental door. Systems from different vendors that departments independently buy don't necessarily interact well with each other. When this occurs, systemic data silos can arise because of cross-system and data integration failures. The best way to address this issue is to require interoperability and a full set of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the requests for proposal (RFP) that IT and individual business departments issue to vendors. One way to assure that system and data interoperability is a front-page requirement on RFPs is for IT to create a standard RFP that is required by purchasing or whichever department authorizes tech purchases. This standardized form can be used by IT and end-user departments. Most systems and databases sold by vendors have some type of APIs for data integration; however, totally seamless integration and the ability to easily aggregate data from disparate systems can never be assumed.


How CIOs can limit the business disruption of the coronavirus — Gartner

How CIOs can limit the business disruption of the coronavirus — Gartner image
With various quarantine measures and travel restrictions undertaken by organisations, cities and countries, uncertainties and disruptions are beginning to have more of an impact on businesses and their workforces. This increases the chance that business operations are either being suspended or run in a limited capacity. In response to this, Gartner are promoting the use of AI to automate some tasks particularly basic customer service protocols and candidate screenings. In its report, Gartner also recommends that in organisations where remote working capabilities have not yet been established, CIOs need to work out interim solutions, including using instant messaging for general communication, file sharing/meeting solutions, and access to enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). ... If it isn’t possible for organisations to meet their clients face to face, Gartner recommends using digital channels such as video calls and live streaming solutions that can serve various customer engagement and selling scenarios.


What Does A Typical Day Of A Data Scientist Look Like?

A day of a data scientist
Like every other professional, the day of a data scientist will be dotted with emails to answer and meetings to attend. But this is where the similarities end. Unlike in most jobs, each day throws up new challenges and unique problems for a data scientist. This comes in the form of varied projects, and that in turn changes with the industry they operate in. But despite the flux, what ties together each workday for them collectively are data-related tasks. Depending on your profile, you will either be – broadly speaking — pulling data, shaping it, merging it, or analysing it — all with the end goal of solving problems for businesses. This is accomplished by using a wide variety of tools that look for patterns or trends within a given data set, and trying to simplify data problems. ... As emphasised in the first point, the primary task of a data scientist is to be problem-solvers, and that cannot be achieved in silos. A typical day would involve engaging with stakeholders at multiple levels to determine the questions that need pointed answers. Not just that, it is their job to come up with different approaches to solve these problems.


Introducing Alpine.js: A Tiny JavaScript Framework

Ever built a website and reached for jQuery, Bootstrap, Vue.js or React to acheive some basic user interaction? Alpine.js is a fraction of the size of these frameworks because it involves no build steps and provides all of the tools you need to build a basic user interface. Like most developers, I have a bad tendency to over-complicate my workflow, especially if there’s some new hotness on the horizon. Why use CSS when you can use CSS-in-JS? Why use Grunt when you can use Gulp? Why use Gulp when you can use Webpack? Why use a traditional CMS when you can go headless? Every so often though, the new-hotness makes life simpler. Recently, the rise of utility based tools like Tailwind CSS have done this for CSS, and now Alpine.js promises something similar for JavaScript. In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at Alpine.js and how it can replace JQuery or larger JavaScript libraries to build interactive websites. If you regularly build sites that require a sprinkling on Javascript to alter the UI based on some user interaction, then this article is for you.


Job Trends For Data Scientists In The Next 5 Years

Data scientist
A trend that has emerged in recent times is that companies which earlier identified themselves as ‘non-tech’, are beginning to position themselves as tech companies, and this is likely to continue. A case in examples is banks. For instance, the term ‘analyst’ used in the context of this industry, might now be called a ‘data scientist’, as long as they are seeking to monetise the company’s data assets. One of the main drivers for this trend is the copious amounts of data available today – and this has been increasing exponentially. What is more, fuelled by the rise of (Internet of Things) IoT and social media, this growth is not expected to slow down anytime soon. The IoT market in India alone is reportedly likely to reach a whopping 2 billion connections by 2022. This is buttressed by the fact that not only are more devices coming online but with greater improvements in hardware, the type of data delivered will be more diverse. The same goes for social media. According to Hootsuite, the number of social media users worldwide in 2019 rose up to 3.484 billion — recording an increase of 9% y-o-y.


Huawei P40 Pro expected to have 7 cameras, 10x optical zoom, and 5G support


According to known Apple leaker Ming Chi Kuo, a 10x optical zoom camera could be included as one of the sensors in the P40 Pros camera system, making it the world's first phone to achieve such a feat. The Mate 30 Pro featured a quad-camera set-up, and included a 50x digital zoom and a 5x optical zoom, which catapulted it into the mobile hall of fame.  Optical zoom is achieved by switching from a wide-angle camera to a telephoto camera. The magnification number is a reflection of the difference of those two lens lengths. Using the telephoto camera without "pinching in" results in a higher-quality image instead of using digital zoom which is what happens when you pinch the screen of your phone while using the main camera --- or when you try to zoom in beyond the telephoto camera's capabilities. According to GizChina, the P40 Pro's rear camera will come with a 52-megapixel Sony IMX700 sensor, which is 10 megapixels higher than P30 Pro's rear camera. The 52-megapixel sensor is significantly lower in terms of resolution than Samsung's Galaxy S20 Ultra 108-megapixel sensor, but reports suggest this new sensor can bring bigger pixels and better low-light image quality.



Quote for the day:


"The captain of a ship can run a great ship, but he can't do anything about the tides." -- Matthew Norman


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