Ransomware attacks growing in number, severity: Why experts believe it will get worse
The attackers are also changing their tactics, making it difficult to defend
against them. “Those tactics include things like not just encrypting victims’
computer networks but also exfiltrating data on those victim networks,” Holmes
said. “Now when victims realize they’ve become a victim of a ransomware
attack; it’s not just that their data is encrypted. It’s also that they’ve
lost all their — or much of their — information. The ransomware actors are
holding that data at risk and telling victims if they don’t pay the ransom,
they’re going to leak that data to the public.” Perhaps not surprisingly,
ransomware attackers are starting to band together, Holmes said. “We’ve seen
some of these ransomware actors entering into a cartel with one another. Under
this cartel model, they’ll share information amongst the group members and
share intelligence and share techniques. It’s a bit concerning to us as well
[because] it shows a major shift change among the ransomware actors.” The
ransomware cartels are forming into business-like organizations with
specialization of labor, Jason Conboy of DHS’s Investigations division said.
“You have your malware office… and they have effectively built skills to write
that malware. You’ve got your money mules.
Cloud banking: More than just a CIO conversation
The bank of 2030 will look very different from today. Facing changing consumer
expectations, emerging technologies, and alternative business models, banks
need to start putting strategies in place now to help them prepare for this
future. An important indicator of the shifting landscape? Cloud computing is
moving to the forefront as a focus for the chief information officer, C-suite
executives, and board members. Banking and capital markets leaders
increasingly recognize that cloud is more than a technology; it is a
destination for banks and other financial services firms to store data and
applications and access advanced software applications via the internet. The
leading public cloud providers offer an array of innovative
products-as-a-service that can be accessed on their platforms and help banks
implement business and operating models to improve revenue generation,
increase customer insights, contain costs, deliver market-relevant products
quickly and efficiently, and help monetize enterprise data assets. The cloud
also offers a huge opportunity to synchronize the enterprise; to break down
operational and data silos across risk, finance, regulatory, customer support,
and more. Once massive data sets are combined in one place, the organization
can apply advanced analytics for integrated insights.
Machine Learning Biases Might Define Minority Health Outcomes
Algorithmic biases present marginalized patients as more healthy,
disqualifying them from the speciality care they need. ... AI bias issues
are in no way new to the computer science community; however, it is unclear
whether the medical community even recognizes the problem.
Algorithmic-driven patient care results in less adequate care for people
striving to push back against the tide of systemic racism, given that the
lack of diversity in big data and automated-decision regulations has not
been ameliorated by the United States federal government. In contrast,
European data regulations state that machine-automation developers must use
appropriate mathematical and statistical techniques to ensure both that risk
of error is minimized and that discriminatory effects are prevented.
Regardless of geography, it is undeniable that managing these prejudices
requires careful attention to data, the use of artificial intelligence to
help detect bias, and the building of diverse teams. The federal government
must ensure that those behind the automation are ethically and legally
obliged to ensure AI is on the side of fairness.
Ireland’s data watchdog slammed for letting adtech carry on ‘biggest breach of all time’
Responding to the ICCL submission, the DPC’s deputy commissioner Graham
Doyle sent this statement: “Extensive recent updates and correspondence on
this matter, including a meeting, have been provided by the DPC. The
investigation has progressed and a full update on the next steps provided to
the concerned party.” However in a follow up to Doyle’s remarks, Ryan told
TechCrunch he has “no idea” what the DPC is referring to when it mentions a
“full update”. On “next steps” he said the regulator informed him it will
produce a document setting out what it believes the issues are — within four
weeks of its letter, dated September 15. Ryan expressed particular concern
that the DPC’s enquiry does not appear to cover security — which is the crux
of the RTB complaints, since GDPR’s security principle puts an obligation on
processors to ensure data is handled securely and protected against
unauthorized processing or loss. ... The regulator also pointed to another
related open enquiry — into adtech veteran Quantcast, also beginning in May
2019.The DPC has said the Quantcast enquiry is examining the lawful basis
claimed for processing Internet users’ data for ad targeting purposes, as
well as considering whether transparency and data retention obligations are
being fulfilled.
Write Better Automated Tests With Cypress in Angular
Cypress is much like Protractor for Angular applications, but Cypress is
much faster to run and easier to debug. Cypress not only is good at the
automated end-to-end testing that is independent of our applications, but
also is capable of unit testing against methods in model classes, service
classes, and so on. Cypress provides a complete end-to-end testing
experience in your browser where you can see your tests in an automated way.
Cypress provides it's own test runner where you can do the tests locally.
Cypress provides some other cool features like Time Travel, Debuggability,
Real-time reloads, Automatic waiting. These brilliant features make apart
this tool and we will see these in action. Enough talk. If you've already
cloned this repo then you're good to go but if not then you probably have an
Angular project and you just have to add Cypress as a dependency. ... The
cypress package includes a desktop app and the Cypress binary. It may take a
few minutes to run this command for the first time because the package
installation needs to download the Cypress binary. The Cypress binary is
saved in a global cache directory, so installing this package in the future
will be much faster for the same version.
Connecting the dots in an uncertain world
A tendency to underestimate the unexpected — both the chance of it happening
and the potential in it — is a common one. To combat this bias, instead of
doing “risk management,” which tends to focus on known unknowns, you can
build a muscle for planning for and finding potential in the unexpected.
This will be what counts during periods of crisis and uncertainty. One way
of doing this is to develop a North Star you can use to connect unexpected
events to your mission. Take Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of Turkish telecom company
Turkcell from 2015 to 2019. When there was an outbreak of serious violence
in Turkey in 2016 following an attempted coup d’etat, Kaan and his team
responded by making the Internet free for a month so people were able to
communicate with those they cared about without worrying about bills. And
during a regional refugee crisis, the company’s quick and proactive actions
to develop an app to help Syrian refugees find crucial health and financial
information in the country calmed tensions in the camps. As Turkcell has
built on this initial app, adding more services, customer loyalty among the
refugee population has given Turkcell a major market share among the 3
million Syrian refugees in Turkey.
What advances in HPC and AI mean for business, and what they do not
What businesses do need to be mindful of when looking to deploy AI is that
it is not a magic bullet to answering business critical questions. What’s
more, and as we’ve seen in several recent unfortunate examples, is if your
AI is not trained with a wide set of data, it can end up amplifying a wrong
supposition, rendering the end-product useless. For example, if you’re only
training your facial recognition programme with pictures of white men,
you’re going to get some biased and potentially discriminatory outcomes. As
with all forms of modelling, the findings you get out are only as good as
the data that you put into it. There are no shortcuts around this simple
fact and any organisation trying to do so will quickly become unstuck. The
key take-away from these missteps is not that AI has failed or is incapable
of carrying out a task; it’s that humans have, can and often do apply the
technology poorly. Today, AI is transforming almost every industry and
vertical, from pathology, where it’s used to detect cancer, to AI picking up
the phone to answer contact centre customer queries, from water controlled
indoor farming to driving autonomous vehicles in warehouses and on public
roads.
Interview with Event Modeling Founder - Adam Dymitruk
The event model contains independent units of work (slices). This allows not
requiring stand-ups, sprints and many other processes that are not effective
with remote work. These saved hours are reinvested in working on
implementing the solution. The transition to remote work is not even felt
with the guidance event modeling brings. Because the patterns are
prescribed, event modeling takes the guesswork out of many aspects of
writing software. The design allows a fixed and flat cost curve where the
complexity of the system doesn't make a project end in a "death march".
Event Modeling is simple. Whether you're looking at BPMN or UML, the
traditional practices for design are incredibly heavy. The main benefit is
that you can get the same value for a much smaller investment of time to
create a blueprint for how your current or potential solution works or will
work. The goal is to sweep aside the mountain of books and get on
organization going quickly. It takes 15 minutes to explain Event Modeling.
The other main benefit is having a reliable plan to start implementation.
Most new projects in software today head into starting development blind. An
important test that the event model provides is that it shows if you are
"information complete".
The 4 Top Artificial Intelligence Trends For 2021
From advancement in medical technology and standards of care, to advances in
communication technology that enabled outbreaks to be spotted more quickly and
lockdowns imposed. Over the next year, AI will be added to the list of
technological developments that are enabling us to more effectively deal with
pandemics. The growth in the amount of scientific and medical literature alone
is enormous, with more than 28,000 papers published by April this year
relating to Covid-19. A dedicated search engine powered by natural language
processing (NLP) algorithms has already been made available, so anyone can get
AI assistance when investigating this massive dataset. Work is also ongoing to
develop AI solutions to help deal with the huge backlog of other medical
issues, such as cancer, where treatment has been affected as resources are
diverted to fight Covid-19. Over the next year, we are likely to see the
accelerated adoption of AI across many other areas of healthcare, not only
related to tackling viruses. By developing our ability to apply machine
learning problem-solving to these massive, real-time global datasets, we will
spot outbreaks more easily, track contact between infected people, enable more
accurate diagnoses, and, by predicting ways that a virus might evolve in the
future, develop more effective and lasting vaccinations.
New US digital identity legislation promises more secure verification
The Improving Digital Identity Act would create an Improving Digital Identity
Task Force within the executive office of the president. Its mission is to
establish a government-wide effort to develop secure methods for federal, state
and local government agencies to validate identity attributes and support
interoperable digital identity verification in both the public and private
sectors. The task force would be comprised of cabinet secretaries, heads of
other federal agencies, state and local government officials, congressional
committee designated members, and a position appointed by the president.
Additionally, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would
develop a standards framework for digital identity verification to guide
federal, state and local governments in selecting their digital identity
solutions. NIST would have one year to publish a final version of the framework.
The legislation requires the task force to publish a report with recommendations
on research and development in systems that enable digital identity
verification. Upon its completion and with consent of the individual, the
framework will enable government agencies to securely vouch for its citizens in
real-time when online.
Quote for the day:
"Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility." -- Herb Kelleher
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