What Is Dark Data Within An Organisation?
In the universe of information assets, data may be deemed dark for a number of
various reasons either because it’s unstructured or because it’s behind a
firewall. Or it may be dark due to the speed or volume or because people
simply have not made the connections between the different data sets. This
could also be because they do not lie in a relational database or because
until recently, the techniques required to leverage the data effectively did
not exist. Dark data is often text-based and stays within company firewalls
but remains very much untapped. For instance, supply chain complexity is
a significant challenge for organisations. The supply chain is a data-driven
industry traversing across a network of global suppliers distribution channels
and customer base. This industry churns out data in huge numbers given that an
estimated that only 5% of data is being used. So while 95% of such data is not
being utilised for analytics, it presents an opportunity for big data
technologies to bring this dark data to light. To date, organisations
have explored only a small fraction of the digital universe for data analytic
value. Dark analytics is about turning dark data into intelligence and insight
that a company can use.
Quantum computing meets cloud computing
As part of Leap, developers can also use a feature called the hybrid solver
service (HSS), which combines both quantum and classical resources to solve
computational problems. This "best-of-both-worlds" approach, according to
D-Wave, enables users to submit problems of ever-larger sizes and
complexities. Advantage comes with an improved HSS, which can run
applications with up to one million variables – a jump from the previous
generation of the technology, in which developers could only work with 10,000
variables. "When we launched Leap last February, we thought that we were at
the beginning of being able to support production-scale applications," Alan
Baratz, the CEO of D-Wave, told ZDNet. "For some applications, that was the
case, but it was still at the small end of production-scale applications."
"With the million variables on the new hybrid solver, we really are at the
point where we are able to support a broader array of applications," he
continued. A number of firms, in fact, have already come to D-Wave with a
business problem, and a quantum-enabled solution in mind. According to Baratz,
in many cases customers are already managing the small-scale deployment of
quantum services, and are now on the path to full-scale implementation.
H&M Hit With Record-Breaking GDPR Fine Over Illegal Employee Surveillance
Swedish multinational retail company H&M has been hit with a monumental
€35 million ($41.3 million) GDPR fine for illegally surveilling employees in
Germany. The Data Protection Authority of Hamburg (HmbBfDI) announced the fine
on Thursday after the company was found to have excessively monitored several
hundred employees in a Nuremberg service centre. The watchdog said that since
at least 2014, parts of the workforce had been subject to "extensive recording
of details about their private lives". "After absences such as vacations
and sick leave the supervising team leaders conducted so-called Welcome Back
Talks with their employees. After these talks, in many cases not only the
employees' concrete vacation experiences were recorded, but also symptoms of
illness and diagnoses,” HmbBfDI said. “In addition, some supervisors acquired
a broad knowledge of their employees' private lives through personal and floor
talks, ranging from rather harmless details to family issues and religious
beliefs.” The extensive data collection was exposed in October 2019 when such
data became accessible company-wide for several hours due to a configuration
error.
How CIOs can convert Data Lakes into profit centres
Most CIOs today are comfortable with traditional concepts of BI and Data
Warehousing. These mature technologies have worked well to help the
organization gain insights into what happened in the past - but are no longer
sufficient by themselves. ML and AI are required technologies today for
generating the next set of competitive advantages - predicting the future,
gaining deep insights from unstructured data and creating data-driven
products. Relational Databases are often incapable of handling rapidly
evolving data formats and unstructured data, like natural language text and
multimedia, which are the fuel for this ML and AI-driven revolution. ...
Exploding data sizes, increasing Data Democratization and increasingly rich
and complex data processing workloads mean the traditional on-premise hardware
has a hard time keeping up. Processing power of modern processors for AI and
ML (GPUs/TPUs) are doubling every few months - leaving Moore’s law in the
dust. Capital sunk in on-premise hardware becomes obsolete faster than ever.
Rapidly innovating hardware in the cloud enables new classes of applications
or breaks performance barriers for old ones.
Data Governance & Privacy Best Practices to Lower Risk and Drive Value
An enterprise-wide data governance program is your key to accelerating
digital transformation programs such as cloud migration, improving customer
experience with trust assurance, and lowering operating expenses when data
use is optimized, in line with your corporate policies. In today’s
world with more data being available from more sources, it’s no surprise
that we look for an automated and scalable methodology to manage all this
information. Data governance is a discipline that encompasses the rules,
policies, roles, responsibilities, and tools we put in place to ensure our
data is accurate, consistent, complete, available, and secure to enable
trust in the outcomes we plan to achieve. From my experience, these
are three best practices around governing data to maximize the success of
business transformation agendas, reduce uncertainty, and ensure safe and
appropriate data use. ... Leading global organizations are leveraging
Informatica’s integrated and intelligent Data Governance and Privacy
solution portfolio to proactively add value to their bottom line today. It
is about getting the right information to the right people at the right
time, enabling the entire organization to be proactive, in order to identify
and act on new opportunities and plan for the best results, instead of
reacting to unanticipated surprises.
Cyber-attack victim CMA CGM struggling to restore bookings, say customers
As CMA CGM’s IT engineers continue, for the fifth day, to try to restore its
systems following a cyber-attack at the weekend, the French carrier has come
under mounting criticism from customers that its back-up booking process is
inadequate. Yesterday, the carrier said its “back-offices [shared services
centres] are gradually being reconnected to the network, thus improving
bookings and documentation processing times”. And it reiterated that
bookings could still be made through the INTTRA portal, as well as manually
via an Excel form attached to an email. However, Australian forwarder and
shipper representatives, the Freight & Trade Alliance (FTA) and
Australian Peak Shippers Association (APSA), described the measures as
“failing to adequately provide contingency services”. John Park, head of
business operations at FTA/APSA, said its members ought to be due
compensation from the carrier and its subsidiary, Australia National Line,
which operates some 14 services to Australia, according to the eeSea liner
database. “FTA/APSA has reached out again to senior CMA CGM management to
seek advice as to when we can expect full service to be re-instated,
implementation of workable contingency arrangements and acceptance that
extra costs incurred ...
Researchers create a graphene circuit that makes limitless power
The breakthrough is an offshoot of research conducted three years ago at the
University of Arkansas that discovered that freestanding graphene, which is
a single layer of carbon atoms, ripples, and buckles in a way that holds
potential energy harvesting capability. The idea was controversial because
it does refute a well-known assertation from physicist Richard Feynman about
the thermal motion of atoms, known as Brownian motion, cannot do work.
However, the University researchers found at room temperature thermal motion
of graphene does induce an alternating current in a circuit. The achievement
was previously thought to be impossible. Researchers also discovered their
design increased the amount of power delivered. Researchers say they found
the on-off, switch-like behavior of the diodes amplifies the power delivered
rather than reducing it as previously believed. Scientists on the project
were able to use a relatively new field of physics to prove diodes increase
the circuit’s power. That emerging field is called stochastic
thermodynamics. Researchers say that the graphene and the circuit share a
symbiotic relationship.
Frameworks for Data Privacy Compliance
As new privacy regulations are introduced, organizations that conduct
business and have employees in different states and countries are subject to
an increasing number of privacy laws, making the task of maintaining
compliance more complex. While these laws require organizations to
administer reasonable security implementations, they do not outline what
specific actions should be taken to satisfy this requirement. As a result,
many risk managers are turning to proven security frameworks that
specifically address privacy. Doing so can help organizations build privacy
and security programs that make compliance more manageable, even when
beholden to multiple regulations. While no two frameworks are the same, each
is designed to help organizations identify and address potential security
gaps that could negatively impact data privacy. Such frameworks include the
Center for Internet Security (CIS) Top 20, Health Information Trust Alliance
Common Security Framework (HITRUST CSF), and the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework. ... Originally designed for
health care organizations and third-party vendors that serve health care
clients, HITRUST CSF leads organizations beyond baseline security practices
to establish a strong, mature security program.
Selecting Security and Privacy Controls: Choosing the Right Approach
The baseline control selection approach uses control baselines, which are
pre-defined sets of controls assembled to address the protection needs of a
group, organization, or community of interest. Security and privacy control
baselines serve as a starting point for the protection of information,
information systems, and individuals’ privacy. Federal security and privacy
control baselines are defined in draft NIST Special Publication 800-53B. The
three security control baselines contain sets of security controls and control
enhancements that offer protection for information and information systems
that have been categorized as low-impact, moderate-impact, or high-impact—that
is, the potential adverse consequences on the organization’s missions or
business operations or a loss of assets if there is a breach or compromise to
the system. The system security categorization, risk assessment, and security
requirements derived from stakeholder protection needs, laws, executive
orders, regulations, policies, directives, and standards can help guide and
inform the selection of security control baselines from draft Special
Publication 800-53B.
Emerging challenges and solutions for the boards of financial-services companies
Actions by boards reflect the increased attention all financial firms are now
devoting to cyberrisk. Ninety-five percent of board committees, for example,
discuss cyberrisks and tech risks four times or more a year (Exhibit 1). One
such firm holds optional deep-dive sessions the week before each quarter’s board
meeting. These sessions cover relevant topics, such as updates on the current
intelligence on threats, case studies of recent breaches that could affect the
company or others in the industry, and the impact of regulatory changes. ...
There has been a remarkable shift in board awareness of cybersecurity in the
past few years: for example, earlier McKinsey research, from 2017, suggested
that only 25 percent of all companies gave their boards information-technology
and security updates more than once a year. More frequent and consistent
communication between board members and senior management on this topic now
enables boards to understand the financial, operational, and technological
implications of emerging cybersecurity threats for the business and to guide its
direction accordingly. Firms increasingly recruit experts for these
committees.
Quote for the day:
"Superlative leaders are fully equipped to deliver in destiny; they locate eternally assigned destines." -- Anyaele Sam Chiyson
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