5 reasons why companies need to develop and prioritize their AI Business strategies now!
We live in a technological moment comparable to the early days of the Internet,
which sparked fascination — and even some apocalyptic predictions and
fears — when it first appeared. Today, we can all see that the Internet is such
a natural part of our everyday lives that we only notice its existence when it’s
missing. I’m betting my career that the same will soon happen with AI. But for
companies to benefit from this disruption, they have to stop focus on the
technology itself and see it as an amplifier of the value that can be offered to
customers, which is at the heart of business strategies. Many of the discussions
about Artificial Intelligence in teams, departments, and companies today still
start with the question, “What data do we have, and what technology do we need
to work with it?” Please don’t do that anymore! It’s time to turn the tables and
look at what the customers’ needs are. What are the questions your customers are
asking that, when answered, will generate value for them and the business? Only
when you have this clarity you should start looking for the correct data and
related AI applications.
Critical Infrastructure Under Attack
Unlike ransomware, which must penetrate IT systems before it can wreak havoc,
DDoS attacks appeal to cybercriminals because they're a more convenient IT
weapon since they don't have to get around multiple security layers to produce
the desired ill effects. The FBI has warned that more DDoS attacks are employing
amplification techniques to target US organizations after noting a surge in
attack attempts after February 2020. The warnings came after other reports of
high-profile DDoS attacks. In February, for example, the largest known DDoS
attack was aimed at Amazon Web Services. The company's infrastructure was
slammed with a jaw-dropping 2.3 Tb/s — or 20.6 million requests per second —
assault, Amazon reported. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency (CISA) also acknowledged the global threat of DDoS attacks. Similarly, in
November, New Zealand cybersecurity organization CertNZ issued an alert about
emails sent to financial firms that threatened a DDoS attack unless a ransom was
paid. Predominantly, cybercriminals are just after money.
9 tips for speeding up your business Wi-Fi
For larger networks, consider using a map-based Wi-Fi surveying tool such as
those from AirMagnet, Ekahau or TamoGraph during deployment and for periodic
checks. Along with capturing Wi-Fi signals, these tools enable you to run a full
RF spectrum scan to look for non-Wi-Fi interference as well. For ongoing
interference monitoring, use any functionality built into the APs that will
alert you to rogue APs and/or other interference. Map-based Wi-Fi surveying
tools usually offer some automated channel analysis and planning
features. However, if you're doing a survey on a smaller network with a
simple Wi-Fi stumbler, you'll have to manually create a channel plan. Start
assigning channels to APs on the outer edges of your coverage area first, as
that’s where interference from neighboring wireless networks is most likely to
be. Then work your way into the middle, where it’s more likely that
co-interference from your own APs is the problem. ... If you have more than one
SSID configured on the APs, keep in mind that each virtual wireless network must
broadcast separate beacons and management packets. This consumes more airtime,
so use multiple SSIDs sparingly.
Increasing Developer Effectiveness by Optimizing Feedback Loops
The key here is usefulness and empowerment. If the process is useful, accurate
and easy to interrupt, and the team is empowered to optimize, then it will
naturally get shortened. Developers will want to run useful validations more
often, earlier in the cycle. Take the example of regression tests that are tests
owned by another siloed team, that are flaky, slow, run out of cycle and hard to
figure out what is wrong in them. It is unlikely that they will get optimized,
because the developers don’t perceive much value in them; whereas with a test
suite based on the test pyramid that is owned by the team, is in the same code
base, and is the gate to deployment to all environments, the team will come up
with ways of improvement. You can apply the concept of feed loops to different
scales, for example, super small loops, e.g. when the developer is coding, what
feedback can we give them to help and nudge them? How does your IDE inform you
have made a mistake, or how does it help you find the syntax for the command you
are looking for? When we look at the developer flow, discovering information is
a big source of friction.
Coding interviews suck. Can we make them better?
Another issue is that technical interviews aren't standardized, meaning they can
vary wildly from company to company – making it almost impossible for candidates
to prepare fully. As a result, their fate rests largely in the hands of whoever
is carrying out the interview on that day. "The interviews typically are not
well thought out and not structured," says Tigran Sloyan, co-founder and CEO of
assessment platform CodeSignal. "What typically happens is, you have a developer
whose job it is to evaluate this person. Most developers don't have either
practice or understanding of what it means to conduct a structured interview."
When there's so much variability, biases begin making their way into the
process, says Sloyan. "Where there's lack of structure, there is more bias, and
what ends up happening is if whoever you're interviewing looks like you and
talks like you, you [the interviewer] start giving them more hints, you start
leading them down the right paths." The reverse is also true, Sloyan says. "If
they don't look like you and talk like you, you might throw them a couple more
curveballs, and then good luck making it through that process."
RPA and How It's Adding Value in the Workplace
While automation is the use of advanced technologies to replace humans in
low-value, repetitive, and tedious tasks with the goal of increasing
profitability and lowering operating costs. It benefits businesses by allowing
them more flexibility in how they operate and by increasing employee
productivity by automating the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks so that
employees can focus on more important tasks. In practice, the objective is to
improve workflows and processes. Alex Kwiatkowski is principal industry
consultant for financial services at UK-based
SAS. He points out that banks
are constantly seeking efficiency gains. Firms have long sought to remove
time-consuming, and occasionally error-prone, manual tasks in favor of
technology-infused, straight-through processing in the front, middle and back
offices. More than just fanciful hyperbole, automation has proven an enabler to
achieving such goals. No matter the bank, there's always room for improvement.
Keep in mind, too, that these advances need not be giant leaps forward but are
often the aggregation of marginal gains, if you will.
Shedding Light on the DarkSide Ransomware Attack
Like other gangs that operate modern ransomware codes, such as Sodinokibi and
Maze, DarkSide blends crypto-locking data with data exfiltration and extortion.
If they are not initially paid for a decryption key, the attackers threaten to
publish confidential data they stole from the victim and post it on their
dedicated website, DarkSide Leaks, for at least 6 months. When a ransom note
appears on an encrypted networked device, the note also communicates a TOR URL
to a page called “Your personal leak page” as part of the threat that if the
ransom is not paid, data will be uploaded to that URL. Ransom is demanded in
Bitcoin or Monero. If it is not paid by a specific initial deadline, the amount
doubles. ... Most ransomware operators understand that they need speed to
encrypt as much data as possible as quickly as they can. They, therefore, opt to
use symmetric encryption for that first phase and then encrypt the first key
with an asymmetric key. In DarkSide’s case, they claim to have come up with an
accelerated implementation; the malware uses the Salsa20 stream cipher to
encrypt victim data.
Can We Trust the Cloud Not to Fail?
Reducing, or transforming a failure detector algorithm with one set of
completeness and accuracy properties into a failure detector algorithm with
another set of such properties means finding a reduction or transformation
algorithm that can complement the original failure detection algorithm and
guarantee that it will behave the same way as the target failure detection
algorithm in the same environment given the same failure patterns. This concept
is formally called reducibility of failure detectors. Because in reality it can
be difficult to implement strongly complete failure detectors in asynchronous
systems, per T.D. Chandra and S. Toueg we can transform failure detectors with
weak completeness class into failure detectors with strong completeness. This
concept is formally called reducibility of failure detectors. We can say that
the original failure detector algorithm based on timeouts (described earlier)
was reduced or transformed into an Eventually Weak Failure Detector by using
increasing timeouts. As T.D. Chandra and S. Toueg showed that it is also
possible to transform failure detectors with weak completeness into failure
detectors with strong completeness.
The 6 Dimensions of a Winning Resilience Strategy
As CIOs look to pivot to this new and more complete approach to building
resilience, they will be coming from different places in the journey depending
on their existing business strategy and investments. The good news is that this
journey does not need to be undertaken in one swoop. CIOs can start with the
quick wins, such as identifying and deploying the right collaboration tools,
before moving on to longer-term processes, such as how best to migrate
applications to the cloud and embrace cloud-native models. The starting point
should be a resilience roadmap so you can plan when best to address the various
dimensions of your strategy. This needs to be supported by a focus on your
people to ensure they are able to leverage new technologies to their fullest and
understand how to thrive in their work no matter where they are. Identifying
what needs to change and putting in place an effective resilience strategy is
now a critical business differentiator. In the past, business resilience was
about doing the best in tough times, and often CIOs’ focus was on robust
oversight and control to ensure that there were security breaches while
business-as-usual was disrupted.
Cloud data and security — what every healthcare technology leader needs to know
Knowing where an organisation’s data resides, who owns that data and what type
of data it is, will ease any security incident and any legal or compliance
implications. It will also ease an organisation’s ability to manage risk and
improve their response over time. Commenting on the importance of knowing your
data, William Klusovsky, Global Cybersecurity Strategy, Governance, Risk &
Compliance Offering Lead at Avanade, said: “Often, technology leaders will
forget that asset management is not just about keeping track of hardware, it
means knowing where your data is, where your data flows and who owns that data.”
The challenge of having a holistic view of an organisation’s data landscape is
intensified by the problem of Shadow IT — the procurement of software and tech
without IT’s knowledge. As new systems and applications are onboarded by various
departments it’s easy to lose track of these, and what data sits within them,
without a strong systems acquisition process. With healthcare specifically, the
rapid introduction of IoT medical devices and all the new data they’re
generating, exemplifies this.
Quote for the day:
"Stories are the single most powerful
weapon in a leader's arsenal." -- Howard Gardner
No comments:
Post a Comment