Why Developers Should Learn Kubernetes
Along with DevOps and SRE adoption, there is also a lot of discussion about
“shifting left” in the software development world. At its core, shifting left
means focusing on moving problem detection and prevention earlier in the
software development lifecycle (SDLC) to improve overall quality. More robust,
automated continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines and
testing practices are prime examples of how this works. Shifting left applies to
operational best practices as well. Once upon a time, developers would code
their applications and then hand them off to operations to deploy into
production. Things have changed dramatically since that time, and old models
don’t work the way they once did. Knowing about the platform that the
application lives on is critical. Successful engineering organizations work hard
to ensure development and operations teams avoid working in silos. Instead, they
aim to collaborate earlier in the software development lifecycle so that coding,
building, testing and deployments are all well understood by all teams involved
in the process.
Top 5 Programming Languages for Automation Testing
JavaScript focuses strongly on test automation and performs well when it comes
to rebranding the client-side expectations through front-end development.
Unavoidably, there are many web applications like Instagram, Accenture, Slack,
and Airbnb which support libraries written through JavaScript automation, such
as instauto, ATOM (Accenture Test Automation Open source Modular Libraries),
Botkit, and Mavericks. Besides, there are various testing frameworks like Zest,
Jasmine, and Nightwatch JS which refine multiple processes of unit testing as
well as end-to-end testing. The reason for using them is that programmers or
developers may build strong web applications primarily focusing on the core
logic of businesses and quickly resolving security-related issues that may occur
anywhere and anytime. With such advantages, teams working for automation testing
won’t feel pressured because the debugging time and other code glitches are
reduced and the productivity is promisingly increased with the shift-left
testing approach.
Trickbot Malware Rebounds with Virtual-Desktop Espionage Module
The latest version of the spy module makes use of virtual network computing
(VNC): hence its name, vncDll. It essentially sets up a virtual desktop that
mirrors the desktop of a victim machine and sets about using it to steal
information. It’s been circulating since late May, researchers said. When first
installed, vncDll uses a custom communications protocol to transmit information
to and from one of the up to nine C2 servers that are defined in its
configuration file. The module will use the first one to which it can connect.
“The port used to communicate with the servers is 443, to avoid arousing the
suspicion of anyone observing the traffic,” according to the Bitdefender
analysis. “Although traffic on this port normally uses SSL or TLS, the data is
sent unencrypted.” The first order of business is to announce to the C2 server
that it’s been installed, and it then waits to receive a set of commands. The C2
connects to an attacker-controlled client, which is a software application that
the attackers use to interact with the victims through the C2 servers.
Four common biases in boardroom culture
Boards can be effective only if they can come to a consensus. Let’s say a
company is considering the launch of a significant new product, but five of the
12 directors have concerns going into a meeting on the topic. Some have
discussed the issue among themselves before the meeting. Many are worried about
how the full board discussion will go. In the meeting, one director starts to
share his concerns, but the CEO quickly moves on. Over the course of the
meeting, more and more heads start to nod along. No parts of the strategy for
this new product have changed. But now the entire board appears supportive,
including the director whose concerns were dismissed. Though consensus-building
is important, boards may be too inclined to seek harmony or conformity. This can
lead to groupthink, a much-written-about challenge facing companies in which
dissenting views are not welcomed or even entertained. In fact, though most
boards work to solicit a range of views and come to a consensus on key issues,
the 2020 edition of PwC’s Annual Corporate Directors Survey found that 36% of
directors have difficulty voicing a dissenting view on at least one topic in the
boardroom.
Moving Data is Expensive
Data created at the edge must be accessed and processed by the applications in
the datacenter. The necessity to move data to the application incurs a
productivity penalty. Take media and entertainment: editors, colorists, and
special effects artists in multiple locations may sit idle waiting for data to
become accessible. A 30 minute delay across 200 animators may result in ~$400K
unintended cost. Data may have to be moved multiple times, each time incurring
the productivity penalty. Every time data is moved or copied, storage resources
must be made available to store it. Whether it is persistent storage or a
caching device, disk drives are deployed to catch data being sent. Moving 10TB
requires 10TB of storage to be available in every location requiring data
access. The cost of storage varies from $120/TB/yr for archiving tier to
$720/TB/yr for high-performance tier. Every copy created incurs an added storage
cost. These estimates are marginally accurate; procuring small amounts of
storage may be even more costly since economies of scale kick in at over
40TB.
How to Best Assess Your Security Posture
Risk assessment can help an organization figure out what assets it has, the
ownership of those assets and everything down to patch management. It involves
figuring out what you want to measure risk around because there are a bunch of
different frameworks out there [such as] NIST and the Cyber Security Maturity
Model, (C2M2)" said Bill Lawrence, CISO at risk management platform provider
SecurityGate.io. "Then, in an iterative fashion, you want to take that initial
baseline or snapshot to figure out how well or how poorly they're measuring up
to certain criteria so you can make incremental or sometimes large improvements
to systems to reduce risk. ... Looking at your own scorecard is a good way to
get started and thinking about assessments because ultimately you're going to be
assigning the same types of weights and risk factors to your vendors," said Mike
Wilkes, CISO at cybersecurity ratings company SecurityScorecard. "We need to get
beyond thinking that you're going to send out an Excel spreadsheet
[questionnaire] once a year to your core vendors.
Leveraging data: what retailers can learn from Netflix
For bricks and mortar retail, collecting data on customers is obviously more
difficult – they don’t need to ‘login’ in order to enter a shop. Retailers,
however, can track credit cards to group transactions back to a specific
customer, and use this data to link both online and offline sales. AI, when used
smartly in store, can also help retailers to get to know their customers better.
Connected devices and IoT, along with Computer Vision technology (CV), allows
businesses to collect data from sensors, cameras and mobile devices on consumer
behaviours. This can include the items that are picked up or put back down, the
directions visitors move in, whether the shoppers are regulars, or which areas
of the store are most visited. Analysing the data gathered by this suite of
technologies can, in turn, help drive brand loyalty with a tailored in-store
experience. Loyalty programmes continue to have a key role to play in supporting
retailers with data capture (such as behavioural and transactional information),
and analytics are helping loyalty schemes to become more powerful in driving
sales than ever before.
The real cost of MSSPs not implementing new tech
Taking on a complex cybersecurity landscape without the right tools can result in serious weaknesses that threaten an organization’s networks and data. Among the potential problem areas: The comprehension gap. - The lack of a translation layer between tactical and strategic stakeholders (i.e., those making reactive decisions and those who plan for the future) can result in separate tools and systems within an organization. This results in failures while making crucial, time-sensitive decisions, as well as in fully understanding the threat landscape and effectively allocating resources. A regulatory disconnect - Organizations need to balance collaborative cybersecurity efforts with compliance. Various regulations, such as the Federal Information Management Security Act, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), tend to restrict the ability of security platforms to collect and share threat intelligence. Loss of time and momentum - Without the right tools, security teams can find themselves besieged by a steady onslaught of low-impact events and security control system alerts
Training NLP Engines Without All of the Answers
Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is a
subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are many benefits when using the
technology, and I am surprised at the pushback from technical people when
talking about deploying it. I guess there is a difference between learning
about technology in academia and the complexity of actually deploying it. ...
Another common over-promising statement is that it is easy to build the
conversation and responses. In some cases, you build a simple decision matrix
via the UI. After a while, you find out all of the variables in the
conversation have created a mess. The other option is to create a machine
learning (ML) model to look at data and provide observations and predictions.
You might as well pull out your calculus textbooks and remember how all of
this complex math works to build a ML algorithm. Building the ML is a
specialized discipline in applied mathematics. Just because you can take a
distance learning course does not mean you have the mathematics to build them.
When asking a mathematician how long it will take to observe, hypothesize, and
build an algorithm to try, they will tell you it takes time.
7 Key Insights of Product Management
There are inputs everywhere: feedback from customers, the team, leadership teams; quant data will tell us something and qual data will give us another insight. But are they all equal? Is the "customer always right?" Noooooooo, not necessarily. Using customers as an example: co-designing solutions can be dangerous, but they are good at helping you discover problems, so get them involved here. Good decisions come from proper weighting and attention to the inputs: the data, customer feedback, the market, your experience built from your track record, the team’s competence and so on. Again, it depends on what company, which product, what market. I’ve been a PM carrying almost everything from articulating and validating the initial idea through to writing FAQs and call scripts for the Customer Service Team. I’ve sometimes looked more like an Executive Producer, focused on the vision and strategy, galvanising multiple teams, suppliers and partners and engaging with a multitude of stakeholders. Perhaps you’re a Product Manager as well as a Product Marketer with your emphasis on positioning, pricing and Go-To-Market.
Quote for the day:
"Leaders think and talk about the
solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems." --
Brian Tracy
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