How to answer the age-old question: Could this meeting have been an email?
Companies want their people to be productive and their processes and systems to
be efficient. “From an efficiency perspective, meetings to discuss a challenging
issue or to make a decision are a good investment of time,” says Christie. “It
is a better use of the team’s time to get them in a room together for 30 minutes
to debate an issue or make a decision, than it is to send multiple emails
seeking input, to read all of the input, to synthesize the input, and then
arrive at a decision which then needs to be disseminated.” ... Before you send
out a calendar invite, consider that meetings are multiples of their attendees,
says Burns. “If a bad six-minute meeting has 10 attendees, that’s an hour of
wasted productivity,” he says. “Now imagine a bad 30-minute meeting with three
people or more.” Meetings are requests for someone’s time, so carefully evaluate
the its cost or benefit, says Janardan. ... Resist the urge to default to
a meeting, says Janardan: “Remind yourself of all the things that got resolved
when you had those casual run-ins at work and try to recreate them—whether you
are in-person or not. Sometimes the fastest way to come to a solution is to just
pick up the phone or physically seek out a colleague if you are spending more
time in a physical office.”
Researchers Create New Approach to Detect Brand Impersonation
These attacks, in which adversaries craft content to mimic known brands and trick victims into sharing information, have grown harder to detect as technology and techniques improve, says Justin Grana, applied researcher at Microsoft. While business-related applications are most often spoofed in these types of attacks, criminals can forge brand logos for any organization. "Brand impersonation has increased in its fidelity, in the sense that, at least from a visual [perspective], something that is malicious brand impersonation can look identical to the actual, legitimate content," Grana explains. "There's no more copy-and-paste, or jagged logos." In today's attacks, visual components of brand impersonation almost exactly mimic true content. ... While too many types of content can present a detection challenge, too few can do the same. Many brands, such as regional banks and other small organizations, aren't often seen in brand impersonation, so there might only be a handful of training examples for a system to learn from.The 10 temptations you should not fall into as a leader
The path of leadership is plagued with complex situations, which merit making
unpleasant decisions. A layoff, sanctions of different kinds, tackling a tactic,
abandoning a long-standing customer or an established supplier. In this sense, a
frequent error of being observed happens because, due to lack of courage or fear
of losing the admiration of collaborators, one avoids taking this type of
action, with the naive idea of assuming that “everything happens”. On the
contrary, each and every one of these situations that are not resolved tend to
increase their emotional volume as the days go by and constantly acquire an
increasingly bitter taste. ... Leaders who fall into this temptation have a
clear component of insecurity, feeling that if they do not know everything that
happens, they could be in danger. Then, people who use the logic of mistrust as
a standard, will place a collaborator "of his kidney" whose main responsibility
will be to tell him everything that his colleagues say, do or even think. The
effects of this are lethal. The credibility of the leader is undermined and
collective mistrust is strengthened, seriously affecting the transparency that
the team culture requires as the oxygen for its operation.Beginner’s Guide To Machine Learning With Apache Spark
Spark is known as a fast, easy to use and general engine for big data
processing. A distributed computing engine is used to process and analyse large
amounts of data, just like Hadoop MapReduce. It is quite faster than the other
processing engines when it comes to data handling from various platforms. In the
industry, there is a big demand for engines that can process tasks like the
above. Today or later, your company or client will be asked to develop
sophisticated models that would enable you to discover a new opportunity or risk
associated with it, and this all can be done with Pyspark. It is not hard to
learn Python and SQL; it is easy to start with it. Pyspark is a data analysis
tool created by the Apache Spark community for using Python and Spark. It allows
you to work with Resilient Distributed Dataset(RDD) and DataFrames in python.
Pyspark has numerous features that make it easy, and an amazing framework for
machine learning MLlib is there. When it comes to huge amounts of data, pyspark
provides you with fast and real-time processing, flexibility, in-memory
computation and various other features.Facebook AI Releases ‘BlenderBot 2.0’: An Open Source Chatbot
BlenderBot 2.0 is better at conducting more extended, more knowledgeable, and
factually consistent conversations over multiple sessions than the existing
state-of-the-art chatbot. BlenderBot’s improved conversational abilities have
made it a serious contender for artificial intelligence research. The AI model
takes the information it gets from conversations and stores them in long-term
memory. The knowledge is stored separately for each person they speak to, which
ensures that new information learned in one conversation can’t be used against
another. This model can read and respond in real-time, making it an excellent
tool for keeping up with current events. It can scan the internet for new
information to have a more up-to-date conversation. Facebook AI Research is
releasing the complete model, code, and evaluation set up to help advance
conversational AI research. The Facebook team combined human conversations with
internet searches that have been bolstered for training purposes.The Evolving Role of the CISO
In the era of the digital workplace, CISOs must not only focus on preventing
threats, but create systems that work for the business and still keep everyone
protected. Constant innovation, creation and implementation of unique strategies
are already part of the CISOs job description. ... Decision-making that ties
business strategy and security processes into a firm knot is the only way to
stand straight amidst the faced-paced, ever-changing storm of digital services.
The role of the CISO is evolving faster than ever, and becoming the jack of all
security and business trades. On Monday, they’re the superheroes keeping the
cybercriminals out. On Tuesday, they’re improving the organization’s security
posture. By the end of the week they’re C-suite ambassadors and innovating the
concept of security, all while delivering positive business value. As the role
continues to evolve and the CISO’s depth and breadth of knowledge regarding the
business, its underlying technology and its core risks, the role will continue
to elevate outside of IT and be seen as a peer of the CIO.Is DeFi the future of financial infrastructure and money?
DeFi apps could benefit by borrowing some of the legacy concepts, particularly
in terms of compliance and consumer experience. For example, they could
definitely make the front-end of these apps a much better customer experience
for end users. The DeFi space also doesn’t really have a concept of customer
relationship management nor typically collects any amount of consumer data.
While great from a privacy perspective, there is great value in understanding
the customer better. There are security audits DeFi products do, but they
feature none of the security guarantees most consumers are accustomed to in the
traditional financial world. Notifications or alerts also don’t really exist at
all in the DeFi space. In terms of products, there are tools to measure
blockchain activity, but not to measure engagement within DeFi applications.
Most of the developers in the crypto space are building right on top of the
layer one protocol itself. There aren’t any concepts of developer platforms or
middleware yet. In traditional finance, if you make a mistake, a financial
institution can initiate a rollback of the transaction – this doesn’t exist at
all in DeFi yet. How Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Can Revolutionize Businesses
Unlike traditional card payments, which can be reversed using the chargeback
feature, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency payments cannot be reversed. Because
each transaction is securely recorded, there is a long-term audit trail that can
be utilized to trace transactions and verify their authenticity. As a result,
each transaction has greater audibility and accountability, dramatically
reducing the likelihood of fraudulent transactions. This audibility feature can
also be used to track other assets, allowing businesses to keep a database of
various types of information about these assets up to date. Increased
traceability of the supply chain The use of blockchain-based applications makes
it easier to track products and goods as they move through different stages of
the supply chain. The ability to monitor suppliers in real-time, eliminate human
errors in data updating and use smart contracts for payments is expected to
transform the global supply chain industry. With the supply chain becoming more
efficient, organizations can shift their focus on cutting down other costs and
more efficiently streamlining other processes, including production.The lighthouse signals a digital disruption storm
In BFSI, with remote working/collaboration and digital transactions,
cybersecurity has become one of the main focus points during the COVID-19
pandemic, adds Rajdeep Saha, Managing Director, Financial Services – Technology
Consulting Practice, Protiviti India. “In this context, secure access service
edge (SASE) and Zero Trust model can help create a single cloud-native security
service, coupled with other enablers.” Tare recommends a host of measures
underlining the new role that artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics would
be playing ahead. “Cyberattack insurance is now available from several
organisations. A bundle like this is a must for all financial institutions.
Security analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are some of
the cutting-edge technologies that are helping strengthen the cyber defense
mechanism. Before threats assault your infrastructure, the finest protection
mechanisms detect and neutralise risks.” Implementation of PCI-DSS compliance,
card payment security, and others have reduced the impact of cyber threats in
financial institutions, he adds.Is Cryptocurrency-Mining Malware Due for a Comeback?
Cryptocurrency mining refers to solving computationally intensive mathematical tasks. In the case of bitcoin, such tasks are used to verify the blockchain, or public ledger, of transactions. As an incentive, anyone who mines for cryptocurrency has a chance of getting some cryptocurrency back as a reward. But for bitcoin and some other types of cryptocurrency, the amount of reward decreases as more blocks get added. Mining can consume copious amounts of electricity - so much so, that some studies have found it would be cheaper to buy gold outright rather than obtain cryptocurrency via mining. Such calculations are always in flux, with the rise and fall in cryptocurrency value. But for attackers, the easiest approach is to have someone else pay for the power while they walk away with the cryptocurrency. ... The takeaway for security teams, as ever, is vigilance, because if attackers can sneak cryptominers onto an organization's systems - eating up processing power and racking up sky-high electricity bills - they might put something nastier there too.Quote for the day:
"The level of morale is a good barometer of how each of your people is experiencing your leadership." -- Danny Cox
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