Magnanimous machines: Why AI work should work for people and not the other way around
The consolidation of power amongst a Big Tech elite fused with state
intelligence grows ever stronger. These entities can know everything about us,
yet carefully hide their own clandestine obfuscated activities. The best defence
to this asymmetry is radical, mandated, and cryptographically secure
transparency. To illustrate, in commercial aircraft, we have two essential data
recorders (‘black boxes’). One monitors the aircraft itself, and the other
monitors cockpit chatter. Both recorders are necessary to understand why an
incident has occurred. For the same reasons, we need a similar approach to
humane technology. Transparency is the foundation upon which every other aspect
of ethical technology rests. It is essential to understand a system, its
functions, as well as attributes of the organisation, and not to forget, those
who steer it. Through transparency, we can understand that the incentive
structures within organisations are aligned towards producing honest good faith
outcomes. We can understand what may have gone wrong and how to fix it in the
future.
8 Keys to Failproof App Modernization
Typically, modernization initiatives are strategized or rolled out before major
events or milestones like data center contracts and vendor contracts coming up
for renewal, Software and hardware platforms going End of Service and Support
Life, government-imposed deadlines to implement regulatory and compliance
requirements, ageing workforce and the risk of shortage of skills. In all such
scenarios, since the accumulated technical debt is so high, these become
multi-year, multi-million modernization programs. Risks are equally higher in
such large programs. And to optimize costs and minimize risks, the temptation
sometimes is to somehow get these workloads to the target platform [containerize
or rehost without really changing the underlying architecture]. This will result
in more technical debt and will necessitate another modernization initiative in
a few years and so it goes. The chances of success are much higher if the
initiatives are incremental in nature and time-bound say 3-6 months. In fact, it
is a recommended practice in agile development practices to pay down technical
debt regularly every single sprint.
Three key issues to tackle before smart cities become a reality
Many smart systems require data to be validated and assimilated in real-time
for it to be relevant. This poses a problem, in that it requires every citizen
to agree to their data being collected and shared, which in turn requires
trust. That means the collection of data and its use to influence critical
decisions in smart cities, needs careful consideration. However, citizens
often worry about being ‘tracked’ – a difficult perception to eradicate in a
world where privacy and security are among the biggest challenges each of us
faces. Overcoming it requires us to build a comprehensive data privacy and
security strategy into any smart city development, with local governments then
responsible for educating individuals and society on how their data will be
stored, who has access, and how it can be used. Such strategies require
careful consideration, as any mistakes that harm public trust could impact the
success of smart cities. The NHS COVID-19 app is a good example of this – once
people lacked trust in the application, it took only a matter of days for
thousands of people to delete it.
Engineering Digital Transformation for Continuous Improvement
Getting organizations to invest in improvements and embrace new ways of
working is a challenge. They don’t just need the right technical solutions,
they also need to address the organizational change management challenges that
are creating resistance to new ways of working. Organizations frequently have
champions that have ideas for improvement and are trying to influence change
without a lot of success. These champions find that the harder they push for
change, the more people resist. We can have all the best approaches in the
world, but if we can’t figure out how to overcome this resistance,
organizations will never adopt them and realize the benefits. While pushing
for change is the natural approach, research by organizational change
management experts, like Professor Jonah Bergerin his book “The Catalyst,”
suggests this is the wrong approach. His research shows that the harder you
push for change, the more people resist. Whenever they feel like they are
trying to be influenced, their anti-persuasion radar kicks in and instead they
start shooting down ideas and resisting the change being offered.
A transactional approach to power
As Battilana and Casciaro tell it, it’s not your personal or positional power
that determines your effectiveness in any given situation. It is your ability
to understand what resources the involved parties want and how the resources
are distributed—that is, the balance of power. “We find this extremely
compelling,” explains Casciaro, “because it brings power relationships—whether
they are interpersonal, intergroup, interorganizational, or international—down
to four simple factors.” Taking this a step further, the ability to shift the
balance of power within a situation determines your success at exercising
power. Battilana and Casciaro find there are several key strategies that
support this ability to rebalance power. If you have resources the other party
values, attraction is a key strategy. You try to increase the value of those
resources for the other party. Personal and corporate brand-building are
organized around this strategy. If the other party has too many paths to
access your resources, consolidation is a key strategy. You try to eliminate
or otherwise lessen the alternatives. Employees join unions to limit the
alternatives of employers and increase their power.
Treasury Dept. to Crypto Companies: Comply with Sanctions
The announcement is the latest in a series of moves from the Biden
administration to combat ransomware, following high-profile attacks this year
that have disrupted the East Coast's fuel supply during the Colonial Pipeline
incident; jeopardized the nation's meat supply by attacking JBS USA; and
knocking some 1,500 downstream organizations offline by zeroing in on managed
service provider, Kaseya, over the July Fourth holiday. Last month, the
Treasury Department blacklisted Russia-based cryptocurrency exchange, Suex,
for allegedly laundering tens of millions of dollars for ransomware operators,
scammers and darknet markets. In its latest issuance, the department alleges
that over 40% of Suex’s transaction history had been associated with illicit
actors, involving the proceeds from at least eight ransomware variants.
Similarly, this week, the White House National Security Council facilitated a
30-nation, two-day "counter-ransomware" event, which found senior officials
strategizing on ways to improve network resiliency, addressing illicit
cryptocurrency usage, and ways to heighten law enforcement collaboration and
diplomacy.
DevSecOps: 11 questions to ask about your security strategy now
Where does friction exist between security and business goals? The
question is relatively self-explanatory: DevSecOps exists in part to remove
friction and bottlenecks that have historically introduced risks rather than
reduce them. The question also has a subtext: What are we doing about it? This
friction often goes unaddressed because, well, it’s unaddressed – as in,
people avoid pointing it out or talking about it, whether because of poor
relationships, fear factors, cultural acceptance, or other reasons. Leaders
need to take an active role here by showing their willingness to talk about
it, without finger-pointing or other toxic behaviors. “Leaders should
constantly be probing and trying to understand the friction points between the
business and DevSecOps,” says Jerry Gamblin, director of security research at
Kenna Security, now part of Cisco. “These often uncomfortable conversations
will help you refocus your team’s goals on the company’s goals.” A willingness
to have those uncomfortable conversations as a pathway to positive long-term
change is a key characteristic of a healthy culture.
The importance of crisis management in the age of ransomware
How to prepare for ransomware attacks is an often-asked question. From my
point of view, the best action is to go through the checklist of security
controls that prevent hackers from taking control of your network.
Organizations like Servadus offer a Ransomware Readiness Assessment which
helps organizational leadership identify current risks to the corporation. Of
course, having up-to-date incident response and business continuity plans are
part of that assessment. Outside, the real value comes from remediating weak
cybersecurity controls. Additionally, organizations implement a framework to
shore security control implementation and sustainability. Many organizations
try to maintain compliance and security controls but are vulnerable to attacks
3 to 6 months after validating security in channels in place. The long-term
strategy is about validating sustainable security controls. The service
framework also allows organizations to evaluate threats to the organization
and vulnerabilities of the system software in use.
The importance of staff diversity when it comes to information security
The information security team’s decision-making is diversified, which
contributes to the organisation’s overall strength. The fact that each
employee provides an unique perspective to the problem makes it simpler to
recognise and address hidden vulnerabilities in the security operations, as
well as to identify and correct the deficiencies of other employees, helping
them to grow in their own areas of expertise. Consider the likelihood of a
breach, as well as the “red team” that will be assigned to deal with the
situation. SOC analyst looks for the logs, security engineer looks for the
vulnerability and some other team members look for the defensive approach to
defend against the vulnerability. As a result, in order to maintain a strong
information security team, it is critical to have a diverse workforce. It
facilitates task efficiency while encouraging alternative viewpoints.
... An organisation’s security cannot be handled by a single product, and
in order to maintain and handle those security products, companies require a
large number of employees. So, in order to work efficiently and effectively
without being reliant on a single person or product, this should be common
knowledge.
Is it right or productive to watch workers?
The recent rise in employee surveillance accelerated during the pandemic,
largely because it had to, but the bottom line is that we are now more than
ever accustomed to being watched. We accept the intrusion of cameras in novel
spaces under the promise of increased safety; doorbell cameras spring to mind,
but so too do webcams and smartphones; we accept data tracking to prove we’re
“not a robot” on websites; we accept that our information, our clicks, and our
preferences are observed and noted. We seem to be primed now to accept that
companies have a reasonable expectation to protect their own safety, so to
speak, by monitoring us. One recent survey by media researcher Clutch of 400
US workers found that only 22% of 18- to 34-year-old employees were concerned
about their employers having access to their personal information and activity
from their work computers. Meanwhile, in a pre-pandemic survey of US workers
by US media group Axios from August 2019, 62% of respondents agreed that
employers should be able to use technology to monitor employees.
Quote for the day:
"Leaders are more powerful role models
when they learn than when they teach." -- Rosabeth Moss Kantor
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