Daily Tech Digest - July 17, 2024

Optimization Techniques For Edge AI

Edge devices often have limited computational power, memory, and storage compared to centralised servers. Due to this, the cloud-centric ML models need to be retargeted so that they fit in the available resource budget. Further, many edge devices run on batteries, making energy efficiency a critical consideration. The hardware diversity in edge devices ranging from microcontrollers to powerful edge servers, each with different capabilities and architectures requires different model refinement and retargeting strategies. ... Many use cases involve the distributed deployment of numerous IoT or edge devices, such as CCTV cameras, working collaboratively towards specific objectives. These applications often have built-in redundancy, making them tolerant to failures, malfunctions, or less accurate inference results from a subset of edge devices. Algorithms can be employed to recover from missing, incorrect, or less accurate inputs by utilising the global information available. This approach allows for the combination of high and low accuracy models to optimise resource costs while maintaining the required global accuracy through the available redundancy.


The Cyber Resilience Act: A New Era for Mobile App Developers

Collaboration is key for mobile app developers to prepare for the CRA. They should first conduct a thorough security audit of their apps, identifying and addressing any vulnerabilities. Then, they’ll want to implement a structured plan to integrate the needed security features, based on the CRA’s checklist. It may also make sense to invest in a partnership with cybersecurity experts who can more efficiently provide more insights and help streamline this process in general. Developers cannot be expected to become top-notch security experts overnight. Working with cybersecurity firms, legal advisors and compliance experts can clarify the CRA and simplify the path to compliance and provide critical insights into best practices, regulatory jargon and tech solutions, ensuring that apps meet CRA standards and maintain innovation. It’s also important to note that keeping comprehensive records of compliance efforts is essential under the CRA. Developers should establish a clear process for documenting security measures, vulnerabilities addressed, and any breaches or other incidents that were identified and remediated. 


Sometimes the cybersecurity tech industry is its own worst enemy

One of the fundamental infosec problems facing most organizations is that strong cybersecurity depends on an army of disconnected tools and technologies. That’s nothing new — we’ve been talking about this for years. But it’s still omnipresent. ... To a large enterprise, “platform” is a code word for vendor lock-in, something organizations tend to avoid. Okay, but let’s say an organization was platform curious. It could also take many months or years for a large organization to migrate from distributed tools to a central platform. Given this, platform vendors need to convince a lot of different people that the effort will be worth it — a tall task with skeptical cybersecurity professionals. ... Fear not, for the security technology industry has another arrow in its quiver — application programming interfaces (APIs). Disparate technologies can interoperate by connecting via their APIs, thus cybersecurity harmony reigns supreme, right? Wrong! In theory, API connectivity sounds good, but it is extremely limited in practice. For it to work well, vendors have to open their APIs to other vendors. 


How to Apply Microservice Architecture to Embedded Systems

In short, the process of deploying and upgrading microservices for an embedded system has a strong dependency on the physical state of the system’s hardware. But there’s another significant constraint as well: data exchange. Data exchange between embedded devices is best implemented using a binary data format. Space and bandwidth capacity are limited in an embedded processor, so text-based formats such as XML and JSON won’t work well. Rather, a binary format such as protocol buffers or a custom binary format is better suited for communication in an MOA scenario in which each microservice in the architecture is hosted on an embedded processor. ... Many traditional distributed applications can operate without each microservice in the application being immediately aware of the overall state of the application. However, knowing the system’s overall state is important for microservices running within an embedded system. ... The important thing to understand is that any embedded system will need a routing mechanism to coordinate traffic and data exchange among the various devices that make up the system.


How to assess a general-purpose AI model’s reliability before it’s deployed

But these models, which serve as the backbone for powerful artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, can offer up incorrect or misleading information. In a safety-critical situation, such as a pedestrian approaching a self-driving car, these mistakes could have serious consequences. To help prevent such mistakes, researchers from MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab developed a technique to estimate the reliability of foundation models before they are deployed to a specific task. They do this by considering a set of foundation models that are slightly different from one another. Then they use their algorithm to assess the consistency of the representations each model learns about the same test data point. If the representations are consistent, it means the model is reliable. When they compared their technique to state-of-the-art baseline methods, it was better at capturing the reliability of foundation models on a variety of downstream classification tasks. Someone could use this technique to decide if a model should be applied in a certain setting, without the need to test it on a real-world dataset. 


The Role of Technology in Modern Product Engineering

Product engineering has seen a significant transformation with the integration of advanced technologies. Tools like Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), and Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) have paved the way for more efficient and precise engineering processes. The early adoption of these technologies has enabled businesses to develop multi-million dollar operations, demonstrating the profound impact of technological advancements in the field. ... Deploying complex software solutions often involves customization and integration challenges. Addressing these challenges requires close client engagement, offering configurable options, and implementing phased customization. ... The future of product engineering is being shaped by technology integration, strategic geographic diversification, and the adoption of advanced methodologies like DevSecOps. As the tech landscape evolves with trends such as AI, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), IoT, and sustainable technology, continuous innovation and adaptation are essential.


A New Approach To Multicloud For The AI Era

The evolution from cost-focused to value-driven multicloud strategies marks a significant shift. Investing in multicloud is not just about cost efficiency; it's about creating an infrastructure that advances AI initiatives, spurs innovation and secures a competitive advantage. Unlike single-cloud or hybrid approaches, multicloud offers unparalleled adaptability and resource diversity, which are essential in the AI-driven business environment. Here are a few factors to consider. ... The challenge of multicloud is not simply to utilize a variety of cloud services but to do so in a way that each contributes its best features without compromising the overall efficiency and security of the AI infrastructure. To achieve this, businesses must first identify the unique strengths and offerings of each cloud provider. For instance, one platform might offer superior data analytics tools, another might excel in machine learning performance and a third might provide the most robust security features. The task is to integrate these disparate elements into a seamless whole. 


How Can Organisations Stay Secure In The Face Of Increasingly Powerful AI Attacks

One of the first steps any organisation should take when it comes to staying secure in the face of AI-generated attacks is to acknowledge a significant top-down disparity between the volume and strength of cyberattacks, and the ability of most organisations to handle them. Our latest report shows that just 58% of companies are addressing every security alert. Without the right defences in place, the growing power of AI as a cybersecurity threat could see that number slip even lower. ... Fortunately, there is a solution: low-code security automation. This technology gives security teams the power to automate tedious and manual tasks, allowing them to focus on establishing an advanced threat defence. ... There are other benefits too. These include the ability to scale implementations based on the team’s existing experience and with less reliance on coding skills. And unlike no-code tools that can be useful for smaller organisations that are severely resource-constrained, low-code platforms are more robust and customisable. This can result in easier adaptation to the needs of the business.


Time for reality check on AI in software testing

Given that AI-augmented testing tools are derived from data used to train AI models, IT leaders will also be more responsible for the security and privacy of that data. Compliance with regulations like GDPR is essential, and robust data governance practices should be implemented to mitigate the risk of data breaches or unauthorized access. Algorithmic bias introduced by skewed or unrepresentative training data must also be addressed to mitigate bias within AI-augmented testing as much as possible. But maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Because even with AI’s continuing evolution, and autonomous testing becomes more commonplace, we will still need human assistance and validation. The interpretation of AI-generated results and the ability to make informed decisions based on those results will remain a responsibility of testers. AI will change software testing for the better. But don’t treat any tool using AI as a straight-up upgrade. They all have different merits within the software development life cycle. 


Overlooked essentials: API security best practices

In my experience, there are six important indicators organizations should focus on to detect and respond to API security threats effectively – shadow APIs, APIs exposed to the internet, APIs handling sensitive data, unauthenticated APIs, APIs with authorization flaws, APIs with improper rate limiting. Let me expand on this further. Shadow APIs: Firstly, it’s important to identify and monitor shadow APIs. These are undocumented or unmanaged APIs that can pose significant security risks. Internet-exposed APIs: Limit and closely track the number of APIs accessible publicly. These are more prone to external threats. APIs handling sensitive data: APIs that process sensitive data and are also publicly accessible are among the most vulnerable. They should be prioritized for security measures. Unauthenticated APIs: An API lacking proper authentication is an open invitation to threats. Always have a catalog of unauthenticated APIs and ensure they are not vulnerable to data leaks. APIs with authorization flaws: Maintain an inventory of APIs with authorization vulnerabilities. These APIs are susceptible to unauthorized access and misuse. Implement a process to fix these vulnerabilities as a priority.



Quote for the day:

"The successful man doesn't use others. Other people use the successful man. For above all the success is of service" -- Mark Kainee

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