Daily Tech Digest - December 17, 2024

Together For Good: How Humans And AI Can Close The Health Gap

While the potential is immense, AI’s effectiveness in closing the health gap hinges on more than just technological advancement. AI must be deliberately tailored, trained, tested, and targeted to bring out the best in and for people and the planet. This means anchoring AI development and deployment in a holistic understanding of humans, and the environment they evolve in. It also entails the design of ethical frameworks, transdisciplinary collaboration, and 360-degree strategies that systematically bring out the complementarity of AI and NI, including the knowledge, experience, and intuition of humans. ... Closing the gap of preventable health inequalities cannot be achieved by advanced algorithms alone. It requires us to integrate the strengths of artificial intelligence with natural intelligence — the knowledge, ethical judgment, empathy, and cultural understanding of human beings — to ensure that solutions are both effective and just. By anchoring AI in localized insight and human expertise, we can align personal health improvements (micro) with community-led action (meso), informed national policies (macro), and globally coordinated strategies (meta), delivering equitable outcomes in every arena of the organically evolving kaleidoscope that we are part of.


How to Take a Security-First Approach to AI Implementation

Whether it's a third-party tool or an in-house project, thorough research and a clear plan will go a long way toward reducing risks. When developing guidelines for AI implementation, the first step is to match the business case with available tools, remembering that some models are more suited to specific tasks than others. Practicing a Secure by Design strategy from the ground up can future-proof AI implementation. These principles ensure that security is prioritized throughout the entire lifecycle of an AI product. A Secure by Design methodology implements multiple layers of defense against cyberthreats. During the planning stage, the security team's input is critical for a Secure by Design approach. Vendor trust is also vital. Evaluating vendors for trustworthiness and auditing contracts thoroughly, including regular monitoring of updates to vendor terms and conditions, are imperative. It is essential for data quality to be assessed for metrics like accuracy, relevance, and completeness.... Keeping security at the forefront from the get-go confers advantages, especially as tools and risks evolve. Safer AI is on the horizon as more users adhere to best practices through regulatory frameworks, international collaborations, and security-first use cases. 


Data Governance in DevOps: Ensuring Compliance in the AI Era

Implementing effective CI/CD pipeline governance in the age of AI requires a multifaceted approach. It starts with establishing clear policies outlining compliance requirements, security standards, and ethical guidelines for AI development. These policies should be embedded into the pipeline through automated checks and gates. Leveraging advanced automation tools for continuous compliance checking throughout the pipeline is essential. These tools can scan code for vulnerabilities, check for adherence to coding standards, and even analyze AI models for potential biases or unexpected behaviors. Robust version control and change management processes are also crucial components of pipeline governance. They ensure that every change to the codebase or AI model is tracked, reviewed, and approved before progressing through the pipeline. We can't forget logging and auditing. Comprehensive logging and monitoring of all pipeline activities provide the necessary audit trails for compliance demonstration and post-incident analysis. In the context of AI, this extends to monitoring deployed models for performance drift or unexpected behaviors, ensuring ongoing compliance post-deployment. 


Top 10 Cloud Data Center Stories of 2024

If you work in the data center industry, you may use term on-premise (or on-prem) frequently. But have you ever stopped to wonder how the phrase entered the data center lexicon – or considered why on-premise doesn’t make grammatical sense? In a nutshell, the answer is that it should be on-premises – note the s on the end – because premise and premises are different words. If not, you’ll be enlightened by our coverage of the history of the term on-prem and why it has long irked certain CIOs. ... The more complex your cloud architecture becomes, the harder it is to identify security risks and other misconfigurations. That’s why the ability to automate security assessments is growing increasingly important. But how good are the solutions that cloud providers offer for this purpose? To find out, we took a close look at compliance reporting tools from Azure and GCP. The takeaway was that these solutions can automate much of the work necessary to identify misconfigurations that could trigger compliance violations, but they’re no substitute for human experts. ... What was less often discussed – but equally important – is the role of edge infrastructure in AI. That’s what we focused on in our report about edge AI, meaning AI workloads that run at the network edge instead of in traditional cloud data centers.


Clop Ransomware Takes Responsibility for Cleo Mass Exploits

Whether or not Clop is actually responsible for attacks targeting various types of Cleo's MFT software couldn't be confirmed. Separately, on Dec. 10, British cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont reported having evidence that the ransomware group Termite possessed a zero-day exploit for vulnerabilities in the Cleo products. Security experts said both groups may well have been involved, either separately or together. "Although Cl0p posted a message on their website, this is not hard evidence pointing to a single threat group's involvement. Therefore, any discussion of whether Termite or Cl0p are behind this exploit is speculation until proven with other indicators/evidence," said Christiaan Beek, senior director of threat analytics at cybersecurity firm Rapid7. "We have seen Cl0p utilize complex chains similar to this vulnerability in multiple file transfer use cases before, such as MOVEit and Accellion FTA in 2021," Beek added.  ... The latest attacks appear to target in part CVE-2024-50623, an unrestricted file upload vulnerability in the managed file transfer products Cleo Harmony, VLTrader and LexiCom. Exploiting the vulnerability enables attackers to remotely execute code with escalated privileges.


Balancing security and user experience to improve fraud prevention strategies

There may not be one right way of handling the balance of security and user-friendly customer experience. Different institutions and their customers will have different needs, and processes might vary somewhat. But overall, there should be clear, easy-to-follow standards and checkpoints built into whatever financial institutions do. For instance, some banks or credit card companies may allow customers to institute their own stop gap for purchases over a certain amount, which may reduce the incentive for relatively large-scale fraud. These companies could also introduce some level of personalization into the processes, like how a credit or debit card could be easily turned on and turned off by customers themselves via an app or site. ... Meanwhile, it seems like barely a day goes by when there’s not some coverage of fraud or a release of personal info via hacking from some corporation, and some speculate increasingly advanced technology may make it easier for those who want to perpetrate fraud. With this in mind, there may be a greater emphasis placed on enhancing security and experimentation in what different institutions do to find what works best and to have a process in place that allows customers to have confidence in their banks and credit card companies.


Generative AI Is Just the Beginning — Here’s Why Autonomous AI is Next

Embracing this technology will unlock significant opportunities to improve organizational efficiency and accuracy. But before we dive into this, let us start with some definitions. Autonomous AI refers to systems that can perform tasks without human intervention. In contrast, generative AI systems focus on content creation based on existing data. What sets autonomous AI apart is its ability to self-manage. Understanding this difference is crucial, enabling organizations to use AI for more complex operations like predictive maintenance and resource optimization. ... The first step in successfully integrating autonomous AI into your organization is implementing robust data governance frameworks to support these advanced systems. Establish clear data privacy and transparency guidelines to ensure autonomous AI operates within ethical boundaries. It’s crucial to incorporate technical controls that prevent the AI from making reckless decisions, aligning its actions with your organizational values. ... When exploring the future of autonomous AI within your organization, it’s crucial to monitor and evaluate your autonomous AI systems regularly. Continuous assessment allows you to understand how the AI is performing and identify potential improvement areas.


Privacy by design approach drives business success in today’s digital age

Businesses that adhere to data privacy practices validate the upkeep of customer data and data privacy, earning them a stronger brand reputation. They should also ensure privacy is embedded in the organisation’s framework across the technology, products, and services, which is also known as Privacy by Design (PbD). ... The PbD framework was developed by Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner of Ontario jointly with the Dutch Data Protection Authority and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research in 1995. It aimed to cultivate and embed privacy defences to safeguard data in the design process of a product, service, or system. Privacy becomes the default setting built at the very beginning rather than an afterthought. This framework is founded on seven core principles: being proactive and not reactive, having privacy as the default setting, having privacy embedded into design, full functionality, end-to-end security, visibility and transparency, and respect for user privacy. ... The PbD approach which is proactive indicates the company’s commitment to protecting the customer’s sensitive personal information. PbD enables companies to have personalised engagement with customers while respecting their privacy preferences.


Top 10 cybersecurity misconfigurations: Nail the setup to avoid attacks

Despite the industry-wide buzz about things like zero-trust, which is rooted in concepts such as least-privileged access control, this weakness still runs rampant. CISA’s publication calls out excessive account privileges, elevated service accounts, and non-essential use of elevated accounts. Anyone who has worked in IT or cyber for some time knows that many of these issues can be traced back to human behavior and the general demands of working in complex environments. ... Another fundamental security control that makes an appearance is the need to segment networks, a practice again that ties to the broader push for zero trust. By failing to segment networks, organizations are failing to establish security boundaries between different systems, environments, and data types. This allows malicious actors to compromise a single system and move freely across systems without encountering friction and additional security controls and boundaries that could impede their nefarious activities. The publication specifically calls out challenges where there is a lack of segmentation between IT and OT networks, putting OT networks at risk, which have real-world implications around security and safety in environments such as industrial control systems.


Why Indian enterprises are betting big on hybrid multi-cloud strategies?

The multi-cloud strategy in India is deeply intertwined with the country’s broader digital transformation initiatives. The Government of India’s Digital India program and initiatives like the National Cloud Initiatives are providing a robust framework for cloud adoption. ... The importance of edge computing is growing, and the rollout of 5G is opening up new possibilities for distributed cloud architectures. Telecom titans like Jio and Airtel are investing substantially in cloud-native infrastructure, creating ripple effects throughout industries. On the other hand, startup ecosystems play a crucial role too. Bangalore, often called the Silicon Valley of India, has become a hotbed for cloud-native technologies. Companies and numerous cloud consulting firms are developing cutting-edge multi-cloud solutions that are gaining global recognition. Foreign investments are pouring in. Major cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are expanding their infrastructure in India, with dedicated data centers that meet local compliance requirements. This local presence is critical for enterprises concerned about data sovereignty and latency.



Quote for the day:

"You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance." -- Lou Holtz

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