Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah: App Store

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Daily Tech Digest - December 25, 2017

What Does the Human Experience Mean to Digital Identity?

The Identities Project distilled the findings into a following set of twelve articles categorized by a) identity practices employed, b) the vulnerabilities exposed, and c) the implications for policymakers and system architects.There is tension between fixed identities within rigid systems and the reality of people’s shifting, dynamic lives. There are persistent tensions around gender and identity. The social and cultural contexts of power and status embodied in the use of identification systems can serve to mitigate, as well as reinforce, established dimensions of gender identity. Crossing borders makes managing identities a struggle for migrants. Registration and enrollment into ID systems exposes and reveals vulnerabilities for many individuals. In addition to the end users, intermediaries — the people who support enrollment and ID use — may lack knowledge of awareness of changes to system rules.

Fintech and banks: Collaboration may help close digital delivery gap

After a combative approach, banks are now beginning to see merit in partnering with fintechs to close the digital delivery gap, and in investing in them for joint value propositions. Fintechs do not have the burden of legacy infrastructure, but lack scale and understanding of regulations. On the contrary, traditional banks have an established customer base, and heaps of data, but lack digital agility. As of 2017, top 10 global banks reported to have invested nearly $3.6 billion in about 56 fintech firms. Leading banks such as JP Morgan Chase in the US, and Santander in the UK, have also significantly increased their fintech investment. The key areas of investment include blockchain, payments, APIs, Cloud, and an overall proclivity to ensure the technology landscape is responsive to market changes. Future may seem nebulous for banks with traditional business under constant attack, but there is a silver lining for those who choose to go beyond the haze.

Agencies May Want to Think Neuro-Differently About the Cyber Workforce

ASPertise recruits “atypicals”—people who, per their conditions, often have very high IQs, memories and a “better relationship with data” than the neurotypicals, or people who aren’t on the autism spectrum, Vezon explained. Some have been employed before; others have struggled to integrate into traditional office spaces and therefore have opted out of the workforce altogether. Instead of isolating them, ASPertise embeds atypical consultants in client offices and checks in regularly to create a sort of social support network, he explained. Such a strategy could also help companies and federal agencies learn how to better accommodate an atypical workforce in the office, Vezon explained. For instance, atypicals often need cognitive stimulation, and organizations that hire them should consider that traditional reward systems—doling out performance bonuses, for instance—might not be an adequate incentive for an atypical.

Stop Fixating on the 'Artificial' in AI Because It's Actually an Evolution

The expression often evokes images of the Terminator coming to exterminate people -- or take their jobs. For me, it’s the “artificial” aspect that bestows the phrase with the character of something cold, alien and unsympathetic to human concerns and frailties. However, firsthand experience has taught me there's nothing artificial about intelligence. AI is real. It’s just part of a continuum of intelligence that’s now coming to machines. In practice, AI is an extension of human intelligence that’s guided by people. Far from spelling your doom, AI is more likely to save your life. Its applications can help stop a skyjacker or halt the spread of an epidemic, for example. I’ve personally observed AI’s very real and very human side in the excited faces of high-school students who have developed their own AI apps.

Blockchain: The Rajnikant or Chuck Norris of all technologies?

India-Chain will contain details of every citizen's academic records, land records, driving license, investments, marriage certificates, criminal records, biometrics, etc. Basically, India-Chain would have a citizen's birth certificate, death certificate and everything in between. Over the next 12 months, all physical property and assets would be mapped with their digital equivalents on India-Chain. So, when you buy a new car, its details would be added to a smart asset on India-Chain and every subsequent sale, insurance claim or even theft would be automatically appended to the car's record. This would make it very easy for the police to detect thefts. Taking and giving loans is also going to become very efficient. People with money to lend would create smart contracts by mentioning the amount of money they are ready to lend, the time period and minimum acceptable rate of interest.

International Standard looks to curb theft of personal data

The increasing prevalence of high-profile data breaches has motivated countries worldwide to investigate potential reforms to policy and regulation. One of the best-known examples is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation to come into force in May 2018, with global implications. Privacy has taken on new dimensions in our hyper connected world. The need to protect personal data is increasing in urgency with the digital transformation of sectors such as healthcare and financial services. More and more organizations are processing personal data, all of them dealing with an increasing amount of this data. Personal data custodians have received new guidance from IEC, ISO and ITU – the three leading international standards bodies – in the form of an International Standard providing a ‘Code of Practice for the Protection of Personally Identifiable Information’.

4 New Platforms Combining VR and Blockchain

Blockchain, a decentralized ledger technology with relevant applications in finance, data storage, cybersecurity and investing, doesn’t seem like a likely candidate for virtual reality (VR). The former is a somewhat complicated platform relying on a blend of algorithmic cryptography to achieve autonomous consensus between individuals, and the latter an immersive new way to experience games and entertain oneself. However, these young inventions are finding new applications with each passing day, and are slowly drifting closer together. The market now has several examples of unique, useful solutions that combine both blockchain and VR — with others joining soon, as the trend catches on. Though VR can now claim a purpose in the fields of science, engineering and more, Decentraland takes it back to its roots: the gaming world. This virtual world is accessible through any normal VR headset and is hosted entirely on the blockchain.

Turning to Machine Learning for Industrial Automation Applications

If manufacturers want to remain competitive, they will have to eventually (if they haven’t already) incorporate these new technologies into their plant infrastructure or modernize their legacy systems, a key component of which is industrial automation. With consumers growing more conservative in their product views (quality and customization), being able to change production systems in a short amount of time is crucial, and advanced hardware and software help provide that path without the need for retooling or systemwide reprogramming. Machine learning in this area and all aspects of industrial automation can be beneficial—it can monitor and help perform maintenance on production machinery, reprogram industrial PCs (distributed intelligence) for new product production, and optimize the efficiency of plant operations over the entire supply chain.

The Dangers of Shadow IT to Cloud Security

The problem with Shadow IT is that the broken system that causes it to exist in the first place is precisely what hackers exploit for their attacks. For instance, a strong password security policy could accomplish the goals of one business unit by achieving a higher rate of password rotation. However, this has an unintended consequence. To simplify the password updates, users might create passwords that are easier to remember — and easier to hack. Or, if they don't receive training on using a password management system, users might write them down on paper and keep them in an insecure place, like at their desks. This defeats the purpose of changing them in the first place. The password rotation policy would have been made with good intentions, and it's obviously a good start. But without shared goals and a review across the organization, it's easy to see how it could actually do more harm than good if these programs are implemented in a silo.

The Coming Of Intelligent Apps

Some of these apps predict race performance using such metrics and average pace per mile. And some apps, such as RockMyRun, scan music playlists to slow down or speed up beats to keep pace with a runner’s footfalls and heart rate. Seeing what tech companies were doing, organizers of the New York City Marathon offered a virtual training program powered by the data-driven platform RUNtrix, which uses information provided by a user to design a regimen and predict the finishing time. “Artificial intelligence will become much more ingrained because users will expect it,” said Sanjay Malhotra , co-founder and chief technology officer of Clearbridge Mobile, an Ontario-based custom mobile app development company. Using data analysis to apply artificial intelligence, a chatbot was developed to collect information from customers and relay it to a representative. With those AI-collected details, the representative could respond with more precision.

Quote for the day:

"Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense." -- Thomas Huxley

Daily Tech Digest - September 19, 2017

Can DevOps deliver on digital potential?

If a developer cannot easily see how to get their code into production, or the path that needs to be taken is convoluted, then, for Hill, chances are features are not being released as quickly as they could be. The situation at JLR, which is unique to certain industries such as automotive, is that there is heavy use of embedded devices. “When we are putting software into vehicles, we do not have the luxury of a web developer,” said Hill. Clearly, it is not feasible to spin up a fleet of vehicles to run automated test suites. Instead, he says the team has to rely on virtualisation and software-based infrastructure to enable it to build code that is representative of the operating environment of a production vehicle. People often argue that the cultural change is harder than the technological change, but like JLR’s heavy reliance on embedded systems, some technologies can prove immutable.

Measuring the economic value of data

On the value side of the equation, there is not a well-defined measure for data value. The value of data is really a measure of business value as a result of using or analyzing that data in some way. In addition, there is a correlation between the amount of data kept, how accessible that data is, and its value. For example, having more data makes all of the data more valuable if the use of the data depends on a historical trend. For example, use of machine learning is already changing the value of larger data sets because most machine learning algorithms work better when trained with large amounts of data. The area under the curve represents the amount of data that is created but not stored because its value is perceived to be lower than the cost to keep it.

Future Cyber Security Threats & Challenges: Are You Ready For What's Coming?

The increasing depth and volume of personal and corporate data make it a more rewarding target for cyber crooks and state-sponsored espionage or sabotage. At the same time, greater connectivity provides more potential attack vectors. This makes industry, governments and individuals uneasy and unsure how to prepare. Predicting the exact nature of future threats and how to combat them is difficult, but a new study from The Internet Society (ISOC) offers credible insight. ISOC was founded by internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in 1992 “to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.” On September 18, ISOC released its Paths to our Digital Future report, which sheds light on how the development of the internet might continue to service everyone.

Amazon innovation chief: 'We are failing and will continue to fail'

"It was this willingness to fail and trying to get things right eventually finally that led us to this very beneficial way of doing business," Misener said. The key to innovation is experimentation, Misener told the crowd. And to experiment, you have to fail. "The whole idea is this: if you really want to be innovative, you have to experiment. If you know the outcome of what you're going to do, it's not an experiment. It's more like a demonstration." Misener said too many people confuse real experiments with the type of you do in a school science class. "Undoubtedly your teacher knew what the outcome was supposed to be and you probably knew what the outcome was supposed to be," he said. "The reason? You weren't doing an experiment, you were just rehashing an experiment that was done decades, maybe centuries ago.

Hackers compromised free CCleaner software, Avast's Piriform says

Talos researcher Craig Williams said it was a sophisticated attack because it penetrated an established and trusted supplier in a manner similar to June’s “NotPetya” attack on companies that downloaded infected Ukrainian accounting software. “There is nothing a user could have noticed,” Williams said, noting that the optimisation software had a proper digital certificate, which means that other computers automatically trust the program. In a blog post, Piriform confirmed that two programs released in August were compromised. It advised users of CCleaner v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191 to download new versions. A spokeswoman said that 2.27 million users had downloaded the August version of CCleaner while only 5,000 users had installed the compromised version of CCleaner Cloud.

Progressive web apps in Microsoft Edge: What you need to know

Under the hood of a progressive web app is a new HTML feature, the service worker. Service workers take what would have been server functionality and bring it into your web content—along with adding support for some native platform-like features. It’s that ability to abstract the web server that makes progressive web apps attractive, because the same underlying web code will work on the web for devices that don’t support progressive web apps, increasing your reach and making sure that users on other platforms aren’t left out. Service workers are event-driven scripts that respond to actions from your UI or from other service workers, giving you a simple structure that can support increasingly complex code. They’re not intended to work with your content—they send messages to and from the page, with familiar JavaScript code and libraries handling layout.

Why end-to-end encryption is about more than just privacy

Duric says the information security community should work on raising awareness about the need for privacy among regular people/Internet users. At the moment these efforts are being obstructed by Internet conglomerates, he notes, just as the tobacco industry hindered awareness raising about the dangers of smoking and passive smoking all those years ago. But those who were fighting the good fight persevered, and today everybody knowns about those dangers, and can choose for themselves whether the option is worth the risk. People need to be aware that the great power Internet giants have over us could lead to great abuses, and ask themselves what can go wrong if they choose not to protect their communications. But also, companies that sell security need to find good ways to do it – adapt methods that have worked in the past for other vendors, both for physical and digital security.

Cyber security: Media companies cannot afford to ignore risks

"Ultimately, when a company is faced with losing $10 million a day, or paying a $10 thousand ransom, executives may see a strong business reason to pay.” It’s an IT security issue but needs to be understood company-wide. “But there are also potential legal implications of paying a ransom, including US sanctions laws and anti-money laundering controls that companies should explore with counsel,” Rosen said. “Cyber security hygiene is a growing and an important component to any major business, and I think it’s only going to continue to grow. “Hackers will find new ways to infiltrate networks, and whether it’s the broadcasting and media industries or some other sector, as long as there is a desire for what you have or to manipulate what you’re doing, the threat of cyber-attacks will continue,” Rosen stated.

MPLS or IPsec VPN: which is the best?

If your real-time apps are a big part of everyday life for users in your company, don’t believe the hype and dump your MPLS network without thorough testing. Ask yourself questions like “Will having unreliable call quality hurt our customers’/prospective customers’ impression when they call our company, as they review a bid from our competitor?” Or “Will it slow our employees down if their app is unreliable or slow?” Those little things make for big losses. Put it this way… if your company has sales of only $25 million/year, a mere 1 percent loss in sales (due to lost customers, etc.), equates to a $250,000 loss. Add this to money lost from lost employee payroll efficiency and you can see how the execs will not be happy with dropped calls, glitchy apps, etc. And a $25 million company doesn’t have a big enough WAN to save $250,000+ from ditching their MPLS.

UK education system exacerbates cyber skills gap

Nick Viney, vice-president consumer at McAfee, said this insight into the widespread uninspiring view of careers in cyber security makes it clear that fixing the cyber skills gap will require more than an updated curriculum. “However, teachers are not to blame,” he said. “Our sector needs to attract new talent, but that won’t happen if the industry cannot convey the wide variety of available job opportunities or the fast-paced and challenging nature of careers. “The view of cyber security needs to change at a national level. While updates to the curriculum could help plug the skills gap and inspire a new generation of cyber experts, it won’t come into effect straight away. Instead, we need to foster new education models and accelerate the availability of training opportunities for all.”

Quote for the day:

"In any leadership position, the most important aspect of your job will be getting your team to work together." -- Dale Brown

May 15, 2015

Principal Component Analysis And Singular Value Decomposition
One of the most common dimensionality reduction technique is filtering, in which you leave most of the dimensions and concentrate only on certain dimensions. But that doesn’t always work, when you are dealing with image data, the number of pixels represents the number of dimensions in the image. Now you have lot of dimensions and you don’t want to throw out dimensions inorder to make sense of your overall data set. As the dimensionality of your data increases, the volume of the space increases, in a sense the data you have becomes more and more sparse(scattered). One way to think about it is a very high data set might live in some kind of high dimensional manifold and as you are increasing the number of dimensions, that manifold becomes bigger and bigger.

Why Big Data is bad for science
“Scientific advances are becoming more and more data-driven,” write statistician Jianqing Fan of Princeton University and colleagues. “The massive amounts of … data bring both opportunities and new challenges to data analysis.” For one thing, huge datasets are seductive. They invite aggressive analyses with the hope of extracting prizewinning scientific findings. But sometimes Big Data In means Bad Data Out. Wringing intelligent insights from Big Data poses formidable challenges for computer science, statistical inference methods and even the scientific method itself. Computer scientists, of course, have made the accumulation of all this big data possible by developing exceptional computing power and information storage technologies. But collecting data and storing information is not the same as understanding it.

Lily Is A Self-Flying Drone That Follows You Around And Films You
Whatever you want to call it, the Lily drone uses a combination of GPS and visual processing to track the user. The drone contains an accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, GPS and three cameras — one camera to do the recording, one that’s looking at the user to visually track them, and another camera looking at the ground to make sure it’s stabilized. Lily also requires a little tracking device you can slip into your pocket or strap onto your wrist. The tracking device has GPS and WiFi that communicates with the drone to make sure it knows where you are — it also has an accelerometer to track how fast you’re moving. The device also has a microphone for picking up sound around you.

Origin EON15-X review: You'll find a desktop CPU in this laptop, and that's a good thing
The EON15-X features two DisplayPorts along with an HDMI out. You get three USB 3.0, a Gigabit ethernet, and a combo USB and eSATA (remember those?) port, plus an SD card reader. There’s also a full set of analog audio ports along with SPDIF. Wireless is an Intel combo 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0. The keys have an odd sculpted shape to them that I’m not completely a fan of, but the trackpad isn’t bad. The lid on the laptop and top keyboard deck has a light rubberized coating too. It makes the laptop a little less slippery when hefting. The laptop weighs in at a hefty 7.7 pounds on your lap and pushes 10 with its power brick. You probably won’t lug it with you every day, but it’s manageable for hiking to your buddy’s house for an ad-hoc LAN party or bringing it to your relatives’ house to cut video.

IT suppliers call on new-look GDS for commitment to G-Cloud's future
“One of the most damaging things to all SMEs, and one that has hurt us personally, is the amount of change in G-Cloud over the years. More change at this time would be a bad thing,” she said. Since the framework’s introduction in February 2012, suppliers have had to deal with numerous changes, including a government-wide alteration to the way public sector data is classified in April 2014. Under the new system, public sector information is labelled Official, Secret and Top Secret, based on how sensitive it is, while the previous system was based on a sliding scale of impact levels. This used a scorecard system of zero to six to demonstrate the risk posed to the public sector should data fall into the wrong hands and was used by G-Cloud buyers to ascertain if the services being offered through the framework were equipped to cope with the levels of security they required.

Lean Start-Up, and How It Almost Killed Our Company
Start-ups work rather differently to how large companies run innovation projects. A big company with a portfolio of innovation products is the perfect place to implement the ‘little bets’ strategy – investing more in this seemingly-successful idea, killing off this poor one. For start-ups a poor innovation product is its only product. When it fails or delivers only a small revenue stream, there are a limited number of times that the start-up can pivot, or kill an idea and start again. Each independent start-up is its own ‘little bet’ – the market gains the benefit of the few that succeed, but that’s not much consolation for the 80% of start-ups that close within the first 3 years. Those that succeed will have a mixture of good ideas, good management, good funding and luck. The Lean Start-Up method fails to say much about the equally important, latter two.

Cybersecurity is a team sport
The US is ahead of Europe when it comes to integrating cybersecurity into its foreign and security policies. Europe would be foolish not to follow and learn from its example. As with most security issues, there are signs that in cybersecurity the default behavior for most European countries seems to be to follow the US approach. For the US, the biggest challenges at the moment are: updating all legal frameworks, strengthening cyber rules of engagement for the military, building cyber deterrents, and clarifying the roles and cooperation of the government and private sector. Europeans can learn from five main take-aways from the US’s new cyber strategy. Cybersecurity must be taken more seriously and planned strategically in Europe. The US’s strategy cybersecurity is more holistic and strategic than ever before.

Blended Analytics: That's What's Next for IT Mgmt
While leading vendors and startups alike have made significant progress in leveraging analytics for offering better IT operational insights, the available ITOA solutions still struggle to effectively deal with IT big data -- operating with a focus on data in narrow silos (APM, log etc.). To really reap the benefits and promise of analytics, IT decision makers need to break these silos and apply blended analytics, an approach that blends and analyzes major sources of IT information. Blended analytics can extract insights and draw intelligent correlations from a variety of data produced by multiple systems across IT silos. By analyzing a blend of data sources together IT Decision makers can see more than the individual components and finally get the whole picture.

The rise of Zombie Apps on the mobile landscape
The first and most obvious answer is to keep an eye on any outdated apps and remove them if you don't need them. If you're an Android user, you can install utilities such as Notification History or App Install History to keep track of when apps were last updated. On iOS 8, you can simply swipe from the top of your screen and tap "Notifications" to review your app update history. If you need an app for the functions it provides but its old and outdated it may be worth finding an alternative that is more recent and performs the same function. However, if you support multiple mobile devices, such as in an enterprise environment, you may need a better solution. Centralized mobile device management which provides the ability to analyze apps and find risks can come in handy. One such example of a solution is Appthority.

Google has an Android security problem
Android remains the most popular mobile operating system in the world with over 81 percent of the worldwide market share. But only a fraction of Android's share is running the software's latest version, with the latest bug fixes, vulnerability patches, and security updates. Official stats say just shy of 10 percent are using Android 5.0 "Lollipop," with about 39 percent running the second latest version, Android 4.4 "KitKat." That's a huge gap, but not close to even older versions. It's almost exactly split fifty-fifty down the middle between Android 4.3 and earlier -- including some 930 million devices that remain vulnerable to a security flaw Google won't fix, and Android 4.4 and later. With about two weeks until the next version is announced -- Android "M" -- the fragmentation problem is expected to get worse. And that means security will get worse.

Quote for the day:

"It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance." -- Thomas Huxley

May 01, 2015

Apple And IBM Team With Japan Post To Address The Needs Of An Aging Population
Tim Cook called the initiative “groundbreaking,” saying that it is “not only important for Japan, but [also] has global implications. Together, the three of us and all the teams that work so diligently behind us will dramatically improve the lives of millions of people.” He added that the “courage and the boldness and the ambition that Taizo-san and Japan Post are showing by being first in this is incredibly commendable.” For Cook, this Japan Post initiative shows the “enormous potential” of the Apple/IBM partnership, and he also delved into a discussion of Apple broader goals with respect to user health. He brought up the examples of HealthKit and ResearchKit, and added that this program with Japan Post is perfectly in line with the goals of those existing initiatives.

How Globe Testing helps startups make the leap to cloud development
There are also things such as response time. Customers are very impatient. The old rule was that websites shouldn't take more than three seconds to load, but these days it's one second. If it's not instant, you just go and look for a different website. So response time is also something that is very worrying for our customers. ... So being able to test on multiple operating systems and platforms and being able to automate as much as possible is very important for them. They need the tools that are very flexible and that can handle any given protocol. Again, HP Software, with things such as Unified Functional Testing (UFT), can help them.

ITIL: Piece by Piece
When enterprises have a challenge like that, we can immediately start to deconstruct the challenge itself and then deconstruct ITIL, until we have identified the quick win/s, matching solution to issue/s. Bear in mind that it doesn’t mean abandoning all plans to implement a significant portion of ITIL in the long term, it simply means ‘let’s tackle the challenge and improve piece by piece’. We may unearth that in fact the solution lies in simply implementing ITIL’s Change Management process to ensure that authorized changes are prioritized, planned, tested, implemented, documented and reviewed in a controlled manner. Quick win delivered, disruptions to the live environment and services minimized.

6 cloud sourcing archetypes
What does a typical enterprise cloud services buyer look like? It’s a tricky question to answer. Cloud services are everywhere: in the data center, in development teams, in shared services organizations on manufacturing floors. It’s also delivered in many different ways: as software, as infrastructure that behaves like software and as business processes supported by cloud software. Complicating matters further, what one buyer may call cloud another may call a rack of dedicated, virtualized servers, making the line of demarcation between “cloud” and “traditional” very blurry. Regardless how one chooses to define this boundary, cloud is permeating just about every corner of the enterprise, and the buyers that are driving this transformation are as varied as the functions they represent.

IT outsourcing deal values hit 10-year low
After one of the strongest years yet for the IT outsourcing industry, the sluggish tempo of the quarter is unsurprising, according to ISG. Ultimately, 2014 turned into the third best year for the industry in the last decade—driven by a buyers’ market, a rise in contract restructuring, and an increase in mega relationships. But ISG’s analysts say early 2015 slowness is not necessarily a sign of things to come. “IT outsourcing strength in the U.S. bodes well for the full year, and the first quarter dips in Asia Pacific and EMEA also suggest there should be more in the pipe,” says Keppel. “IT outsourcing solutions and client demands are changing rapidly, and as these change, they bring new opportunities for improved capabilities, improved flexibility, and lower costs—a combination we would expect most buyers to find irresistible.”

Why IBM's z13 microprocessor matters to analytics
The z13 delivers many value propositions, including speed, but the one that I think about the most is what it delivers to organizations in terms of analytical capability. As I said above, the mainframe in the modern enterprise has the data, and that feeds analytics. With the ability to have 10TB of memory with large memory frames/pages, the practice of bringing your analytics to the data (rather than copying the data, via ETL, to the analytics) has more relevance than ever before. z13 is designed for cloud, mobile and advanced analytics capabilities, which is a function not only of speed but of design.

How To Install Windows 10 IoT On Your Raspberry Pi 2
Why would you want to do this? Well, as Microsoft notes, “Windows 10 IoT Core is a new Windows 10 edition for low-cost, small-footprint devices that will be available ‘free’ for Makers and commercial device builders.” This means you can easily flash and use a stripped-down version of Windows in your own projects. Interestingly, this version of Windows will be very familiar to users of similar platforms like Arduino and Rasbian. Don’t expect to be playing Far Cry on this thing anytime soon – think of it as more of a universal app platform that connects to simple devices like Arduino-based relays and LEDs. In fact the UI is quite limited unless you program some apps yourself.

‘Security has failed’: Exclusive preview of RSA president's conference keynote
Yoran’s keynote address is aptly titled “Escaping Security’s Dark Ages,” and he extends the analogy in conversation with Fortune. “We need to stop thinking of taller castle walls and deeper moats,” he says. Complex passageways and nifty windows won’t work either—no matter how high one builds or how deep one digs, attackers will still get through. “At the end of the day, even if you use next generation protective measures, focused adversaries with the resources, with the time, with the skill, and that have a defined objective of breaking into your organization are still going to get in,” he says. Not to alarm anyone, but they’re probably already inside, he adds.

Google Apps Marketplace apps: Three things every admin should know
When you add a Google Apps Marketplace app to your Google Apps account, you save people time and increase security. People don't have to remember an additional login--and app access and data are more likely to remain under organizational control. That convenience requires a bit of periodic work by a Google Apps administrator. Here's how to review your Marketplace apps data access settings, check which apps are used, and discover new Marketplace apps to add. When you add a Google Apps Marketplace app to your Google Apps account, you save people time and increase security. People don't have to remember an additional login--and app access and data are more likely to remain under organizational control.

Hack the hackers? The debate rages on
Indeed, on a panel at the recent RSA conference in San Francisco, Rhonda MacLean, founder and CEO of MacLean Risk Partners, declared that most organizations should assume they have been breached. “If a company tells you they haven’t been breached, they don’t know,” she said. To have a meaningful debate on the issue, however, requires some defining of terms. Some experts object to the use of “active defense” as a euphemism for hacking back. Rafal Los, director of solutions research & development at Accuvant, said he believes active defense is a good thing when it means, “the actions a defensive team takes to protect themselves, on their own systems/network and explicitly not hacking back to protect themselves and their assets from attackers.”

Quote for the day:

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -- Benjamin Franklin

February 13, 2013

40 GbE technology: Hurry up and wait
Believe it or not, the 40 Gigabit Ethernet era is already upon us. The standard has long since been ratified, and products are shipping. But for the time being, 40 Gigabit Ethernet is having trouble moving out of first gear. A few reasons for the delay include existing wiring infrastructure, where these faster Ethernet switches are placed on networks, slower adoption of 10 GbE (which has been mostly on servers) and the preponderance of copper gigabit network connections.

Why Software Still Stinks
This webcast, delivered by a software quality professional and a respected industry analyst who researches security products, will discuss what organizations must do to roll out an effective application security program, which includes the right mix of training, tools, best practices and assessment that yield the highest mitigation on investment.

Big security for big data
Catching a hacker and being able to stop them as the attack is taking place is more useful to a company than being able to use forensics to piece together an attack that already took place. However, in order to have that as part of your arsenal, we have to resolve four problems: How do you insert data faster into your data store?; How do you store all this data?; How do you quickly process events?; How do you return results faster?

Apigee Big Data Insights: Are You in Control of Your App Economy?
According to Apigee, organizations no longer own or control all the data they need to make accurate business decisions. Just as consumers are learning that they don’t necessarily control the types of information that are collected about them, the amount of data generated by the mobile apps and plugins deployed by companies isn’t always easy to access or analyze.

IT training gets an extreme makeover
There are a number of variables helping to push staid PowerPoint presentations into history's dustbin. "Innovative IT training programs got their start because of cost-cutting measures," says Kendra Lee. As IT managers contend with shrinking budgets and skeleton staffs, many can no longer afford to enroll their workers in monthlong, off-site workshops. At the same time, new delivery mechanisms, such as cloud technology, are enabling companies to offer online courses anytime, anywhere, and at a fraction of the cost of on-premises programs.

How to Implement Lean BI
So, what is Lean BI? Lean BI is about focusing on customer value and generating additional value by accomplishing more with existing resources by eliminating waste. Lean BI is a set of principles and practices that have been influenced by three main concepts: Lean manufacturing; Systems theory; and Agile project management.

Building Android Apps with MVVM and Data Binding
As the name implies, MvvmCross is an open source, cross-platform MVVM framework for Windows Phone, Mono for Android, MonoTouch, the Windows Runtime and more. Part of bringing MVVM to platforms where it wasn't previously available means that it also enables you to take advantage of rich data binding support in your views. This feature is quite powerful, and can save you a lot of time and code.

Lawmakers to reintroduce controversial info-sharing bill
Representatives Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, and C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat, are scheduled to reintroduce the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) on Wednesday, they said in a press release. The new version of CISPA will be identical to the one that passed the U.S. House of Representatives despite objections from several privacy groups.

Don't open that PDF: There's an Adobe Reader zero-day on the loose
"Upon successful exploitation, [the exploit] will drop two DLLs [dynamic link libraries]. The first DLL shows a fake error message and opens a decoy PDF document, which is usually common in targeted attacks. The second DLL in turn drops the callback component, which talks to a remote domain," FireEye said. FireEye says it has submitted the sample to Adobe's security team and, without a new patch available from the company, is warning users not to open any unknown PDF files until it receives confirmation.

COBOL will outlive us all

Yes, most of the smaller COBOL programs written in the 1970s, 1980s, and even 1990s have been replaced with newer systems and newer technologies. However, the big mission critical systems written long ago in COBOL and modified and enhanced for the past thirty to forty years are still driving very large, very prestigious companies around the country and around the world. These companies include banks, insurance companies, manufacturing companies, retail chains, health care organizations, and every other type of company you can imagine.

Can New Software Testing Frameworks Bring Us to Provably Correct Software?
We can get CPUs that are consistent and reliable, and we can get compilers that work on top of them that are provably correct. Pascal creator Nicholas Wirth described how to write a correct compiler in his book, Compiler Construction, back in 1996. It should be a simple step from there to create "functionally correct" programs that can, for any input, produce the correct output. The only problem is that no one seems to be able to actually do it.

Quote for the day:

"Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses." -- Anonymous

February 07, 2013

The Continuous Delivery Maturity Model
The principles and methods of Continuous Delivery are rapidly gaining recognition as a successful strategy for true business agility. For many organizations the question is no longer “why?”, but rather “how?” How do you start with Continuous Delivery, and how do you transform your organization to ensure sustainable results. This Maturity Model aims to give structure and understanding to some of the key aspects you need to consider when adopting Continuous Delivery in your organization.

Governance, risk, compliance: Four things to ponder about GRC initiatives
The GRC road is long and arduous, but by pondering four key items (before even selecting an enterprise GRC offering) you can form a framework that will eventually lead to an environment where you can accurately determine what security controls to implement, how to gauge their effectiveness, and how to optimally support those controls (to many of you this may sound more fiction that fact).

Free cost-benefit analysis template examples for CIOs
SearchCIO.com searched the Web for free cost-benefit analysis templates that could tally planned project costs and calculate key performance metrics, such as ROI, net-present value internal rate of return and payback periods. Using these indicators, IT organizations can make more informed business decisions about where to invest their teams' energies, time and precious budget dollars.

The Soft Skill that Drives Your Analytics Team
Across all analytic positions, the top workplace characteristic found in the survey was “curiosity.” The best and brightest enterprise analytics teams will be able to spot those curious candidates or interested in-house employees for growing data teams, says Greta Roberts, IIA faculty and CEO of Talent Analytics.

Oracle Promises To 'Fix' Java
"The plan for Java security is really simple," Smith said. "It's to get Java fixed up -- number one -- and then, number two, to communicate our efforts widely. We really can't have one without the other. No amount of talking or smoothing over is going to make anybody happy or do anything for us. We have got to fix Java..." Oracle has been working to improve Java security, Smith said, though much of that work has not been publicized.

Python gets a big data boost from DARPA
DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has awarded $3 million to software provider Continuum Analytics to help fund the development of Python's data processing and visualization capabilities for big data jobs. The money will go toward developing new techniques for data analysis and for visually portraying large, multi-dimensional data sets.

Project management lessons learned from a vacation

The biggest learning on my part is that I need to worry less about thing going wrong in my absence. My team is made up of some very capable people and are able to provide good guidance on how projects should be executed. I will probably look to see how I can take advantage of that to get some of them to provide more leadership. From a personal point of view, the vacation has enabled me to recharge my batteries and come back with renewed energy. I will also look to ensure my team gets the same opportunity.

CIO: Innovation driven by IT simplification processes
By simplifying its technology environment, Northwestern Mutual creates value in three ways: generating financial capacity, managing risk better and increasing use cases for newer technologies. These innovations, Schaefer explains, are powered by the convergence of cloud, mobile, analytics and social technologies.

Singapore to benefit from 'app economy'
"The kitchen is ready with the recipe and ingredients, and the dining room has guests, but you still have to do the cooking. That is something very important [to note]," Krishnan said. He was speaking to ZDNet ahead of the inaugural PlugFest International Programming Competition, which was jointly created by GDG Singapore and another non-profit, IEEE Computer Society Singapore.

Microsoft's cybersecurity report rethinks global web landscape
Published by Paul Nicholas, senior director Security at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, Aaron Kleiner and Kevin Sullivan at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, the report, titled "Measuring the Impact of Policy on Global Cybersecurity," focuses on how changing global demographics and the rising numbers of online users are an important factor in creating and enforcing protective policies.

Quote for the day:

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." --Maya Angelou, American author and poet

January 15, 2013

Application Modernization and the Cloud Connection
Modernizing without a plan delivered via a strong migration methodology can be expensive, time-consuming, laborious and challenging on many fronts -- a combination that may not give organizations the return on investment they're seeking. This often leads organizations to delay their modernization efforts -- adding even more risk and cost to the eventual 'doomsday event' which finally forces modernization.

DDN grabs first slab of 100PB storage cloud
Data Direct Networks (DDN) will provide storage for a node of Australia's Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI), a $AUD50m project aimed at creating a pool of storage the nation's researchers can use to house large quantities of data, the better to feed it into the nation's supercomputers and subject it other forms of analysis.

An Easy Guide For Developing and Publishing Apps in Intel AppUp Store for New Ultrabook Devices
So what is the opportunity there in AppUp? This might just be the first question you may ask if you have never worked with Apps or if you happen to be an existing App developer for Apple or Android market. Let me tell you, AppUp is still in it's early stage and can be considered as a start up. Having said that, there are many good things to start with AppUp

Cloud Computing Services in Russia Offer Huge Growth Potential, Finds Frost & Sullivan
"The continuing adoption of cloud services will have a significant impact on both the public and private sectors in Russia. Implementation of the National Cloud Platform will increase the quality of healthcare and government services due to the unification of services and their higher availability via Internet and public universal access points (terminals)," notes Mr Vyatskikh.

Why We Find it Hard to Change Our Behavior
When we look at our behavior we have to understand that there is a thought going on in our heads that is tripping us up. And we have to change that first. Or we’re working on the wrong thing. The question becomes, “What thoughts do I need to change to make my behavior change?” New behavior will automatically follow a change in thinking. One right thought can correct a lot of bad behavior.

Microsoft keeps calm, issues emergency IE update
"It's as ordinary as only Microsoft could make an [out-of-band] release ordinary," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, in an interview via instant messaging. "While it's rare they go out of band, their idea of emergency is still calm and to the letter of the process." And that, said Storms, is a good thing.

Paving the way to cloud security certification is a two-way street
Security and compliance go hand in hand when cloud computing is involved. As cloud consumers, enterprises are responsible for defining security policies, authorizing end-user use and understanding cloud compliance requirements. But all that responsibility doesn't fall solely on enterprise IT.

'There is a need for better dialogue between industry and government'
"If you look at the relative economic scenario across the world, I would say that the India story is still very strong" says Sanket Akerkar, MD, Microsoft India in an interview with Dataquest. He shares his views on a wide range of subjects-from the state of the economy to India's growth prospects, the changing approach to IT outsourcing and the key areas where industry and government can work together. Excerpts

7 Ways You're Wasting Time and Don't Even Know It
Berry realized she needed to get smarter about managing time and making Provident Insurance Agency in Florissant, Mo., run more smoothly. She hired a productivity coach and saw immediate results. If you feel as overwhelmed as Berry did, you may need to rethink how you use your time. Here are seven ways you may be wasting time without even realizing it.

Offshoring has fuelled IT skills crisis, say UK firms
“We all look dreadfully surprised when five years later we need to find an [enterprise] architect. Where do we grow architects from? We grow them from our analysts. Then we realise ‘Ah, we don’t have many of those any more because we shifted them out’.” Harris was commenting on the findings of a report for the forum which found that 59 per cent, of forum members have been unable to find people with the right technical or business skills for an IT role.

Quote for the day:

"Knowing when to take your losses is an essential part of eventual success." -- Tom Peters