Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

September 25, 2014

In Evolving Healthcare Business Model, Tech Plays Vital Role
This scenario mirrors what happened in the banking industry in the 1990s, when independent banks sold out to "super-regional" firms in large part to be able to afford the move to a common IT platform. Many of the health system transactions Hagood has seen in the last two years have included specific IT commitments – namely, migrating to a common system (typically Meditech, Cerner or Epic) and subsequently taking advantage of group licensing.

Digital Business Technologies Dominate Gartner 2014 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle
As you leave for work in the morning, your house automatically turns down the heat and places an order for milk (connected home) and your virtual personal assistant (VPA) alerts you that Cindy will be late to your 9 a.m. meeting and besides, the forecast you prepared has already changed (big data). You allow your car to navigate the traffic to your office (smart machines and Internet of Things [IoT]) while you manage the latest crisis. In this scenario, much of the possibility stems from the growth of digital business and continued adoption of the related technologies as they move through the Gartner 2014 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle.

Everything you need to know about the Shellshock Bash bug
The risk centres around the ability to arbitrarily define environment variables within a Bash shell which specify a function definition. The trouble begins when Bash continues to process shell commands after the function definition resulting in what we’d classify as a “code injection attack”. Let’s look at Robert’s example again and we’ll just take this line: http-header = Cookie:() { :; }; ping -c 3 209.126.230.74 The function definition is () { :; }; and the shell command is the ping statement and subsequent parameters. When this is processed within the context of a Bash shell, the arbitrary command is executed.

Understanding Partitioned Indexes in Oracle 11g
By breaking an index into multiple physical pieces, you are accessing much smaller pieces (faster), and you may separate the pieces onto different disk drives (reducing I/O contention). Both b-tree and bitmap indexes can be partitioned. Hash indexes cannot be partitioned. Partitioning can work several different ways. The tables can be partitioned and the indexes are not partitioned; the table is not partitioned but the index is; or both the table and index are partitioned. Either way, the cost-based optimizer must be used. Partitioning adds many possibilities to help improve performance and increase maintainability.

Backing Up SaaS: The Challenge
However, replication or backup doesn't protect against hack attacks, which suggest that data should be moved off to a cloud-based archiving service such as AWS Glacier. Even there, the risk of a really smart hacker going after the final tape copy exists. It will take a bit longer, but we've seen recent situations, such as Target's debacle, where the hackers had weeks of access. Someone needs to write-prevent that tape, either by offlining it or by clicking the write-protect button.

Rackspace Re-architects its OpenStack Private Clouds
With the new release Rackspace also decided to get away from Open vSwitch, the open source software defined network platform used as a plug-in for Neutron (the network element of OpenStack), conceding it was not quite ready for production and high-volume workloads. The team switched to traditional hardware load balancers and firewalls, still leveraging Neutron SDN capabilities within customer clouds. These and other changes have enabled Rackspace to offer “four nines” API Service Level Agreements for each of the core OpenStack services.

Don’t Overlook the Operationalization of Big Data, Pivotal Says
“We’re at the cusp of a tectonic shift in how organizations manage data,” Mongo vice president of business development Matt Asay said at the time. “It’s such a big opportunity it’s frankly far too big for any one company.” The folks at Pivotal might not totally agree with that assessment. While Cloudera and Mongo are working on connectors and joint solutions, the EMC spinoff–which owns its own in-memory, NoSQL database called GemFire–is looking to provide an all-in-one, soup-to-nuts big data solution.

Data Science That Makes a Difference
In a world filled with dangerous individuals who fund terrorist activities and imperil lives, data has helped the world's banks learn more about their customers and share watch lists to flag signs of trouble. This is a tremendous initiative to help fight money-laundering all around the world. As a result of data analytics and technology, financial institutions can be more confident that they are doing business with people and businesses they know, and they can vet customers regardless of where they are. Such collaborations across geographies are helping solve major problems in global business.

Android smartwatches to retail at average of $US30 by 2015: Gartner
The worldwide smartwatch market is poised for lift off and could gobble up 40 per cent of the consumer wristwatch market by 2016. That according to Gartner anlaysts, who have also predicted Android-based smartwatches could retail at an average price of $30 by 2015 as OEMs capture the consumer mass market in China and internationally. Gartner analysts say that nine out of the top 10 smartphone vendors have entered the wearables market to date or are about to ship a first product, while a year ago only two vendors were in that space.

The Pursuit of Excellence is a Choice
Many organizations struggle with a number of very common issues. They lack cogent direction. Strategies are incomplete or missing in action or in some state of flux. Employees are unengaged and unaware of how their efforts and functional or vocational goals plug into the bigger picture. Priorities are fuzzy and ever-shifting. Customers aren’t particularly loyal or happy. There’s cross-border conflict between functions where there should be cooperation and collaboration. Metrics are fuzzy and mostly rear-view mirror looking. And finally, there’s an incredible amount of waste and inefficiency due to poor and undocumented processes.

Quote for the day:

"At the heart of great leadership is a curious mind, heart, and spirit." -- Chip Conley

September 24, 2014

How Agile Can Yield Effective IT Business Alignment
In her talk Klasien showed how can you apply lean thinking to decide which architecture documentation is needed and when it is needed, discussed why Agile practices are often only used by the IT Teams in many projects, and provided suggestions on how to increase the involvement of stakeholders from business, demand and supply in agile projects. Klasien presented her experiences from working in different architectural roles with the council for the Judiciary and with the Dutch tax authority, both governmental organizations.

IT Dress Code: 10 Cardinal Sins
Just as we might sometimes try a little too hard for our own fashion good, there are those among us who grossly misinterpret the meaning of the word "casual." It's a lasting artifact of the first dot-com boom, the offices where soccer sandals and flip-flops are de riguer. Maybe we don't need to dud up in suits every day, but a decent pair of shoes might still behoove everyone. Then there are variables of common sense -- and common decency -- to consider. No, we don't want to talk about the sprawling ERP upgrade with you while you're sporting super-snug bike shorts and an equally form-fitting tour jersey. That's just awkward, your upcoming triathlon notwithstanding.

Predictive Analytics in Health Care: Helping to Navigate Uncertainties and Change
Changes to payment models will likely cascade across the industry and affect all participants, from private insurers and government which will develop new models, to providers and patients who will change their behavior accordingly. Each of these steps can affect the eventual decision to prescribe or use a specific health care product or service, as well as how much this product will cost and how it will be paid for. And it is clear that ACA will result in additional future price pressures, the impact of which will vary greatly by product, therapeutic area, service and state.

How a CIO Shift to Strategic Management can Eliminate IT Hero and Firefighter Mentality
It may sound odd, but sometimes laziness has its place in the business. Some of the best IT folks I know work very hard, but they don’t realize they’re working hard because the work they’re doing is helping them avoid work they don’t like doing. Every IT organization needs a few leaders and contributors who can look at the job at hand and say, “How can I fix this so I never have to do it again?” If you celebrate the contributions of firefighter martyrs, you are to some extent, rewarding bad behavior. There may be a wide range of reasons for the fires in the first place, but you certainly don’t want to make it worse by establishing the wrong success motivators.

5 Ways Data Warehousing Is Changing
In today’s world, it’s important to deal with data in its raw format, including semi-structured, first-class formats such as JSON and XML. Data warehouses must be able to not only bulk-load large data sets as is, but also scale linearly in a cost-effective manner as volumes and formats grow, without upfront planning. This ability preserves the richness of the data while also circumventing the need (and cost) of writing custom code in order to build, collect, model and integrate data from various streaming and semi-structured sources before analysis.

Secure Computing as Threats Evolve (Infographic)
Data breaches have dominated the headlines for months, but the overall cyber security landscape is far from bleak. Researchers have made significant inroads battling spam bots, closing up mobile vulnerabilities, and keeping users away from malicious web domains. This infographic highlights some of the positive developments in the war against malware and illustrates Symantec’s unique position in the security intelligence market. You’ll discover: Which threat vectors are shrinking vs. growing; How spear phishing attacks have evolved; and How Symantec’s security intelligence helps block more attacks, more quickly

The Dangers of Dark Data and How to Minimize Your Exposure
Most discussions of dark data tend to focus on its potential value and utility to an organization. Indeed, for those outfits willing to expend resources (money, tools and time) to develop and exploit the information and value locked up inside dark data, such potential is undoubtedly attractive. This also explains why many organizations are reluctant to part with dark data, ... or perhaps more chillingly, the dark data about them, their customers and their operations that's stored in the cloud, outside their immediate control and management – can pose risks to their continued business health and well-being.

Puppet Server's Big Revamp
Puppet is a project that has built a widely used configuration management system, one designed to let an IT administrator or "puppetmaster" to pull the strings inside the data center and create servers for whatever infrastructure was needed. In the commercially supported version, Puppet Enterprise from Puppet Labs, the core piece of the system, Puppet Server, has been rewritten to allow add-on applications. ... With Node Manager, servers can be quickly grouped together "based on its job rather than its cute, assigned name" or other manually-inspired designation.

How to choose the right Linux distro
Unlike most other desktop and server operating systems, Linux comes in a wide variety of flavors, each based on a common core of the Linux kernel and various GNU user space utilities. If you're running Linux servers -- or Linux desktops, for that matter -- you should understand the important differences and be discerning about which flavor of Linux is best suited to any given situation. This article will help you do just that. Because Linux is open source software, the number of discrete Linux distributions is hard to know for sure.

Technical Architecture in Banking and Gaming
By contrast, when gamers have formed a major emotional attachment to a particular game they can be much more tolerant of outages. For popular games which deploy regular, largeish patches (often a few hundred MB in size) potentially slow download times seem to be mostly accepted by users - and no mass exodus to another game occurs. Even the occasional crash of a server seems to be regarded as a fact of life. As long as it doesn't happen too often gamers seem to regard crashes and even the loss of a small amount of game state and experience as acceptable.

Quote for the day:

"The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." -- Harvey S. Firestone

September 23, 2014

Securing virtual machines still a dark art, says Kaspersky Lab
Virtualisation is becoming a core part of mission-critical IT infrastructure, yet securing a virtual network is still a dark art, says David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “All too often businesses apply security measures developed for physical machines, which can leave the business exposed to a whole raft of risks,” he said. Despite the reliance on the virtualised environment moving the issue of securing it up the business agenda, Emm said five common myths, or misconceptions, continue to put organisations at risk.

5 things to prepare the CIO for disruption
Consumption expectations for customers and users changed as well. Consumers became more technologically savvy and demanded more. Overnight, consumers become familiar, and more comfortable with solutions quicker than IT organizations could adopt them. The technology available to consumers rapidly became more sophisticated. The combination of these two drove a change in consumer behaviors. Consumers, and customers became more demanding of technology…and by extension, corporate IT. So, how does the CIO respond to these changes in a timely and meaningful manner? Start at the top and work down.

The Open Group panel: Internet of things poses massive opportunities and obstacles
This so-called Internet of Things means more data, more cloud connectivity and management, and an additional tier of “things” that are going to be part of the mobile edge — and extending that mobile edge ever deeper into even our own bodies. Yet the Internet of Things is more than the “things” – it means a higher order of software platforms. For example, if we are going to operate data centers with new dexterity thanks to software-defined networking (SDN) and storage (SDS) — indeed the entire data center being software-defined (SDDC) — then why not a software-defined automobile, or factory floor, or hospital operating room — or even a software-defined city block or neighborhood?

Singapore reiterates call for industry collaboration in security
"Cybersecurity incidents highlight the importance of a robust cybersecurity framework to prevent any cyberattack, or its possible spillover impact on the physical world. This is especially critical for Singapore as we depend on IT in many aspects of our lives [and] are susceptible to cyber threats due to our high internet connectivity across the country," he said. The minister added that Singapore is targeting to become the world's first smart nation, providing citizens easier access to public services and data on their smart devices. However, this ability to retrieve data remotely also increases vulnerability to cyberattacks, so efforts have to go toward ensuring the country's cyber infrastructure remains secure and resilient.

Parameterization Part 5: Two Common Mistakes
In this post I would like to focus on two common mistakes that developers do, which make parameter sniffing a really bad thing, even when it would be a great thing otherwise. The reason I’m focusing on these two mistakes is because I see them so often, and they usually have such a dramatic impact on performance. There is a good chance that if you check the code in your system, you’ll find a few occurrences of these mistakes, and you might suffer from performance problems due to these mistakes without even knowing about it. OK, I hope I made you curious enough, so let’s get to business. In order to demonstrate the two mistakes, I’m going to use the following use case

Importing Excel Data into SQL Server Via SSIS: Questions You Were Too Shy to Ask
Retrieving data from Excel, and importing it into SQL Server hasn't the same appeal or glamour as, for example, performing heroics with ill-performing queries. This could be why one hesitates before asking questions about how to do it. Rob Sheldon calms your private doubts and fears by answering those embarrassing questions.

We just might put a dent in data breaches
Payment data can be compromised at retailers both big and small, but the nature of the compromise is very different depending on the merchant’s size. With small-scale retailers, the threat is that someone, probably an insider, will simply snatch the relevant data (credit card numbers, for example). That affects one customer at a time. The high-profile compromises, of course, hit large-scale retailers like Home Depot and Target, where cyberthieves are able to access millions of accounts all at once. These attacks have succeeded by compromising firmware on payment terminals directly, thereby snagging account data during the payment process.

Ebay under fire for inaction over phishing attacks
Security professionals found that attackers were using cross-site scripting (XSS) to embed malicious JavaScript code in eBay’s product listing pages in a link that appeared to be from a trustworthy source. When someone clicks on the link, the embedded programming is submitted as part of the client's web request and can execute on the user's computer, typically allowing the attacker to steal information. In the case of the compromised iPhone listing, the XSS code redirected users through a series of other websites, so they ended up at a legitimate-looking page asking for their eBay login and password.

Q&A on Kanban in Action
Kanban is a scheduling system used in lean production. It was developed at Toyota as a way to improve production by challenging people to continuously improve the Just-in-Time flow of goods and services while avoiding overburdening of the system and the workers. This was achieved mainly through limiting WIP, visualization and managing flow. Very much like kanban in software development. Kanban is only a part of Lean but it embodies some of the most important principles of Lean just like Scrum is only a part of Agile.

This is How Banks Need to Manage People Risk
Before you know it those issues can become major concerns and the cause of a perhaps untimely departure. A firm culture that pushes against this natural tendency is very important but also difficult to create. Yet taking time to understand what your employees can offer — especially where natural contact is limited - and any issues they have that may be bubbling up could pay dividends down the road. For employees also, making sure they have their manager's attention by sharing accomplishments and ideas proactively – new trading products, or new trading risk controls — will also make sure they are on the radar at promotion time.

Quote for the day:

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” -- Winston Churchill

September 22, 2014

What you need to know about the robots that feed humanity
The Department of Agricultural and Biological engineering at the University of Illinois,divides agricultural robots into three generations. The first gen is comprised of basic ones that can collect data, while the second gen bots are capable of harvesting, seeding, spraying and cultivation. Finally, the third and most advanced generation are comprised of autonomous robots capable of caring for plants without (or with minimal) human intervention. As you can see below, American farms already use machines from across three generations, though most of the ones that fall under the third are still in development.

Identity Crisis: Should Employees Create Their Own Job Titles?
"We think the main reason is that it gives people a chance to rethink their work and what is important about it, and what they add to the work that is unique and important," said Dan Cable, professor of organizational behavior at London Business School and co-author of the report. "Then by developing their own job title, they get to inject a little bit of themselves into the title, and make it more accurate and descriptive." Cable also noted that self-reflective job titles tend to reduce formality and hierarchy in a business, which makes people feel better and less threatened at work. It can also serve as an icebreaker in meetings with external stakeholders, Cable said.

Radar Gun Targets Texting & Driving
The gun distinguishes the unique signal from sending and receiving texts from other background signals. This would allow police to meet their ticket quota... er... keep the roads safe with a simple device. Presumably, it could even be combined with a traditional radar gun to put the bite on you twice... er... save you from your own poor choices. Next, the company will develop a gun that checks to make sure you are wearing your seat belt -- or that you're not getting too much of a groove on to your favorite jam, daydreaming about winning the lottery and quitting your job, or looking for the french fry you dropped behind the seat.

CIOs Must Actively Engage in Opportunities to Influence IT Decisions in Business Budgets
"In the past, the use of IT to support the business came almost as an afterthought, long after the business strategy and strategic initiatives for the coming period had been designed and sanctioned by top management," said Cassio Dreyfuss, research vice president at Gartner. "Over time, IT has graduated from being a support tool to being a business enabling and a business creation tool. Under that much broader and inclusive perspective, it makes more sense to talk about IT-related expenditures in each and every business initiative and respective budget. In this way, the CIO is challenged to adopt a higher profile and actively engage in opportunities to influence IT decisions in business budgets."

Hands on with Microsoft's Internet of Things platform
The Windows IoT tools add support for Arduino-style Wiring apps to its Visual C++ compiler, along with tools for monitoring Galileo devices connected to a network. While I could have just connected my Galileo to my existing wired network, it was easier to just set up a simple peer-to-peer connection over the provided USB adapter and cable. That way the device could sit next to my keyboard, and I could monitor its status LEDs while I worked. Booting a Windows Galileo is easy. Plug in the Windows microSD card, turn on the power, and wait for the onboard LEDs to stop blinking. Once its booted, you can log in using a telnet client, which drops you in at the familiar Windows command prompt.

What microservices architecture really means
SOA initiatives tended to be a top-down, driven by managers frustrated with multiple, siloed dev teams reinventing the same functionality. From what I can tell, microservices architecture appears to be more of a grassroots developer trend. Developers don't like duplication of effort, either, especially when they're under greater pressure than ever to build more and better apps -- many of them Web and mobile apps with different presentation layers but similar services behind the scenes. You've probably heard that SOA failed. That's not entirely fair, since it succeeded in some cases -- famously, at Amazon -- but as a trend it pretty much tanked in 2008 or 2009. Why might microservices fare better? Here are a few reasons:

Brocade unveils OpenDaylight SDN controller
Brocade says the tested and commercially supported Vyatta Controller supports a range of underlying physical and virtual network infrastructure, such as multivendor switches, routers, firewalls, VPNs and load balancers. Brocade says it will be continuously updated with OpenDaylight code, which means it will attain the group policy model and Cisco-developed OpFlex policy protocol in the “Lithium” release of OpenDaylight expected next year. Juniper is also offering an open source controller with OpenContrail, but it is not based on OpenDaylight even though Juniper is contributing to the consortium.

GS Collections by Example – Part 1
Why would you use GS Collections now that Java 8 is out and includes the Streams API? While the Streams API is a big improvement to the Java Collections Framework, it doesn’t have all the features you might want. As shown in the matrix above, GS Collections has multimaps, bags, immutable containers, and primitive containers. GS Collections has optimized replacements for HashSet and HashMap, and its Bags and Multimaps build on those optimized types. The GS Collections iteration patterns are on the collections interfaces so there’s no need to “enter” the API with a call to stream() and “exit” the API with a call to collect(). This results in much more succinct code in many cases.

How the Data Explosion Changes the Way We Do Business
Companies seem to be doing a variety of things. One angle is to kind of turn a blind eye, pretend it’s not happening, but the other more thought provoking and beneficial angle seems to be to embrace this new wealth of data and find new and creative ways to do that. For those companies then it becomes the question of build or buy or amend. One of the trends I’m seeing is in the core applications that run businesses, like ERP systems. It’s very difficult to change those in any significant way without lots of upheaval. I see a lot more activity around the ERPs, taking bits and pieces of data from them as needed but building solutions that don’t circumvent the ERP but run adjacent to it. Is that a fair assessment?

Dell bets on its end-to-end datacentre infrastructure strategy
“Virtualisation is running across the entire datacentre – so all layers of storage, network and servers are becoming virtualised. All elements in the datacentre are becoming applications running in virtual machines,” Dell said in his keynote address. “Everything is going to the cloud. We’re seeing this idea of the integrated appliance taking hold,” he added. Dell emphasised how its datacentre products such as VRTX and PowerEdge, as well as its datacentre management strategies and the company’s acquisitions – including Quest Software – are helping businesses shape their IT plans.

Quote for the day:

"Leadership offers an opportunity to make a difference in someone's life, no matter what the project." -- Bill Owens

September 21, 2014

What to Expect With Windows 9
That's what we know for sure. Everything else is conjecture, but it's backed by a string of revelations based on build 9834 of the Windows Technical Preview, which appears to have fallen into the hands of the folks at the German-language site WinFuture.de. WinFuture is dribbling out screenshots and videos, turning a buck by pasting Netflix, Hornbach, and Peugeot ads on the front of their leaked videos. Somebody in Redmond must be fuming. Here's a recap of what's been revealed, starting with the features I described last week:

To Integrate or Not to Integrate – That is the Question.
If all the data exists in centralised data warehouse, then developing the integrated view is about modelling and pre-building the relationships. If the data is distributed, integrating is about modelling and pre-building the relationships. You read correctly, logically there is no difference for there is no silver bullet to integrated data, you must still do the analysis to uncover the relationships between the data entities and the expose the pathways. When data exists on multiple platforms, the key is to understand the business driver for integration; often this is to achieve a holistic view of customer, citizen, employee, service provider, program, etc.

Why Are Organizations Still Struggling with Their Data?
Best practices exist for organizations to follow to achieve a strong information management framework and tie data to business processes enabling decision makers the ability to take actions on the insights they’ve gleaned. A variety of solutions exist in the market place providing BI access to any type of user and that are geared towards a strong IT infrastructure or small business with little to no internal IT support. Additionally, organizations understand the value their data brings to the table.

Enterprise Architecture: A Practitioner View
This article highlights our framework of Enterprise Architecture and its roadmap for the development and management of various components. It depicts how these components work together, what are the various measures of business units, enterprise and their outcome. The framework includes putting in place the proper organizational structure and hybrid business/IT roles, consolidating and standardizing information and data stores, and integrating applications and infrastructure to support the right business processes across the enterprise. The key Components of Enterprise Architecture are depicted below.

A New Era for Enterprise Architecture?
“Stop trying to explain what enterprise architecture is. Don’t talk about it. Forget IT. What you need to do, is talk to people about the problems and challenges that keep them up at night. What programs or projects need to be fixed now. As the enterprise architect, it is your job to make the connection as to how to align the technology to the mission, not theirs,” said Burke. Wang agreed. “You have to put all the focus on the mission and the outcomes. Effectively, it doesn’t matter to anyone but you how you get results. You need to ask the stakeholders, ‘What do you need?’ That’s how you get enterprise architecture to matter at agencies, you have to reframe the conversation.”

Choosing API Security Options and Fostering API Ecosystems
Rather than rely on a static random string known by both the client, authorization server, and resource server, the MAC token profile does not directly pass the access token to the resource server. The profile relies on client-side code to sign the resource request with a shared session key, and the resource server checks the signature. The client uses the signature algorithm, access token and the MAC key to calculate the request token passed to the resource server. The OAuth authorization server will issue a MAC key along with the signature algorithm, session key, nonce and an access token. The access token can be used as an identifier for the MAC key.

Security Visibility in the Enterprise
Many security tools or services promise to provide protection, deliver insight, achieve compliance, and many other things. And many projects run using vendor “best practices” leave the customer feeling either unsatisfied or overwhelmed. This program took a large corporation from basic logging for compliance using an external managed monitoring service on a journey to bringing monitoring and analysis into the core of the organization. More than a “how to” on deploying a SIEM, this paper describes common pitfalls and at least one way to avoid them. While by no means the only way to improved security visibility, the results show that success is within reach.

Critical Security Controls: How to Apply the Lessons Learned
So, why don’t we take what others have learned from previous incidents and apply it to our own security practices? The good news is that we are heading in the right direction. A new SANS analyst survey recently reported that now 90 percent of participating organizations have implemented or are planning to implement the Critical Security Controls (CSCs), including a greater increase in adoption from entities in the financial and government sectors. With the survey respondents ranging across all industries, job roles and workforce size, the results show greater overall security awareness and support of the benefits brought by implementing the CSCs.

Data, Data Everywhere, With Governance Around the Corner
Data quality issues are common in the industry, but they are less common among carriers with formal data governance initiatives in place. The top challenge carriers face when it comes to data is collecting and analyzing data quickly enough. A fragmented data environment follows, with poor data quality the third top issue. These problems build on each other; a fragmented data environment makes it difficult to collect the data quickly, and poor data quality makes it difficult to analyze and use the data to make better decisions.

Factoring Security Into Data Governance
The European Union's Cybersecurity Strategy and the European Commission's Directive on Network and Information Security, now in place, was a long-shot for passage a year ago, Crisp notes. There is a social element to data, namely the possibility that hackers can use social engineering to gather information on data users and deceive them through social familiarity to gain access, Crisp says. Along with the EU directive, regulators in European nations want firms to demonstrate what systems and organization they have in place, for data protection.

Quote for the day:

"A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier." -- Tom Stoppard

September 20, 2014

The Perfect Storm: Service Aggregation, Automation and Management
Generic IaaS portfolio’s with little creativity. Limited to no service automation capability, a huge skills shortage in the areas of service creation, demand creation and workload integration / technical planning and a gross under estimation of how quickly the demand side of this market would develop because reality is, most of these organisations likely to use Cloud (Read : Demand) are still trying to work out how to virtualise and deal with the costs and complexity of consolidating legacy and physical systems in an intelligent and coordinated way.

Design your own KPIs, like this bar manager did with limes
Some vendors of CRM applications might be dismayed to hear such advice, entertaining as the story is. For an emerging trend among some of these companies is to coax users of their product into sharing metrics -- from sales to compensation -- with the other users of the product to establish very specific benchmarks for these indicators. One example is Xactly's recently rollout of Xactly Insights. Xactly offers an application that supports sales compensation and Insights is an add-on that compiles the compensation data of the customers that the flagship applications is managing -- and then releases it in anonymized form to the users. Users have to opt in and most have, according to Xactly.

The Growth of Data Science
Data Science is a discipline that has been evolving rapidly over the last couple of years as a large number of companies have embarked on Big Data projects that seek to put the vast stores of data that they are collecting to good use. Software such as the hugely popular Splunk has made it easy for non-specialist staff to carry out rudimentary Big Data analysis - a recent CompTIA study found that staff in both sales and research departments have seen a rapid rise in involvement in Big Data projects. But to get the full benefit from all this data companies are increasingly recruiting from the small pool of highly skilled specialist Data Scientists.

Detroit's IT Systems “Beyond Fundamentally Broken”
Detroit’s financial IT systems are so bad that the city really hasn’t known what it is owed or in turn, what it owes, for years. A Bloomberg News story last year, for example, told the story of a $1 million check from a local school district that wasn’t deposited by Detroit for over a month. During that time, the check sat in a city hall desk drawer. That isn’t surprising, the Bloombergstory noted, as the city has a hard time keeping track of funds electronically wired to it. The financial systems are so poor that city income-tax receipts need to be processed by hand; in fact, some 70 percent of all of the city’s financial accounting entries are still done manually.

Adopting a Multi-Pronged Approach to Cyber Risk
Traditional security controls are no longer sufficient to address the risk, according to the executives. Thomas says insurance companies need to consider their threat landscape and take a right-sized approach. In addition, various stakeholders need to work together to share intelligence about who is trying to attack, especially among public and private sectors. Companies also need to get their boards involved. “There’s a growing sentiment among investors that cyber risk requires persistent involvement and oversight,” he says. Insurance companies, and the industry at large, also need to focus on talent, so there’s the expertise and “muscle memory” on hand to know how to detect and respond to threats.

Service Locator Pattern
The basic idea of pattern is to decouple service Consumers from their Providers. It allows a Consumer to easily change its service Provider. .... The Service Locator pattern is used for applying Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP) in your application. The DIPstates "A High level module in an application must not be directly dependent on Low level module, but must rely on abstraction". This allows modules to change their implementation without effecting each other providing loose coupling and easy extension.

How Do I Become a Data Scientist?
Capital One hired me for my logical thinking and not for the knowledge of the tools, I would need to use. In the following years, by working with several employers, freelancing and doing a few pet projects – I learnt several tools and techniques – SAS, SPSS, R and Python included! Having said that, if I was starting my career today, would I choose the same path? The answer is NO. I would take up a very different path, than what I did. This path would not only cut out the period of confusions I had, but also uses some of the dramatic shifts which have happened in analytics industry in past few years.

Human-Computer Interaction: Present and Future Trends
New forms of HCI will significantly change our lives. New interaction paradigms offer the chance to improve quality of life for people who can't take advantage of current interfaces — due to physical disabilities, for example. On the other hand, new issues will arise — particularly related to privacy, security, and ethics — thus potentially slowing the diffusion of new hardware and software products based on wearable (and "invisible") devices. Although some researchers have already investigated relationships between interface design and legal and privacy issues, national legislations are heterogeneous and not yet ready to cope with present and future advances in HCI.

Applying the 4Cs Map to Enhancing Team Performance
Learners retention is key so that not only they can learn from the mistakes but not repeat the same mistakes. Henrik Kniberg, an Agile and Lean coach says it best in one of his articles when he said, “The only real failure is the failure to learn from failure”. So, how can we accelerate learning and ensure that we retain what we learned? This leads us to the 4Cs Map which is a brain-based instructional design model that also apply to enhancing team performance. The 4Cs stand for Connections, Concept, Concrete Practice and Conclusion.

5 Case Studies in Mobile Payments
The embedded mobile payments feature in the iPhone 6 is breathing new life into a controversial product category that has numerous billion dollar corpses floating in its innovation ocean. Regardless of the well-publicized mobile payment failures in recent years, it is inevitable that a few successful players will emerge. The skyrocketing growth of mobile, online and social technologies have transformed global trade. Current and future generations of consumers will continue to expect new services that support multi channel commerce with non-intrusive (yet targeted) advertising and big data analytics, with ever-easier ways to make payments.

Quote for the day:

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something" -- Thomas Huxley

September 19, 2014

Wearable tech pioneer and Google Glass mastermind
Starner said he hasn't experienced any negativity while using Glass in public. He said the media has overstated the complaints against Glass wearers in public. While wearing Glass at the UbiComp and ISWC conference in Seattle this week, he deftly tapped the side of Glass and turned it on and off. "You can see when this is on," he said, pointing to the small light that appears when Glass is in use. "You can look closely and see what I'm doing. The gestures are socially appropriate." Priest-Dorman said, "People aren't threatened by eyewear. Both that the device becomes more accepted and more commonplace and doesn't stand out as much."

PaaSLane 2.5 optimizes Java and .NET apps for the cloud
This release of PaaSLane adds support for Google's AppEngine and Compute Engine. It also makes it possible for a customer's code to be analyzed locally rather than requiring the code to be uploaded to the cloud. The company calls this "local profiling." Profiling .NET applications has also been improved. ... CTP's move to offer local scanning and optimization will help companies that were uncomfortable loading their source code into a cloud environment. This one change could result in more of them consider integration with or migration to cloud computing environments.

Pragmatic Functional Refactoring with Java 8
You may be hearing a lot of buzz around functional programming. For example, Java 8 recently introduced new features (lambda expressions and method references) and APIs (Streams, Optional and CompletableFutures) inspired from functional ideas such as first-class functions, composition and immutability. However, what does this mean for my existing codebase? In this talk we show how you can refactor your traditional object-oriented Java to using FP features and APIs from Java 8 in a beneficial manner.

Why you should tap into the power of Ruby from the comfort of the JVM
The most important piece of JRuby for Java developers is one known as JRuby Embed. RedBridge is an small part of JRuby used to embed Ruby code atop a Java program. You can use it using a bare metal API, which means that you use internal classes provided by RedBridge to execute Ruby code inside Java; alternatively, you can you can use the JSR 223 spec as well. The disadvantage of the latest approach is that it raises the level of abstraction and probably you will end up by mixing both approaches, so for these examples we are going to use the JRuby Embed API directly.

Beyond Big Data: Consider the Impact of Emerging Technologies on Data Management
In today’s data management processes, data experts devise ways to measure the relevancy and currency of information stored in the companies’ databases. Methods are developed to score information based on recent usage. “Best record” methods are developed to identify duplicates and determine the surviving records. All these methods take time to develop and implement. Also consider that today most employees find it very difficult to report on the quality or usefulness of the data in a database. Employees need to find who in the company is responsible for the quality of the information or the appropriate data owners.

Developers Failing at Mobile App Privacy, Security
"Apps are becoming central to our lives, so it is important we understand how they work and what they are doing with our information," said Simon Rice of the United Kingdom's Information Commissioners Office (ICO), which issued a news release about the study. "Today's results show that many app developers are still failing to provide this information in a way that is clear and understandable to the average consumer. "The ICO and the other GPEN members will be writing out to those developers where there is clear room for improvement," Rice continued. "We will also be publishing guidance to explain the steps people can take to help protect their information when using mobile apps."

Big Success with Big Data
Organizations that start and complete big data projects see practical results and significant value, according to a recent study by Accenture Analytics. Those standing on the sidelines may be left behind. Executives report big data delivering business outcomes for a wide spectrum of strategic corporate goals — from new revenue generation and new market development to enhancing the customer experience and improving enterprise-wide performance. Organizations regard big data as extremely important and central to their digital strategy.

10 free analytics tools to help you manage social media
Everyone is after data. If you're running social media for a brand or company, it's best you're armed with information on the social accounts you manage -- not only so you can show how social efforts are lining up with business goals, but also for the sake of a deeper understanding of what works and what doesn't. There's no shortage of tools that will tell you various parts of the story, from who is mentioning you and where, to what hashtags mean and how to best to use them. The following 10 tools, however, are built for giving users analytics. Most of the them are free or have a free version to get you started.

Web Application Security Vulnerabilities
Vulnerability is any weakness or flaw in the application that exposes the application to the attacker who can use it to perform unauthorized actions such as retreiving confidential information. Many website security problems come from believing that users will perform only the actions that they are supposed to perform. A malicious user may try to perform the actions that he is not supposed to. Software vulnerability is one of the biggest challenges of the software industry. Particularly public web sites are more prone to vulnerability attacks since they are exposed to lot many users.

Why big data evangelists should be sent to re-education camps
"Too often, big data enables the practice of apophenia: Seeing patterns where none actually exist, simply because enormous quantities of data can offer connections that radiate in all directions. In one notable example, Leinweber (2007) demonstrated that data mining techniques could show a strong but spurious correlation between the changes in the S&P 500 stock index and butter production in Bangladesh," they wrote. In her paper The Surveillance-Innovation Complex: The Irony of the Participatory Turn, Julie Cohen noted that surveillance has become increasingly privatised, commercialised, and participatory. Surveillance is no longer something to fear and regulate.

Quote for the day:

"Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion." -- Bill Hybels

September 18, 2014

Cyber crime wake-up call
Part of the problem is that cyber security is no longer a question of building a firewall and installing anti-virus software. To begin with, KCS finds that roughly four-fifths of malicious cyber intrusions can be traced from within the organisation being hacked. The individual concerned could be a disgruntled employee or someone who is being blackmailed, bribed or otherwise coerced into helping cyber criminals or competitors find a hole in the company's defences.

5 Best Practices For Agile Analytics Organizations
One of the ironies of analytics today is that while the technology is more powerful and easier to use than ever, the fast-changing organizational and technology landscapes have lead to increased discontent and confusion for IT and business users alike. The challenge is to combine the benefits of self-service: more flexibility & speed, greater adoption, and better alignment with business needs; but avoid the potential problems, including needless duplication of data and tools, lack of overall visibility of the business, and diluted responsibility.

With this tool, you can run nearly any Android app on a Chromebook
Did you hear the big news? Android apps now run on Chromebooks. To be more specific, four Android apps run on Chromebooks. It now sounds like a little less of a big deal but in the long run, this has the potential to strengthen the case for Chrome OS, as we discussed in detail on this week’s Chrome Show podcast. We’ll have to wait for Google to work with Android developers and for the App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) to mature from its current beta status. But you don’t have to wait for more Android apps on Chromebooks if you want to use an unofficialsolution: With it, you can install and try just about any Android app on a Chromebook, such as Flipboard.

How IT should prep for iOS 8
iOS 8 isn't as paradigm shifting as those releases. Most new features are aimed more at consumers than business users or enterprise IT. HealthKit, HomeKit, Handoff and other Continuity features that link iOS devices and Macs, and even the upcoming Apple Pay, are decidedly consumer-oriented. But that doesn't mean IT departments can easily write off iOS 8 as a welcome, but unimportant update. Apple's new mobile OS presents several challenges (and opportunities) to IT shops as well as enterprise app developers. Here's what IT departments should keep in mind as Apple launches iOS 8 later today and rolls out the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on Friday.

Risk management key to cyber strategy, says BP
“Uncertainty is a fact of life, but we can be organised in our approach to managing risks by having a clear set of risk management processes in place,” he said. One key process is aimed at identifying and prioritising each threat based on a risk assessment. However, Dudley said as member of the highly-targeted energy sector, BP has a multitude of risks to manage and is constantly looking to innovations in cyber security to improve its defence capabilities. ... “Security controls are not enough – employees need to know they have a role to play and how they should respond to the worst-case scenarios,” said Dudley.

Continuous Delivery in Practice
Continuous Delivery allows you to get new features and capabilities to market quickly and reliably—two highly desirable outcomes. In this best practice guide, learn from successful Continuous Delivery practitioners and hear lessons from Salesforce.com, NYSE-Euronext, and Edmunds.com.

TechUK manifesto calls on future government to put digital first
“What interests me is how very clear, how very direct, how very ambitious, but how very achievable the recommendations in this manifesto are. Where I come from, we’d say ‘there is not a lot of flannel in here’. It is very achievable,” he said. “What is very clear is the huge opportunities that are available, not on the horizon or in the long distance future, but now. The prize is immediate if we can grasp it now,” he added. Lord Timothy Clement-Jones, representing the Lib Dems, made an interesting case, pointing out that while the UK was good at funding and producing start-ups, it was appalling at providing later-stage finance.

IT outsourcing: As Romania vies to be the new India, can the country keep up?
"Romania is seen as a complementary location to India as Eastern Europe provides a perfect balance between cost and quality. Our clients say we are 2-3 times more productive than the traditional offshore vendors. There is better ability to understand the requirements and needs beyond project specs," said John Cotterell, CEO at Endava. The company has more than 1,100 full time employees in Romania, located in Bucharest, but also in Cluj-Napoca and Iasi. Tholon's most recent Top 100 Outsourcing Destinations report includes several Eastern European countries, and puts the Romanian capital of Bucharest 40th in the list last year, up from 44th in 2012.

Stop Governing Your Data - Start Leading Data Behaviors and Outcomes
The work of sourcing and assuring its basic integrity for their use has overtaken their analytic and execution mandate. This over-emphasis on data sourcing and assurance undermines their performance and limits their career potential since they cannot shine based on analysis and execution alone, as they should. Relieving them of most of this burden by offering a much smaller comparative burden of controlling data as it is produced and consumed becomes a very attractive option, especially if it takes much less time and everyone involved is committed to this effort.

Once your car's connected to the Internet, who guards your privacy?
Modern vehicles, Schneider said, can have as many as 200 CPUs and multiple communications networks between internal computer systems. While most systems are isolated within the car, others are used to transmit data back to manufacturers, dealers or even the government. "On the plus side, this data can make the user experience much richer and personalized because from one vehicle to the next, it will know all my settings and [be] able to integrate your car into your digital day," Schneider said. "The flip side of that is it creates risk."

Quote for the day:

"Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance." -- J. Donald Walters

September 17, 2014

Artificial Intelligence Is Doomed if We Don't Control Our Data
Arguably the most widespread application of AI comes in the form of personalized advertising, where ceding control of our personal data has also set the precedent for relinquishing rights to our digital identity. In their article, "LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-mail Contacts Lawsuit", Bloomberg recently reported that the business networking company may have, "violated customers' privacy rights for marketing purposes by accessing their external e-mail accounts and downloading their contacts' addresses." The decision means LinkedIn members who filed the complaint can seek revenue LinkedIn made using their e-mail accounts.

Be a data scientist for the love of the craft not the perks
It would be miserable to work as a data scientist if it's just a job. As a physicist or a mathematician, you may believe you're a good fit for data science, but if you're not accustomed to programming around the clock to hit a deadline you feel is unrealistic, the life of a data scientist may not suit you well. And as a computer programmer, you may feel you just need to dust off some of your college math books; however, if you don't have the patience for solving complicated math problems, data science may be the wrong path to pursue. Graphic artists seem to have the hardest transition.

Why Your Company Needs Both a CIO and a CISO
CIOs have so many projects, problems, and plans on their plate that they let slide their responsibilities to bolster the security profile of their systems and to monitor the integrity of the networks and machines they already have in place. Moreover, a CIO may not have the technical expertise or continuing education required to stay on top of security threats and the evolving nature of the security landscape. No matter who the CISO reports to – whether it's the CIO or, even better, the COO – he or she should be charged solely with managing the current security profile and ensuring that the hardening of networks and systems continues at an efficient but effective pace.

Would You be able to Weather the Storm of a Cyber Data Breach?
In evaluating our clients’ risks, we believe that each company has a responsibility to focus on managing the unpredictable threats that are a result of doing business in today’s technologically advanced world and optimizing its ability to respond and recover in the event of a breach. Effectively managing cyber risk requires strategic insight and technological prowess. Cyber risks should be addressed in a three-dimensional way. As important as it is to safeguard data, many organizations’ cyber risk management processes often overlook risks outside the company’s servers and firewalls.

Healthcare and Financial Services Sectors Struggle with Virtualization Security Concerns
Interestingly, these two sectors, which seem so reluctant to implement new virtualization technologies, don’t seem overly concerned about securing the virtual machines they already have. In the Financial Services industry, “Security of Virtualized Infrastructure” was listed as a top IT security concern by only 16% of respondents, and only 12% in Healthcare, compared to an overall average of 14%. Why the disparity? The answer could be attributed to the attitude of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Kaspersky Lab has previously reported that a large portion of IT professionals lack a strong understanding of virtualization security.

VMware's Former CTO Herrod On IT's Future
In addition to tools and applications, companies need to worry about having in place "very formal API structures" to manage the creation of mobile app APIs that may be used by thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers. One of the companies that he's advised General Catalyst to back is Runscope, which specializes in automated testing of mobile app APIs. "Runscope is a company that is trying to help companies build APIs and make sure they're robust," he said, and such companies are going to be "the picks and shovels of the new economy."

Five Habits of Data-Driven People
We all know that using data to make decisions is better than relying on assumptions and opinions. But we also know that exercise is better for us than kicking back with a stiff drink and watching television. Is that knowledge enough to make us choose exercise? Not usually -- unless we make a conscious effort to work it into our daily lives. People who exercise regularly tend to adopt habits such as putting their running shoes next to their bed or always working out at the same time, and data-driven people do the same thing. Here are five habits common among data-driven people.

Wikileaks releases FinFisher files to highlight government malware abuse
FinFisher can infect Apple OS X, Windows and Linux computers as well as Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Phone devices. The files, originally obtained by a hacker going by the name Phineas Fisher in August, should be used to improve detection systems to protect people’s PCs and mobiles, WikiLeaks said. The organisation also believes the files will help researchers uncover further human rights abuses related to FinFisher, which can be used to siphon off data from machines and spy on communications, from email to Skype.

Programmers unknowingly inherit development framework security issues
Watson added that at least with Java, a developer can mark fields as transient so that they won't be subjected to the serialization process -- effectively barring an attacker from modifying the field. More generally, he said that developers need to remember that an untrusted source may modify any data, and as such, there should be a thorough sanitization process for such fields. ... more security mechanisms put into development frameworks themselves, or at least documentation warning developers that open-source components may still include vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.

Meet Zuta, the tiny printer that drives itself to make documents on the go
The idea for Zuta had been lingering in Elbaum's mind for a while, after having faced the need to print documents on the go, and not finding a product to meet that need. "I had this idea in my head for some time," Elbaum said. "We presented it to some professors at our institute, and to the institute's management... We passed three committees, and got the initial funding. We used that money to hire an electrical engineer, one of the institute's top students, and started rolling out as a company."

Quote for the day:

"The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score" -- Bill Copeland

September 16, 2014

Aligning Business & Technology Strategies
“The biggest factor here is interdepartmental communication. Obviously technology affects every area of the business. You have the accounting team using software and resources to maintain the books; marketing teams using technology platforms to reach consumers, sales teams using CRMs and other tools to manage appointments and meetings—so it’s important that all of their technology needs are communicated to IT. IT should then vet these needs to ensure they align with the overarching technology strategy currently being deployed,” Odegard explained.

20 funniest cartoons on Big Data
Crayon is all about innovation and fun. So, this time, we thought we should publish some of the funniest cartoons on Big Data. Here is a collection of Dilbert’s 20 funniest cartoons on Big Data, data mining, data privacy, data security, data accuracy etc… Have fun!!!

How the Internet of Things changes our lifestyle
The Internet of Things, in general, refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. If all objects and people in daily life were equipped with identifiers, they could be managed and inventoried by computers. This tagging of things, besides using radio-frequency identification (RFID), may be achieved through such technologies like near field communication (NFC), barcodes and QR codes. In the IT world today, the term Internet of Things is used to describe the advanced connectivity of devices, systems and services that goes beyond machine-to-machine communications; it covers a variety of protocols, domains and applications.

How the Technology Ecosystem Puts Power Back in the Hands of the CIO
The modern IT environment requires easy access to new solutions for a number of reasons not the least of which is agility. However, as indicated above, the traditional approach is the enemy of agility. So, if you need agility, and you need to manage your costs and solution requirements what can you do? You must have access, access, access, and then maybe a little more access. Access to solutions in a diverse and in-proximity environment is a foundational must. Without proximity, you can’t possibly adopt, change, increase, or decrease your selection choices as quickly, safely or cost effectively.

IBM takes Watson freemium: Time for bring your own analytics?
Under the freemium model, Watson Analytics is available on the desktop, Android and Apple's iOS via a Web site. IBM would charge for more sophisticated analysis, but the tiers and pricing model is still being worked out. IBM's challenge will be to highlight insights and entice users to drill down into the data and ultimately pay. Altshuler said that IBM is looking to get Watson Analytics into the hands of as many people as possible. For instance, Watson Analytics could ingest 20 spreadsheets and data from Salesforce, Teradata and Oracle systems to start making connections and answering questions in a natural language format.

Basho Advances NoSQL Riak Enterprise 2.0 With Search, Advanced Data Types
The two big additions in version 2.0 are enhanced search functionality and advanced data types. The update also comes with some security enhancements and simplified configuration management. The enhancements position Riak 2.0 as a platform for a wider variety of applications. ... Apache Solr has been leveraged for search in 2.0 giving better performance. “With this powerful search capability, we can now support different apps within the organization,” said Coppola. “It moves us from point solution to platform.” The 2.0 release also includes support for new distributed data types, including sets, flags, register and maps.

HIPAA Violations: Don't Be A Headline
A HIPAA breach will affect most departments in an organization so it is important to establish a crisis management team composed of department heads including public relations, human resources, IT, legal, and finance. Each participant should provide relevant information pertaining to the incident. For example, IT can provide an audit log highlighting a device's security posture at the time of the breach. It is important to ensure that a detailed communications plan is in place and that employees are aware of how they should respond to questions about the breach.

Big Data's Big Impact on Enterprise IT--The Open Group Panel Discussion
A panel of experts explores how big data changes the status quo for architecting the enterprise. Learn how enterprises should anticipate and correct the effects and impacts of big data, as well the simultaneous impacts of cloud and mobile computing. The panel was part of The Open Group Conference on Jan. 29, 2013 in Newport Beach, California.

Intel's Kim Stevenson on creating insight and value
"Everything Intel has always done is complicated, but the big difference in an SoC is that you have to integrate different blocks, each of which is developed to its own schedule. And these parts have to be integrated and tested, just as a typical large manufacturer would need to do," she says. By analysing the engineering process for SoC designs, Stevenson says, the IT team identified around 25 projects which could help the business by reducing the cycle time. One of these projects involved optimising the compilation of engineering changes.

An Alliance of Major Players to Guide Open-Source Software
Open source is a popular approach to software, in which anyone can contribute to and use the code. Formal approval of changes comes from agreed-upon authorities who speak for the group. It is considered a good way to build software with fewer bugs, and such software makes up much of the world’s mobile and computer server operating systems, as well as many other applications. “There is a problem here we all feel is not getting better anytime soon,” said Jay Parikh, global head of engineering at Facebook. “We feel there is a speed at which things have to move.”

Quote for the day:

"Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got." -- Peter Drucker