Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

March 25, 2016

Should You Worry That Your Car Will be Hacked?

Consumers, however, should stay informed about the capabilities of their cars, just as they would about most connected devices they own -- from PCs to smartphones to smart home appliances -- especially considering that vehicles are much a more complex and "dangerous tool," Menting said. "So it is perhaps even more important to understand the risks," she added. Egil Juliussen, director of research at IHS Automotive Technology, said other than gaining notoriety, there really isn't much of an incentive for hackers to break into your vehicle's electronic systems. In fact, the only business case for hackers to break into a vehicle is to extort money from owners or automakers. "They have to earn money on it; otherwise, it doesn't pay for them to do it," Juliussen said.

As Silicon Valley chills, Europe’s tech gets hotter

Silicon Valley is indeed undergoing a chill, while tech in Europe is growing, purposefully, confidently and across a broad front of geographical hubs and industries. Currently, France is leading Europe in investments so far this year. CB Insights shows that the absolute number of funding rounds for early-stage companies — what’s called Series A rounds — in the U.S. appear to have peaked in 2014 ... In Europe, Series A investments only really started to ramp from 2014, and the number of local companies hitting this funding milestone continues to rise. 2015 was a record year for Europe — up 12 percent from the year before. In January and February so far this year, A rounds are up 38 percent year-over-year.

SDNs come to the branch office, with risks

Despite the benefits of SD-WAN, Shaffer says that he still worries about the viability of startups such as Viptela in such an immature market: "I'm relying on something they have and what happens if they go away or get acquired and some company buries their product?" Shaffer says. "You may have time to get out, but you've invested the time and it's not what you wanted." While there is no crystal ball to help Shaffer see whether Cisco Systems or some other player decides to gobble Viptela, Shaffer says he believes the company is well-positioned for growth based on its funding and commercial track record. Viptela in 2014 raised $33.5 million from Sequoia Capital and counts Gap as one of its customers. Last month Verizon began selling a hosted SD-WAN service powered by Viptela.

The Evolution of today’s enterprise applications

In the old days, corporate IT departments built networks and data centers that supported computing monocultures of servers, desktops and routers, all of which was owned, specified, and maintained by the company. Those days are over, and now how you deploy your technologies is critical, whatone writer calls “the post-cloud future.” Now we have companies who deliver their IT infrastructure completely from the cloud and don’t own much of anything. IT has moved to being more of a renter than a real estate baron. ... At the same time, the typical endpoint computing device has gone from a desktop or laptop computer to a tablet or smartphone, often purchased by the end user, who expects his or her IT department to support this choice. The actual device itself has become almost irrelevant, whatever its operating system and form factor.

Are electronic medical records worth it?

The value of the technology has been heralded as improved diagnosis and treatment through better information access and sharing. Researches, however, have found that the vast majority of providers don’t share electronic patient data outside their own practice. According to a study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, just 14 percent of providers were sharing data with other providers in 2013 Psychology Today notes that many medical centers’ outpatient systems cannot “talk” to their inpatient hospital systems; and actually accused “One of the bigger “providers” of electronic health records” of creating data silos that prevent the sharing of their records with outside organizations unless a high fee is paid. This current state of affairs argues for strong action by the government and even stronger action by healthcare organizations.

Quantum Networkers, Watch Out: Twisting Light Slows IT Down

By putting a twist on beams of light and changing how they travel through space, engineers can create another variable for encoding information. Each kind of twist creates a different corkscrew pattern, and theoretically there's no limit to the number of patterns that can be created, said University of Ottawa Assistant Professor Ebrahim Karimi, who led the research team. With that extra form of encoding, networks could carry as much as four times as much data as they do now, just using fiber already in the ground, Karimi said. More advanced fiber could allow for many more times the data. Twisted light may also play a role in quantum computing, the fledgling field of number-crunching using more than just binary zeroes and ones.

Australia can't afford to miss the 'blockchain' revolution

Financial services is the largest and also the fastest-growing sector in the Australian economy, according to the recent UBS/FSC State of the Industry report. The broader services sector is the key contributor to employment growth, making up for weaker figures in other sectors, according to the RBA. Think about things like international tourism, wealth management and natural energy. It is in the services industry that blockchain technology can be most transformative. We do need to catch ourselves before we go running away with all the possibilities of the blockchain. On the one hand, the technology has the potential to reduce fraud because of the transparency among users. On the other hand, there are still open questions about how secure the system is, which has obvious implications for something described, ironically enough, by The Economist as "the trust machine".

9 Myths Surrounding Blockchain Smart Contracts

Historically, the concept was first introduced by Nick Szabo in 1994. Smart contracts then had a long gestation period of inactivity and disinterest, because there was no platform that could enforce them, until the advent of blockchain technology in 2009. Now, smart contracts are entering their prime, especially since Ethereum has popularized them further by making their programming a basic tenet of their blockchain's power. Like any new buzzword, the more a term gets popular, the more it spreads around. The more it will get used, but also misused and abused. It will mean a lot of different things to different people. Here’s a list of 9 misconceptions about smart contracts, and my efforts to debunk and explain away those misconceptions:

Interactive Intelligence Doubles Down on Cloud Computing

Each microcomponent processes one transaction at a time. If processing completes successfully, it moves to the next, and so on. If a transaction fails, that transaction might be lost, but another version of the microcomponent is activated to go on processing other transactions of the same sort. Thus any failure is isolated and has limited impact. If the number of transactions is higher than expected, this can be handled in one of two ways; either the system calls on AWS to provide more processing resources, or more instances of the microcomponent can be activated. The architecture also impacts how bugs are fixed or new capabilities are added. In both cases a new microcomponent is developed, and once tested, it takes over from an existing one or is activated to provide new capabilities.

Security vs. privacy: Evaluating the government’s case

Clearly, the government couldn’t compel the terrorist to reveal the key, since he is dead. So instead, it had to reveal its own blundering by taking this to court. I can only assume that, by choosing this case to push its agenda, the government is either desperate, feigning desperation or just staggeringly inept. I don’t find comfort in any of those scenarios. If the government is truly desperate, it has to know that it is losing the “crypto wars” and this is a last-ditch attempt to try to extract victory from the jaws of defeat. If it is merely feigning desperation, it is trying to lull us back into thinking our systems are more secure than they really are — meanwhile, it has developed or is developing some post-Snowden means of obtaining our data. And if it’s just staggeringly inept — then God save us.

Quote for the day:

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.” -- @SirKenRobinson

March 24, 2016

University IT departments struggle to stay always open, always secure

If IT "cannot be agile enough in its review and implementation of cloud services, the path of least resistance for users may be to go it alone, without institutional IT involvement," Juckiewicz said. In the process, users can unwittingly put institutional or individual data at risk. Often called "shadow IT," the tendency to look beyond the central IT department for software and other technology became more widespread in organizations once people started bringing smartphones and tablets to work and using them to accomplish work tasks. Cloud applications available over the Internet, software as a service, made it even easier for departments outside IT to get whatever they wanted. It has happened in every industry, and higher education is no exception.

IAM is the future for managing data security

IAM systems prevent hackers from escalating privileges and gaining access to sensitive applications and data once they have compromised an employee’s credentials. They can also mitigate the reach of malicious insiders. IAM also helps to achieve regulatory compliance. Auditors are getting smarter about enforcing regulatory compliance. IAM helps to satisfy compliance mandates around separation of duties, enforcing and auditing access policies to sensitive accounts and data, and making sure users do not have excessive privileges. It can also improve employee productivity and reduce helpdesk costs. Good IAM processes and tools alleviate employee and customer frustration by letting users log in faster, such as by using single sign-on (SSO).

The Power of Next-Generation Profitability Analytics

A well-built, multidimensional profitability solution becomes a solid finance foundation, especially when coupled with a single, integrated analytic data platform or similar cloud-based business intelligence platform. Technologies such as these not only help define and run your profitability model, but they also offer the ability to make changes quickly, run ad-hoc analyses, manage very large data sets and provide reporting and dashboarding beyond what’s available with ERP solutions. What’s more, this type of finance foundation can ultimately serve as the single source for all of the diverse types of analytics performed within the CFO department, because there is a direct link back to the General Ledger.

What Everyone Should Know About Cognitive Computing

The goal of cognitive computing is to simulate human thought processes in a computerized model. Using self-learning algorithms that use data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing, the computer can mimic the way the human brain works. While computers have been faster at calculations and processing than humans for decades, they haven’t been able to accomplish tasks that humans take for granted as simple, like understanding natural language, or recognizing unique objects in an image. Some people say that cognitive computing represents the third era of computing: we went from computers that could tabulate sums (1900s) to programmable systems (1950s), and now to cognitive systems.

Are you ready for an SDN deployment?

The principal motivation behind SDN deployments and hyper-convergence is the need for a responsive and nimble IT organization. While it's definitely the future, not all are ready for it. The shift can be too drastic for enterprises still struggling with the basics of managing an efficient infrastructure. Are you saddled with technical debt? Could your policies, standards and procedures use work? Do you have staffing challenges? The first steps toward deploying an SDN or SDDC strategy should include a phased design, with an analysis of the current environment addressing any gaps that are barriers to the future road map.

FBI, Apple battle may leave lasting legacy

"Never before have I seen encryption being in the public eye so much," said Rod Schultz, vice president of product at Rubicon Labs. "Time magazine, John Oliver -- if you told me this would happen a year ago, I would think it was impossible." The case has become an opportunity to educate the public about encryption and privacy, he said. "I think customers and the public are becoming very very savvy," he added. "For me, that's the best outcome right now." When combined with the recent memory of the Snowden leaks, he added, it makes for a strong argument against giving governments backdoors around encryption and weakening security. And the battle over unlocking Rizwan Farook's phone was just the tip of the iceberg, said Harvey Anderson, chief legal officer at AVG Technologies

DDoS attack threat cannot be ignored

One of the reasons why DDoS is such a significant threat is the relative simplicity of arranging an attack. There have been reports of a DDoS attack being hired as a ‘service’, sometimes for as little as £10. The distributed nature of DDoS attacks, combined with the anonymous nature of the internet, means the instigators are rarely caught. To have an appropriate level of planned safeguards in place for a DDoS attack, companies need to assess how much of their revenue is generated through their website. This revenue can range from orders taken online or appointments being booked, through to sales of digital goods and ordering of online services. Naturally, the ratio of digital revenue to physical sales will determine the appropriate level of response and preparation. As a worst-case scenario, companies should also plan how they would continue to operate if their website went down.

The Challenge of Monitoring Containers at Scale

Application functionality is becoming more granular and more independently scalable and resilient, which is a challenge for traditional monitoring solutions. If a single component within a microservice architecture fails, there may be no business impact, and so the severity of alert should match this fact. The traditional monitoring tool approach of testing whether something is 'up' or 'down' falls short, and accordingly some organisations are building their own monitoring systems. The transient nature of containers also presents new challenges with monitoring, especially when combined with the emerging popularity of scheduling and orchestration systems, such as Kubernetes, Mesos and AWS ECS.

How FinTech is shaping Financial Services

New digital technologies are in the process of reshaping the value proposition of existing financial products and services. While we should not underestimate the capacity of incumbents to assimilate innovative ideas, the disruption of the financial sector is clearly underway. And consumer banking and payments, already on the disruption radar, will be the most exposed in the near future, followed by insurance and asset management. ... The investment industry is also being pulled into the vortex of vast technological developments. The emergence of data analytics in the investment space has enabled firms to hone in on investors and deliver tailored products and automated investing. Additionally, innovations in lending and equity crowdfunding are providing access to asset classes formerly unavailable to individual investors, such as commercial real estate.

The Networked World

"Today when we virtualize some functions, whether it's load balancing or a policy engine or whatever we can do in an SDN construct, we can do it because we can virtualize those functions without giving up performance. We couldn't do that 10 years or even six years ago,” Mehra says. "We are in the middle of this software-defined revolution, but it was made possible by multiple pieces all falling in place: advancements on the semiconductor side, advancements with other hardware, and advancements related to how we can consume software in the networking world." This coalescence of new developments is, in fact, what is enabling the Internet of Things: advances in sensors, in wireless networking, in software control, in distributed intelligence, and in big data tools that make it possible to extract actionable intelligence from a plethora of data points.

Quote for the day:

"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for." -- Oscar Wilde

March 20, 2016

Cyber-Insurance: Is It Right for Your Business?

As a result of actual and threatened events, the insurance market has responded with a new product to protect businesses from data breaches: cyber-insurance. Traditionally, businesses sought coverage for losses of data breaches under commercial property, commercial general liability, and business interruption policies for first-party losses, and under commercial liability and directors and officers liability policies for third-party losses. However, in the late 1990s, insurers began offering cyber-insurance in the form of standalone policies. Yet, despite recent data breaches, only 20 to 30 percent of American firms purchase cyber-insurance. The case law interpreting these policies is scarce, as courts struggle to define the parameters of cyber-liability. Courts are increasingly allowing plaintiffs to file creative claims against businesses in the wake of data breaches.

The future of computing

Moore’s law was never a physical law, but a self-fulfilling prophecy—a triumph of central planning by which the technology industry co-ordinated and synchronised its actions. Its demise will make the rate of technological progress less predictable; there are likely to be bumps in the road as new performance-enhancing technologies arrive in fits and starts. But given that most people judge their computing devices on the availability of capabilities and features, rather than processing speed, it may not feel like much of a slowdown to consumers. For companies, the end of Moore’s law will be disguised by the shift to cloud computing. Already, firms are upgrading PCs less often, and have stopped operating their own e-mail servers.

Big Data for Governance - Implications for Policy, Practice and Research

This predicted growth is expected to have significant impact on all organizations, be it small, medium or large, which include exchanges, banks, brokers, insurers, data vendors and technology and services suppliers. This also extends beyond the organization with the increasing focus on rules and regulations designed to protect a firm’s employees, customers and shareholders as well as the economic wellbeing of the state in which the organization resides. This pervasive use and commercialization of big data analytical technologies is likey to have far reaching implications in meeting regulatory obligations and governance related activities.

XGIMI projects innovation in Android entertainment

The device is ideally suited for a number of use-cases including families or students that are space-constrained or cannot accommodate a permanently wall-mounted television. It incorporates a 700 ANSI Lumens OSRAM LED projector element which is fully capable of both 1080p and 4K output, and can render 3D video, with up to a 300" diagonal width projection area. The device can also act in a "Business" mode where data from a cloud storage service or from local USB can be presented using a built-in Microsoft Office-compatible viewer. Of course, with Office 365 for Android, it's also possible to run the real thing, provided you have the right packages installed. In its pre-production configuration the device was shipped to me with a modified version of Android 4.3 using AOSP-based sources. The device uses a 1.5Ghz quad-core ARMv7-based SoC, which is comparable to that which might be used in a high-end smartphone.

Beyond Bitcoin: The blockchain revolution in financial services

Interest in the technology exploded when it became clear that blockchain can be used to document the transfer of any digital asset, record the ownership of physical and intellectual property, and establish rights through smart contracts, among other applications. By reordering and automating complex, labor-intensive processes, the technology can enable organizations to operate both faster and more cheaply. Financial institutions are exploring a variety of opportunities to use blockchain, including applications to improve and enhance currency exchange, supply chain management, trade execution and settlement, remittance, peer-to-peer transfers, micropayments, asset registration, correspondent banking and regulatory reporting.

Who Are the Bad Guys and What Do They Want?

Recent breaches at the Internal Revenue Service are a stark reminder that cyber crime is alive and well. According to Center for Strategic and International Studies, cyber crime and cyber espionage cost the global economy between $375 billion and $575 billion annually, or roughly 1% of global income. So who are those guys and what do they want? Based on interviews with several cyber security experts, this O’Reilly report provides a concise and highly informative look into various actors who populate this murky world. You’ll explore some of their methods and motivations, as well as new approaches from the both US government and private sector to help organizations manage cyber security more aggressively. ... Get a copy of this report and find out what your organization can do to deal with this ongoing threat.

Defend against ransomware with 3 easy steps

The fight to secure your business is a never-ending battle. Ransomware is a particular strain of malware that quietly works in the background to encrypt user documents with a secret cryptographic key kept at a remote location and threatens to only release this key upon payment to the perpetrators. This type of malware has mostly changed in its increasing sophistication and prevalence, as well as the use of robust encryption schemes that offer little hope of undoing by the time its nefarious encrypting work is completed. According to Software Advice, businesses are taking note of the risks surrounding this malware. Sixty-seven percent of business decision-makers claim they'd never pay a ransom to regain access to infected files, yet only 23 percent say they're "very confident" their data is secure from ransomware attacks.

Spark in Action Book Review & Interview

Project Tungsten is one of these efforts under “get Spark as close to bare metal as possible” umbrella, where the goal is to remove any general-purpose software between Spark and the operating system (Tungsten allows Spark to bypass JVM and do memory management by itself). Tungsten makes a lot of sense, mainly because it makes a large class of JVM-related problems go away, garbage collection being the main one. Since end users are not managing memory manually, there’s no risk of getting segmentation fault errors, so the full potential is there to give Spark arbitrary large chunks of off-heap memory with significant performance improvements without any down sides that would be visible from the end user perspective.

Why Central Banks Should Start Issuing Electronic Money

The Bank of England currently issues central bank money reactively: it issues banknotes in whatever quantities are needed to meet demand from the public, and issues central bank reserves in order to meet demand from the banks. It could choose to issue digital cash in the same way, by providing the infrastructure for Digital Cash Accounts but letting the public determine how to split their holdings of money between bank deposits and digital cash. ... Alternatively, by taking a proactive approach to issuance, the Bank of England could use digital cash as a monetary policy tool to stimulate aggregate demand and influence the economy. If every citizen had a Digital Cash Account at the Bank of England (either directly or indirectly), then it would be a simple process for the Bank of England to make small and occasional ‘helicopter drops’ of newly created digital cash to every citizen.

What Should Data Scientists Know About Psychology?

How data is collected informs what we can conclude from that data. Many methodological confounds exist in relation to what can be extrapolated from data to maximize the ecological validity of what can be accurately concluded. Implementing quality assurance in collecting data, such that what is supposed to be measured is indeed being measured requires manipulation checks, quality testing and research. Then how the data is coded and quantified creates another lens of possible distortion. Poor measurement cannot be fixed post-hoc in already collected data. Furthermore, because statistics requires the calculated assumption of error (unlike formal mathematics) how one implements data mining/management decides on appropriate statistical analysis and interprets the results is of utmost importance in a field of scientific inquiry.

Quote for the day:

"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." -- M.C. Escher

March 19, 2016

How to Connect Cisco Nexus 9396PX to 40G Network

The traditional network usually used a three tier network architecture. However, with the migration of 40/100G, a new architecture is taking place of the traditional one with great advantages. This is known as spine-leaf architecture. ... In spine-leaf network architecture for 40G application, the connections between the spine switches and leaf switches are 40G, while connections between the leaf switches and servers are usually 1/10G. Thus these 40G QSFP+ ports can be used to connect the spine switch and the 1G SFP/10G SFP+ are suggested to connect servers and routers. To accomplish the whole spine-leaf connection, optics and cables or DAC (direct attach cable) should be used. The following picture shows a 40G spine-leaf architecture with Cisco Nexus 9396PX being used in the leaf layer and the fiber cabling choice for Cisco Nexus 9396PX switch in this architecture.

HPE IaaS reference architecture for SAP Business Applications

The solution blueprint outlined in this paper provides an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud infrastructure for SAP Business Applications under both traditional and SAP HANA In-Memory databases as the Cloud service. The platform provides the ease of use and flexibility needed to minimize the effort to bring legacy platforms to SAP HANA performance levels and addresses future needs coming with SAP’s newest software generation S/4HANA. The configurations are based on Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers, storage, networking and software. For customers that need maximum and dedicated database performance, this white paper describes a high performance configuration optimized for SAP HANA bare metal deployments and SAP Business Applications based on virtualization layers.

FlexPod and UCS – where are we now?

Recent announcements around the Gen 3 UCS Fabric Interconnects have revealed that 40GbE is now going to be the standard for UCS connectivity solutions, and the new chassis designs show 4 x 40GbE QSFP connections, totaling 320Gbps total bandwidth per chassis, this is an incredible throughput, and although I can’t see 99% of customers going anywhere near these levels, it does help to strengthen the UCS platform’s use cases for even the most high performance environments, and reduces the requirement for Infiniband type solutions for high throughput environments. Another interesting point, and following on from the ACI ramblings above, is that the new 6300 series Fabric Interconnects are now based on the Nexus 9300 switching line, rather than the Nexus 5K based 6200 series.

Jive prescribes collaboration software as best DNA match for healthcare

The theory here is: better collaboration could improve information, could improve patient care, could improve the fight against the nursing shortage the USA currently being experienced. According to a press statement, "Built on the cloud-based Jive-n interactive intranet, this solution improves the accessibility of nursing curriculum, best practices, specialised knowledge and peer-to-peer feedback amongst nursing educators, professionals and students." Oregon was the first US state to implement a statewide, multi-campus consortium approach for nursing education and OCNE's collaborative online community is claimed to be the first of its kind.

Getting Started with Blockchain

Blockchains are going to be useful wherever there is a need for a trustworthy record, something which is pretty vital for transactions of all sorts whether it be in banking, for legal documents or for registries of things like land or high value art works etc. Startups such as Stampery are looking to use blockchain technology to provide low cost certification services. Blockchain is not just for pure startups however. Twenty-five banks are part of the blockchain company, called R3 CEV, which aims to develop common standards around this technology. R3 CEV’s Head of Technology is Richard Gendal Brown an ex-colleague from IBM.

Open Blockchain

OBC is a modular-based protocol for recording and accessing transactions on a private ledger. Transactions, in this context, can have a wide definition, ranging from data to assets, instructions, and identities. A system that combines both the transactional processing protocol and the information store is a big advantage for multiple domains. For example, the protocol is modular so network administrators can define their own constraints and then set the protocol accordingly. This open source fabric allows infinite sets of unique actors to create their own networks. Communities create a permissioned network, where validating and non-validating nodes are operated by known whitelisted entities. These identities are granted access by an issuing authority on the network. This model is substantially different from current blockchains.

Identity theft, fraudsters, and what to know to prevent an attack

One of the pitfalls to keeping up with security trends, Platt said, "Is that there is a certain pace that organizations work at and putting changes in place can be difficult. You have to be able to make changes immediately, so you always want systems that can be changed and modified at the pace of fraud not at the pace of IT organizations." The pace of attacks has increased through technology, and according to Platt, "Some studies say that up to one-third of all traffic online is non-human." Innovation is driving change at a rapid pace, but while the technology available to people in the security industry is fast, it is changing just as fast for the bad guys. Platt said, "The pace of innovation is helping all of us so that every new attack can be identified and stopped."

BPM tools now used for complex event processing architecture

The events in the context of BPM can be internal events defined, generated or processed within the BPM tool. Examples include the instantiation or completion of a dynamic case or service levels. For example, when an assigned task is late, it is a temporal event that needs to be handled through escalation. The temporal aspect is extremely important in event processing, especially the occurrence and relationship of multiple events in a temporal window. Events can also be external, such as financial transaction events, device or machine-monitoring events and social media events. "Core intelligent complex event capabilities are becoming part of the unified BPM platform that supports intelligence holistically," Khoshafian said.

The Enterprise Architect is no Project Manager though it can be

The architect structures the description of the enterprise, establishes principles for change and evolution, standards for technologies, the roadmap... with the final aim to enable change, decision making and manage, if not reduce, the unnecessary and costly complexity and variation in the enterprise. The PM, having been given the architecture, dependencies, roadmap, risks, the work breakdown, skills and resources necessary and deliverables and acceptance criteria has to come up with a project plan and iterate it until the schedule, resources and costs are all coming together. The PM has then to monitor and report progress, bottlenecks, risks eventuation, organise meetings..

How Cognitive Computing Can Get Businesses Up And Running After Disasters

In the cognitive era, the continuous availability of data, systems, applications and business processes is essential. Organizations will take for granted that these services are “always on.” By applying advanced analytics and automation to predict potential issues, companies can correct systems in advance. At IBM, we are investing in new capabilities to help clients move from reactive business continuity and disaster recovery planning to a cognitive and predictive resiliency program. The goal is to avoid the impact of a disaster before it occurs. What if we could crunch weather data to predict the potential impact of severe weather and prompt appropriate action?

Quote for the day:

"Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities." -- Leon Kass

March 16, 2016

10 Ways Virtual Reality is Disrupting Industries

Today we have different types of equipment or gears which facilitate our experience of this simulated environment. Take, for instance, the Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Sony Morpheus VR headset or Samsung Gear VR. All these head mounted display (HMD) devices have magnified the mass interest and hype around virtual reality, bringing it out of animated series or video games, and into our living rooms. Today, this technology and its applications are proving revolutionary for almost every industry, and the world as a whole! Let’s understand the enormous ways in which VR is transforming the world and disrupting many different industries.

Is this the end of the API economy?

A gateway like this is an important element in API-focused service strategy. You can use it to handle user authentication, and then once user tokens have been exchanged, route calls to an appropriately provisioned endpoint. Is a user a subscriber, and at what level? If they're paying for a service, check how many calls they've made from their allocation, and deliver an appropriate error message if they've used their allocation so they can purchase more or upgrade a subscription to account for changes in user patterns. That doesn't mean returning a 200 OK message, it means delivering an appropriate and documented JSON response to ensure that applications are able to report errors to users.

TechUK to spotlight cyber threat intelligence

“The bottom line is that threat intelligence is only as good as the countermeasures that it informs, and that has got to be our ultimate goal,” Young said, calling on security organisations to join the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA). A key part of informing countermeasures, said Rajab, is applying human intelligence and experience once the technology has sifted through the data to identify what needs further investigation. Similar to the CTA, TechUk considers it very important that threat intelligence is shared in the information security community for the benefit of all. “We have set up Trusted Agents Forum, which enables TechUk members to share threat intelligence and analysis. It is only through sharing threat intelligence and best practice that companies can better protect themselves,” said Rajab.

Debating Disruptive Innovation

It is critical that boards of directors and senior management understand when following accepted principles of good management (such as paying attention to your best customers and focusing investments where you can increase profit margins) leads to failure. Christensen demonstrated that those accepted management principles are only situationally appropriate. That insight can be used not only to avoid failure but also to go on offense to displace competitors. Identifying and harnessing disruptive innovations to avoid failure and to grow shareholder value became far more attainable once Christensen identified the essential elements of a disruptive innovation — a phenomenon previously unnoticed.

How Businesses and Governments Can Capitalize on Blockchain

While blockchain is the core technology that enables the Bitcoin crypto currency to operate, it can be used for entirely different purposes. It’s a distributed ledger shared via a peer-to-peer network that maintains an ever-expanding list of data records. Each participant has an exact copy of the ledger’s data, and additions to the chain are propagated throughout the network. Therefore, all participants in an interaction have an up-to-date ledger that reflects the most recent transactions or changes. In this way, Blockchain reduces the need for establishing trust using traditional methods. ... For blockchain to fulfill its full potential, it must be based on non-proprietary technology standards to assure the compatibility and interoperability of systems.

The downside of relying on social network providers for authentication

Relying on the social media giants helps both users and application developers. Users don't need to create yet another account and remember yet another set of credentials (my 1Password vault already has 176 entries in it). Application developers can skip implementing authentication, identity and password management. However, relying on a third-party identity service such as Facebook or Twitter also has its downsides. The application developer must make an assumption that the user has an account with those systems. The developer also must take it for granted that the third-party system is stable and reliable.

The Future of Jobs in a Machine World

Unlike the disruptions of yesteryear where technologies replaced simple repetitive Blue Collar job functions near the bottom of the Skills and Complexity Pyramid they’re now starting to replace White Collar knowledge workers near the top. The result is an increasingly nervy global workforce and for the first time ever a squeezed middle who are becoming increasingly worried about their lack of specialisms and skills. The technologies that will have the greatest impact and influence on the job markets can be divided into two groups. “Individual Emerging Technologies” such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Vision and hardware and software based Robots and “Aggregated Emerging Technologies” that combine different technologies together to create platforms that include Autonomous Vehicles, Avatars, Cloud, Connected Home, the Internet of Everything, Smarter Cities, Wearables and Telehealth.

The 9 Challenges of an Industrial IoT Implementation (Part 1)

While industry reports provide some guidance, there is no straightforward answer as to which of these areas will yield the most short or mid-term benefits and should take priority. To name just a couple, Consultancy McKinsey, in its 2015 Report, Unlocking the potential of the Internet of Things, suggests that manufacturers stand to gain the most in making industrial processes more efficient. On the other hand, research firm Forrester, in its August 2015 paper The Internet of Things Has the Potential to Connect and Transform Businesses, counsels companies not to focus too heavily on potential efficiency gains from IoT, lest they “miss out on the potential of IoT to transform business models”. While there is no one size fits all, the answer to the question of where to start can be found by each company through a diligent and coordinated approach.

Chinese hackers behind U.S. ransomware attacks - security firms

"It is obviously a group of skilled of operators that have some amount of experience conducting intrusions," said Phil Burdette, who heads an incident response team at Dell SecureWorks. Burdette said his team was called in on three cases in as many months where hackers spread ransomware after exploiting known vulnerabilities in application servers. From there, the hackers tricked more than 100 computers in each of the companies into installing the malicious programs. The victims included a transportation company and a technology firm that had 30 percent of its machines captured. Security firms Attack Research, InGuardians and G-C Partners, said they had separately investigated three other similar ransomware attacks since December. Although they cannot be positive, the companies concluded that all were the work of a known advanced threat group from China, Attack Research Chief Executive Val Smith told Reuters.

Security via the cloud can ease digital transformation by reducing IT headaches

The rise of cloud-based services is coming at a time when many firms have been struggling to attract and retain skilled cyber security staff. Mistry from Trend Micro said this is particularly true for smaller firms, where IT staffing budgets can be very limited, thus making the ability to outsource cloud security especially appealing. “For businesses that have a limited headcount, in an environment where IT professionals are required to wear multiple hats, this allows some of the maintenance tasks to be reduced,” he said. “This includes network appliances such as firewalls, and also the full-time employee (FTE) staffing costs for the upkeep of security infrastructure. With security as a service, organisations can now use security software without the headache of maintenance. SMEs also favour security as a service for the reasons outlined."

Quote for the day:

"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers." -- Colin Powell

March 15, 2016

Information security and the art of business enablement

For any business, decisions about what actions need to be taken from a security perspective should be based on risk, as opposed to an ad hoc approach to prioritizing fixes. For example, TLS 1.0, a web cryptography protocol, has a vulnerability allowing it to be exploited by the POODLE attack. That being said, it is not considered a critical exposure for most organizations. The PCI Security Standards Council for instance, is not requiring the removal of TLS 1.0 for existing installations until June, 2016. Were I assessing risks for an organization, this would probably not be the top item on my list. When using a risk-based approach to vulnerability management, the challenge is in properly assessing the business risk of a given vulnerability. This is where a CISO with knowledge of the business side as well as the technology side comes in.

How to Respond to Ransomware Threats

Ransomware is obviously analogous to kidnapping, and dealing with the perpetrators can feel much like negotiating with a jumper standing on the edge of high-rise roof.The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology recently released a report that in part describes how to deal with criminals when they are holding your data hostage. The report talks of what to do once a breach has been found. ICIT says the proper response will depend on the risk tolerance of the organization, the potential impact of the hostage data, the impact on business continuity, whether a redundant system is available, and regulatory requirements.

Is cloud computing facilitating poor security practices?

The single most common mistake users of public cloud make is to not read their contracts and understand where their responsibilities truly lie. Often people are unclear as to when and how the creation of a server in the cloud moves from the care and security of the provider to them. I’ve run into folks who mistakenly thought their cloud provider was patching servers through some back door for them. They weren’t; and the servers went unpatched for months. Often organisations will forget that the layer of management given to them by the cloud provider will also need some security. The administrative users and rights used to configure and control the cloud systems will need to be treated just as carefully as any other privileged users in their systems.

Embracing open source - An expert look at the cutting edge of corporate technology

Variety speaks to how open source used to be confined to software – programming that could be improved or adjusted to fit different business needs – but has now evolved into hardware IP, like specs, servers, and data center designs. Volume speaks to the amount of open source content that's available, which has grown astronomically in the past few years. Major growth in volume is largely due to the fact that open source IP isn't just created by individuals anymore – it's created by huge corporations, too. Open source also must be viewed in terms of velocity, or how quickly it develops everyday use-cases. Duet says that open source is now fully permeated in technology, and points to the rise of the Internet of Things – made possible by the ability to analyze disparate data sets on a massive scale – as a triumph of open source philosophy.

Change Management: Building a Case for Cloud-Based ERP

If moving to public cloud or hosted services seems intimidating by adding another factor into the mix amid or replacing on-premise infrastructure, a paradigm shift is in order – necessary to stay competitive and lean in a world shifting to accommodate more outsourced options and the agility found in the cloud. Complicating things further, those now making the move are presented with options – options that improve the quality of cloud overall, but create an initial dilemma as leaders oscillate between service providers and products, debating which areas of their business to migrate when and where. Meanwhile, more and more applications build upon on another within increasingly complex and intricately interdependent environments.

Will WebSocket survive HTTP/2?

The browsers opens several HTTP 1.x connections in parallel to speedup the page loading. Browsers have different limits on maximum concurrent connections they can open on a domain but they generally support around 6 different connections. To overcome this limitation, techniques such as Domain sharding can be used to distribute resources across several domains. These techniques (that we can consider as hacks) including concatenating JavaScript and CSS files, spriting images and resource inlining will be counter-productive in a HTTP/2 world. This is probably one of the main impacts when considering to switch to HTTP/2: eliminate optimization/hacks made during several years. When trying with HTTP/2, we see the browser use a single multiplexed connection with a much faster load time.

What can your ISP really see and know about you?

Some high-profile ISPs were not pleased after the FCC proposed rules (pdf) to give broadband consumers more privacy. To dispute the notion that ISPs are “somehow uniquely positioned in the Internet ecosystem,” AT&T wants you read Georgia Institute of Technology professor Peter Swire’s paper titled “Online Privacy and ISPs: ISP Access to Consumer Data is Limited and Often Less than Access by Others.” Although Swire’s paper may be used to assist the FCC as it decides how to handle broadband privacy, the same paper was criticized for technical inaccuracies by Princeton professor Nick Feamster before Feamster revised his statement to say Swire’s paper skips over “important additional facts that should be considered by policymakers.”

Project Management Gloassary

The project management field spans 10 interconnected knowledge areas and incorporates the use of 47 processes organized into five process groups (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and close-out) -- making it a complex field to understand and navigate. As project management is applied within small businesses to large multi-national organizations and to virtually any industry in some form, anyone from the CEO of a large international organization to employees within a small business can benefit from understanding these PM terms. Since project management involves careful planning, execution and management of people, processes, timelines, deliverables, technologies and other resources in a way that aligns with overall strategic objectives, successfully executing a project, can be almost impossible absent the understanding of these PM terms.

IoT “plug and pray” all over again, says security consultant

The unwillingness of manufacturers to address security issues, he said, is illustrated by Trane, which was alerted to serious security flaws in its ComfortLink II thermostat in April 2014, including hard-coded SSH passwords, and yet this particular issue was only fixed a year later, and the company took a further eight months to address the remaining vulnerabilities. “When [Trane] eventually did fix the vulnerabilities it did not alert customers, so this is a classic example of the problems people are facing, where they have these devices, they don’t know they are insecure, and they are not made aware when is a software update to make them secure,” said Alexander. He also pointed out consumers should be aware that there is money to be made from data, and that electronics manufacturers have found a way to make consumers pay to put devices in their homes that will give the device makers data that will make them money.

Data traffic jam? Top performance requires worldwide Internet intelligence

If your customers in Berlin are experiencing performance problems with your service it could be an issue at a local ISP or CDN you are using. It could be a more general problem in Berlin. It could be a lot of things. You can then use Dyn's information on where the problems actually are to direct your traffic through alternatives until the trouble passes. Obviously such problems occur all the time, some from mistakes, some from equipment failure, some from malicious action like a DDOS. In all cases, the first action to take is to route around the problem. Very often, existing services and practices use geolocation and hops as a proxy for latency in order to determine best route. But what if you actually had the latency numbers?

Quote for the day:

“Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned...” -- Amy Cuddy

March 14, 2016

A Bulletproof DevOps Strategy to Ensure Success in the Cloud

First, you need to understand the solution patterns of the applications you’re looking to build. For instance, will there be data-intensive or processor-intensive applications, or a mix? Will the applications require any special hardware or software requirements, such as HPC or IPC middleware? Finally, consider security, performance, monitoring, governance — basically all of the core details that make up your requirements shopping list. Keep in mind that you’re not looking to solve the problem of a single application, but selecting a core cloud architecture that can accommodate most of the applications that will be built, tested, and deployed using your DevOps automation solution. Also, keep in mind that it’s okay to use multiple target clouds for deployment.

How InteraXon plans to monetize meditation–and more

The company’s headband is essentially a meditation coach. Muse works like an electroencephalogram (EEG), measuring the user’s brainwave activity and transmitting the data to an app. When your mind is at rest, the app plays audio of calm winds. When your mind begins to wander, the winds intensify to prompt you to refocus. At the end of a session, the Muse app tells you how well you performed and displays a graph of your brain’s activity. It’s a high-tech approach to an ancient practice, one that’s becoming more popular among busy professionals who recognize the benefits of meditation but don’t have time to attend a class

The top 12 cloud security threats

Many developers make the mistake of embedding credentials and cryptographic keys in source code and leaving them in public-facing repositories such as GitHub. Keys need to be appropriately protected, and a well-secured public key infrastructure is necessary, the CSA said. They also need to be rotated periodically to make it harder for attackers to use keys they’ve obtained without authorization. Organizations planning to federate identity with a cloud provider need to understand the security measures the provider uses to protect the identity platform. Centralizing identity into a single repository has its risks. Organizations need to weigh the trade-off of the convenience of centralizing identity against the risk of having that repository become an extremely high-value target for attackers.

Surprising tips from a super-hacker

Mitnick hacks as a kind of performance art in keynotes and talks at security conferences around the world. At CeBIT in Germany this year, for example, he performed several hacks including a demonstration showing how simply plugging in a thumb drive could give a hacker total control of your machine, including the ability to activate and monitor the camera and microphone or launch any program. In the hack, the USB thumbdrive tricks the laptop or PC into thinking it's a keyboard, rather than a storage device. That enables the hacker to inject keystrokes, which means he can do anything to your device that he could do by typing on your keyboard. Mitnick demonstrates this hack because "people think USBs are safe now, because they turn off 'auto-run.'" He wants the public to know that thumbdrives are not safe.

How to Reach a Competitive Advantage Through Huawei Open Source Solutions

Standards bodies continue to produce solid architectures and protocols. But they are slow and resist change. Traditional SDOs will remain relevant but must evolve. The MEF is a perfect example of doing it right. The MEF created a collaboration program, involving key industry standards development bodies, called MEF Unite. Instead of digging in its heels and resisting change, the MEF has put off its ego and begun collaborating with ... As providers (working with their vendors) customize the code, to make it unique to each company, they have created a competitive advantage. Vendors that offer customizable, and supported, solutions will succeed. Red Hat has proven the success of this model. Vendors and providers that quickly adapt to the open source world and learn to differentiate will have a future. Those that don’t will fail.

CIO and the Digital Dilemma

Gartner predicts that by 2018, controlled shadow IT will contribute up to 30 percent of IT operations activities, up from 15 percent in 2014. CIOs are recognizing that by investing and championing the introduction of new, digital services that are capable of accelerating growth while not undermining the effectiveness of pre-existing systems, IT will shift from being seen as strictly a cost center to becoming revered as the business’ competitive weapon. Thus a digital transformation is set to motion. With the likes of AirBNB, Amazon and Uber (to name a few), digital technologies are fueling economic growth at an exponential rate by establishing strong market positions and opening up new business models on which to capitalize. But that’s only the beginning.

Data Security Trends: Shifting perceptions on data security

Although the C-suite might be more involved in data security than in the past, IT teams feel executives still are not allocating the energy or resources needed to properly address data security challenges. ... there are concerns that senior executives don’t pay enough attention and aren’t well informed about data security issues and tools. The findings also show that 3 in 4 decision makers say their C-suite plans to increase current security measures, and more than half expect to spend more money on data security in the coming years. However, cost is a concern when it comes to building on existing security programs – 53 percent cite cost constraints for why they don’t anticipate adding additional security features in the future, and only 1 in 3 businesses are very confident in their C-suite’s ability to budget enough for data security solutions over the next five years.

4 best practices for implementing external business processes

For CIOs and IT managers, working out external business processes like EDI and collaborating on business process projects with hundreds of different business partners can be a daunting and frustrating undertaking. "We're in the process of assessing our external business process growth projections for the next three years," remarked one mid-sized company CIO. He was unsure as to which external business processes would be tackled first, but he made these points: He was concerned about the readiness of his staff to team with end business users and users from other companies for effective business process design or redesign to enable the externalization of business processes that were formerly internal. He was also worried about whether security and governance measures were sufficiently robust to support external information exchanges with other companies.

How to stay ahead of cyber criminals in the data breach era

A typical example of an irrelevant information scenario is the “former employee” situation. In this case, an attacker chooses to target a specific user from your list of employees, not knowing that the person no longer works for your organization. Because the employee no longer works for you, that employee should not be taking actions within the company’s network and the network shouldn’t be contacting them. Spotting this suspicious activity can help you prevent data breaches. Global law firm, Locke Lorde, was able to mitigate a cyber attack after catching a former employee using his credentials to access their network. The closer you track the use of irrelevant information, the quicker you can stop data breaches in their tracks.

Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence?

Since depth implies computational power and efficiency, we have focused on very deep neural nets from the start. For example, by the early 1990s, others were still limited to rather shallow nets with fewer than 10 subsequent computational stages, while our methods already enabled over 1,000 such stages. I'd say we were the ones who made neural nets really deep, especially recurrent networks, the deepest and most powerful nets of them all. Back then, few researchers were interested in this, but we kept going, and with cheaper and cheaper computing power, it was just a matter of time before contests would be won through such methods. I am glad to see that the other deep learning labs and companies are now also heavily using our algorithms.

Quote for the day:

"To be successful, innovation is not just about value creation, but value capture." -- @jaysamit

March 13, 2016

IT's Shift From Service Provider to Business Partner

IT is a business enabler, providing secure and highly available technology solutions that enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of TRS and our members. As such, it's my job to ensure IT is seen by our individual business areas as a true business partner, not just simply a service provider. IT needs to truly understand the business of TRS and be proactive in helping solve business problems and recommend innovations that move our business forward. ... The one thing that is certain in IT is it's going to change. Many times these technology changes have a significant impact on the rest of the business and/or provide an opportunity for improving efficiency. As such, the CIO often finds himself or herself in the position of change agent, promoting and leading enterprise projects that bring about significant shifts in the organization.

Amazon India planning to launch digital wallet

"Building own wallet helps it restrict access to customer data in the company's ecosystem and monetise customer insights," said another person familiar with Amazon India's plans. Amazon did not comment specifically on whether it plans to launch a digital wallet, only saying that it was "always exploring" acquisitions. "Payments are key to the e-commerce ecosystem," said Srinivas Rao, director at Amazon Payments India, in an emailed statement. "Developing a trusted, frictionless and ubiquitous payments ecosystem is critical to our customer-centric philosophy and we will invest in building the capabilities to drive our strategy." Currently, Amazon India uses its gift cards as pre-paid instruments for buying on its online marketplace, offering customers the option to top up these cards for up to Rs 10,000, which is the limit applicable to digital wallets under Indian regulations.

So You Think You Can Agile?

The interesting thing here is that everyone in the market—customers, communities, consultants, vendors and partners—wants the same outcome. Improving the way organisations work to ultimately enhance our way of life as a society: eliminating waste and responding to change quickly and confidently (well, at least that’s what my team and I want).So, one can only live hoping that’s why we're all here—to continue toward autonomy, mastery and purpose and in turn help enterprises do the same. We all want to embrace, educate and coach great outcomes for the people who work in these enterprises. Who doesn’t want to get up and be excited about the day of work ahead and help people improve their capabilities to ultimately create a better society?

Demand for security skills is ballooning: So can former hacker hotbed Romania help?

"Although companies are actively searching for security experts, many of these jobs aren't listed on the web," she says. HR professionals prefer to hire based on referrals. Many engineers are self-taught, building on top of the computer-science knowledge they acquired in school. Developer Gabriel Cirlig says cybersecurity was a hobby he had during high school. ... Cybrary co-founder Ryan Corey says Romanian users have a grasp of the basics but come to training providers to hone more advanced, niche security skills. "While US and UK users tend to take more beginner-level, general-interest courses such as Network+, CCNA and Linux+, Romanian users tend to take higher-level, more advanced security offerings like Malware Analysis and Advanced Penetration Testing," he says.

The Hidden Security Risks of Our IoT Devices

As IoT devices gather more and more data about us and our lives, we as consumers should be extremely concerned about these vulnerabilities. We may not think about it very much, but these IoT devices have collected a lot of information about our private lives. The refrigerator that orders your milk must have some sort of payment method set up with the grocer. Your thermostat knows when you are likely to be at home – and also when you are not. And your smart watch or wearable fitness tracker may have private information about your health and habits that you wouldn’t want anyone but your doctor to know. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report urging IoT manufacturers to put security first with these new technologies.

Why Are We Fighting the Crypto Wars Again?

Is it any wonder that the government is rebooting the crypto wars? For the first time, it’s really struggling with the results of the first war, as more information is now encrypted, increasingly in a manner the government finds really hard (or impossible) to decode. Apple has been impressively aggressive in its refusal to comply with that order, even though this test case involves possible information from a murderous terrorist. The company’s court filings outline with withering precision how complying with the government order — to essentially rewrite part of its operating system, an action it regards as an act of “compelled speech” — violates its rights and compromises the rights of its customers. With John Oliver-strength sarcasm, it refers to the software the FBI has ordered it to produce as “GovtOS.”

One API, Many Facades?

When developing an API that is going to be used by others, it’s important not to break that contract. Often, frameworks and tools allow you to generate an API definition from the codebase — for example, with an annotation-driven approach where you label your endpoints, query parameters, etc. with annotations. But sometimes, even if your own test cases still pass, the smallest code refactoring could very well break the contract. Your codebase might be fine, but the refactoring might have broken the code of your API consumers. To collaborate more effectively, consider going with an API-contract-first approach and make sure your implementation still conforms with the shared agreement: the API definition. There are different API definition languages available and popular these days, like Swagger, RAML, or API Blueprint. Pick one you’re comfortable with.

Big Data: Why You Must Consider Open Source

“There are multiple – and at this point in history, thoroughly validated – business benefits to using open source software.” Among those reasons, he says, are the lack of fees allowing customers to evaluate and test products and technologies at no expense, the enthusiasm of the global development community, the appeal of working in an open source environment to developers, and the freedom from “lock in”. This last one has one caveat, though, Kestelyn explains – “Be careful, though, of open source software that leaves you on an architectural island, with commercial support only available from a single vendor. This can make the principle moot.” The literal meaning of open source is that the raw source code behind the project is available for anyone to inspect, scrutinize and improve.

Web Application Firewall: a Must-Have Security Control or an Outdated Technology?

Gartner predicts that by 2020, more than 60 percent of public web applications will be protected by a WAF. However, in 2015 Gartner had only one vendor listed in its WAF MQ as a Leader (Imperva), and only two vendors listed as Visionaries. All other vendors are either Niche Players or Challengers. Many more WAF vendors were simply not present in the MQ for not meeting the inclusion criteria. Last year, security researcher Mazin Ahmed published a White Paper to demonstrate that XSS protection from almost all popular WAF vendors can be bypassed. XSSPosed prior to announcing its private and open Bug Bounty programs, published new XSS vulnerabilities on the largest websites almost every day and was effectively an insightful resource for observing just how security researchers bypassed almost every WAF mentioned in the Magic Quadrant.

Data Is a Toxic Asset

Our Internet search data reveals what's important to us, including our hopes, fears, desires and secrets. Communications data reveals who our intimates are, and what we talk about with them. I could go on. Our reading habits, or purchasing data, or data from sensors as diverse as cameras and fitness trackers: All of it can be intimate. Saving it is dangerous because many people want it. Of course companies want it; that's why they collect it in the first place. But governments want it, too. In the United States, the National Security Agency and FBI use secret deals, coercion, threats and legal compulsion to get at the data. ... When a company with personal data goes bankrupt, it's one of the assets that gets sold. Saving it is dangerous because it's hard for companies to secure. For a lot of reasons, computer and network security is very difficult. Attackers have an inherent advantage over defenders, and a sufficiently skilled, funded and motivated attacker will always get in.

Quote for the day:

"Informed intuition, rather than analytical reason, is the most trustworthy decision-making tool to use." -- G. Moore

March 11, 2016

RSA 2016: Data compliance beyond the firewall

The feedback from RSA from security professionals was that you need to start with a data classification policy and you need to start considering how to isolate the data from where it resides. So, if you look at new solutions that allow you to manage your encryption keys around the data, regardless of where the data is structured – solutions such as Ionic, for instance – you’ll see that it’s a new way of looking at data storage and at the implications of where you store data. That said, to do it the right way you need not only technology, but you most likely need help from your in-house solicitor to make sure you fully master the legal ramifications of where your data [resides]. And that’s notwithstanding any requirements for e-discovery, where you may need to get access to data.

Is Breach Notification A Part Of Your Incident Response Plan?

Don’t notify too early. You’ll be criticized either way, so let the investigators help uncover as much information as they can about what happened to help you better communicate the facts. Consider issuing a hold statement in the meantime – something that states you’re aware of the issue. Define what constitutes a breach vs a security incident in your business partner and service provider contracts. This is important from a cyber insurance claims analysis perspective to help with breach notification costs. Cultivate relationships with local law enforcement, your local FBI and secret service gurus – before a breach event. Go above and beyond state attorney general expectations and be proactive with engaging with them during a breach event; you don’t want them to hear about the breach in the news before you tell them.

Got a new USB-C device? 19 accessories that will help

There's a new USB in town -- the Type-C port. Smaller than the familiar USB Type-A, the USB-C plug uses the latest USB 3.1 specification, which means it's not only faster but reversible, eliminating the frustration of trying to insert a USB plug upside-down. Able to carry up to 100 watts of power (six times the USB 3.0 limit), a USB-C port can deliver up to 10Gbps -- double that of current USB 3.0 devices. Although USB-C has been on its way for some time, there haven't been a lot of devices that use it -- until recently. Apple's 12-inch MacBook started the trend last year and was followed by other laptops , tablets and smartphones. And that's only the beginning. The problem: All those micro-USB and mini-USB hubs, cables, chargers and adapters that you've collected over the last several years can't plug into your new USB-C port.

What is bimodal IT and what does it mean for the CIO?

Put simply, bimodal IT involves running two separate modes of IT delivery within a business; one is a traditional, safe execution model, while the second is more exploratory, agile and fast. The approach is of particular interest to enterprises with legacy IT because it allows tried-and-true, existing systems to continue underpinning core business processes while newer, more agile delivery models work alongside them, without having to deal with the disruption of ripping everything up and starting again. But what could bimodal IT look like on a practical level? A useful analogy is thinking of bimodal IT as a swimming pool with two lanes: a fast lane for slower, more careful swimmers and another lane for faster, more agile swimmers.

Between SSL-cylla and Charib-TLS

The last 12 to 15 months has seen a significant upheaval in the threat landscape for securing Internet communications. In late 2014, security researchers at Google published the details of an attack they called POODLE (for Padding Oracle on Downgraded Legacy Encryption), which exploited a deficiency in one of the most common security protocols used on the Internet, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and allowed an attacker to determine the encryption key used in a supposedly secure connection and decrypt the data in transit. Despite the fact that this particular protocol was developed by Netscape in the 1990s and had been replaced by a better protocol called Transport Layer Security (TLS), version 3 of the SSL protocol (SSLv3) remained in popular use for many years.

Global regulators shape the future of LTE-U, LAA

A hastily-assembled consortium, the LTE-U Forum (LTE-Unlicensed Forum), defined a set of loose rules explaining how LTE could work in 5GHz, with some modifications that they claimed would ensure co-existence with Wi-Fi. The goal of LTE-U was to get product to market quickly in the US, establishing working trials and networks without delay and meeting the commercial requirements of its proponents (selling and deploying new gear as soon as possible). Meanwhile, work started on the European regulators. The movers behind LTE-U lobbied the global cellular standards body, 3GPP, to develop standards that would satisfy ETSI. Since 3GPP-ETSI is a multi-year exercise, this was envisaged as a slower, parallel path to the LTE-U-FCC work.

The next big threat in hacking — data sabotage

"Criminal enterprises — they look for levers within society that are economically tuned to helping them make money," said IOActive's Miessler. "If you could tweak a credit score and get a better rate on money and you're making money by borrowing at better rates, these are things criminal enterprises look at — their ability to modify the system in some way to get an economic return." Manipulating credit scores or bank account numbers is a natural evolution from yesterday's big data breaches, where the personal information on millions of U.S. shoppers, health-care patients and government workers could already be in use for such manipulation schemes. "That's the interesting thing about integrity attacks — they can be highly beneficial to the attacker in that they can often achieve their goals more effectively than a traditional attack," said Steve Grobman

Europe’s CIOs examine impact of new data protection regulation

CIOs must help their businesses to recognise the importance of sanctions emanating from the GDPR. The regulation presents a new challenge, but the current situation regarding data protection is far from ideal, says Jacobs. A company operating across Europe might have to deal with as many as 28 different data privacy regimes. CIOs should see the GDPR as an opportunity, she says. Rather than data protection being a complex puzzle, the regulation should help to provide legal consistency across Europe. “The principle of creating a single regulation across many countries is a good idea,” she says. “But there have been many lobbies around the detail of the regulation and the exact text will not be known until later this year.”

Bitcoin Technology Will Long Outlive Digital Currency

"Bitcoin, if it became broadly accepted, would challenge states’ dominance of the economy. It is designed to prevent monopoly by states or other entities, building a new currency based on shared information and making it hard for any entity to gain control. Politics disappears and a combination of technology and cryptographic proofs is conjured up in its place," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the magic is wearing off. Some of the technological innovations associated with bitcoin will stick around. The political project will not. Rather than overcoming conventional politics, bitcoin is succumbing to it," he wrote. The problem is centered around bitcoin's blockchain, which is a public, decentralized ledger that records every single bitcoin transaction.

The Next Big Thing In Big Data: BDaaS

As well as the “firehose” of tweets it provides analytics tools and applications for making sense of that messy, unstructured data and has trained 4,000 consultants to help businesses put plans into action to profit from them. Another is agricultural manufacturers John Deere, which fits all of its tractors with sensors that stream data about the machinery as well as soil and crop conditions to the MyJohnDeere.com and Farmsight services. Farmers can subscribe to access analytical intelligence on everything from when to order spare parts to where to plant crops. The arrival of Apple’s Watch – perhaps the device that will bring consumer wearables into the mainstream – will doubtlessly bring with it a tsunami of new BDaaS apps.

Quote for the day:

"People will work for a living but they'll die for recognition." -- Lee Odden