Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

Daily Tech Digest - February 23, 2017

Here's why self-driving cars may never really be self-driving

The issue with self-driving vehicles extends well beyond safety; it's also a legal one. As autonomous vehicles gain in popularity, liability questions about who is to blame when an autonomous car crashes are also growing. If an autonomous car crashes, who is at fault? The driver -- even though the car was driving itself? The manufacturer? The developer who created the autonomous software? "Supposed I write a piece of software and it has an inherent flaw. It starts causing injuries and property damage. Am I protected? The answer is: Unlikely," said Michael Overly, a partner and intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP. "People whose property was damaged or they were injured would sue for negligence."

2017 Predictions For AI, Big Data, IoT, Cybersecurity, And Jobs From Senior Tech Executives

The recent success of deep learning in tasks such as image recognition and machine translation has served as a catalyst for investments in and experimentation with AI and Bill Franks, Chief Analytics Officer, Teradata, predicts that “Deep learning will move out of the hype zone and into reality.” Says Franks, sounding a note of caution: “Deep learning is getting massive buzz recently. Unfortunately, many people are once again making the mistake of thinking that deep learning is a magic, cure-all bullet for all things analytics. ... While deep learning will be in place at a large number of companies in the coming year, the market will start to recognize where it really makes sense and where it does not. By better defining where deep learning plays, it will increase focus on the right areas and speed the delivery of value.”

Insecure Android apps put connected cars at risk

While compromising connected car apps might not directly enable theft, it could make it easier for would-be thieves. Most such apps, or the credentials they store, can be used to remotely unlock the vehicle and disable its alarm system. "Also, the risks should not be limited to mere car theft," the Kaspersky researchers said in a blog post. "Accessing the car and deliberate tampering with its elements may lead to road accidents, injuries, or death." While manufacturers are rushing to add smart features to cars that are meant to improve the experience for car owners, they tend to focus more on securing the back-end infrastructure and the communications channels. However, the Kaspersky researchers warn that client-side code, such as the accompanying mobile apps, should not be ignored as it's the easiest target for attackers and most likely the most vulnerable spot.

Fighting the hidden enemy: how can your organisation combat cybercrime?

Administrative frameworks, however, can achieve only so much. When it comes to improving cybersecurity, employees also have a vital role to play. Again, there are two sides to this coin. One concerns the human vulnerabilities associated with cybercrime. As efficient as a firm’s cyber strategy might be, one simple mistake from an employee can render these defences futile. ... At the same time, any internal threats must be treated with this same level of vigilance. As a significant number of cyberattacks reported by organisations are actually carried out from within the company, it is not unreasonable to claim that many of these breaches could have been avoided, had employees been able to recognise that their colleague was stealing valuable information. Again using education as a resource, firms can promote a culture of self-regulation which allows rogue workers to be identified and reported before their efforts are successful.

Reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning copies a very simple principle from nature. The psychologist Edward Thorndike documented it more than 100 years ago. Thorndike placed cats inside boxes from which they could escape only by pressing a lever. ... Reinforcement learning works because researchers figured out how to get a computer to calculate the value that should be assigned to, say, each right or wrong turn that a rat might make on its way out of its maze. Each value is stored in a large table, and the computer updates all these values as it learns. For large and complicated tasks, this becomes computationally impractical. In recent years, however, deep learning has proved an extremely efficient way to recognize patterns in data, whether the data refers to the turns in a maze, the positions on a Go board, or the pixels shown on screen during a computer game.

Data-related jobs see huge growth in January hirings

Data processing/hosting/related services also had a healthy January, posting 1,200 new jobs. That segment had been adding an average of 233 per jobs per month on average in 2016. Commenting on this segment, Foote noted that employers need to scale to stay competitive. “When they dig their heels into a solution that works, be it in cloud, security, big data, mobile, or digital technology, they tend to add headcount because they know these people will be making contributions for a long time to come,” Foote said. ... “Ideally each new hire must have a measurable impact on the business: they can’t just be a cost item for them. What will drive new job creation in 2017 will be hiring in niche areas such as big data and analytics, information/cyber security, cloud computing, and certain areas of applications development and software engineering like DevOps and digital product development.”

A hard drive's LED light can be used to covertly leak data

The latest hack leverages the LED activity light for the hard disk drive, which can be found on many servers and desktop PCs and is used to indicate when memory is read or written. The researchers found that with malware, they could control the LED light to emit binary signals by flashing on and off. That flickering could send out a maximum of 4,000 bits per second, or enough to leak out passwords, encryption keys and files, according to their paper. It's likely no one would notice anything wrong. "The hard drive LED flickers frequently, and therefore the user won't be suspicious about changes in its activity,” said Mordechai Guri, who led the research, in a statement. To read the signals from the LED light, all that’s needed is a camera or an optical sensor to record the patterns.

A Sweeter Spot for the CDO?

First of all kudos for a correct use of the term Venn Diagram Second I agree that the role of CDO is one which touches on many different areas. In each of these, while as Bruno says, the CDO may not need to be an expert, a working knowledge would be advantageous. Third I wholeheartedly support the assertion that a CDO who focusses primarily on compliance will fail to get traction. It is only by blending compliance work with the leveraging of data for commercial advantage in which organizations will see value in what a CDO does. Finally, Bruno’s diagram put me in mind of the one I introduced in The Chief Data Officer “Sweet Spot”. In this article, the image I presented touched each of the principle points of a compass. My assertion was that the CDO needed to sit at the sweet spot between respectively Data Synthesis / Data Compliance and Business Expertise / Technical Expertise. At the end of this piece,

The March Of Financial Services Giants Into Bitcoin And Blockchain Startups In One Chart

It should be noted, though, that consortia are not included on the chart below. One such example is R3 CEV, which counts a bevy of banks and insurers including Credit Suisse, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank collaborating to advance ledger solutions and standards that meet banking requirements. R3 has hit a few bumps of late, with Goldman Sachs and Santander – among others – leaving the consortium in favor of private blockchain investments. Among the financial services investors are insurance providers such as TransAmerica, New York Life, and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group (MSIG); payments giants including Visa, MasterCard, and American Express; as well as banks like Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Citi, Santander, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).

Amid cyberattacks, ISPs try to clean up the internet

Even when ISPs send warning messages to users, what then? Not every PC user knows how to resolve a malware infection, Clayton said. For ISPs, it can also be a matter of cost. “Of course we want to see ISPs helping, but they are in a competitive market,” he said. “They are trying to cut their costs wherever they can, and talking to customers and passing on a message is not a cheap thing to do.” In addition, ISPs can’t identify every malicious cyberattack. Most hacking attacks masquerade as normal traffic and even ISP detection methods can occasionally generate errors, Clayton said. “If you have a 99 percent detection rate, in an academic paper, that sounds fantastic,” he said. “But that basically means one out of 100 times, you’ll be plain wrong.”

Quote for the day:

"If you don't make it easy for people to do the right thing, you're wasting money on security awareness." -- Angela Sasse

Daily Tech Digest - February 22, 2017

Wilders' Security Officer Held for Suspected Data Leak

The revelations came three weeks before the Netherlands holds a parliamentary election. Wilders' party is riding high in the polls, although mainstream parties have said they will not form a coalition with him if he wins the popular vote because of his hard-line anti-Islam stance. His manifesto includes closing Dutch borders to all migrants from Muslim nations, banning the Quran and shutting all mosques in the Netherlands. In an indication the government is taking the alleged leaks seriously, the Dutch prime minister and the minister for security and justice on Wednesday visited the heavily-guarded wing of Parliament that houses Wilders' party offices. Rutte declined to say if he had met Wilders or to discuss the nature of his visit. Wilders later tweeted that the security breach "is a serious case that fortunately is also being taken seriously by the Cabinet."

How a College Kid Made His Honda Civic Self-Driving for $700

A Neo is built from a OnePlus 3 smartphone equipped with Comma’s now-free Openpilot software, a circuit board that connects the device to the car’s electronics, and a 3-D-printed case. Jorgenson got the case printed by an online service and soldered the board together himself. He first put his life in the device’s hands in late January after an evening college class. “It was dark on the interstate, and I tested it by myself because I figured if anything went wrong I didn’t want anybody else in the car,” says Jorgenson. “It worked phenomenally.” Subsequent tests revealed that the Neo would inexplicably pull to the right sometimes, but a software update released by Comma quickly fixed that. Now fully working, the system is similar in capabilities to the initial version of Tesla’s AutoPilot

Is user generated content fuelling data fatigue?

Perhaps the real value in user generated content comes from how brands themselves are harnessing it. It offers a mine of information to inform the business but, with ever-growing volumes, it also carries a huge risk – have brands simply become data rich, insight poor? If companies can’t grapple with high volumes, they could lose out on important trends or actually arrive at misleading or inaccurate assumptions. As brands engage across social, mobile, in-store and elsewhere, they are having to connect insights across channels in new and more innovative ways. Those that can break the customer journey down into granular segments can gain greater intelligence about customer behaviours as well the business.

Financial cyberthreats in 2016

For the first time in 2016, the detection of phishing pages which mimicked legitimate banking services took first place in the overall chart – as criminals sought to trick their victims into believing they were looking at genuine banking content or entering their details into real banking systems. ... It’s clear that financial cybercriminals are increasingly on the look-out for new ways to exploit users and extract money from them. Owners of Android-based devices should be extremely cautious when surfing the web – especially if they have financial applications installed. But caution is advised for everyone. As predators become more persistent and as their methods grow more convincing, corporate users and home users alike – whatever type of device they use – need to be aware of the dangers and understand how to protect themselves from this ever-evolving cyberthreat landscape.

Software development genetics, part 1: DevOps, lean, agile

Formal adoption of agile methodologies include new-age terms such as the Scrum methodology. Facilitated by the scrum master and involving software "ninjas," the practices are gaining increasing numbers of adherents. These terms infer an enlightened hybrid philosophy that is gathering followers and driving innovation and increased quality. These methodologies are also changing the environment in which software is developed. As more businesses are virtualizing and lifting applications to the cloud, so too the functions of software development are moving from a shop floor mentality of physically present resources to that of geographically distributed talent. As Ashley Speagle points out in CIO, “Collaboration-centric strategies are now at the heart of modern IT departments, breaking down formerly rigidly defined siloes and creating responsive, communicative teams.”

Could smartphones replace datacenters? These Finnish researchers think so

In other words, while your phone sits idle on your office desk, it could be helping to compute weather forecasts, earthquake warnings, or solve encryption challenges. But first the mobile cloud computing platform needs to be built. Currently the researchers are testing their approach using nine Samsung Galaxy S4 phones and a LG Smart TV for predefined tasks. The preliminary results show that this configuration is more than enough to equal the computing power of a single server. "We have nine smartphones computing in parallel and one server computing the same thing, and we can achieve the same speed," Lagerspetz says. "[But] if you want to beat a cluster of machines at Amazon, you might need 10 times the number of phones, so 90 phones. If you're working in a big organization and you have a lot of employees, you just put our app on their phones and you're ready."

How The DOT Discovered Its Network Was Compromised By Shadow IT

The shadow IT revelations and the associated security concerns led McKinney to launch a project to rearchitect the DOT's network, an effort that, while still ongoing, has been introducing more centralized controls and clearer segmentation to cordon off the systems of various administrations within the department. The experience also compelled his office to change the internal processes for introducing new equipment to the network, including a policy directive putting the various DoT administrations on notice that the days of ad hoc, unsecured and unmanaged network expansion were over. "We also at that point put out policy memos and told the entire department that there will be no adding equipment to the network without going through a formal change-management process," he says. "We had one, but people had been ignoring it."

Redfin CTO says machine learning needs human help

Any company that expects its employees to stand behind the product of an automated system needs to let them manually edit the results, Frey said. What’s not clear is which set of insights -- the machine's or the agent's -- actually led to better outcomes. In the case of Listings Matchmaker, Frey said users didn’t seem to click on one set of recommendations over another, but she didn’t know if the company had data about which recommendations resulted in a purchase. The more important difference is that agents used the feature more once they were able to recommend particular homes, she said. Frey’s comments were echoed by Alphabet Executive Chairman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt during an on-stage interview at the RSA security conference in San Francisco last week. He said humans must remain in the loop of machine learning systems.

The Overlooked Corporate Data Breach

Executives haven’t ignored the issue. According to researchers, 30 percent of CEOs surveyed said cybersecurity is their top risk over the next three years, more so than risk from regulation or disruptive technology. CEOs have cybersecurity in their line of sight for sure. But the report describes attacks that lead to the compromise of corporate data as “beneath the covers” attacks that rarely land in the news or become the topic of public debate. Further, 72 percent of CEOs surveyed for the report admitted that they are not prepared for a cyberattack. According to analysts, part of the issue is that, when a corporate cybersecurity event occurs, the event under investigation often involves market-sensitive, proprietary information that cannot be released to the public. That fact also limits the ability for corporates to discuss the cyberevent with their peers.

The Future of Java in the Enterprise - InfoQ’s Opinion

We continue to see Java SE as in good health, and it remains one of the most widely adopted languages for enterprise computing. Java 9 is expected to ship this summer, and includes both Jigsaw and the JShell REPL. Work on Java 10 is already underway. Given this, we believe that Java remains a great choice for building large-scale enterprise applications, particularly where they are expected to remain in production for some time. In terms of alternative JVM languages we continue to see interest in both Scala and Clojure, but reader interest in Scala suggests the language may have reached an adoption peak; we can trace a small drop in Scala interest amongst readers around the time Java 8 shipped with support for lambda functions. Our instinct on this is that it hasn’t yet “crossed the chasm” in Moore’s parlance, and therefore still sits in the early adopter stage.

Quote for the day:

“A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.” -- Henry Kravis

Daily Tech Digest - February 21, 2017

Why Google And Apple Will Rule Mixed Reality

Computer-generated objects appear to attach or interact with real-world objects. This can range from simple applications, such as the Sphero BB8 toy robot smartphone app, to complex systems, including Hololens, Magic Leap and others. The most thrilling mixed reality experience involves real-time, 3D mapping of the environment, which enables virtual objects to interact with surfaces and objects in the real world. For example, a computer-generated creature that can stand on a table -- or hide behind it. Here's the challenge: 3D-mapping capability is compute-intensive, meaning it is expensive, power-hungry and heat-generating. So is the real-time rendering of 3D objects. With the richest mixed-reality experience, you need both 3D mapping and image rendering. As a result, products like Hololens and Magic Leap require heavy, bulky headsets and cost a lot of money.

People Don’t Buy IoT, They Buy a Solution to a Problem

Everywhere we turn there seems to be a new “connected this” or “smart that”. Many applications are novel, but not very useful. I can think of many silly examples, and I’m sure you can too. So here’s my point: The fact that we can connect any device to the Internet doesn’t mean we should. And if we’re not careful, we can fall into the trap of having technology looking for a problem, instead of starting with a problem and looking for the best way to solve it. This is Product Management 101. It’s a shame the useless products get most of the airtime, because there are many applications today that are solving important problems—in healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, energy, and more. So this is a call to action for all you IoT Product Managers: Leverage IoT only if it provides more value to your customer or your company.

Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On?

There are many models of emotional intelligence, each with its own set of abilities; they are often lumped together as “EQ” in the popular vernacular. We prefer “EI,” which we define as comprising four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Nested within each domain are twelve EI competencies, learned and learnable capabilities that allow outstanding performance at work or as a leader (see the image below). These include areas in which Esther is clearly strong: empathy, positive outlook, and self-control. But they also include crucial abilities such as achievement, influence, conflict management, teamwork and inspirational leadership. These skills require just as much engagement with emotions as the first set, and should be just as much a part of any aspiring leader’s development priorities.

Big data privacy is a bigger issue than you think

Don't feel so compelled by transparency that you give away your strategic secrets. After all, you are in business—a very competitive business. If you give away too much information, your competitive value is eroded. You must find a way to be transparent, while keeping the secret sauce behind the firewall. Here's how. Your IT leadership team should launch proactive communication campaigns, which could include PR, speaking, social media, and outreach programs—the more the better. Explain more about what you can do than how you do it. At a minimum, it's your responsibility to let people know what you know about them and what you're capable of doing with your analytics. For instance, if location analytics allows to you know where they are and where they're likely to go next, then let users know you have this technology.

ESET looks to deepen enterprise penetration with new threat intelligence service

The ESET data feeds are typically integrated into existing SIEM [Security Information and Event Management] systems, which allow reports from multiple sources to be reviewed at once in real time. “Integrating this with a SIEM means the customer can quickly see it and address issues,” Reed stated. “Their security teams are provided with actionable information.” This use case does require that the customer is large enough to have a security team monitoring the data and making decisions. However, because ESET Threat Intelligence does not need to be deployed in a network infrastructure in order to run, ESET expects that another use case of the service will be prospects testing the efficiency of ESET if they are considering replacing their legacy endpoint security vendor.

Virtual Singapore Looks Just Like Singapore IRL—But With More Data

This technology is the latest and most sophisticated attempt to create an all-seeing “urban dashboard.” Rio’s operations center, complete with banks of screens that resemble NASA Mission Control, tracks transit, weather, utilities, and more. Los Angeles’s Bureau of Engineering has Navigate LA, which includes GIS maps overlaid with more than 20 layers of data, from property data to geotechnical information. Technology companies like IBM (which powers the Rio effort), Siemens, and Cisco—provide “Smart City” data-tracking software for several other metropolises. But none are as holistic, intuitive, or three dimensional as this. “It really opens up a window onto how all these systems impact each other,” Rocker says.

Blockchain and the "Internet of Value"

During a speech at the Stanford Graduate School of Business the co-founder and ex-CEO of Ripple Labs - Chris Larsen very well puts forward the idea of "Internet of Value" - a network of networks for moving value. Larsen says, “Just as you can’t have fire without fuel, oxygen, and heat, you can’t have effective globalization without interoperability in goods, data, and money. They all have to work together.” As we have the internet to move data, or the global logistics network to move goods, IoV will be a dedicated global network to move value (money and other digital assets) in a safe, efficient and inexpensive manner. To understand this more closely let us take the example of payments. The existing process of international wire transfer requires co-ordination and series of resource-intensive steps between participating banks, clearing houses, and the central banks.

Advanced analytics, Big Data to Blockchain driving disruption in banking sector; here’s how

Blockchain, or the distributed ledger in general, has been touted as one of the biggest disruptive technologies of recent times. While 20% of bankers feel that the event is one to two years away, another 40% think it could take twice as long. In any case, banks have got busy developing a range of use cases, especially in the areas of payments and remittances, trade and supply chain finance, digital identity management, smart contracts, document security, loan syndication and treasury management. Although it has slid from its top spot in the list of disruptive technologies, mobility, along with wearables, is still a force to reckon with. ... The smartphone’s native capabilities—camera, mobile apps, and touch screen—make it extremely suitable for biometric authentication, and customers are more than happy to adopt.

The many faces of grep

The grep command – likely one of the first ten commands that every Unix user comes to know and love – is not just a nice tool for finding a word or phrase in a file or command output. It can take on some vastly different personalities that allow you to more cleverly find the data that you are looking for and has more flexibility than many of its users have discovered. Historically provided as separate binaries, the different “flavors” of grep are now provided through a number of key command options that change how grep interprets the pattern that you provide for your search. To easily switch from one mode of searching to another, the different grep commands could be set up as aliases such as these:

Mitigating the Increasing Risks of an Insecure Internet of Things

Improving the resilience of the Internet and cyberphysical infrastructure in the face of insecure IoT devices will require a combination of technical and regulatory mechanisms. Engineers and regulators will need to work together to improve security and privacy of the Internet of Things. Engineers must continue to advance the state of the art in technologies ranging from lightweight encryption to statistical network anomaly detection to help reduce risk; similarly, engineers must design the network to improve resilience in the face of the increased risk of attack. On the other hand, realizing these advances in deployment will require the appropriate alignment of incentives, so that the parties that introduce risks are more aligned with those who bear the costs of the resulting attacks.

Quote for the day:

"The best strategy can do is shorten ur odds of success. If u are certain about ur strategy, u are dangerously delusional.” -- @RogerLMartin

Daily Tech Digest - February 20, 2017

How to organize an enterprise cybersecurity team effectively

An organization's cybersecurity team needs to manage and perform the right functions. So what's the best way to determine those functions? Carnegie Mellon University's well-respected Software Engineering Institute has created a framework that proposes structuring a cybersecurity team around four key functions. ... A framework that is based on an approach developed by security expert Mike Rothman is likely more realistic and pragmatic for many organizations. In this framework, an organization's cybersecurity team has an individual (e.g., a CSO) who has overall responsibility for implementing an organization's cybersecurity program, and who is the team's coordination point. This person is responsible for ensuring compliance with security policies and communicating cybersecurity program results to senior management.

6 ways IoT will change project management

Despite the more collaborative approach in projects that Agile development offers, IT still goes off to code and test most new apps on its own. When the apps are ready for staging or final end user review, the end users get plugged back in. This won't work with IoT projects, because IoT is so integrally linked into company operations that the software and hardware can't be separated from its actual operating environment. For instance, if an IoT robot is being used in a distribution center to pick and pack items from shelves, the software, the communications, the data collection and the operation of the robot in its warehouse environment have to be tested on the floor. It is not enough to finish the IT part of the project and just insert the technology. IT and operations have to work hand in hand on IoT 100% of the time, for the entire duration of the project.

Why Tech Should Get Involved in Regulating IoT Security

What’s needed is a sense of collective responsibility that involves vendors, government, and even consumers. “The moment that consumers know their fridge can spoil their own food but might also be attacking the neighbor’s fridge, they might say, I want to be a responsible actor. Most civilians want to be responsible actors,” Kolkman said. Earlier this month, Schneier proposed on his blog that a new government agency is required because existing agencies are not equipped to cope with the fluid nature of the Internet. During RSA, Schneier made a Skype appearance at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Leadership Summit in Lake Tahoe, California, where he repeated that call for a new agency. “My worry is the alternatives are not viable any longer. Government is going to get involved regardless,” he told that audience.

Sustainable Development Through Bitcoin

The origins of bitcoin lie in code and cryptography. In its early adoption, it has attracted the attention of bona fide entrepreneurs operating in a gray regulatory area prone to over-reaction, plus speculators and criminals. In the space of eight years, bitcoin (and its underlying protocol) has grown to the extent that central banks around the world and large financial institutions have begun to take serious notice. This is good. Still, while its ecosystem is growing, many of its use cases are still hypothetical or untested, and some advocates are prone to wishful thinking. A few betray a whiff of technological fundamentalism. Meanwhile, the Sustainable Development Goals arose in 2015 after sustained political debate and empirical evidence on what has and has not worked to improve the lot of people and planet. Their number and complexity is an admission that the world we live in is interdependent. Long-term fixes in one location can have positive effects elsewhere.

Breaking big data into business sense

Even contextually analysed data can’t do any good if it’s not being properly utilised. And when it comes to getting the most out of your data, it’s all about how you see it. Whatever big data analytics tool companies deploy should use data visualisation technology to help decision makers identify patterns. For example, a CIO might benefit from a dashboard that shows the number of unsatisfied customers over a period of time and lets them review the areas of the highest customer dissatisfaction. Visually representing these issues, with options to drill deeper into each graph, will help the CIO fully understand the situation, even at a glance. To completely enable visualisation in an analytics tool, users should be able to create graphs and dashboards in real time by dragging and dropping customised and out-of-the-box data fields. They should be able to combine multiple reports into a single, live dashboard, eliminating the need for multiple tabs and simplifying analysis.

IoT And Privacy: Turning Pitfalls Into Benefits

Companies can find themselves at risk if they haven't taken the appropriate steps to protect consumer interests, especially if they end up having a data breach where consumer information is exposed or stolen. Litigation can be costly and result in settlements that require micromanagement of the business, and no one wants that. "Then you are under the spotlight," she said. Concerns are growing as more high-profile startup companies offer devices and then stop supporting them due to an acquisition or the business closing down. When creating a privacy policy, organizations need to look at the entire life cycle of the device, from creation to updates to end of support. To get you started in the right direction with your privacy, security, and IoT policies, Hutnik promises she will offer a very focused session that helps people identify "key low hanging fruit that they should know but don't know.

Business Process Compromise: The Biggest Cyber Threat You’ve Never Heard Of

Application control can lock down access to mission critical systems to ensure nothing is altered. And file integrity monitoring (FIM) will be able to spot any signs of unusual activity inside your network which could indicate an attempt to compromise key processes. Intrusion prevention is important in preventing lateral movement as attackers look to move around, gathering information as they go. And advanced machine learning capabilities can be a useful aid to detecting malware designed to evade traditional filters. The key here is to spot any incursion or attempt to modify systems before the bad guys have time to do any real damage. With dwell time regularly averaging over 100 days, we need to get better at this.

Not investing in employees’ mental health is bad business

This isn’t about not hiring millennials and just hiring older workers. It’s about the fact that as older workers retire, there is a growing need to increase employee care and provide for the mental health of the employees coming in. If you don’t want to do that these younger employees will increasingly underperform and become problems that will significantly reduce the firm’s ability to compete. In the end, these young employees are our sons and daughters, they are our legacy, and they will be the ones who assure the work we did lasts into the future. Not investing in them isn’t just bad business, it is stupid management and fixing that should be a far higher priority than it is. The fact that similar problems exist at the top of the company is also an irony that shouldn’t be lost on any board of directors.

How To Develop An Internet Of Things Strategy

It all begins with a landscape analysis. You need to thoroughly understand your industry and competitors — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). This will help you see the megatrends and forces at play in your market. "Creating a landscape analysis and value chain of your industry is a very important thing to do," Rossman tells CIO.com. "Studying the market: What are they saying about IoT in your industry? Truly understanding what is your worst customer moment: Where do customers get frustrated? What data or what event improves that customer experience? What's the sensor or IoT opportunity that provides that data?" ... The next step, Rossman says, is to create a value-chain analysis and profit-pool analysis of your industry. It should be a broad view of the industry, don't give in to tunnel-vision with a narrow view of your current business.

Tata Motors and Microsoft India Collaborate to Provide Connected Cars

Tata Motors will continuously develop and launch new connected services and applications that make it easier for people to stay connected to work, entertainment and social networks, with greater safety & security as well as services to maximize better use of newly found in-car free time. In addition, Tata Motors’ recently launched ring-fenced vertical, TAMO, will act as an open platform to foster innovation through a startup ecosystem and develop vehicles with on-the-go connectivity. In its first phase, the advanced offerings will incorporate technologies such as cloud computing, analytics, geo-spatial & mapping and increased human-machine interface, creating a new benchmark in the industry for connected vehicles. TAMO will provide a digital eco-system, which will be leveraged by Tata Motors to support the mainstream business in the future.

Quote for the day:

"One of the best things you can do in your pursuit of growth is to systematize it." -- @alexgoldfayn

Daily Tech Digest - February 19, 2017

Fantastic (data)-Beasts and Where to Find Them: Data Scientists and Data Engineers

In reality, data scientists as imagined by most do not exist because it is a completely new figure, especially for the initial degrees of seniority. However, the proliferation of boot camps and structured university programs on one hand, and the companies’ increased awareness about this field on the other hand, will drive the job market towards its demand-supply equilibrium: firms will understand what they actually need in term of skills, and talents will be eventually able to provide those (verified) required abilities. It is then necessary at the moment to outline this new role, which is still half scientist half designer, and it includes a series of different skills and capabilities, akin to the mythological chimera.

Intelligent Computers Could Replace Lawyers in Coming Years: Report

Advocates of the technology believe that AI machines could help create more jobs in the legal sector as the technology drives costs down and makes legal services more affordable to greater numbers of people. “It’s like the beginning of the beginning of the beginning,” said LawGeex CEO Noory Bechor. “Legal, right now, I think is in the place that other industries were 10 and 15 years ago, like travel.” LawGeex is an AI-powered platform for legal contract review. The LawGeex platform is designed to “take a new contract, one that it’s never seen before, read it and then compare it to a database of every similar contract that it’s seen in the past.” LawGeex, like other AI platforms, also learns from each review it performs. Can AI legal platforms do better than people? Will the machine miss things that an experienced lawyer would otherwise catch?

We’re only human: Vulnerability, machines set to disrupt sales jobs

The intangible benefit of being human may no longer be an advantage regarding relationship building skills. These human capabilities have been primary considerations for giving the nod over robots in any potential sales role—tech-related or otherwise. It could be argued that the benefit of being human, is no longer a benefit at all. People in sales get and keep customers. It’s what they do. If you’ve known successful sales people, you will have heard of the importance of building and fostering good relationships with clients. ... With the advent of the digital age and global economy, humans are increasingly not building or fostering relationships particularly well. This is ironic on any number of levels that are not lost upon me. The ability to engender consistent, quality communications with the assistance of unprecedented technology has resulted in the unexpected failure to do so.

Teaching Staff To Respect The Risk Of A Data Breach

Research by the Ponemon Institute reveals that just 35 percent of respondents who are familiar with their companies’ data protection and privacy training programs feel that executives prioritize their employees’ understanding of the causes and effects of data breaches. This statistic should concern every organization. Although attacks on data originate from external sources, the vulnerabilities exist internally. In fact, employees themselves are most often responsible for introducing a threat into an IT infrastructure. Most executives who realize that their employees don’t know much about security also struggle with the fact that, if there is a major breach, it’s them — the CEOs and CIOs — who will lose their jobs. ... Companywide security initiatives must place a major focus on social engineering in order to minimize the risk of user errors.

2017 Will Prove Pivotal in Efforts to Bring Smart Home Technology to Mass Market

An important year for smart home, 2017 will be the launch-pad year for EMEA and APAC adoption rates along with consolidation and maturity in North America. For the market as a whole, professional and DIY channels will continue to be fierce competitors, with a hybrid of the professional channel ultimately winning out at the end of 2017. Although DIY companies such as Apple will make large strides, DIY solutions will continue to suffer from mixed reviews and high upfront costs. As a result, the non-smart home enthusiasts will opt for professional support until DIY platforms become more reliable. As the price for connected devices come down, DIY systems will benefit until the cost of back-end services and maintenance allow service providers to lower monthly subscription fees.

The one critical skill many data scientists are missing

To be open and transparent with clients, we can’t just explain the potential for our products, we need to explain the possible pitfalls as well. We have started running “under-the-hood” sessions with some of our clients where they visit our offices and we talk about some of the more technical aspects of what we do. These are informal sessions, though, so people don’t want a math lecture or a discussion on coding practices. In this case, the challenge is finding the right balance between the formal, the detail, and the enjoyment. If any of the communication had failed, our product would never have got off the ground. It has all made me appreciate how vital communication is as a data scientist. I can learn about as many algorithms or cool new tools as I want, but if I can’t explain why I might want to use them to anyone, then it’s a complete waste of my time and theirs.

Designing the Data Management Infrastructure of Tomorrow

Enterprises struggle to create a data-driven culture in order to realise the true business value of data. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach towards creating a data-driven culture as this depends on the people and the precise work environment of an organisation, there is a unique business model that can be used as an inspiration to create an effective data management strategy and plan data management infrastructure. It is called Agile. The Agile approach is being used by renowned firms like Google, Spotify, Zappos, and Netflix. The purpose of this approach is to empower people to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams and enable them to make the right decisions quickly and effectively.

Evolution of Business Logic from Monoliths through Microservices, to Functions

The first steps to reduce cost of delivery focused on process automation. Many organizations developed custom scripts to deploy new hardware, and to install and update applications. Eventually common frameworks like Puppet and Chef became popular, and “infrastructure as code” sped up delivery of updates. The DevOps movement began when operations teams adopted agile software development practices and worked closely with developers to reduce time to value from months to days. Scripts can change what’s already there, but fast growing businesses or those with unpredictable workloads struggled to provision new capacity quickly. The introduction of self service API calls to automatically provision cloud capacity using Amazon EC2 solved this problem.

An Angular Wish List

There are many ways of implementing browser screen sharing – what is proposed here is to have a new Angular platform type (let’s call it Platform-Shared). It would have a composite renderer with functionality similar to what is both in Platform-Browser (to display locally) and in Platform-WebWorker. It could be configurable whether the remote user only gets to see the rendered output or could also send events back. The X Window System has the concept of a display server, which runs on the machine the human user sits in front of, and this offers a display service that remote applications can use to render on screen. Currently with Angular, the entire application runs in the web browser where the user is located. Imagine a new Angular Platform-DisplayServer that would allow the web application to run on some remote machine

10 things to consider when buying a router

Keep in mind that networking hardware doesn't last forever. Not only do the standards change fairly often, but networking hardware is put through a lot of stress on a daily basis. Your Wi-Fi connection is stretched across your computer, gaming console, smartphone, tablet and streaming devices. And with more devices being added to the mix, such as smart lights or thermostats, that load is only getting larger, and over time, a router's performance can degrade. ... The positioning of your router is extremely important. It should be in a central location, away from other gadgets or obstructions and, ideally, high up on a shelf. Still, even with great positioning, you're likely to run into dead spots inside your home, places where the wireless signal just can't reach. Using heat map software can help you maximize your wireless coverage, and buying a more expensive router might give you better range, but it still doesn't mean the signal will reach the far corner or your basement.

Quote for the day:

?Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together." -- Marilyn Monroe

Daily Tech Digest - February 18, 2017

The Rise of AI Makes Emotional Intelligence More Important

Those that want to stay relevant in their professions will need to focus on skills and capabilities that artificial intelligence has trouble replicating — understanding, motivating, and interacting with human beings. A smart machine might be able to diagnose an illness and even recommend treatment better than a doctor. It takes a person, however, to sit with a patient, understand their life situation (finances, family, quality of life, etc.), and help determine what treatment plan is optimal. Similarly, a smart machine may be able to diagnose complex business problems and recommend actions to improve an organization. A human being, however, is still best suited to jobs like spurring the leadership team to action, avoiding political hot buttons, and identifying savvy individuals to lead change.

Support Grows For Robo-Advice

Accenture's report Financial Providers Transforming Distribution Models For The Evolving Consumer says that seven in 10 consumers around the world would welcome robo-advisory services – computer-generated advice and services that are independent of a human advisor – for their banking, insurance and retirement planning. Yet, a large number of consumers still want human interaction for their more complex needs, leaving firms challenged with blending a physical presence with an advanced digital user-experience, as they look to integrate robot and human services. ... The survey also found that consumers are willing to switch to non-traditional providers for financial services. Nearly one-third would switch to Google, Amazon or Facebook for banking, insurance and financial advisory services.

Protecting your digital enterprise—it’s not just up to IT

So, how do organizations protect their digital enterprise and ensure that they are compliant? It will be essential to provide your IT team with the resources it needs to manage data effectively, including where it goes and who can access it. At the session, my team members and I discussed how HPE’s ControlPoint and Structured Data Manager are ideal tools to help businesses achieve this level of data hygiene. But achieving compliance isn’t just up to the IT team. It requires an organization-wide commitment. “What’s really important is to create a pervasive information governance culture throughout the organization,” said Duncan. “GDPR is not a security problem. It’s not even an IT problem; it’s a business problem.”

Tapping the Entrepreneurial Spirit for Successful Digital Transformation

The likeliest place to find these change agents is right in the trenches, in the lines of business. These are the individuals who are intimately involved with and exposed to daily operations, who are uniquely positioned to see opportunities for problem-solving. Taking a fresh perspective on the mundane tasks that are performed every day can inspire creative solutions using custom apps. Here’s a real-life example of an individual who put this experience and perspective to good use. Never one to do things conventionally, Pete Tucci was a pro baseball player with Major League Baseball. When a career-ending hand injury cut his dream short, he founded the Tucci Lumber Bats Company, producing custom baseball bats. The fact that he had no woodworking experience didn’t deter him; he was determined to figure out how to make world-class bats. In short, Tucci was a change agent.

From disrupted to disruptor: Reinventing your business by transforming the core

For all the fundamental change that digital reinvention demands, it’s worth emphasizing that it doesn’t call for a “throw it all out” approach. An engine-parts company, for example, will still likely make engine parts after a digital reinvention, but may do so in a way that’s much more agile and analytically driven, or the company may open up new lines of business by leveraging existing assets. Apple, with its move from computer manufacturer to music and lifestyle brand through its iPhone and iTunes ecosystem, reinvented itself—even as it continued to build computers. John Deere created a whole series of online services for farmers even as it continued to sell tractors and farm equipment. There are many elements to a transformation, from end-to-end journey redesign and embedding analytics into processes to open tech platforms.

3 Big Blockchain Ideas MIT is Working on Right Now

Work on the multifaceted world of blockchain tech now sits easily alongside transparent robots that eat real-world fish, solar nebula research, and other imaginative, futuristic projects in progress at the university. Part of MIT's Media Lab, DCI now has a team of 22 people and at least seven ongoing research projects, and it nurtures three startups that use cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology in a variety of ways. To date, the initiative has funded the work of bitcoin protocol developers, and has supported a range of research, going beyond bitcoin to partner with distributed ledger tech startup Ripple and developing enterprise data projects. DCI research director Neha Narula, who helps drive the initiative, told CoinDesk:

Raking in the Ransoms: How the Russian Ransomware Threat Landscape Ticks

If you think Russian threat actors code a piece of ransomware and directly target users with it, you’re wrong. All native ransomware enterprises are much more sophisticated than that. It all begins with a developer who creates the crypto-malware. They are the one responsible for coding the software, adding additional modules, and setting up IT infrastructure to support the ransomware’s distribution. To coordinate this operation, a creator inevitably hires or enlists the help of a manager. The manager is the only person in a Russian ransomware enterprise who gets to communicate with the author. Their job is to internalize the directives of the creator and find partners who can realize the developer’s vision. In other words, a manager is responsible for finding partners who can help expand the ransomware initiative. Kaspersky Lab explains how they do this in a blog post:

Putting digital transformation on the business agenda

Since embarking on this new world of work, Microsoft Japan now regularly measures how successful its work style innovation has been. Employees are rewarded for making calls and arranging meetings more promptly. “A Japanese company, on average, takes about 10 days before they have an official meeting, from asking for the meeting to an actual meeting to happen; in our case, 5.5 days,” says Hirano. “The new work style empowers employees with the flexibility to not only become more productive but also achieve more work-life balance. This has helped significantly in attracting and retaining talent. In fact, we have halved the attrition rate of female staff.

How Fintech Will Change The Way We Bank In The Developing World

The spread of mobile phones has spearheaded this opportunity. The economic benefit of this inclusion is massive at an individual and societal and organisational level. Not only is there opportunity to provide financial services to 80 percent of the global population through their mobile phones, there are also 200 million businesses in emerging economies without access to financial services including savings and credit. By bringing down the barriers of entry of the banking institutions, entrepreneurs now have the opportunity to enjoy the economic benefits previously available exclusively to established institutions. Blockchain solutions have provided a digital platform which enhances transparency. Furthermore, for governments, a cash run economic ecosystem means that transactions are not captured into the system and tax revenue is lost.

How Machine Learning Transforms Digital Experience, One Industry at a Time

Every customer’s journey is different. Someone looking for wedding items, DIY repairs or Halloween costumes will have different preferences and different stages of the buying journey. ... Machine learning can cultivate this personal experience automatically, quickly and at scale.

Knowing exactly what they want ... Natural language processing (NLP) will help create an incredibly efficient marketing machine from a simple site search bar. One person’s “Cable knit jumper” is someone else's “chunky sweater,” and NLP continuously learns to identify and connect intent. These super-charged analytics give insight to more than just trending search terms, but can also tell you what overall topics and categories are likely to be the next big thing — and which of your current catalogue already fits nicely into these trends.

Microsoft Aims To Expand Into Healthcare With AI And Cloud Services

This is a slight departure from Microsoft's previous healthcare projects like Microsoft Health that has focused on data-based patient programs. The new initiative will create partnerships between various players in the healthcare industry and Microsoft's AI and Research organization, starting with a collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). UPMC's product development experts will work with Microsoft's research and technology expertise to build tech solutions that are customized to the needs they are serving. The synergy between the products designed to solve healthcare issues and the realities of everyday healthcare is a crucial stepping stone in healthcare tech initiatives. More efficient information and workflow tools can improve health care systems and even save lives.

Quote for the day:

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." -- Abraham Lincoln

Daily Tech Digest - February 17, 2017

Extending COBIT 5 Data Security and Governance Guidance

COBIT 5 encourages each enterprise to adapt the COBIT content to the enterprise’s own priorities and circumstances. However, among the processes COBIT 5 recommends are 3 especially suited for security, and the metrics suggested for each are only a subset of measurements that might be meaningful to the enterprise. First is that a system is in place that considers and effectively addresses enterprise information security requirements. This appears overarching (a good thing), and the measures suggested for it include the number of key security roles that have been clearly defined and the number of security-related incidents. Most enterprises would wish to add other measures to the list in keeping with their own situation.

7 tips to turn threat data into true threat intelligence

Unvetted threat intel is a bit like getting raw data feeds about the stock market. Responding to such data, you may be the next investment millionaire, or you could completely lose your shirt. You need to filter through it to eliminate the useless portions, and carefully weigh the balance. As Malcovery Security said in a blog some months ago, most of what the industry refers to as threat intelligence is really just threat data. It is just a list of data elements, full of noise and false positives. Until the intelligence part is applied to this data feed, it is fairly useless, or even worse, may lead to false conclusions. According to Mark Orlando in his presentation to the RSA Security Conference in 2015, raw threat intel data is highly commoditized, has poor quality control, a short shelf life, and promotes a false sense of awareness.

CTO: Our quest for agility led us to the OpenStack framework

The OpenStack framework has been around for a reasonably long time. Even more important, OpenStack was an early manifestation of an approach purposefully designed to help us deliver agility. In the years since the OpenStack framework became available, others have created alternatives to Open Stack, but they are all built to do similar things: leverage commodity hardware, open standards, virtualization and orchestration tools to deliver fluid, portable and complete services (compute, storage and networking). With fluid, portable and complete IT services, we can flex, scale, move around and revise our services as needed. These are capabilities we need -- no, must have -- if we are to survive and thrive in a technology-driven marketplace.

58 Mind-Blowing Digital Marketing Stats You Need to Know

While there are several forms of traditional marketing including print, radio, and television, statistics show that digital marketing is taking over in terms of popularity and success. In fact, by 2021 it’s projected that marketing leaders will spend 75% of their total marketing budget on digital marketing rather than traditional marketing. ... Social media is changing the face of the marketing culture in several ways. With social media, it’s easier to collect useful data on consumers, build a visible and popular brand, and sell products on various social media platforms. The following statistics will boggle your mind and help you understand the importance of getting your social strategy right this year.

Gain competitive advantage with NoSQL databases

Till yet we learned the reasons that worked as a catalyst for the failure of relational databases. However this is not completely true as relational databases still have a fair share of the market however NoSQL drew the attention of many companies which wanted to deal with big data. Some of the NoSQL advantages are- Make the system agile- NoSQl databases work on a dynamic model that allows storing and maintaining data without defining it beforehand. This makes the faster and responsive than ever before. Easy scaling- Scaling up the relational databases were complex and expensive. Unlike this the NoSQL databases can easily be scaled-up and down as per the workload as these have a dynamic architecture offering much more operational benefits than RDBMS.

Russian Cyberspies Blamed For US Election Hacks Are Now Targetting MACs

The group, which is known in the security industry under different names, including Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, and APT28, has been operating for almost a decade. It is believed to be the sole user and likely developer of a Trojan program called Sofacy or X-Agent. X-Agent variants for Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS have been found in the wild in the past, but researchers from Bitdefender have now come across what appears to be the first macOS version of the Trojan. It's not entirely clear how the malware is being distributed because the Bitdefender researchers only obtained the malware sample, not the full attack chain. However, it's possible a macOS malware downloader dubbed Komplex, found in September, might be involved.

How to use Instant Tethering on your Google Pixel or Nexus device

Staying connected on the go is a constant struggle for business professionals and everyday techies alike. However, a new feature from Google called Instant Tethering could offer a more intelligent way to keep your devices online. A recent product forum post by Google product manager Omri Amarilio explained that Instant Tethering uses Bluetooth to allow to Google devices to communicate. The devices, such as tablets and Pixel phones, must be logged into with the same Google account. "When you unlock a tablet such as the Pixel C, it will notice if there is no internet connection available, and will ask your Pixel phone if it has internet and battery life," Amarilio wrote in his post. "If it does, we will give you an option to enable a secure hotspot and pair [automatically], without even taking your phone out of your pocket."

Real-World, Man-Machine Algorithms

There are many machine learning classification problems where using log data is standard, essentially giving you labels for free. For example, ad click prediction models are typically trained on which ads users click on, video recommendation systems make heavy use of which videos you’ve watched in the past, etc. However, even these systems need to move beyond simple click data once they reach large enough scale and sophistication; for instance, because they’re heavily biased towards clicks, it can be difficult to tune the systems to show new ads and new videos to users, and so explore-exploit algorithms become necessary. ... As another example, suppose you're an e-commerce site like eBay or Etsy. You're starting to see a lot of spammy profiles selling Viagra, drugs, and other blacklisted products, so you want to fight the problem with machine learning.

2 powerful new features on their way to Android right now

Android can be full of surprises. Thanks to the deconstructed nature of the operating system, individual pieces of the software receive updates all the time -- in a way that has nothing to do with the big, attention-grabbing OS rollouts. It happens with a large and ever-expanding list of core system apps that now exist in the Play Store and are updated accordingly, but it also happens silently and seamlessly with some behind-the-scenes tools that are easy to overlook. As a result, useful new features can sometimes appear in random areas of your device -- and you might not even realize they're there. Such an update is underway as we speak. Google is in the midst of rolling out a refinement to its Google Play Services app that brings two powerful new options into Android's settings -- options you might never notice but don't want to miss.

Bruce Schneier: It's time for internet-of-things regulation

Schneier argued there is precedence for creating such an agency to address new technologies, from trains and automobiles to radio and nuclear. And he said those agencies tend to be created for two reasons. "New technologies need new expertise," Schneier said. "And new technologies need new controls. And this is something markets can't solve. Markets are, by definition, short-term profit-motivated. That's what they're supposed to do. They don't solve collective action problems." Government, he said, is "the entity that is used to solve problems like this." But Schneier also admitted that a regulatory approach to IoT threats brings a lot of problems, from a general lack of technical expertise in the government to historical problems with regulatory capture.

Quote for the day:

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe" -- Anatole France

Daily Tech Digest - February 16, 2017

Biometrics lead to liberty, security debate

“It’s going to apply to all of us, because there is a global priority of security and that philosophy has been clearly illustrated by President Donald Trump,” Joyner said. The benefits of these systems is the potential to reduce fraud, increase security by accurately assessing and identifying individuals, eliminating the need for passwords and, possibly, a cashless society, he said. “There have already been programs like this in effect, and I think that’s why nobody is questioning it now,” constitutional law professor Joseph Ignagni said. The issue presents an interesting legal question about the Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant or probable cause, since seizing biometric data is technically a search that is being recorded or kept without probable cause, Ignagni said.

One in three cybersecurity job openings go begging, survey finds

The experience part is paradoxical, of course, since someone somewhere has to bet their infrastructure on an inexperienced but eager candidate willing to learn. There are some choice certifications that make the difference, led by the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification, sought by 27 percent of security managers. The survey report's authors recommend nurturing talent from within, to invest in offering support for training and certifications to current staff members. The advantage is these individuals already understand the business, and who owns what line of business. At least 26 percent of security professionals say they have positions that have been open for more than six months, and another six percent say they have positions they haven't been able to fill.

Demand for qualified cybersecurity professionals continues to outstrip supply

Studies show most corporate job openings result in 60 to 250 applicants. Compounding the problem, ISACA’s State of Cybersecurity 2017 found that 37 per cent of respondents say fewer than 1 in 4 candidates have the qualifications employers need to keep companies secure. “Though the field of cybersecurity is still relatively young, demand continues to skyrocket and will only continue to grow in the coming years,” says Christos Dimitriadis, ISACA board chair and group director of Information Security for INTRALOT. “As enterprises invest more resources to protect data, the challenge they face is finding top-flight security practitioners who have the skills needed to do the job. When positions go unfilled, organisations have a higher exposure to potential cyberattacks. It’s a race against the clock.”

Board Can Play A Key Role In Curbing Cyber Threats

The good news is, there has been an increase in the number of firms whose boards of directors and management that are actively engaged with cybersecurity and adopting best practices in their IT departments. Protiviti’s 2017 Security and Privacy Survey shows that current board engagement levels are at 33 percent, compared to 28 percent in 2015. “While there has been an increase in boards of directors’ and company management’s engagement with information security is a positive sign, it’s imperative that leadership keeps closer tabs on the state of their organizations’ cybersecurity programs,” said Scott Laliberte, a Protiviti managing director and leader of the firm’s global IT security and privacy practice.

Lawmakers Want Self-Driving Cars To Thrive But Still Fear Hacks

The vision of widespread self-driving cars might not be realized without Congressional help. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chair John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., announced plans Tuesday to eventually introduce legislation that promoting the autonomous vehicle industry. Today's federal safety standards involve concepts such as the "placement of driver controls" that "assume a human operator," they wrote in a statement. "While these requirements make sense in today’s conventional vehicles, they could inhibit innovation or create hazards for self-driving vehicles." They also plan to examine the "existing patchwork of laws and regulations and the traditional roles of federal and state regulators.”

Hands on with the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 hybrid

A notebook should take you from workstation to couch to the road, with as few peripherals or headaches as possible. But as notebooks get thinner and lighter, more manufacturers have followed Macbook's footsteps and ditched full-sized HDMI, DisplayPorts and USB ports. Instead, the trend is turning towards USB Type-C connectors that can do it all -- as long as you have the right adapter. I've had to temper my great port-expectations because I know it's not reasonable to expect a full USB or HDMI port on a thin, compact device. But, that doesn't mean I'm ready to say goodbye to every port. While the Macbook is an extreme example -- it features just one USB Type-C port for everything, including charging -- Dell found a comfortable middle ground on the XPS 13 2-in-1.

Google Assistant Will Soon Be Able To Buy Stuff For You On Command

There isn’t much you can do with the feature after it’s set up, but presumably Google will announce support for third-party stores shortly. At the start of the set-up process, you’ll need to accept the terms and conditions for both Google Payments and Google Express, an online marketplace that links to a number of popular stores, such as Walgreens, Costco, and Toys R Us, so at the very least you'll be able to buy things there. However, asking Google Assistant to shop for something on Google Express merely brings up a search results screen. Since the feature is tied to your Google account and not the Pixel phone specifically, it’s likely it will work with all of the devices integrated with Assistant, including Google Home and Android Wear 2.0 watches.

There Are A Lot Of Open Questions When It Comes To Machine-Based Innovation

The trend in machine learning has been strongly in favor of neural networks. If 2016 was the year when Alpha-Go bested world's best Go players, I think 2017 will be the year where we make continued progress towards neural-networks based technologies entering the every-day world. I'm thinking better personal assistants (Amazon's Alexa and Google Home are already great successes), greater progress towards autonomous vehicles, machine learning in health-care, etc. People way smarter than myself have been thinking about this. I really like Andrew Ng's perspective: 'if a typical person can do a mental task with less than one second of thought, we can probably automate it using AI either now or in the near future.' A lot of analytics that are done require way more than one second of thought!

10 Management Techniques from Born-Digital Companies

Born-digital enterprises are “a generation of organizations founded after 1995, whose operating models and capabilities are based on exploiting internet-era information and digital technologies as a core competency.” “It’s actually the superior leadership thinking, patterns of thought and competencies they’re employing that are beginning to be the differentiators,” said Mark Raskino, VP and Gartner Fellow at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Barcelona, Spain. But conventional companies are often resistant to the idea that they might be able to replicate some of these ideas in their own enterprise. However, the excuses are starting to fall away as companies move toward digital. Traditional companies previously may have thought, those are startups so they can operate differently or those are small companies, they work in the ephemeral, or they are all U.S.-based companies.

Clear goals, patience required for successful IT automation strategy

"There is a training curve for digital systems that does not elicit better work in the short term; it takes time to get there," Conlee said. An IT automation strategy can be a huge help when it comes to one common issue facing modern digitized companies, Galusha said: process and data complexity. Because these companies are responsible for many systems with numerous internal/external data sources, it is difficult to connect all that information to the company's processes. A robotic process automation strategy can help with consolidating data for analytics purposes, Galusha said, and apply unique business rules to information contained in these numerous data sources. "Your processes, and how you are making decisions, [is] only as good as the information," Galusha said. "If you are doing it manually, it's slow, it's inefficient, and you're probably making errors along the way."

Quote for the day:

"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt