Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

Daily Tech Digest - June 18, 2017

How to Start Incorporating Machine Learning in Enterprises

Most of the economists and social scientists are concerned about the automation that is taking over the manufacturing and commercial processes. If the digitalization and automation continue to grow at the same pace it is currently happening, there is a high probability of machines partly replacing humans in the workforce. We are seeing some examples of the phenomena in our world today, but it is predicted to be far more prominent in the future. However, Dynes says, “Data scientists are providing solutions to intricate and complex problems confronted by various sectors today. They are utilizing useful information from data analysis to understand and fix things. Data science is an input and the output is yielded in the form of automation. Machines automate, but humans provide the necessary input to get the desired output.”

Understand these 5 basic concepts to sound like a machine learning expert

Most people seem a bit intimidated or confused by machine learning. What is it? Where is it going? Can I have some money now please? All valid questions. The truth is, you’ve been training machine learning models for years now, probably without realizing it. Do you use an iPhone or Apple photos? Or how about Facebook? You know how it shows you a group of faces and asks you to identify them? Well, by tagging those photos, you are training a facial recognition model to identify new faces. Congratulations, you can now say you have experience training machine learning models! But before you do, read these machine learning basics so you can accurately answer any follow up question.

Will the rise of AR mean the end for smartphones and TVs?

The problem, naturally, is that a huge chunk of the world's economy hinges on the production of phones, TVs, tablets, and all those other things that Facebook thinks could be replaced with this technology. Even Zuckerberg acknowledges it's a long road ahead. That said, this Camera Effects platform, should it succeed in attracting a bunch of users, could go down as a savvy move. The apps that are built for the Facebook Camera today could wind up as the first versions of the apps you'd use with those glasses. In the short term, Facebook's play for augmented reality is going to look a lot like competing with Snapchat — and in a meaningful way, it is. Facebook needs developer and user love, so it needs to keep offering fun and funny tools to keep people from moving away from using its apps.

A discussion about AI’s conflicts and challenges

“The big breakthrough over the last ten years has been deep learning but I think we’ve done that now,” he argues. “People are of course writing more papers than ever about it. But it’s entering a more mature phase where at least in terms of using deep learning. We can absolutely do it. But in terms of understanding deep learning — the fundamental mathematics of it — that’s another matter.” “But the hunger, the appetite of companies and universities for trained talent is absolutely prodigious at the moment — and I am sure we are going to need to do more,” he adds, on education and expertise. Returning to the question of tech giants dominating AI research he points out that many of these companies are making public toolkits available, such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft have done, to help drive activity across a wider AI ecosystem.

How Will Analytics, AI, Big Data, and Machine Learning Replace Human Interactions?

Today using Big Data analytics companies and isolate which web pages, IVR logic paths, and customer service agents are starting snowballs and which web pages, IVR logic paths, and customer service agents are successfully resolving them, or melting them; these analytics also spotlight which issues or reasons are not resolved the first time and result in snowballs. Digging into the root causes of both of these areas produces improvements in processes that can help to Eliminate many thorny issues. In addition, analytics and machine learning can help to predict that there might be a snowball, and recommend how to address that customer in that moment in order to prevent a repeat contact from happening. As with the predictive models that I described earlier this forms a much stronger engine – either automated or human provided – that in turns delivers a combination of Best Service is No Serviceand Me2B success.

How to Prepare the Next Generation for Jobs in the AI Economy

Ethics also deserves more attention at every educational level. AI technologies face ethical dilemmas all the time — for example, how to exclude racial, ethnic, and gender prejudices from automated decisions; how a self-driving car balances the lives of its occupants with those of pedestrians, etc. — and we need people and programmers who can make well-thought-out contributions to those decision making processes. We’re not obsessed about teaching coding at the elementary levels. It’s fine to do so, especially if the kids enjoy it, and languages such as Snap! and Scratch are useful. But coding is something kids can pick up later on in their education. However, the notion that you don’t need to worry at all about learning to program is misguided. With the world becoming increasingly digital, computer science is as vital in the arts and sciences as writing and math are.

9 shell tips every developer should know

The shell is your friend. But many developers don’t really know the shell, the Unix or Linux command-line environment available in several operating systems. (Bash is the best known, but there are others.) Some of you, when you transitioned from Windows to Mac, took your (slow) clickety habits with you, not realizing that the power laid in that app called Terminal hidden under Applications somewhere. Some of you have been shelling into “the server” to tweak a setting or two without realizing that you could automate your life away without even cracking a devops tool. Whatever brought you to the shell, chances are you’re not using it to its full advantage. Here are my top nine tricks for doing so

Why are so many customers still afraid of mobile banking?

Overall mobile adoption among Americans remains relatively low — 31 percent for banking and 17 percent for credit cards, according to J.D. Power. It’s not surprising that card apps are used less, because they’re typically limited to providing balances, payment due dates and loyalty points. Online banking adoption, by contrast, is 80 percent. “Eight out of 10 are comfortable doing their banking electronically, and mobile offers them a more convenient alternative to that, and they have the phone to do it, but they’re still not comfortable with it, particularly older customers,” Neuhaus said. Because 80 percent of Americans have smartphones, “there’s a big pool of potential mobile banking users that have not gotten comfortable with it or have not seen the value yet in making that move,” Neuhaus said.

How To Tell If AI Or Machine Learning Is Real

If someone claims an application, a service, or a machine is smart, you’re almost certainly getting snowed. Of course, people will use the word “smart” as a shortcut to mean “more capable logic,” a phrase that won’t sell anything. But if they don’t explain what “smart” means specific to their offering, you know they think you’re dumb. The fact is that most technologies labeled “smart” are not smart, merely savvy. The difference is that smart requires intelligence and cognition, whereas savvy requires only information and the ability to take advantage of it (it’s no accident that “savvy” come from the French word for “to know”). A savvy app or robot is a good thing, but it’s still not smart. We’re simply not there yet. bEven IBM’s vaunted Watson is not smart. It is savvy, it is very fast, and it can learn.

Identifying And Overcoming Cybersecurity Risks

Many SMBs don’t understand the extent to which their data is at risk, and those who do often don’t know where to start in addressing this problem. In 2015, the U.K. government issued a press release suggesting that businesses need to plan for a cyberattacks. The research revealed that as many as 90% of big businesses and 74% of SMBs had experienced an information-security breach. It’s understandable, then, that a large proportion of small-business owners don’t pay the danger much attention, perhaps failing to realize that something as innocent as a social-media post or a USB stick left in the wrong place can be enough to bring down their whole organization. If you’re in this group, you should start reviewing the risks and putting security procedures in place. This guide gives you a starting point, with five steps you can implement right away to improve the safety of your company.

Quote for the day:

"A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers" -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Daily Tech Digest - June 15, 2017

How big data is disrupting education

Some people are visual learners and others more hands on. Also, some people are simply good at taking tests. There’s a difference between passing a test on a subject and actually having that subject mastered. Big data analytics allows educators to use a wider range of sources when grading a student to come up with a more realistic picture of how well they’ve learned a subject. It also provides the opportunity to... Data analytics has pointed out some startling truths about education in the inner-cities of America. Studies show that inner-city schools are more likely to higher less educated teaching staff to reduce costs. Unfortunately, those cost-savings have directly translated into lower grades and higher dropout rates. This problem that big data pointed out, can be monitored in real time and solved using the same tools.

Trends Shaping Machine Learning in 2017

Businesses greatly value data to take the appropriate actions, whether it is to understand the consumer demand or comprehend a company’s financial standing. However, it is not the data alone they should value because without an appropriate algorithm, that data is worth nothing. Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President of Gartner Research, says that, “Data is inherently dumb and the real value lies in the algorithms which deduce meaningful results from a cluster of meaningless data". Algorithm Economy has taken center stage for the past couple of years, and the trend is expected to follow as we expect to see further developments in machine learning tools. The use of algorithm economy will distinguish small players from the market dominators in 2017. Small businesses that have just entered the transitional phase of embedding machine learning processes in their business models will be using canned algorithms in tools such as BI, CRM and predictive analysis.

The evolution of data center networks

With an open platform powering each, we no longer have to solve the same problem twice (once for networking, and once for compute). Often, the two solutions are vastly different for no reason other than history. Computing was opened up when Linux replaced the proprietary server OSes; this changed the application landscape as we know it. I think solutions such as clouds and the Google search would have been harder to invent if not for the widespread use of Linux. For too long people have innovated around networks, not with them. If networking can be opened up as computing has been, and if people can innovate with the network rather than around it, I think networking and computing as we know it can change dramatically.

Stakeholders Collectively Designing Future Of Artificial Intelligence

The goals of the partnership are to understand what the main issues are “in the pervasive use of Ai in our lives,” economic and societal impacts, such as data policy, data privacy, data ownership, and sharing. ... A number of issues have been identified for further focus over the next two years, she said, such as safety, trustworthiness and transparency. IBM Watson, as explained by Whatis.com is “an IBM supercomputer that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and sophisticated analytical software for optimal performance as a ‘question answering’ machine.” According to Technopedia, “IBM’s Watson supercomputer is a question-answering supercomputer that uses artificial intelligence to perform cognitive computing and data analysis. With a processing rate of 80 teraflops, Watson performs deep-level input analysis to present accurate answers to questions generated by humans.“

Miniservices may deliver, much to microservices purists' chagrin

Scalability is probably one of the big reasons why we've kind of been looking at moving toward a microservices architecture. I think, in that case, it's fair to say HTTP doesn't solve the problem. I'm not sure that there's a firm line in the sand here. [But] just because you've got a hundred services or a thousand services doesn't necessarily mean that HTTP is the wrong choice. It may be just as functional as any other integration technology. But, you will get to a point, I'm sure, where the amount of traffic starts to get in your way. And then the other angle around HTTP or within web-centric integration that's perhaps useful is the concept of governance. HTTP affords us more capability there simply because with an easier way of seeing where traffic is coming from and flowing to.

Facebook teaches machines to negotiate with humans

Over the course of the interactions, machines naturally adopted many common negotiation tactics — like placing false emphasis on a low-value item in an attempt to use it as a more valuable bargaining chip later. Under the hood, Facebook’s rollout technique takes the form of a decision tree. Decision trees are a critical component of many intelligent systems. They allow us to model future states from the present to make decisions. Imagine a game of tic-tac-toe, at any given point of the game, there is a finite option set (places you can place your “X” on the board. In that scenario, each move has an expected value. Humans don’t usually consider this value in an explicit way but if you decompose your decision process when playing the game, you are effectively short-handing this math in your head.

Public cloud services show no sign of slowing down

Cloud experts predict growth in the PaaS realm. "For ten years, cloud companies focused on getting companies to purchase IaaS," said Maribel Lopez, strategic advisor at Lopez Research. "Today, cloud providers are delivering more value in the PaaS area to help people build new mobile-cloud ready apps as well as cybersecurity services that will help companies secure everything from devices to network and cloud-resident services." "As companies put more data into the cloud," said Lopez, "developing a richer set of services as a way to manage and secure corporate data has become a critical set of features and services for cloud providers. The cybersecurity market is the toughest market to crack but has tremendous opportunity." While it is clear that the cloud is showing signs of huge growth, it has still not quite caught up with the use of data centers.

Fintech developers tell you what to look for and why the fintech revolution arose

"Connecting the dots is what matters these days so the trend is towards establishing a data lake for investigation. AI needs data to be effective, the more the merrier, and the rise of 'big' unstructured data from social media, news and other sources helps this, as does the cloud as a connective layer. More data translates into better insights for anti-fraud or money laundering pattern spotting behavioral systems, financial market surveillance systems and other such applications. These are the key trends and technologies for me." What you do with the technology is important too. If people, process and technology aren't aligned and embedded in stringent management, risk and governance layers, then the full effectiveness of any new technical development won't be unleashed. People rely on machines and vice versa.

7 Techniques to Handle Imbalanced Data

What have datasets in domains like, fraud detection in banking, real-time bidding in marketing or intrusion detection in networks, in common? Data used in these areas often have less than 1% of rare, but “interesting” events. However, most machine learning algorithms do not work very well with imbalanced datasets. ... It is noteworthy that cross-validation should be applied properly while using over-sampling method to address imbalance problems. Keep in mind that over-sampling takes observed rare samples and applies bootstrapping to generate new random data based on a distribution function. If cross-validation is applied after over-sampling, basically what we are doing is overfitting our model to a specific artificial bootstrapping result. That is why cross-validation should always be done before over-sampling the data, just as how feature selection should be implemented.

Will Augmented and Virtual Reality Replace the Bank Branch?

Banking bots will soon be able to support most banking queries, with 24/7/365 access benefits afforded the consumer and significant cost savings being the driving force for the banking industry. Once the transition is complete for simple teller transactions, will the technology be used for full-function robo-advising as well? ... USAA was the first to offer limited voice banking, with Capital One enabling banking by voice, connecting via Amazon’s Alexa – embedded in devices like the Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot and newly introduced devices. Capital One customers can check balances, review transactions, make payments and more using simple voice commands. Bank of America is also working on voice recognition technology called Erica, that will allow people to do virtual banking by voice with a computer, similar to how people already use Amazon Alexa or Apple’s Siri.

Quote for the day:

"A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks." -- Oscar Wilde

Daily Tech Digest - June 14, 2017

Machine learning demystified: the importance of data

The software’s functional rules are based on assumptions that are limited to a linear number of observations. Reality often proves to be far more complex than expected, meaning automation is eventually suboptimal or the software ends up requiring expensive corrections. Machine learning on the other hand absorbs and develops itself using all available data, regardless of the volume. This means the risk of patterns or a use case being left out of the picture is therefore limited. Limitations show their head when machines avoid human intelligence and are restricted to imperfect selections. A good example is that of the automated processing of loan requests received by banks. An algorithm parses the archives of previous requests where each borrower’s key information is recorded along with reimbursement information. It therefore highlights the likely relationship between a borrower profile and a default risk.

Virtual Reality’s Missing Element: Other People

If you’re hanging out in virtual reality, you’re going to need a body, and what this body must look like, or whether it even has to be human, depends on the context. Often, it seems cartoonish human figures are best for staying clear of the uncanny valley, since it’s still difficult to make avatars look just like us. ... Regardless of how well designed your avatar is in VR, one way these worlds resemble real life is that your perceived gender shapes the interactions you have. In Rec Room and other socially geared apps, like AltspaceVR and Facebook Spaces, I prefer to make my avatar female—and preferably similar in appearance to me, with brown hair and, when it’s an option, glasses. Being true to your actual identity can make you feel that your virtual self is authentic, but as a female character you’re likely to face behavior that is obnoxious or worse.

Infographic: A Beginner's Guide To Machine Learning Algorithms

We hear the term “machine learning” a lot these days (usually in the context of predictive analysis and artificial intelligence), but machine learning has actually been a field of its own for several decades. Only recently have we been able to really take advantage of machine learning on a broad scale thanks to modern advancements in computing power. But how does machine learning actually work? The answer is simple: algorithms. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) where computers can essentially learn concepts on their own without being programmed. These are computer programmes that alter their “thinking” (or output) once exposed to new data. In order for machine learning to take place, algorithms are needed. Algorithms are put into the computer and give it rules to follow when dissecting data.

How to build a highly effective AI team

AI professionals are in high demand. To assemble -- and maintain -- an AI team, retention and recruitment are key. But that doesn’t necessarily mean having to look outside the organization. ... “In EY’s tax group, we provide extensive training on technical tax matters. However, we are also starting to add training on automation and AI. While recruiting a graduate with degrees in tax and AI is excellent, there is a significant talent shortage. That is one of the reasons we put resources in upskilling our people,” says Fiore. In the past year, EY has hired over 20 professionals focused on automation and AI. Recruiting AI talent in a hot hiring market often requires going directly to academic institutions. “Being active in the community – especially presenting at conferences and publishing papers – has supported our recruiting efforts. We have also presented at Columbia, MIT, and other leading organizations,” explains Thomson Reuters’ Al-Kofahi.

How CFOs Are Driving Digital Transformation Beyond The Finance Department

If finance can be the driving force behind digital transformation, how can it do so when the primary goal is to ensure budgets are stuck to like glue. It is this exact attitude that leads to CFOs adopting a conservative mentality in digital, effectively preserving the status quo. CFOs are by nature risk averse, so subverting this mentality becomes a challenge. ... Finance as a function can drive the implementation of internal processes to upscale efficiency. Using their organisational view of resource and budget allocations, they may then pull this process change back to customer facing systems to create customer intimacy. From here, they may move I.T. strategy to focus on a new product and bring the budget in line for the next year.

APIs, Fintech, and the Future of Finance

APIs enable developers to integrate the features of one application into the code of another. This means that developers can use the existing work of other programmers as they build out their products, drastically increasing speed to market. ... With account authentication now quickly out of the way, the developers can focus their attention on the product itself. Fintech APIs can be viewed as the building blocks out of which new fintech products can be built. As more and more fintech APIs are developed and leveraged for new products, the speed of fintech innovation is likely to increase, which has significant implications for the wider finance industry. In fact, an increase in innovative fintech products is a massive opportunity for traditional financial institutions such as banks, and these institutions can play an active role in fintech innovation with the deployment of their own internal APIs.

The Future of Digital Financial Advice: Who Will Succeed?

The key to success in the digital advice market lies with customer service, according to panelists at both New York meetings this week. “It starts with the client,” said Mike Sha, co-founder and CEO of SigFig. “There’s been a lot of focus on driving alpha, beating the markets [but] fee efficiency is better at driving long-term returns and improving client outcomes. We control not the investment returns through alpha, but how we serve clients.” And clients will expect to set their own preferences for digital advice like they do for the music they listen to on digital platforms like Spotify, said Steve Scruton, president of Broadridge Advisor Solutions. “People are conditioned to have what they want.” Data collection and predictive analysis will help digital advisors learn what clients needs and desire, said Scruton.

Digital Payments Approaching Universal Acceptance

While consumers continue to use traditional payment methods such as direct mail, pay-by-phone and in-person payments, online and mobile payments (either through the financial organization or through the biller) now make up 59% of payments, according to the Fiserv research. Not only have the majority of consumers switched to digital channels, they are happy with their decision. For online bill pay users, 79% rated the service 8 of 10 or higher, with 70% of mobile bill pay users having the same sentiment. The reason for the satisfaction is clear. Both banking bill pay services and biller direct services provide speed and convenience. Major points of differentiation between the services are evident though, with biller direct services getting higher marks for speed and financial institution options being preferred due to the ability to pay multiple organizations in one sitting.

AI and the Future of Mortgage Lending

Speaking to The Adviser, Brett Spencer, the former CEO of the Stargate Group and executive director of TICH Consulting Group, said that he thinks anyone who believes the broking industry is being replaced by technology is talking “absolute rubbish”. Mr Spencer said that the fact an abundance of “fintech” solutions are coming to the market is exactly the main driver behind brokers remaining relevant and increasingly relied upon by consumers. He explained: “The reason brokers are here and will continue to be here, and market share will grow… is that the sheer proliferation of the number of mortgage products in the market today is in the thousands. “You talk to any one lender and they might say they have three products, but there are probably 30 variations on those products. Joe Consumer just doesn’t understand it.

4 things SaaS vendors need to get right

When it comes to technology falling below its potential, what better industry to learn from than the world of conference calling and remote meetings? Despite being a mature industry that has witnessed new technologies emerge and evolve, the clear majority of conference calls are still audio-only, with employees choosing to ‘dial in’ using numbers and codes just as they did decades ago. While more capable software products have been available for many years now, they continue to be shunned by most users. ... Winning SaaS products are those which recognise and deliver upon distinct needs. For example, Salesforce is a great CRM tool for sales teams, but there’s likely a better one for investment professionals. Jira is a great workflow tool for product and engineering teams, but there’s likely a better one for marketing teams.

Quote for the day:

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy." -- Norman Schwarzkopf

Daily Tech Digest - June 13, 2017

4 ways mentoring employees leads to company growth

This growth-centric mentorship isn’t casual or sporadic. In fact, at least 20% of your time should be devoted to mentoring. It’s a purposeful weekly meeting scheduled by, prepared for and owned by the employee. The meetings don’t have to be long, but they’re the best opportunity for employees to discuss their goals, get feedback and present their ideas. As their supervisor, it’s your opportunity to encourage and ask questions to push them to do their best work. ... An increased sense of ownership, loyalty, and engagement leads to a successful mentorship program, which in turn ensures growth. You achieve this by making these one-on-one mentorship meetings, allowing you to ask the best questions, demonstrate how you think through business challenges, and show each employee that he or she is a priority.

Three attributes a serial technology CEO looks for in a CTO

CTOs need to be able to understand both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of a product and where the value-add element can be incorporated – this is something I feel they won’t get by carrying out their work with a hands-off approach. As a company, we can’t afford to miss our business targets of driving a customer-informed view of the product roadmap, and ensuring delivery infrastructure that leads to positive customer experience. Hitting these targets contributes to revenue growth and customer satisfaction. No doubt, a deep and wide technology background remains the essential foundation for any enterprise-grade CTO. He or she will need to understand how our products work at a fundamental level and combine this knowledge with important technology and business trends.

Banks are more trustworthy data guardians than Google

Could financial institutions use their trusted role as data guardians to monetize that trust and compete with the big tech firms?Bloomberg NewsSo Conor’s idea is this: Google gives us searches, email, storage and more, for free — in exchange for letting the search giant mine and use our data. Google claims that it won’t be evil, but is the company using our data ethically and is it all aboveboard? Not everyone thinks so. On Natural News, Mike Adams claims that Google is the most evil corporation in the world “for its outrageous censorship, collusion with spy agencies and blatant attempts to propagandize the world with dishonest, deceitful information about everything from politics to natural medicine."

Risk aware IAM for an insecure world

Over the past several years, modern cloud security solutions such as user behavior analytics (UBA), cloud access security brokering (CASB) and security information and event management (SIEM) systems were born and matured alongside IDaaS solutions, but their integration and utilization has not always been demanded by IT leaders. Integrating and uniting these platforms unleashes the full power of a risk aware IAM system. From a market standpoint, integration is inevitable and necessary. Organizations not only have the opportunity to enhance the security of identity, they have the obligation to do so. IT leaders who haven’t done so already can drive a risk aware IAM agenda in their organizations with the following critical capabilities:

Prepare for increasing 'nation-state' cyberattacks with strategy, not technology

Just as there would be a problem with untrained persons walking around with live explosives, we have a problem with possibly explosive outcomes on the horizon. The reality is that NSA-level attack tools and government-"issued" weaponized exploits have leaked online, and within months, the bad guys had reconfigured them for their purposes, attacking more than 100 countries and many multinational companies. In a few noted and publicized instances, the malicious actors using these tools and frameworks literally reconfigured code blocks and exploit samples overnight to ensure their effectiveness. How fast can a defensive tool vendor move to fight that threat? Do you think your anti-virus tool vendor will move faster than a cybercriminal organization that has no bureaucracy and no motive other than profit?

Cyber threats are inevitable, paralyzing impact is not

Cyber security is a question of a way of life. Europeans are used to the benefits and advantages of digital services and the availability of electronic networks. Nations have no choice but to build up robust cyber security measures – reverting to a paper-based system would not be more secure, is as prohibitively expensive as it is impractical, and would rob us of the conveniences we currently enjoy. The almost-crippling WannaCry campaign highlighted the immediacy of truly international and cross-sector solutions. Cyber security is not simply the prerogative of a narrow range of technical experts or particular agencies. As said previously, Estonia will hold the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of this year. We believe that the Digital Single Market and the free movement of data within the EU are of existential importance for Europe

Beware the next wave of cyber threats: IoT ransomware

Despite the fact that IoT devices often have serious security weaknesses, it is still premature to talk about the imminent ransomware threat for smart homes and connected cars. The wide variety of apps and devices created by thousands of manufacturers complicates extensive malware usage. The IoT industry is highly fragmented these days. It lacks standardized approaches, common platforms and communication systems. It is tough to carry out mass attacks. Every time a compromise occurs, hackers only target a specific type of devices, which reduces the number of potential victims. We can conclude that hackers’ benefits from attacking consumer IoT devices are currently small. But the situation is likely to change in the future as the Internet of Things is going to deeper penetrate into our homes and offices.

Cyber Threats 101: Fileless Attacks (The Stealthiest of All)

This evolving threat vector calls for a rethink in the cybersecurity tools that companies use. Anti-virus software that only scans files on hard drives is no longer enough. Some vendors claim to be adopting memory scanning techniques, or watching for in-memory behavioral patterns. These are new approaches, and customers should always be wary about vendors’ claims for their security tools. Use independent testing organizations to validate those features. Administrative security is an important weapon in the battle against fileless malware attacks. Consider restricting access to administrative tools like Powershell, Apple Script, and WMI, that attackers can use as weapons. In general, application controls on endpoints are a good idea. The Australian Signals Directorate highlighted whitelisting as a key protective measure in its own general security recommendations to stop unauthorized software from running in memory.

3 things that must be addressed in your cloud agreement

It is important to mention that many cloud vendors will resist such requests, stating that in order to keep costs competitive they need to standardize on security policies in a one-size-fits-all approach that applies to all customers. Therefore, the cloud vendor will claim they simply cannot customize the cloud solution and associated services to match unique customer security requirements. Nonetheless, we still recommend engaging in these discussions early in the evaluation process when you have the greatest leverage, as vendors may be willing and able to get creative in providing some level of flexibility that either addresses your unique security requirements or substantially mitigates your financial risk. Other security measures to address include the physical location of your data and where the cloud solution will be hosted.

Forget the GUI: The return of the command line

Recent Windows 10 desktop releases have added support for Linux command-line tools, initially using Ubuntu in the Window Subsystem for Linux, exposed through the Bash shell. More distributions and alternative shells are coming, but Bash’s wide adoption make it an attractive route to bringing Unix tool chains to Windows. Ubuntu’s wide catalog of software, and its easy apt-get installation and update features mean you can quickly go from a bare prompt to a fully featured set of tools in a matter of minutes. SSL capabilities give you remote access to Unix servers, and Windows software is treated just like Linux binaries: Set a path so you can launch apps straight from the command line. Bash is becoming an important piece of Microsoft’s developer outreach, making Windows accessible to the developers who’ve been using MacOS for its Unix tools.

Quote for the day:

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer." -- Peter F. Drucker

Daily Tech Digest - June 12, 2017

CPaaS market evolves with new API suite from Twilio

The Programmable Communications Cloud is where most CPaaS vendors focus today, as they offer voice, SMS and similar capabilities. As a developer, you decide on the specific communications channel you want to use and ask for a specific action to take place -- for example, "Send an SMS to a phone number." The Engagement Cloud is more nuanced. It is a higher level of abstraction where Twilio decided to wrap certain best practices it has seen across its customers and their behaviors. In the Engagement Cloud, Twilio is delivering four separate products: Authy, which handles authentication; Notify, which sends application-to-person messages; TaskRouter, which handles queuing; and Proxy, which connects people across groups.

Mobile app developers: Make sure your back end is covered

Developers need to make sure they are baking security right into the application code and protecting how the app handles the data, but as Appthority’s research shows, they also need to know how the back-end servers and data stores are being configured. The security best practices for these systems are well-documented, but someone needs to be checking and verifying that these controls are implemented so that the data remains protected. “No amount of on-device application security can make up for relaxed security where the application stores user data,” said Hardy. Appthority dubbed the problem “HospitalGown”— because like hospital gowns, the front end is covered but since the issue lay in the application infrastructure, the back end is not. HospitalGown is not a specific vulnerability in the mobile operating system, a type of weaponized app that could lead to data compromise if installed on the mobile device, or a flaw in the app’s code.

Intel Core i9: Everything We Know So Far

Core i9 is Intel’s fifth PC processor family, starting with the Core m and moving up through the traditional Core i3, i5, and i7 chips to Core i9. As the numerical sequencing suggests, Core i9 represents Intel’s most prestigious chip family, offering the best performance at the highest price. It’s important to know that Core i9 is an architecture as well as a brand. Intel has taken some of these new chips and named them Core i7 and even Core i5. Though they share some common features with the Core i9 (more on that later), two of the new chips, the Core i7-7740X and the Core i5-7640X, are based on Intel’s 7th-generation Kaby Lake architecture (rather than 6th-generation Skylake). These two chips, with only four cores apiece, are the most modestly priced members of the Core i9 family.

State pressures create gaps in cybersecurity training

Budgeting is only one reason why some states have a hard time with cybersecurity. An aide to U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, a Democrat and co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said state agencies often misunderstand cybersecurity risks. State officials sometimes treat hacking as an IT problem, not a security problem, he said. The aide added that poor leadership can create situations where it might be easier for cyber aggressors to access information, including residents’ tax and driver's license data. Eric Goldstein, branch chief of partnership and engagement at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, said that while the DHS is making progress on alerting state officials to cybersecurity risks, the department still has “ways to go.”

Open source documentation is bad, but proprietary software is worse

While lack of documentation is bothersome, it's not fatal, as developer Ted Wise indicated to me: "Code is still usable without docs. Barrier to entry is higher and some capabilities may be obscured, but still usable." Or, as Google lead product manager Vanessa Harris stated: "Outcomes matter more than documentation." Those outcomes are more easily come by with open source, given the lowered barriers to using and writing software. Plus, it's not clear what "bad documentation" even means. As professor and former Joomla! developer Elin Waring said to me: "[Y]ou can read the code and automated docs. When people complain about docs it is not always clear what they mean".... She went on: "Different people need different docs, [which is] why 'everyone complains about docs' is so hard to respond to. It's a constantly moving target."

Windows 10: IT wants to manage PCs like phones

“Enterprises want to start piloting a new release as soon it comes out, starting with the IT organization, to see how productivity and line-of-business apps and devices work with it,” Niehaus notes. Typically, customers decide the new releases are ready for broad deployment after four months, he says. The support life cycle for Windows 10 pushes businesses in this direction. With Windows releases now coming in March and September every year, the rather complicated formula of servicing for the two most recent CBB releases plus a 60 days’ grace period becomes a much clearer 18 months of support. Kleynhans cautions against trying to use the Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB, soon to be known as the Long Term Servicing Channel) as a way to avoid updating Windows 10.

How to work with RabbitMQ in C#

RabbitMQ is an increasingly popular open source, fast message broker written using Erlang and built on the Open Telecom Platform framework. It implements the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) for exchanging data between processes, applications, and servers. It’s particularly enticing because it is extensible via plug-in support, supports many protocols, and offers high performance, reliability, clustering, and highly available queues. You can create queues in RabbitMQ by writing code, via the administration user interface, or through PowerShell. ... Now that you have installed Erlang and RabbitMQ in your system, you need to install the RabbitMQ .Net client to connect to and work with the RabbitMQ service. You can install the RabbitMQ client via the NuGet Package Manager. Create a new console application in Visual Studio. Next, install the RabbitMQ.Client package via the NuGet Package Manager.

Inside the Motivations Behind Modern Cyberattackers

Knowing who is behind cyberattacks, in a way, "doesn't really help you much," he noted. Instead of trying to classify individual threat actors, he urged his audience to try and better understand how these adversaries work together and use this information to inform their security strategies. "Today, the most important information about cyberattacks is locked inside your company, which has been attacked," he noted. However, businesses aren't using this information to its full advantage and sharing it to protect against threats. In his session, "Collecting and Using Threat Intelligence Data", Polarity CEO Paul Battista emphasized the importance of leveraging intelligence for threat warnings, prevention, and informed decision-making.

The best identity management advice right now

So far two things have saved us from biometric identity theft being a widespread problem (beyond the fact that biometrics just aren’t accepted in many places beyond phones and laptops). First, most biometrics are stored and used locally. This means the hacker has to access and compromise your device to get access to your biometric identity, and even if he gets access, the biometrics would not work beyond that single compromised device. A second, and related issue, is that once you logon using your biometric identity, what happens authentication-wise from then on is that the authentication system uses one of the other previous discussed authentication methods. It is using some other authentication token besides your fingerprint. Your biometric identity (usually) doesn’t leave your local device. That would change if people started to overly rely on biometric authentication globally.

Why Citi puts a premium on mobile users' satisfaction

Point of view"For a while we looked at mobile as a companion to our website and we've completely flipped that," says Alice Milligan, chief customer and digital experience officer for Citigroup's global cards unit.Upon joining the $1.7 trillion-asset bank in 2014, Milligan faced an uphill battle convincing senior executives that customer satisfaction was worth spending money on. She focused initially on quick wins to persuade them. In one instance, by going through the analytics she discovered that some customers were experiencing login errors, which compelled them to call Citi's service center—an expense for the bank. By fixing that problem, she not only lifted customer satisfaction but was demonstrably able to save the bank money.

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 - June 11, 2017

What it takes to build artificial intelligence skills

AI skills -- again, which blend expertise n programming, data, and business development -- may continue to be in short supply, .... AI is "not something a solitary genius cooks up in a garage," they state. "People who create this type of technology must be able to build teams, work in teams, and integrate solutions created by other teams." This requires a change in the way programming is taught, they add. "We're too often teaching programming as if it were still the 90s, when the details of coding (think Visual Basic) were considered the heart of computer science. If you can slog through programming language details, you might learn something, but it's still a slog -- and it shouldn't be. Coding is a creative activity, so developing a programming course that is fun and exciting is eminently doable."

What exactly is a Cloud Architect and how do you become one?

If you are thinking of becoming a Cloud Architect you will have hopefully already had a strong background in a similar technical area. The following list, will hopefully give you some indication of whether you can begin to contemplate heading down the path of becoming a Cloud Architect. If you feel comfortable with most of the following concepts or at least some of them then you are probably on the right track, otherwise , maybe some initial study or work in these areas would be a better strategy before you tackle the Cloud Architect Role. ... The possibilities are endless and with the Cloud Market expected to grow exponentially over the next few years we think that becoming a Certified Cloud Architect is definitely a step in the right direction as both a career choice and as a chance to get on board any future new and exciting technologies that are bound to emerge in the Cloud arena.

The Transformation Of Insurance

The front office is being revolutionised with apps and portals that allow brokers and agents easier information access and the ability to customise their offerings. Artificial Intelligence based chat-bots are helping customers not just buy better, but also stay connected through the insurance life-cycle to better manage their policies, and file and track claims. Mobile apps are helping enhance customer engagement and providing specific insights to create real stickiness. ... The back office is seeing a significant technology enabled leap too. Automated claims processing - leveraging Machine Learning and increasingly complex rules engines - is becoming more and more the standard. Intelligent Automation is not just reducing costs and streamlining operations, it is increasingly being linked to front-end customer facing portals and apps to leapfrog service experience.

Unstructured data: turning data into actionable intelligence

This information enters your organization. But it doesn’t enter your organization via the helpdesk or contact center. The customer’s request gets looked at follows the traditional path of approval. It does take some time and the customer gets a bit impatient. Who does he call? Not Ghostbusters. And not the people who deal with the loan request. No, he calls the contact center. Or he sends a mail, maybe to say he sent you a mail with an attachment, for instance a copy of his application form. This is just one possible scenario but it shows the challenges. If your contact center has no insight in the processes which are happening in the back end, in this case, the status of the approval, he/she can’t help immediately. And if you have no unified approach with a capability to capture the important data hidden in the unstructured forms of communication (emails, Twitter messages) he/she is blocked as well. The result: a very frustrated customer.

Infrastructure Software Vulnerabilities Raise Concern Among Cybersecurity Experts

Most of the world's high-profile cybersecurity incidents involve theft of consumers' personal information from retailers, insurers and other businesses or so-called "ransomware" like the "WannaCry" attack that compromised more than 200,000 computers in 150 nations last month, Leyman said. But many cyberattack victims are reluctant to contact the FBI due to fears of bad publicity damaging the reputation of a business or government agency if reports of the attack become public, but the FBI is barred to publicly disclosing the victim or details of the attack, he said. "Our goal is the identify and prosecute the bad guy. We need to find out who did what to whom. The biggest issue in getting victims to report incidents is fear of public disclosure. We aren't allowed to do that. We can't identify and prosecute the perpetrator unless we know about the incident," Leyman said.

The benefits of microservices for mobile, and how Node.js can help

Novak explained that certain development frameworks may be particularly helpful in allowing teams to bring legacy services over to microservices. Node.js has proven to be a particularly helpful framework for making this switch and creating connections with back-end infrastructure, he said. "In our experience, Node.js is going to be a good platform for them to convert those services over to microservices," Novak said. ... In addition to Node.js, Novak said plenty of other frameworks software development kits are available to help facilitate microservices development, such as Ionic, Angular JS, Bootstrap and Backbone.js. However, he warned that, while these frameworks and tools will certainly help organizations, there is no "magic bullet" when it comes to bringing legacy investments up to speed with a microservices architecture.

Docker Aims to Improve Linux Kernel Security With LinuxKit

"Security is critically important for Docker, and LinuxKit represents an opportunity for us to help move security forward," Nathan McCauley, director of security at Docker Inc., told eWEEK. Within the LinuxKit effort there are a series of incubated projects that are focused on improving the security of Linux, according to McCauley. Docker and the LinuxKit project are also focused on making sure that all the Linux kernel security work moves upstream into the mainline Linux kernel, he added. "We recognize that there are a ton of people in the Linux community working on security improvements, and we want LinuxKit to be a place where they can foster and grow their efforts," McCauley said. ... The market for container security technology is a growing one, with multiple vendors including Twistlock, Anchore, Aqua Security, NeuVector, Aporeto, Tenable and Capsule8, among others, building products.

Data Structures Are Antithetical to Functional Programming

Functional programmers are incredibly lazy. More precisely, we defer commitment as late as possible. In extreme examples like Haskell, we defer the computation of every part of every expression until the last possible moment. Even in less extreme cases, however, we push effects (such as input/output) to the edges of our program. With Monad Transformers Library (MTL) or FTL, we defer committing to specific effect types until our application’s main function. ... Ultimately, I’d argue that today’s programming languages are unnaturally obsessed with data. They are wedded to the idea of rigid layouts of bits in memory — for understandably pragmatic or historic reasons. Yet, the functions we develop in our code don’t usually require bits. Instead, they require capabilities. Some to construct, some to deconstruct.

How to stop spear-phishing cold

To be effective, a spear-phish must be well crafted, have an artist’s touch for similitude, and likely camouflage. Spear-phishing emails are getting more sophisticated all the time. One that Inky would have prevented, had it been deployed, was the DocuSign vector attack. DocuSign—which, among other services, vouches for electronic signatures—sends email notifications to parties to a contract, letting them know what steps they need to take next (e.g., review and sign). In this case, a hacker set up a domain that looked like DocuSign but was actually sent from a “typo domain”—docusgn.com (missing the “i”). Previously, the hacker had penetrated servers at DocuSign itself to obtain names and email addresses of actual DocuSign users, who then made perfect targets for a DocuSign spoofing attack.

The Internet Of Things Is Becoming More Difficult To Escape

"People's businesses, homes, cars and even their clothing will be monitoring their every move, and potentially even their thoughts," she says. "Connected cities will track where and when people walk, initially to light their way, but eventually to monitor what they do and say. The walls of businesses will have tiny sensors embedded in them, initially to monitor for toxins and earthquakes, and eventually to monitor for intruders and company secrets being shared. People currently strap monitors on their bodies to tell them how many steps they take. Eventually, all fluids in and out of bodies will be monitored and recorded. Opting out will be out of the ordinary and hugely inconvenient, just as not carrying a mobile device and not using a fast pass on the highway are today."

Quote for the day:

"If you need ownership and responsibility from core workers, patriarchy can't get you there." -- Peter Block

Daily Tech Digest - June 10, 2017

How serverless changes application development

When viewed through the prism of the Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve, serverless is still a young market, most likely at the beginning of its early adopter phase. But it has some big players behind it (that a traditional IT decision maker wouldn’t get fired for betting on), a healthy number of open source alternatives, and the beginnings of a market for startups providing complimentary tooling. One intriguing aspect of serverless is its potential to turn the notion of vendor lock-in on its head. Suppose you really like Amazon Polly for voice-to-text but you prefer IBM Watson for text sentiment analysis. Your front-end application could record spoken words, send the recording to a Polly function on AWS, and send the resulting text to Watson. So instead of being locked into a single vendor or ecosystem, you can embrace finding exactly the right tool for the specific job.

HR 2.0: how technology is transforming HR

We are social beings and our workplaces are small societies, so it’s no surprise that social media and technology is having an influence on the corporate environment. The growth of social media shows the appeal of human connections, but that need was hardwired into humans long before Facebook. From swapping stories around the campfire 10,000 years ago to sharing pictures on Instagram, our biological need to bond and share may change expression, but it remains vital to who we are. Businesses are subsequently increasingly using habits of instant messaging, cloud-based document sharing and quick feedback to meet these growing expectations. Until the advent of timelines on social media, social sharing was an ephemeral phenomenon. Now, people expect to relive social sharing over time by looking back at a record of messages, pictures, and videos they’ve shared.

One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick

“We send all the signals to a computer, and it will translate the odor into a signature that connects it to the disease we exposed to it,” Mr. Haick said. With artificial intelligence, he said, the machine becomes better at diagnosing with each exposure. Rather than detecting specific molecules that suggest disease, however, Mr. Haick’s machine sniffs out the overall chemical stew that makes up an odor. It’s analogous to smelling an orange: Your brain doesn’t distinguish among the chemicals that make up that odor. Instead, you smell the totality, and your brain recognizes all of it as an orange. Mr. Haick and his colleagues published a paper in ACS Nano last December showing that his artificially intelligent nanoarray could distinguish among 17 different diseases with up to 86 percent accuracy.

IoT skills set to rise in importance

“IoT training is about coding plus communication. On its own, coding will allow an engineer to give a device some functionality and behave in a certain way. But the IoT is based on the idea that the ‘things’ are able to effectively communicate with one another and exchange data. To make an IoT specialist, they would need to be educated about wireless communications technologies and networking as well as coding,” he says. “ABI Research predicts that 48bn devices will be connected to the internet by 2021, 30% of which will be Bluetooth devices, so knowledge of this most pervasive of low power wireless communications technologies is key In addition, for some people currently working in IT, it means more education is needed about embedded software engineering, as they may find themselves working with smaller, more constrained devices than they ever have before.”

The dangers of hacking back

Attribution is not only a technical problem, but a geopolitical one too, which could be extremely asymmetric in favor of the attackers. ... Moreover, cyber attacks are just one form of digital response that these groups could use in response to a hack back. As we saw last year, cyber attacks can be very successful when part of a larger information campaign that includes disinformation, automated social bots, as well as data theft, dump, and manipulation. When a company hacks back, even if they’ve accurately attributed the source of the attack, they risk triggering retaliation not just from cyber warriors but also trolls, which can inflict widescale brand, reputational, financial, and even physical damage. And that doesn’t even touch upon potential responses outside of the cyber domain, such as targeted economic punishment or escalation of interstate tensions.

PayPal CEO offers sobering view of cybersecurity threats

“History is not on our side,” he added. “because of what’s happening in technology, 40 percent of businesses will go out of business within the next five years.” That’s particularly sobering for credit unions, where the number of institutions nationally has shrunk by 32 percent in the last decade (and shrunk by 35 percent in Michigan during that period), according to statistics offered by Michigan CU League CEO Dave Adams. In order to survive, said Schulman, institutions – particularly financial institutions – must be willing to change their business models and adapt to how consumers do business. “There is going to be more change in financial services in the next five to seven years than occurred in the last 30 or 50 years,” he predicted, noting that basic financial transactions can be done via mobile device for as much as 80 percent cheaper than using existing branch infrastructure.

Executive interview: Brian Kelly, chief security officer, Rackspace

During an attack, he says, there is often an “A team” and “B team” of hackers. “The B team do the reconnaissance. They are noisy and sloppy. They are trying to map the network. Then there is a pause and, within an hour, the A team come in to arm-wrestle with you.” Some organisations tempt hackers in with a honeypot, to catch them trying to break into a network. For Kelly, a reasonable strategy to thwart at attack is to tie up the B team, possibly leaving a few “cookies” for them to steal, and lead them to a place on the corporate network where their activities can easily be monitored and the security team can learn about the attack vectors being tried. But fighting a determined A team hacker is tough and the IT security tools that the security teams rely on will start to fail, warns Kelly. “How adaptive are the tools, given that the attack can change within eight, 10, 12 or 15 minutes?” he says.

How to Apply Machine Learning to Event Processing

On top of stream processing or complex-event processing in general, you often need a human to make the final decision. Think about predictive maintenance where replacing a part might costs thousands of dollars. However, the analytic model of the data scientist just offers you a specific probability if the machine will break. A human can take a deeper look in both, live and historical data, to decide if a part will be replaced or not. A live visualization pushes events in real time to a user interface (e.g. desktop, web browser or mobile device). The operations team can live-monitor systems and see exceptions or errors when or even before they occur (using the analytic models). Thus, they can do proactive actions – e.g. stop a machine or send a mechanic.

How artificial intelligence will transform financial services

With payment fully digitalized, financial services institutions have integrated into the cashless ecosystem, supporting consumers that pay with their digital wallets, smartphones or digital currencies for everyday transactions. In the age of hyper-connectedness, payment transactions are now fully transparent, empowering customers with friction-free payments and checkout procedures. Having embraced digital payment channels, customers view payment processes as a background activity seamlessly done via mobile devices agnostic to technology platforms whether it’s contactless NFC (Apple Pay), wearables, Smart TV or distributed blockchain ledgers. Having built payment platforms that are interoperable, cost efficient, and secure, financial institutions are now razor focused on competing for a seamless customer experience and racing towards greater financial inclusion to attract the larger un-banked and uninsured market share.

CFO or CEO: To whom should IT report?

CIOs must justify IT investments with tangible productivity gains that may not always be substantiated by pure financial means, according to Vinit Kholi of Sibcy Cline Realtors. He points to cloud services and Microsoft Office 365 as examples. “Companies have to clearly define their need and then follow up to ensure tools that impact the whole organization are implemented in a way that adds value for the users. Budgetary discussions become incidental if the business case is strongly presented,” Kholi said. Companies that opt to only replace technology when it breaks will go the way of Kodak, Blockbuster and Radio Shack. Today’s midmarket IT leaders’ primary functions include protecting company data and empowering employees with technology to get their jobs done.

Quote for the day:

"If you don_t find a leader, perhaps it is because you were meant to lead." -- Glenn Beck

Daily Tech Digest - June 09, 2017

Be wary of vendors touting superior data science

Intelligence is overhyped, potentially because of its sundry definitions across both the public and private sector. "At the end of the day, it's about intelligence. What data science is about is being able to leverage the huge amount of information we have, and to analyze it, enrich it, and make it actionable in a proactive instead of a reactive way," Peloquin said. ... In order to make informed decisions, CSOs should ask vendors questions like, Do you have a Phd data scientist on staff? Who leads your team? Where are they from? What is their background and experience? "They [CSOs] need to be smart enough to ask the vendor to ensure that their products are not just marketing speak. If they [the vendor] based all of their capabilities on the output of automated tools rather than experts in the field that can do targeted attacks, then I would argue that their solution is not as mature as they are claiming it to be," Peloquin said.

How Disruptive Innovation Can Finally Revolutionize Healthcare

While these high-level measurements are important for tracking performance, they distract from the understanding of the true causal mechanism of how industries become more affordable and accessible. Nearly a decade ago, The Innovator’s Prescription showed how disruption could transform healthcare. Yet unlike other industries, healthcare has been largely immune to the forces of disruptive innovation. Whereas new technologies, new competitors, and new business models have made products and services much more affordable and accessible in fields ranging from media, telecom, finance, and retail, the U.S. healthcare sector keeps getting costlier, and is now by far the world’s most expensive system per capita, about 2X higher than the U.K., Canada, and Australia, with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease now accounting for more than 75% of total spending.

Security Implications of Permission Models in Smart-Home Application Frameworks

A software app or physical device is collectively referred to as an app in AllJoyn terminology. An app can expose interfaces that have members. For example, a lock can provide the control interface with the members lock and unlock. Apps can consume interfaces from other apps. For example, an auto-lock app will consume the door lock's control interface. AllJoyn standardizes some interface definitions for a select set of devices, such as lights and HVAC. Apps are security principals and are associated with an identity certificate signed by a certificate authority that all apps must trust. The AllJoyn security manager is a component that speaks the AllJoyn protocol and issues identity certificates to apps. An administrative user, such as a home or building owner, operates the security manager component.

Given the Inevitably of IoT Security Breaches, Are We Getting Ahead of Ourselves?

The threats extend all the way up to representative democratic systems of government, prospects that haven’t gone unnoticed by leading figures in commerce, industry and government. “My guess is we are reaching the high-water mark of computerization and connectivity and in a few years we are going to be deciding what to connect and what to disconnect and become more realistic about what can work,” the Pew researchers quote a speech given by Bruce Schneier at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Cancun, Mexico in June 2016. “We are creating a society by which a totalitarian government can control everything. Right now it’s more power to the powerful. And we are living in a computerized world where attacks are easier to create than defenses against them,” Schneier was quoted.

Calm before the storm? Ransomware, botnet attacks predicted to surge

“After the initial shock of ransomware’s rapid growth and the popularity of its usage, threat actors have begun to settle in for the long-term deployment of this category of destructive malware tools,” the report authors wrote. “All indications point to a new wave of innovation in the distribution and tactics used for ransomware attacks in the future.” For Kurt Hagerman, CISO of security firm Armor, it’s clear “the healthcare industry is pretty behind the curve from a security standpoint.” Hagerman used the banking sector as an example of an industry that saw its weaknesses and moved toward security standards, enforcement and education. The impact over time has been less fraud. While the risk can never be eliminated, the total number of records stolen is going down.

Blockchain integration turns ERP into a collaboration platform

"It's a very hot topic right now," said Zulfikar Ramzan, CTO of RSA Security, a subsidiary of the Dell EMC Infrastructure Solutions Group. "We are definitely getting a lot of inbound inquiries around blockchain and its implication within enterprise environments. I think it's driven largely by the fact that when there's a new technology out there, to some degree people want to be buzzword compliant with the latest and greatest." Ramzan said his customers are asking about blockchain for audit logging and or verifiable logs, which is viewed as a reliable way of tracking what happened in an organization to satisfy regulatory auditors. Other RSA customers are interested in it for user authentication to ensure users are accessing the correct digital records at the right time.

Getting threat intelligence right

While threat intelligence feeds provide valuable information to help identify incidents quickly across an enterprise, they are generally based on known, observed information. Much of today’s threat intelligence is supplied as IOCs – essentially fingerprints of known attacks or attackers, says Kane Lightowler, managing director of Carbon Black in Asia Pacific and Japan. “IOCs may provide great value against previously observed attacks, but offer limited insights on new attacks and attack methodologies.” Sparkes agrees, noting that intelligence feeds require a “patient zero” – the first organisation or person to see the attack and record the IOCs before others can benefit from it. Lightowler says patterns of attack are more effective against both known and unknown threats because they focus on the actual behaviour and techniques of the attacker, rather than fingerprints.

Big data and relinquishing your right to privacy

At the heart of the privacy debate are the “unspoken” rules about what companies can do with our data. Even when we know that our activity and information and even our voices are being recorded and stored, what obligation does a company have to tell us every single example of how it can be used? As consumers, we might not mind if our listening preferences are used to advertise related goods or services, but do we have to agree to every possible use of information—both positive and negative—as an unavoidable part of data gathering? The bigger concern is why any company would think it’s OK to not inform its customers of the rights they’re signing away. After all, checking the box that you’ve read the full agreement has been called “the biggest lie on the internet.” It’s alarming to think that we have already adopted a cultural mindset that privacy is just something we sacrifice to make sure we have a ride to the airport, or to turn our lights on when we’re late getting home.

How to avoid a disastrous recovery

The ultimate goal of DR planning is to move “cold” data, complete copies of the data center frozen at a point in time, to the most cost effective location possible that provides for meaningful SLA recovery if/when necessary. These copies are then constantly updated to ensure any subsequent changes to the production environment are replicated to the DR environment. Before moving forward with DR planning, organizations must look at industry-specific regulations such as HIPAA or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to determine the right hosting infrastructure for their data. For example, strict data sovereignty and security requirements prevent organizations from saving personal data to the cloud if that data leaves the country of residence at any time. After evaluating these requirements, it may be that the CIO will see that hybrid cloud makes the greatest financial and risk permissive option for that organization.

3 Keys To Keep Your Data Lake From Becoming A Data Swamp

Perez says one of the biggest mistakes organizations make is collecting too much data, simply because they can. Consider your smartphone. If you own one, chances are you've got hundreds or more pictures stored on it. "You end up with a billion pictures on your phone, and yet 99 percent of them are probably garbage that you would get rid of in a heartbeat," he says. "It's gotten so easy to take pictures with your phone, it's essentially free. And you probably think, 'One day I'll go and clean it up,' but of course no one ever does. You're collecting an enormous amount of information, but you have no way to work your way through it to use it effectively." When you inevitably want to show someone a particular photograph, finding it can require scrolling through an enormous volume of junk.

Quote for the day:

"Great things are done when men and mountains meet." -- William Blake