Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

Daily Tech Digest - July 16, 2017

Getting Started With Apache Ignite

Although often associated with relational database systems, it is now used far more widely with many non-relational database systems also supports SQL to varying degrees. Furthermore, there is a huge market for a wide range of SQL-based tools that can provide visualization, reports, and business intelligence. These use standards such as ODBC and JDBC to connect to data sources. ... The latest releases of the Apache Ignite project provide support for Data Manipulation Language (DML) commands, such as INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. Additionally, some Data Definition Language (DDL) support has also been added. Furthermore, index support is also available and data can be queried both in RAM and on disk. A database in Apache Ignite is horizontally scalable and fault-tolerant, and the SQL is ANSI-99 compliant. Figure 1 shows the high-level architecture and vision.

How a new wave of machine learning will impact today’s enterprise

Advances in deep learning and other machine learning algorithms are currently causing a tectonic shift in the technology landscape. Technology behemoths like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Salesforce are engaged in an artificial intelligence (AI) arms race, gobbling up machine learning talent and startups at an alarming pace. They are building AI technology war chests in an effort to develop an insurmountable competitive advantage. Today, you can watch a 30-minute deep learning tutorial online, spin up a 10-node cluster over the weekend to experiment, and shut it down on Monday when you’re done – all for the cost of a few hundred bucks. Betting big on an AI future, cloud providers are investing resources to simplify and promote machine learning to win new cloud customers. This has led to an unprecedented level of accessibility that is breeding grassroots innovation in AI.

Under the hood of machine learning

The key design point that allows Apache Mesos to scale is its two-level scheduler architecture. Unlike a monolithic scheduler that schedules every task or virtual machine, the two-level scheduler delegates actual tasks to the frameworks. The first-level scheduling allows Mesos Master to decide which framework gets the resources based on allocation policy. The second-level scheduling happens at the framework level, which decides which tasks to execute. This enables data services to run without resource contention with the other data services in the cluster, improving framework scheduling regardless of scale. It also allows the Mesos Master to be a lightweight piece of code that is easy to scale as the size of the cluster grows. Working with Apache Mesos, though, can be challenging in terms of building the framework and components.

5 Common Challenges to Building BI in the Cloud

Building successful Business Intelligence solutions is a well-documented process with many successful, and unsuccessful projects to learn from. The traditional BI/DW model has always been challenging, but a lot of good practices and patterns have emerged over the years that BI professionals can leverage. A net-new BI solution or migration of an existing on-prem BI solution into the cloud creates a different set of challenges to be addressed. What I wanted to do was to try to come up with a top 5 list that may help you in considerations for your cloud BI project planning. I've been focused on building analytics, BI and Big Data solutions in the cloud in Azure for the past 2 years, so I'm going to share a few of my findings for you here.

Blockchain The Chain of Trust and its Potential to Transform Insurance Industry

In the longer term, the potential disruption to the insurance industry from blockchain technology is staggering. Blockchain technologies will enable the creation of assets in a new, distributed form — such as documents, credentials, assessments and transactions— that span the entire insurance value chain. These distributed assets will challenge the traditional insurance business model. IBM is helping Insurers across the globe to determine what use cases are best suited for blockchain, and how to make it easier to innovate on top this middleware fabric. During our discussions, it has come out clearly that a majority of the Insurance CIO’s are keen to understand how they can potentially leverage Blockchain to overcome the challenges they are facing today in the Insurance Industry.

What’s your risk appetite? Your robo-adviser has the answer

The wealth management industry has been transitioning its focus on mere product sales to higher value-added service-based offerings over the past few years, a result of the segmentation of different products and their underlying volatility based on financial advisers’ feedback of what investors want, according to Barry Freeman. He said Xuanji, a robo-adviser platform launched by Pintec last year, was able to make suggestions on asset allocation in a full portfolio of mutual funds based on investment target and risk tolerance levels derived from a set of questions answered by the investors, powered by big data, quantitative modelling and machine learning. As the robo-advisory platform owns data of 80 per cent of mutual funds in China through partnership with all the fund houses, algorithms based on the data and performances of different funds will be able to segment different opportunities, making it a better performer compared with a human stock broker, Freeman said.

Bitcoin Crashes as Chain-Split Risks Increase

We tried to speak to Jeff Garzik, the lead maintainer of the new segwit2x client, to gain some clarity on the relationship between segwit2x and Bitcoin Core, but have received no response at the time of writing. Segwit2x implements segwit largely unchanged, but there are suggestions after the activation the client may only accept segwit blocks, while Bitcoin Core would accept both segwit and non-segwit blocks, which may lead to a split. However, as some 90% of miners seem to be supporting segwit2x, it appears unlikely any miner would produce non-segwit blocks, so they would probably remain in consensus. On the bigger blocks side, there is Bitcoin Unlimited and BitcoinABC, which largely follows the approach of Bitcoin Unlimited but goes further in implementing a User Activated Hard-Fork that will chain-split regardless of miners support.

A pervasive security solution that makes practical sense

First, the SDSN platform’s automated threat remediation capability enforces security all the way down to the network layer, including end clients or data centers populated with switches and wi-fi access points from different vendors. With the SDSN platform, you can still quarantine or block infected hosts in a multivendor environment, without swapping out your existing infrastructure. Imagine not having to write off the thousands or even millions of dollars in equipment investments while taking your security game to the next level. ... The decision to migrate workloads to clouds, or determining what applications run on which cloud, should not break your network’s security posture. SDSN goes one step further, not only enforcing consistent policies in all the deployments but also interoperating with native cloud technologies to maintain the same level of enforcement granularity available in physical networks.

5 Steps to Migrate Unisys Mainframes to AWS

The most effective method to exploit the value of Unisys mainframe applications and data is a transformative migration to modern systems frameworks in AWS, reusing as much of the original application source as possible. A least-change approach like this reduces project cost and risk (compared to rewrites or package replacements) and reaps the benefits of integration with new technologies to exploit new markets — all while leveraging a 20- or 30-year investment. The best part is that once migrated, the application will resemble its old self enough for existing staff to maintain its modern incarnation; they have years of valuable knowledge they can also reuse and pass on to new developers. The problem is most Unisys shops, having been mainframe focused for a very long time, don’t know where to start or how to begin. But don’t let that stop you. The rest of this article will give you some guidance.

Understanding the Basics of Biometrics

There is no one-size solution for the optimal biometric modality, however. Each has a specific set of strengths and weaknesses that must be considered when planning a system, based on the requirements and the application context. Certain deployments may even require multiple biometric modalities (commonly referred to as multimodal biometrics), often with fusion of the results, to ensure the highest levels of accuracy and protection. In addition to considering budget and performance, other factors in selecting the right biometric modalities include accuracy, risk of error, user acceptance, and hygiene. For example, DNA is among the most accurate biometric modalities if the sample isn’t degraded, but the option demands proximity to the person or actual DNA sample to touch and collect it—a requirement that isn’t possible in every scenario.

Quote for the day:

"Great leaders go forward without stopping, remain firm without tiring and remain enthusiastic while growing" -- Reed Markham

Daily Tech Digest - July 15, 2017

Grooming effective remote developers in the world of DevOps

"You really have to double down on being good at communication and being clear and building relationships and trust with people," Copeland said in an interview. "Because if you don't trust somebody they're going to think you're a talking head." Copeland noted that a base level of technology is required for remote developers to be effective. A chat system is required, he said, as well as a video conferencing system that supports multiple users and a good microphone for each user. Regarding synchronous communication, Copeland said, "I hope that we have holographic telepresence someday," but until then seeing each other on screens will have to do. Often, remote developers like Copeland are among an organization's top development assets.

Enterprise Software Fuels IT Spending As CIOs Become Builders Again

Gartner's predictions for 2017 IT spending have gone up and down over the last few quarters, but most of the tweaks to its forecasts were due to fluctuations in the value of the dollar. (In constant currency terms, Gartner predicts IT spending growth this year to be 3.3 percent.) Those fluctuations are not altering the fundamental trends in IT spending: As users hang on to their mobile phones for two, three or even four years, rather than refreshing them every year or so, the big driver for IT growth will be the digital transformation of businesses. Digital business trends include the use of IoT infrastructure in manufacturing and blockchain technology in financial services and other industries, as well as "smart machines" in retail, Lovelock said.

Physical Security Is Critical For Protecting Your Data

A good example of how this matters is the theft of physical devices. If someone can break through physical security then they can steal a server. Even if the data on that server is encrypted, once a thief has physical access to a device, they can take their time to break the encryption or work around it to access data. Once we start thinking about hacking physical security, we move quickly into the realm of IoT. Vizza says hacking these devices is relatively easy. "A lot of IoT devices have been, historically, set up on a completely different architecture. Unlike the seven-layer OSI model, the IoT is set up on a four-layer model and security was an afterthought at best. A lot of the original PLCs and other devices have security bolted on, if it's done at all".

Here's the brutal reality of online hate

Online abuse is as old as the internet. Being anonymous encourages people to say things they'd never say in public and push the boundaries of accepted behavior because they feel they won't be held accountable. Distance adds to the problem. It's a lot harder to pull out all the stops when you're looking someone in the eye. On the internet, you don't see your target or the emotional devastation you leave behind. Racial minorities often get the brunt of the abuse online. Black Lives Matter activists, including DeRay McKesson, have been harassed in tweets, emails and posts. And there's enough hatred out there to ensure feminists, Jews, Muslims and the LGBTQ community are constant targets. The internet amplifies the effect, organizing the haters into packs of digital attack dogs.

IoT: What You Need to Know About Risk and Responsibility

The Internet of Things (or, IoT) is a blanket term used to describe all of the technology that is being deployed in homes and businesses. That is, technology that isn’t normally considered part of traditional IT infrastructure -- things your IT staff already manage, like computers, mobile devices, network equipment, etc. These new devices connect to the public Internet and communicate in ways that make them “smarter”. They include security cameras, climate control, inventory logistics, power meters, and even “smart beds” in hospitals. While the improvements in efficiency and cost savings that IoT devices can bring to a business cannot be ignored, it’s important to understand the risks associated with “smart” devices.

Which Spark machine learning API should you use?

Consider if a car manufacturer replaces the seat in a car and surveys customers on how comfortable it is. At one end the shorter customers may say the seat is much more comfortable. At the other end, taller customers will say it is really uncomfortable to the point that they wouldn’t buy the car and the people in the middle balance out the difference. On average the new seat might be slightly more comfortable but if no one over 6 feet tall buys the car anymore, we’ve failed somehow. Spark’s hypothesis testing allows you to do a Pearson chi-squared or a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test to see how well something “fits” or whether the distribution of values is “normal.” This can be used most anywhere we have two series of data.

Why mobile hardware security is fundamentally broken

Recent exploits show that our devices are not as secure as we are led to believe. For instance, hacker Jan Krissler published a high-profile hack of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 iris scanning feature, using a consumer grade camera and contact lenses. In Singapore, ethical hackers from the Whitehat Society at the Singapore Management University (SMU) showed that it was possible to take over a user’s device using only their phone number, and then use the device’s camera and audio equipment to spy on the user. Even the smartcard chip, which provides tamper-proof security for phones and cumbersome hardware tokens, offers practically no protection against misuse. Smartcard chips don’t authenticate the user, and are unable to decipher the intent of the person using it, be it for the owner or a person with malicious goals.

Beyond user interface testing: Here's what you need to know

The most common way to look beyond user interface testing is by examining and verifying database values. Software applications update data constantly. Changes in the UI can trigger ongoing or multiple database value updates, kick off triggers and be managed through indexes, just to name a few possibilities. Tracking and verifying data value changes triggered from UI actions provides valuable testing data. For example, many QA testers use SQL to create a repository of tests for verifying database values and then execute them before user interface testing. Defects not visible in the UI can frequently be evident in the database, and testing within the database can find defects before user interface testing occurs.

A View from the Trenches: the C-Suite’s Role in Organizational Transformation

Transformations in tech-focused companies impact not just the development team, but the entire organization. Transformations represent a fundamental shift in how an organization as a whole thinks, acts, and produces. They are collaborative, self-organizing, open, and efficient, but changing the way an entire organization operates - from the way teams are organized to how they interact with clients - takes time and a willingness to trudge through the initial discomfort and uncertainty of change. Recent data from the State of Agile survey shows that three of the top four reasons why Agile projects fail fall under the category of culture. Culture at "odds with agile values" accounted for 46% of answers, while both "lack of management support" and "lack of support for cultural transition" accounted for 38% of answers each.

A.I. innovation finds a home on mobile devices

Innovative mobile apps married to increasingly powerful artificial intelligence (A.I.) are rapidly getting smarter -- making them even more helpful for users. These kinds of apps, showcased at VentureBeat's two-day MobileBeat conference here this week, are designed to anticipate user needs. Who knew, for example, that you can use your smartphone to simplify the process of getting a green card to enter the United States or to streamline corporate travel? During a "Startup Showcase" session, Visabot showcased its appropriately-named Green Card app. The program is based on a bot that walks users through a series of simple questions that, when answered, generates a package of documents you can file with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to complete the application process.

Quote for the day:

"Never be ashamed of your past. It’s all part of what made you the amazing person you are today." --Yehuda Berg

Daily Tech Digest - July 14, 2017

9 cutting-edge programming languages worth learning now

The world is filled with thousands of clever languages that aren’t C#, Java, or JavaScript. Some are treasured by only a few, but many have flourishing communities connected by a common love for the language’s facility in solving certain problems. There may not be tens of millions of programmers who know the syntax, but sometimes there is value in doing things a little different, as experimenting with any new language can pay significant dividends on future projects. The following nine languages should be on every programmer’s radar. They may not be the best for every job—many are aimed at specialized tasks. But they all offer upsides that are worth investigating and investing in. There may be a day when one of these languages proves to be exactly what your project — or boss — needs.

So, you want a master's degree in cybersecurity?

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh)—In 16 or 20 months, the Master of Science in Information Security enhances a technical education in computer systems and security with research/development opportunities and the option to take additional courses in areas complementary to security. Graduates may pursue doctoral degrees or positions as security experts equipped to manage the growing complexities associated with securing data, networks and systems. This graduate degree program meets the criteria for the NSF-funded CyberCorps Scholarship for Service Program (SFS). U.S. citizens who are accepted may be eligible for a full scholarship and stipend from the federal government.

Disruptive Technologies and Industry 4.0

Humankind requires an open mind to bring about Industry 4.0. The technology required by the IoT requires a healthy dose of supply and demand to survive and succeed. Good salaries and plentiful employment provide consumers with money to spend on things they want. Rewarding and encouraging the development of technology and creativity brings about the advancement. The good news is that this action is already in place around the world. Manulife’s Lab of Forward Thinking (LOFT), located in the thriving areas of Singapore, Toronto, and Boston, builds competitive advantages within the financial services industry. Employees are encouraged to use technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to determine new solutions for building wealth and prioritizing customer needs.

Singapore unveils first look at new cybersecurity laws

CSA Chief Executive David Koh noted that the country's current legislation, the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, focused primarily on cybercrime. A more multi-faceted bill was necessary to oversee a cybersecurity landscape that continued to evolve, Koh said. Amongst the proposed bill's key components was a regulatory framework targeted at CII owners, which formalised the duties of such providers in securing systems under their responsibility, including before a cybersecurity had occurred. The bill would detail CII owners' responsibilities, which would include providing information on the technical architecture of the CII, carrying out regular risk assessments of the CII, complying with codes of practice, reporting of cybersecurity incidents "within the prescribed period" after the event.

Why Resilience Is Necessary As A Leader

Perhaps we think of resiliency from a personal perspective. When we think of resiliency, the image comes to mind of a person who just completed an ultra-marathon with two prosthetic legs. We do not think of a leader who went through a grueling year and came out a better leader. While personal resiliency is important, it is a critical component of effective leadership. The true grit of a leader is not how they perform during the good times but rather how they display emotional strength, courage and professionalism during the most trying times. It is impossible to demonstrate resilience unless you have gone through difficult times. For example, a leader who leads a team during a time of leadership transition, through a period of high turnover, through an organizational restructuring or through a season where surveys revealed poor performance.

8 keys to DynamoDB success

While DynamoDB generally works quite well, it’s inevitable that we all run into issues. A few months ago at Segment, my colleagues wrote a detailed blog post about our own DynamoDB issues. Mainly, we were hitting our rate limits due to problems with our partitioning setup – a single partition was limiting throughput for an entire table. Solving the problem took a superhuman effort, but it was worth it ... In DynamoDB, read throughput is five times cheaper than write throughput. If your workload involves a lot of writes, see if you can read the data first to avoid updating in-place. Reading first will help avoid throttling and cut your bill in a write-heavy environment where keys may be written multiple times.

Transforming the PMO into an SVMO to Drive Software Value

The PMO for software development is typically focused on planning, implementing, monitoring, and controlling projects. It often serves as the “bad guy” informing management about missed deadlines and keeping the staff on task, ensuring they are following the standard processes as they were defined. ... So, I am certainly not saying that they should be eliminated but I am saying that it’s necessary to focus on more than what has historically been done. I believe the PMO needs to be transformed into more of a strategic partner within the organization, focusing on optimizing process to maximize value flow and measure value rather than just standardizing process to improve efficiency and measure compliance and, consequently, being repositioned as a Software Value Management Office (SVMO).

Who Is A Target For Ransomware Attacks?

“There are a wide variety of ransomware types, but one thing is certain,” says Morey Haber, vice president of technology for BeyondTrust, which offers a privileged access management platform. “No vertical, government, or organization is immune to its effects. Unfortunately, some are more susceptible to successful attacks, based on the type of technologies they deploy, their age, cost for replacement, identity governance and privilege maturity, and overall cyber security hygiene implementations regulated by government or third-party compliance initiatives.” ... it’s never been more important to protect your organization. Here’s a look at who the usual ransomware targets are today and are likely to be in the near future, why they’re targets, and best practices for protecting your data.

Verizon Breach: 6 Million Customer Accounts Exposed

The data exposure was discovered by Chris Vickery, a researcher with the cyber risk team at security vendor UpGuard. The data was contained in an unsecured Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3) "bucket," or storage instance, Dan O'Sullivan, a cyber resilience analyst at UpGuard, writes in a blog post. Israel-based NICE Systems, one of Verizon's partners, controlled the repository. Verizon says in its statement that NICE was supporting "a residential and small business wireline self-service call center portal and required certain data for the project." UpGuard notified Verizon on June 13 about the data exposure, but the bucket wasn't locked down until June 22. UpGuard characterized that length of time as "troubling." Officials at NICE couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Companies must hire a CISO to address cyber threats at the executive level

The office of a CISO is a structure you put in place to help your organisation deliver a continually relevant response to cyber risk. You want your CISO to have an impact, you want to see processes challenged and informed consensus with business units achieved, you want to see tweaks to staff behaviours, as well as to the technical environment. You want your customers to have trust in your organisation. You want your suppliers to be vigilant against the potential impact on you if they don't hold up their end. Cyber risk management is not static and there absolutely is no finish line. As your organisation continues its search for pragmatism in approaching cyber risk, you'll want your CISO to be supported in their role, both with their own team as well as senior executive sponsorship because their success is your organisation's digital wealth protection.

Quote for the day:

"Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader." -- General George S. Patton, Jr.

Daily Tech Digest - July 13, 2017

What are the differences between Office 2016 and Office 365?

Think of Office 2016 as traditional software made and sold in traditional ways. That holds for servicing, too. Microsoft provides monthly security updates for Office applications, usually on the second Tuesday of each month, and also fixes non-security bugs for the first five years of the SKU's lifecycle. But Office 2016 does not receive upgrades with new features and functionality. What you get when you buy the suite, feature-wise, is it. When Microsoft produces a new edition, which it will eventually do, you will need to pay another up-front fee to run that. Office 365, on the other hand, has a completely different servicing model. While the Office applications licensed to users through Office 365 receive the same security patches distributed to Office 2016, they also acquire new features and functionality on a twice-a-year schedule.

Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Robo-Advisers: The Future of Finance?

One issue relating to neural network–based machine learning–enabled AI applications in investment management is one familiar to readers of this blog and its posts on market structure, high-frequency trading, and algorithmic trading. The black-box issue, in which the workings of an algorithm are not understood by its user or other stakeholders and lead to potentially unintended actions or consequences, is a well-known headache for regulators trying to ensure market stability. Although some attempts have been made to check the source code of algorithmic traders, the most effective protection against algorithmic errors are circuit breakers on markets that limit the amount of damage a failing algorithm can cause.

Next WannaCry attack could cost insurers $2.5B

“Sooner or later we, will see a billion-dollar cyber claim and the insurance market is well positioned to absorb that,” said Thomas Seidl, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London. “Everybody has exposure to cyber risks and the best precaution can’t eliminate that, so there is a strong demand for insurance making cyber coverage by far the biggest opportunity for non-life insurers for the next years.” ... With cyber coverage growing rapidly and insurers increasingly seeing the segment as their next blockbuster, regulators are concerned that the industry could be taken by surprise. Insurers writing cyber policies “are expected to introduce measures that reduce the unintended exposure to this risk,” the U.K.’s Prudential Regulation Authority said in a statement on Wednesday.

What Is Hyper Convergence?

Hyperconverged platforms include a hypervisor for virtualized computing, software-defined storage, and virtualized networking, and they typically run on standard, off-the-shelf servers. Multiple nodes can be clustered together to create pools of shared compute and storage resources, designed for convenient consumption. The use of commodity hardware, supported by a single vendor, yields an infrastructure that's designed to be more flexible and simpler to manage than traditional enterprise storage infrastructure. For IT leaders who are embarking on data center modernization projects, hyperconvergence can provide the agility of public cloud infrastructure without relinquishing control of hardware on their own premises.

Businesses warned of insider cyber threat

"Too many people are chasing shadows, it's an education process, teaching them not to open suspicious emails and so on, but even CEOs open their own emails. There's all kind of scams out there but they are people scams, not technology scams." For executives worried about the impact of insider threats within their organisations, the Federal Attorney General's department last year amended its 'Managing the insider threat to your business' publication to provide guidance for managers. Key to the Federal Government's advice is to have rigorous recruitment procedures including properly checking references, watching for changes in staff behaviour and maintaining internal access and security controls on data. Mr Meyer said organisations should also focus on monitoring behaviour on their networks to get early warning of untoward activity.

A cloud in your datacenter? Azure Stack arrives

The business model around Azure Stack is an interesting one, using subscription pricing much like Azure. You can pay per hour or per month, with a Base VM charge of $0.008/vCPU/hour or $6/vCPU/month). Like Azure, on top of a Base VM host, you can use your existing Windows Server or Linux licenses. If you don’t have any licenses, then a Windows Server VM comes in at $0.046/vCPU/hour or $34/vCPU/month. There’s similar pricing for storage and for the Azure App Services, all based around vCPU usage. As expected, it’s cheaper than Azure’s pricing for similar features, but here you’re paying for the hardware yourself, and that’s not going to come cheap. Getting used to a subscription fee for your on-premises usage is going to be the biggest change to using Azure Stack.

Salesforce brings digital transformation to field workers with AI, analytics tools

While customers have benefitted from company digital transformation efforts, field technicians often still find it difficult to deliver a modern, onsite experience, said Mary Wardley, program vice president, customer care and CRM at IDC, in the release. "Customer expectations have escalated across the board, and so have expectations for in-the-field diagnostics and issue resolution," Wardley said in the release. "With features including image recognition, automated equipment tracking and analytics baked into the field service process, digital transformation is reaching the field and will enable companies to run their field service organization faster and more efficiently." In terms of availability, Field Service Equipment and Inventory Management can be purchased today with any Field Service Lightning license, which start at $150

What IT Workloads Say About Your True Priorities

The survey found that IT pros enjoy modernizing technology, troubleshooting or assisting users and planning or strategizing. However, respondents estimated that they spend, on average, only 11 percent of their time on “IT planning and strategy,” and 13 percent on “modernizing technology.” While day-to-day issues in IT will never go away — there will always be hardware to deploy, software to update and help desk tickets to attend to — there are ways you can ease some of the grunt work in IT. “The secret here is to identify and automate those time-consuming, repetitive tasks that are sapping your organization’s ability to focus on more business-critical issues and find ways to automate them,” says Peluso.

5 Privacy Worries on 4 Wheels: Staying Safe in the Connected Car Era

As modern vehicles are upgraded to include Internet-enabled technologies designed to access, store, and transmit data for entertainment and safety purposes, consumers are presented with a double-edged sword. On one hand, these connected systems provide important convenience benefits for consumers, but on the flip side, motor vehicles are being exposed to a growing number of security and privacy risks. As the market for connected cars continues to grow (an estimated $155 billion by 2022) and more semi-autonomous vehicles roll off assembly lines, the severity of security and privacy threats rises exponentially, becoming major concerns for both car buyers and manufacturers. Here are five of the top privacy issues associated with connected motor vehicles

Quantum fiber network to launch in August

“This is a major step toward building a global long-haul and truly-secure satellite communication network,” it said in a press release yesterday. Lasers are expected to play an important part in future satellite constellations partly because currently used radio frequency bands are congested. Light will allow transmissions to be more efficient, with lower power, and thus allow smaller and cheaper satellites. A major part of that new satellite communications technology will be the securing of it. Distance, however, has been a problem area for QKD development in general. While conceptually the subatomic communicating particles that make up the warren of entangled keys affect each other wherever they are in the stream, they actually dilute over distance—just as any other medium. Scattering takes place, for example.

Quote for the day:

Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says "Go!" - a leader says "Let's go!" -- E.M. Kelly

Daily Tech Digest - July 12, 2017

10 Principles for Leading the Next Industrial Revolution

If your company is falling into the trap of thinking that it can make money indefinitely by following its traditional business model, it risks losing out to more flexible competitors. You are not in the same industry that you were in before; soon, that industry may not even exist. Your path to profitability is different. Your opportunities for raising capital have changed. Your capabilities may not apply to the same customers they did before. Your circumstances are probably different from those of any other company, so you need to look freshly at them, without relying on an industry playbook, and rethink your business model accordingly.

Ensure a load-balancer failover in a virtualized environment

The key to modern load-balancer options is operational agility. Today's workloads are dynamic, with daily load variations and frequent spikes. Load balancing needs to recognize this and must extend beyond fixed asset control and handle virtual instances of applications. Virtualization has opened up a new universe of capabilities for balancing. Efficiency improves tremendously when the balancer can increase and decrease the number of instances of a given application. There is no longer a fixed amount of horsepower or a set number of servers. The dynamic range of the resource pool can go as low as a single instance or as high as the whole server cluster. To take advantage of this dynamic range, the balancer must tie in to the cluster's orchestration software. Enable instance control so that the balancer receives additional responsibilities.

General Electric Builds an AI Workforce

The technology depends on artificial intelligence to continually update itself. What’s more, if data is corrupted or missing, the company fills in the gaps with the aid of machine learning, a type of AI that lets computers learn without being explicitly programmed, says Colin Parris, GE Global Research’s vice president for software research. Parris says GE pairs computer vision with deep learning, a type of AI particularly adept at recognizing patterns, and reinforcement learning, another recent advance in AI that enables machines to optimize operations, to enable cameras to find minute cracks on metal turbine blades even when they are dirty and dusty. Take the tiny robot, a little bigger than a Matchbox car, used to inspect working engines. Using computer vision and a variety of AI techniques, the bot can look for cracks inside plane engines by riding on top of a slowly moving fan blade.

From privacy to AI, the new trends set to change the world

Terence Eden, open standards lead at Government Digital Service, drew on the general stasis seen in mobile hardware to highlight a need for refinement. “We’ve reached an inflection point where things are good enough,” he said. “If we look at the big sellers at the moment, it’s stuff that’s plateau-level. People have reached a level where they are happy – apart from with their battery life, of course.” For such big sellers to thrive, however, it’s key that they open up, said Accenture managing director and go-to-market lead George Marcotte: “Businesses have a choice between continuing with the internal, closed-shop practices of the past, or opening their innovation capabilities to an entire ecosystem of innovative partners.”

UK firms still relying on perimeter defences for cyber security

“As a security professional, it feels like I’ve been saying forever that basic perimeter security measures are no longer enough,” said Joe Pindar, director of data protection product strategy at Gemalto. “So it’s worrying to see the UK is continuing to place ultimate faith in these systems, without thinking about what attackers actually want – their data,” he said. Without a switch in mentality, and starting to protect the data at its source with robust encryption and two-factor authentication, Pindar said the UK is like one of the three little pigs. “Unfortunately, the one sitting in the straw house – not realising that when the time comes, passwords and perimeter security alone will not stand up to attackers,” he said.

How an IoT DDoS warning system helps predict cyberattacks

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks require very little effort from cybercriminals and yet inflict maximum damage on the targeted victim, preventing them from sending or receiving any digital traffic. While preventative measures are available, the options are a costly gamble to already cash-strapped small- or medium-sized organizations and businesses. Current DDoS attacks typically employ amplification methodology (PDF), in which bad-guy-owned servers coerce vulnerable remote computing devices into multiplying many times over the incoming requests that are then sent to the targeted computing environment with the intent of knocking it offline—imagine the amount of money a gambling web portal would lose on Super Bowl Sunday if those wanting to bet were unable to reach the portal.

Middle East cybersecurity: Is region's big spend aimed at the right targets?

Research and Markets notes that across these sectors, the key drivers for this increased outlay are factors such as the "need to mitigate IT security risks and threats, including malware, ransomware, and advanced persistent threats, along with a rising enterprise mobility trend across organizations". Across the region, investment in cybersecurity is projected to grow at an average 14.2 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years, with Saudi Arabia expected to be the largest national market. Qatar, which is currently embroiled in the diplomatic and economic fallout from an alleged Russian-led cyberattack, is predicted to be the fastest-growing market for cybersecurity in the region, as it gears up for hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2022.

How to get started with Kubernetes

Kubernetes is available as a standard-issue item in many clouds, though it appears most prominently as a native feature in Google Cloud Platform (GCP). GCP offers two main ways to run Kubernetes. The most convenient and tightly integrated way is by way of Google Container Engine, which allows you to run Kubernetes’s command-line tools to manage the created cluster. Alternatively, you could use Google Compute Engine to set up a compute cluster and deploy Kubernetes manually. This method requires more heavy lifting, but allows for customizations that aren’t possible with Container Engine. Stick with Container Engine if you’re just starting out with containers. Later on, after you get your sea legs and want to try something more advanced, like a custom version of Kubernetesor your own modifications, you can deploy VMs running a Kubernetes distro.

MoJ electronic monitoring programme fails to achieve value for money

“There is still limited evidence on the effectiveness of electronic monitoring in the UK,” it said, adding that the ministry’s bespoke requirements for the tags were too ambitious. “Over time, the Ministry evolved some 900 prescriptive requirements for the new combined RF and GPS tags. They would have to store and send much more location data than existing tags in the market, meet higher data security standards, and prove reliable and robust,” the report said. “They also had to be compact enough to wear comfortably, and not require continual recharging.” ... During the project it also became clear that the contracts didn’t specify who would provide the electronic link to transfer data between the old tags and a central data centre. “It only became clear after the contracts were signed that no party had made plans to build the link.

Mobile DNUN: Danger Notification and User Navigation

Mobile applications are growing in quantity and quality; for example, the Yelp mobile application was an early location-aware communication technology9. Network providers such as T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, and AT&T offer geolocation application services for their devices. Furthermore, these devices' operating systems (iOS, Android, RIM, and so on) enable software designers to develop various applications using software development kits (SDKs). This has led to an obvious evolution in LBS, with applications such as Foursquare, Yelp, Glympse, and so on. However, finding someone's location can be challenging during an emergency. Moreover, it is difficult to determine the location of an object such as a car in a parking lot if you forget where you've parked it. Our Danger Notification and User Navigation (DNUN) mobile application lets users effectively locate a human or object.

Quote for the day:

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it." -- Andrew Carnegie

Daily Tech Digest - July 11, 2017

The Future of Digital Business is Self-Improving Products

That’s a lot of what digital business is all about — turning data into better products and services. But Tesla is taking things to a whole new level. The data from every car is sent to headquarters and shared with every other car on the road. So your car knows what to look out for even if you’ve never been on that street before. Tesla has essentially turned itself into a massively parallel learning machine. The Tesla customer experience improves automatically the more people use the products. And the company is gathering detailed information that can be used for many of other business opportunities. That’s perhaps why Tesla is now the most valuable US car company, eclipsing General Motors, even though GM makes over one hundred times as many cars.

NIST to security admins: You've made passwords too hard

NIST recommends administrators leave out overly complex security requirements that make it harder for users to do their jobs and don't really improve security, since frustrated users are more likely to look for shortcuts. For example, users struggle to memorize large numbers of passwords—the average user accesses more than 40 accounts—so they may either write down passwords, which defeats the purpose of having a "secret" password; reuse passwords, which makes it easier to break into accounts; or use variations of existing passwords, which makes it easier for attackers to guess the patterns. "The username and password paradigm is well past its expiration date," said Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of Nok Nok Labs. "Increasing password complexity requirements and requiring frequent resets adds only marginal security while dramatically decreasing usability.

Digital is Driving Transformation in the Financial Sector

What’s certain is that the pressure on financial institutions is mounting to adapt the way they deliver services to customers. The ubiquity of smartphones, laptops and tablets and shifting consumer habits are driving banks to be creative in how they differentiate. In a market where transactional services are becoming increasingly commoditized, many are seeking to redefine the customer experience as a point of competitive differentiation. Given the vital role of digital maturity, we examine five tenets of digital transformation in the banking and financial sector. ... Everywhere you look there is feedback, potentially valuable snippets of information about your business and how it might improve. The challenge financial firms face is channeling that feedback intelligently, i.e. gathering it, analyzing and extracting value from disparate pieces of data.

GraphQL vs REST: Overview

GraphQL is a query language, specification, and collection of tools, designed to operate over a single endpoint via HTTP, optimizing for performance and flexibility. One of the main tenants of REST is to utilize the uniform interface of the protocols it exists in. When utilizing HTTP, REST can leverage HTTP content-types, caching, status codes, etc., whereas GraphQL invents its own conventions. Another main focus for REST is hypermedia controls (a.k.a HATEOAS), which lets a well designed client run around an API like a human runs around the Internet; starting with a search for "How to complete my tax returns", reading a perfectly relevant article, and after a few clicks ending up on BuzzFeed article about Miley Cyrus throwing Liam Hemsworth a "Weed-Themed" birthday party.

Apache Flink: The Next Distributed Data Processing Revolution?

The Hadoop framework is capable of storing a large amount of data on a cluster. This is known as the Hadoop File System (HDFS) and it is used at almost every company which has the burden to store Terabytes of data every day. Then the next problem arose: how can companies process all the stored data? Here is where Distributed Data Processing frameworks come into play. In 2014, Apache Spark was released and it now has a large community. Almost every IT section has implemented at least some lines of Apache Spark code. Companies gathered more and more data and the demand for faster data processing frameworks is growing. Apache Flink (released in March 2016) is a new face in the field of distributed data processing and is one answer to the demand for faster data processing frameworks.

Why the Blockchain Needs More Failures to Succeed

In the world of startups, learning from failures is an inescapable reality, and part of the prevalent conventional wisdom. That is how the ecosystem and entrepreneurs move forward to greater heights, and with more successes. But in the burgeoning blockchain segment, we haven’t seen that many failures yet. At least, not of the scale and variety required to extract long-lasting lessons for the entire industry. And certainly, not enough to warrant a call for an imminent crash or correction. Failures are important because their sum results in a new body of knowledge that is rich with useful insights and best practices. An aftermath of real failures can make the whole blockchain ecosystem more resilient, because it will result in revealing the boundaries and realities of what’s possible, useful, absurd, impossible, repeatable and scalable

Big Data's Potential For Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovations are: More accessible (with respect to distribution or usability); Cheaper (from a customer perspective); And utilize a business model with structural cost advantages (with respect to existing solutions) than their existing counterparts in the market. The reason why the above characteristics of disruption are important is that when all 3 exist, it is very difficult for an existing business to stay in competition. Whether an organization is saddled with an outmoded distribution system, highly trained specialist employees or a fixed infrastructure, adapting quickly to new environments is challenging when one or all of those things become outdated. Writing off billions of dollars of investment, upsetting the distribution partners of your core business, firing hundreds of employees – these things are difficult for managers to examine, and with good reason.

Hackers Find ‘Ideal Testing Ground’ for Attacks: Developing Countries

“India is a place where newer A.I. attacks might be seen for the first time, simply because it is an ideal testing ground for those sorts of attacks,” said Nicole Eagan, the chief executive of Darktrace. At times, these attacks are simply targeting more susceptible victims. While companies in the United States will often employ half a dozen security firms’ products as defensive measures, a similar company elsewhere may have just one line of defense — if any. In the case of attacks carried out by a nation-state, companies in the United States can hope to receive a warning or assistance from the federal government, ... Cybersecurity experts now speculate that a February 2016 attack on the central bank of Bangladesh, believed to have been carried out by hackers linked to North Korea, was a precursor to similar attacks on banks in Vietnam and Ecuador.

Common Misconceptions Found in the World of IoT

A lot of people believe that IoT is only related to collecting data, something along the lines of Big Data. This has often been fueled by the fact that IoT is commonly used along with Big Data. However, IoT is not only limited to collection of data. It is actually related to the exchange of data between devices and how they are connected to the internet. These devices can include any electronics or gadgets that fall under the smart category, some of them in the consumer product section such as TVs, fridges, etc. However, it is not only limited to these categories, but can expand to other sectors such as cars, smart grids, power plants, and so on. ... people believe all IoT devices are safe or rather they underestimate that the devices can be unsafe. IoT devices are often insecure, because of their need for constant connection to the internet making it vulnerable for hacking if the network is hacked as well.

Where’s the value in big data?

Increased revenue will be yours, competition will disappear and customers will love you even more. And yet, the reality is not matching the hype. ‘How do I really drive value from big data’? is a question that needs to be fully answered. Frustration seems to be building and there’s a danger that disillusionment will set in. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a route to driving value but you have to be realistic and you have to be methodical in your approach. You also have to start by recognising that, in reality, there are only three kinds of big data projects. The first is simply focused on replacing aging traditional infrastructure; in effect to re-platform an environment and make it fit for purpose in today’s economy – let’s call this the makeover.

Quote for the day:

"You have to put in many,many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile." -- Brian Tracy

Daily Tech Digest - July 10, 2017

Big Data Algorithms, Languages Expand

In some ways, the algorithms are anticipating tomorrow’s hardware. For example, quantum algorithms are becoming hot because they “allow you to do some of what quantum computers would do if they were available, and these algorithms are coming of age,” said Anthony Scriffignano, chief data scientist for Dun & Bradstreet. Deep belief networks are another hot emerging approach. Scriffignano describes it as “a non-regressive way to modify your goals and objectives while you are still learning — as such, it has characteristics of tomorrow’s neuromorphic computers,” systems geared to mimic the human brain. At Stanford, the DeepDive algorithms developed by Chris Ré have been getting traction. ... “Much of existing data is un- or semi-structured. For example, we can read a datasheet with ease, but it’s hard for a computer to make sense of it.”

The Evolution of Project Management

Project management should be viewed as a tool that helps organisations to execute designated projects effectively and efficiently. The use of this tool does not automatically guarantee project success. (project success will be discussed in a subsequent issue). However, in preparation for the next issue, I would like you to think about the distinction between project success and project management success. This distinction will provide further insight to the questions: Why are some projects perceived as failures when they have met all the traditional standards of success, namely, completed on time, completed within budget, and meeting all the technical specifications? Why are some projects perceived to be successful when they have failed to meet two important criteria that are traditionally associated with success, namely, not completed on time and not completed within budget?

Artificial Intelligence Processing Moving from Cloud to Edge

Edge or device-based processing of AI algorithms is something that has been difficult until now because of the large processing needs, and the limitations on power consumption. Running NVIDIA’s Pascal GPU consumes hundreds of watts, which can be addressed by cooling mechanisms in a data center, but on a mobile or car that would be unthinkable. However, we are beginning to see several trends that suggest edge-based processing for AI algorithms is starting to happen. This is being pushed at one level by the hyperscalars themselves who are aware of privacy concerns, and want to enable real-time device-based AI training or inference. At the same time, startups are also coming up with innovative ideas, while hardware startups are developing custom solutions for embedded AI applications. Both software and hardware approaches are feeding into the edge-based processing for AI.

The Data Quality Tipping Point

Data quality processes involve a range of costs, from the cost of data quality software to the resource needed to integrate systems. We recommend that every business carries out a review, prior to implementing new data quality measures. It needs to weigh up the points we looked at in the last section: negative effects of inaction, vs expense of throwing the entire budget at bad data. Additionally, the business needs to look at the way it’s using data, and figure out how to improve management internally. That might mean reducing manual touch points, so there’s less human error. Or retraining staff so they don’t type garbage into fields. Finally, let’s be realistic. The cost of the new data quality process needs to be factored into the business’ budget, like any other production cost.

Banks face variety of risks outside of their control, regulator says

"Many banks have increasingly leveraged and become dependent on third-party service providers to support key operations within their banks. Over time, consolidation among service providers has resulted in large numbers of banks (becoming) reliant on a small number of service providers," according to the regulator. It added that that can create "concentrated points of failure for certain lines of business or operational functions for a large segment of the banking industry." Banks also could run the risk of falling afoul of multiple new or amended regulations in lending and real estate, because their vendors are not aware of regulatory changes, the OCC said. Banks may rely on outside firms or software to process loan applications, underwrite or close loans, which could open them to challenges in complying with the new regulations.

7 Lethal Threats To Your Business That Come From Inside

The challenge for most small or tightly held businesses is that it can take 5-10 years to groom a successor to take over the business. Because of that you can't wait until you need to have a succession plan in place and you can't rely on just one person to be the potential successor. You need to constantly be thinking about, looking for, and grooming candidate successors. I can't tell you the number of businesses I've be involved in where the founder, and the business, just end up being stuck with no option but to liquidate or sell, and often for a huge loss in potential value. If I could give you one piece of advise here it would be to wake up every day asking, "If something happened and I could no longer run this business, how would it survive?" If you can't answer that I wouldn't worry much about waking up because I'd have too much trouble even getting to sleep!

CopyCat malware infects 14M Android devices

Significantly, CopyCat steals credits earned by legitimate advertisers whenever one of their ads results in an application download. The malware accomplishes this by swapping out the ad company's real referrer ID with a fraudulent one. These credits are ultimately exchanged for revenue. According to Check Point researcher Daniel Padon, this technique has never been seen before, and is more lucrative than traditional ad fraud. "There are many efforts by ad networks to detect and stop fraud from happening and this is actually a... way to do it without being detected," said Padon, in an interview with SC Media. "You have to be on the device itself [and monitoring] device activity to understand that fraud has actually taken place." Otherwise, the ad transaction "will look like a legitimate one from end to end."

Connecting the dots in the hybrid data management arena

The name of the game is speed, and this platform provides real-time analytics for applications like fraud detection in real-time transactional data streams (banks) and real time personalised offers to customers in stores. In the interview, the Actian executive team ran through a number of case studies, where hybrid data management helped run and improve operations. ... The phenomenon here that we see is businesses trying to drive these applications – these pieces of data is now flattened across the organisation – no longer present in one single large repository deep in the enterprise, but they come from a number of different places really spread across the enterprise. It’s now incumbent on the company/companies that claim that want to profit from this information to be able to extract it, process it and analyse it from these multiple sources in multiple formats to really drive some of these insights.

Data is the fuel and analytics the engine of new economy

Defining analytics as a “multi-disciplinary approach to deriving insights from data,” he said there are different degrees of analytics, starting with descriptive analytics in which you look at historical data to find out what is going on in an organization, what has happened, and what can be learned from that data. The next step, he noted, is predictive: what will happen? Can I forecast the future? “When we get into the predictive space, analytic techniques become more advanced,” he said. ... “However, AI and machine learning have become such buzzwords that many different things get lumped under them. At SAS we try to delineate these areas clearly and have a good understanding of what we mean by deep learning or AI. My calculator is better at arithmetic than I will ever be, but it’s not AI,” he said.

Desperately Seeking Security: 6 Skills Most In Demand

"There’s definitely a talent shortage of quality information security professionals who are capable of solving emerging problems," says Lee Kushner, president of cybersecurity recruiting firm LJ Kushner & Associates. "It’s not a shortage of general skill or average skill, it’s a shortage of skills that can help companies solve their problems." As the industry starts to look at the problem, it'd best start putting a finer point on the types of skills most in demand rather than fixating on one overarching security deficiency. "The problem is more granular than 'look at all the open jobs,'" says Mike Viscuso, CTO and co-founder of Carbon Black. According to the most recent research, the following specialties and skills are the ones that hiring managers are having the hardest time plugging into their teams.

Quote for the day:

"Leadership is like beauty; it's hard to define, but you know it when you see it." -- Warren Bennis

Daily Tech Digest - July 08, 2017

Robot Says "Culture" - Moving towards Teal

Teal is still just a colour. It is one of a set of colours which represent the pre-dominant state of consciousness of an organization. Influenced by Ken Wilber’s work on Spiral Dynamics, Frederic Laloux helped us reach a deeper understanding of the Teal state of consciousness in his book "Reinventing Organizations". Laloux shows how this state of consciousness has morphed over time with breakthroughs achieved at each stage enabling new methods for working which were not possible in the previous paradigms (colours). Even though the colours appeared over the course of time, this does not mean that one colour replaces another when a new shift occurs. Often, organizations get stuck in one predominant style of thinking due to it being deeply set within its culture, and this is where most organizations find themselves today- stuck.

Anti-Virus Conspiracy Theories Cut Both Ways

In case a theme isn't clear here, it's that the Russian government isn't the only cybersecurity threat in the world. But that doesn't mean any given country's cybersecurity firms are a threat. Back in 2012, for example, Schneier said it was highly unlikely that a government would attempt to compel any domestic cybersecurity firms to whitelist malware, simply because related knowledge would be so difficult to contain. "My guess is that the NSA has not done this, nor has any other government intelligence or law enforcement agency," Schneier said. "My reasoning is that anti-virus is a very international industry, and while a government might get its own companies to play along, it would not be able to influence international companies." Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, also in 2012 said anti-virus firms collectively "want to detect malware, regardless of its source or purpose," and that "politics don't even enter the discussion, nor should they."

7 Layers of Security Each Business Owner Should Consider

Employees who go off to lunch with their computers on and exposed are inviting hacking, especially if those computers are in more “open” spaces of a business, such as a floor full of cubicles. Users who don’t think simple steps like locking their computers when away from their desktops, can invite an easy outlet for their information to be stolen. It only takes a few seconds for someone to use a memory card and steal your personal information. Another issue is in the disposal of old computers. Sanitizing and wiping procedures of old hard drives are at time not sufficient, and can allow hackers to retrieve information from those drives. There are a number of tools available to allow you to securely erase hard drives, or you can choose to get it done professionally. Physical security is one of the most overlooked aspects of security. If you cannot ensure that your hardware is physically secure, then there are steps you can take to improve security.

Best VPN services of 2017: Reviews and buying advice

In truth, it’s hard to select the best overall VPN. Some services are weaker on privacy, but are significantly easier to use, while others could stand an interface redesign. Nevertheless, the point of a VPN is to remain private and to have your internet activity kept as private as possible. For that reason, we’re choosing Mullvad as the best overall VPN. The interface needs a lot of work, but the company does a great job at privacy. Mullvad doesn’t ask for your email address, and you can mail your payment in cash if you want to. Like many other VPNs, Mullvad has a no-logging policy and doesn’t even collect any identifying metadata from your usage. Mullvad is also fast, even if it’s not the fastest VPN we’ve tested. Add a more user-friendly interface and Mullvad would be nearly unbeatable.

All you need to know about the move from SHA-1 to SHA-2

SHA-2 is the cryptographic hashing standard that all software and hardware should be using now, at least for the next few years. SHA-2 is often called the SHA-2 family of hashes because it contains many different-size hashes, including 224-, 256-, 384-, and 512-bit digests. When someone says they are using the SHA-2 hash, you don’t know which bit length they are using, but the most popular one is 256 bits (by a large margin). Although SHA-2 shares some of the same math characteristics as SHA-1 and minor weaknesses have been discovered, in crypto-speak it's still considered "strong” for the foreseeable future. Without question, it's way better than SHA-1, and any critical SHA-1 enabled certificates, applications, and hardware devices using SHA-1 should be moved to SHA-2.

Analyzing the Anthem Breach Class Action Settlement

"What will be interesting to see will be the kinds of claims that will be made against that [Anthem settlement] fund" Teppler says. "In the end you have [nearly] 80 million people at risk for ... identity theft," including medical identity theft, which can long-lasting ramifications. For example, he points out, if fraudsters make claims for health insurance coverage using stolen identities, those could impair individuals' ability to obtain life insurance because of false medical information being added to their records, he says. While most of the proposed provisions of the Anthem settlement are common in other data breach class action settlements, "one of things a bit novel [in the Anthem deal] is repayment of credit monitoring for already expended funds for victims," Teppler says.

Luna brings visual development to functional programming

Luna’s creators argue that because developers typically start sketching components and dependencies on a whiteboard before coding, it doesn’t make sense to then implement that logic only in text. Software can have thousands of lines of code distributed in hundreds of files, which can trip up the implementation of that visual data flow and application architecture. Tools such as UML architecture diagrams only deal with the symptoms and not the problem’s source, Luna’s creators argue. That’s why Luna features both visual and textual representations. Developers can maintain their coding habits while also having a graphical whiteboard-like interface. Luna’s visual representations reveal structure, behavior, and data flow. It allows prototyping and visual profiling to understand performance bottlenecks.

The next logical step in Google's Android-Chrome OS 'merger'

Google has little by little been bringing elements of Android into the Chromebook world. It started with a very limited and experimental attempt at making some Android apps compatible with Chrome OS devices. Then came the gradual visual alignment, with Android-like fonts and design making their way into one Chrome OS system app after another and eventually seeping into the platform's core interface. Factor in features such as the Android-Chrome connecting Smart Lock, the Android-inspired PIN Unlock, and the availability of the full Play Store on Chromebook devices—not to mention the Chrome-OS-inspired "seamless" update model that came to Android with last year's 7.0 release—and it's easy to see how all these little pieces are adding up to something big.

Intel SSD 545s review: The next great budget SSD has arrived

At $180 for 512GB, the 545s offers all the capacity and cost advantages of TLC NAND plus the sustained write speed of MLC NAND. Hands-on, the 545s was the smoothest, most consistent performer we’ve seen in a while. The OS popped, all types of file operations were silky, and there were no stutters when opening apps. The Samsung EVO is also smooth and consistent, but it drops to around 300MBps writing when it runs out of TLC-as-MLC cache. The EVO, unlike the 545s, does have its RAPID caching software, which can significantly boost everyday performance by using system RAM as cache. We’re not fans of memory caching as it increases the risk of data loss due to power failure, so we’re only mentioning that to ward off comments.

Rethinking what it means to win in security

Consider how it works in retail. A reality of selling goods is “shrinkage.” That’s a fancy way of explaining that goods get lost and stolen. The mindset requires the understanding that a situation where nothing is lost, broken, or stolen is simply unreasonable. Which causes us to consider what a reasonable amount of loss is. ... The key lesson here is that while what is considered reasonable has changed over time, it is not zero. Embedded in this shift is the economy of improvement: each reduction in shrinkage needs to cost less to obtain than the savings it generates. After all, it doesn’t make sense to spend $100 to protect $1. Coupling the cost of improvement with measured reduction in overall impact to the business is a reasonable way to understand success.

Quote for the day:

"What lies behind us & what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson