Daily Tech Digest - May 19, 2019

Delivering Business Value Through AI To Impact Top Line, Bottom Line And Unlock ROI

Business leaders need to realize AI’s potential to unlock new sources of revenue in addition to improving customer targeting and loyalty. One of these ways is data monetization. What is data monetization? Simply put, data monetization refers to the act of generating measurable economic benefits from available data resources. According to Gartner, there are two distinct ways in which business leaders can monetize data. The most commonly seen method from the two is Direct Monetization. The way to realize value from this avenue involves directly adding AI as a feature to existing offerings. ... Use cases discovered in this arena span social media sentiment mining, programmatic selection of advertising properties, measuring effectiveness of marketing programs, ensuring customer loyalty and intelligent sales recommendations. AI also has huge potential to drive businesses to explore and exploit eCommerce platforms as a credible channel for sales and to help drive the digital agenda forward.

Has the UK government's cloud-first policy served its purpose?

The obvious concern in all this is that, if the cloud-first mandate is revoked completely, central government IT chiefs might start falling back into bad procurement habits, whereby cloud becomes an afterthought and on-premise rules supreme again. Maybe that is an extreme projection, but there are signs elsewhere that some of the behaviours that G-Cloud, in particular, was introduced to curb could be starting to surface again. One only has to look at how the percentage of deals being awarded to SMEs via G-Cloud has started to slide of late, which has fed speculation a new oligopoly of big tech suppliers is starting to form, who will – in time – dominate the government IT procurement landscape. Where G-Cloud is concerned, there are also rumblings of discontent among suppliers who populate the framework that it is becoming increasingly side-lined for a number of reasons. There are semi-regular grumbles from suppliers that suggestions they have made to CCS or GDS about changes they would like made to the framework being ignored, or not being acted on as quickly as they would like.

Enterprise security threats rising, consumer attacks falling

There are several reasons why enterprise security threats -- especially malware attacks -- are on the rise, Kudelski Security's Kizziah said. "One of the most interesting is criminal groups' adoption of the latest, freely available malcode, which is quite advanced, easy to modify for different specific purposes, and modular, so it can use different techniques to infect an endpoint," Kizziah said. With over two billion known malware out there and with new malware being introduced every single day, it is impossible to achieve a reasonable level of protection with the traditional approaches to cybersecurity, which is focused on "chasing the bad," Nyotron's Kolga said. Instead, businesses should refocus their efforts on the "ensuring good" approach, Kolga said. This can be achieved through whitelisting approaches for application control and OS behavior, he added. ... Cybercriminals will always find a way to infiltrate businesses, Kujawa believes. He advised companies to adopt a mindset that is not focused solely on prevention. Enterprises should have a plan in place for when threat actors gain access to networks, so that they can protect the most important data with additional layers of security and to ensure that business operations are not disrupted.

FBI and Europol Disrupt GozNym Malware Attack Network

Authorities say this investigation was the result of cooperation between the U.S. and Bulgaria, Germany, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. An unusual aspect of the investigation is that charges were brought against suspects in the countries where they reside based, in part, on evidence gathered by the FBI and German authorities. "The prosecutions are based on shared evidence acquired through coordinated searches for evidence in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria, as well as from evidence shared by the United States and Germany from their respective investigations," the U.S. Justice Department says. Authorities say five suspects remain at large. All are believed to be in Russia, which did not cooperate with the investigation. The GozNym takedown involved close cooperation between the U.S. Department of Justice and counterparts abroad, supported by coordination from Europol, backed by Eurojust, the EU's agency for handling judicial cooperation on criminal matters among EU member states' agencies.

Demystifying Quantum Computing

Importantly, quantum computers aren’t suited for all problems. There are instances where classical computers can perform just as well as a quantum machine. Thus, quantum computers won’t replace classical computers; they’ll operate alongside them. However, more work and research remains to be done. Current quantum computers aren’t powerful or accurate enough yet to offer an advantage over classical computers. Today they can maintain entanglement for just 90 microseconds, and the algorithm can only run during this short timeframe. In quantum computers with superconducting qubits, the chip must be cooled to close to absolute zero, meaning that it must be totally isolated from the environment. Any outside noise or heat is enough to cause an entangled system to collapse. These limitations will have to be overcome before businesses can start using the technology widely. To date, the quantum computers that exist have been used largely for studying quantum computing and developing its potential use cases. Once quantum computers exceed the capabilities of classical computers, they’ll reach what is called quantum supremacy, and the true quantum era will be at hand. 

The Evolution Of The Chief Data Officer

“CDOs have emerged from one of two camps: IT or business,” she says. “CDOs that have risen through the ranks of a technology organisation recognise the value of data and see how it can be applied to improve the business. One of their biggest challenges is in building trust and credibility with business leaders, while pushing risk averse technologists outside their comfort zones.” “Meanwhile, CDOs who come from the business side of an organisation have been frustrated with how slow IT may have been to respond to requests for self service analytics, new types of data such as the IoT, and the evolution to AI. They are willing to take more risks and innovate faster because they know that the business livelihood depends upon it. Their biggest challenge is learning just enough of the technology—and there is a lot of it, which changes rapidly—to be respected by IT and to make the right decisions.” For all CDOs, regardless of background, the overarching aim is to create a business culture that is driven by data. How this is achieved may vary according to individual or organisation, but the end goal is the same: capture data, understand it, keep it safe, and use it to make the business better.

Only 9% of companies warn employees about IoT risks

IoT-related data breaches specifically caused by an unsecured IoT device or application increased from 15% in 2017 to 26% in the last year, the report found. It's possible that this number is actually larger, as most organizations said they are not aware of every unsecure IoT device or application in their environment, or introduced by third-party vendors, it noted. Despite these risks, only 9% of companies said their organizations currently inform and educate employees and third parties about the dangers created by IoT devices. The majority of organizations surveyed lack centralized accountability to address and manage IoT risks, according to the report. Only 21% of board members report that they are highly engaged in security practices, and understand third-party and cybersecurity risks in general. About one-third (32%) of the organizations surveyed said no single person or department is responsible for managing or implementing corrective actions to manage IoT risks, the report found.

Podcast: Adopting public cloud as a culture

The key for improved cloud adoption is opening the lines of communication, bridging the divides, and gaining new levels of understanding. As in the restaurant analogy, the chef says, “Well, I can add these ingredients, but it will change the flavor and it might increase the cost.” And then the finance people say, “Well, if we make better food, then more people will eat it.” Or, “If we lower prices, we will get more economies of scale.” Or, “If we raise prices, we will reduce volume of diners down.” It’s all about that balance―and it’s an open discussion among and between those three parts of the organization.  This is the digital transformation we are seeing across the board. It’s about IT being more flexible, listening to the needs of the end users, and being willing to be agile in providing services. In exchange, the end users come to IT first, understand where the cloud use is going, and can IT be responsive? IT knows better what the users want. It becomes not just that they want solutions faster but by how much. They can negotiate based on actual requirements.

The Power Of Hidden Teams

A recent Cisco study yielded comparable data. And according to Jones, “We can see from our data that teams with more-frequent check-ins have dramatically higher levels of engagement; so, moving forward, we are going to keep experimenting with smaller, more patient-centered, more agile teams, and keep investigating the link between span of control and patient outcomes — and all because we can see the link between attention, teams, and patient care.” The most-engaged teams — and the most-effective team leaders — understand that the currency of engagement is real, human attention. This helps us answer a long-standing question about the optimal span of control in all organizations. Some research puts the number at eight to 10, whereas some workplaces, such as call centers, push the limits with spans as great as 70 team members to one supervisor. Pinpointing the check in, and the frequent attention it provides, as the key driver of engagement shows that “span of control” is more accurately span of attention. The research reveals that for people to be engaged, the span of control must allow each team leader to check-in, one on one, with each team member every week of the year.

Attackers Exploit WhatsApp Flaw to Auto-Install Spyware

The U.K.'s National Cyber Security Center - the public-facing arm of GCHQ - has published guidance for all WhatsApp users. "The NCSC ... always recommends that people protect their device by installing updates as soon as they become available," it says. "The NCSC also recommends that people switch on automatic updates to install them as quickly as possible." Likewise, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, Cert-IN, has warned that attackers could launch further attacks. It's urging all users to upgrade immediately to latest version of WhatsApp. Questions remain about what exactly the exploit might allow attackers to do. For example, could they use it to escape Apple's iOS sandbox, and does updating eliminate any access they may now enjoy to a device? "Does updating the app remove whatever malware was placed on phone? Did they manage to pivot out of the app? I haven't seen any technical analysis of the malware yet so genuinely interested," says Alan Woodward, a professor of computer science at the University of Surrey.

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Quote for the day:

"And how does one lead? We lead by doing; we lead by being." -- Bryant McGill

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Daily Tech Digest - May 02, 2019

AI is already changing how cancer is diagnosed

Thanks to screening programmes, scientific breakthroughs, and technological advances in areas such as genetics, and medical imaging, cancer is much more likely to be diagnosed at a much earlier stage than it was several decades ago. However, accuracy in medical imaging diagnosis remains low, with professionals seeing 20-30 percent false negatives in chest X-rays and mammographies. False positive diagnosis (wrongly stating that there is a problem) is also common. AI can help counteract this, and the fact that healthcare is data-rich, is an added bonus. The vast majority of AI applications within healthcare leverage machine learning algorithms. The more data they are exposed to, the more likely they are to unearth hidden patterns within it that can then be used to perform a task without being explicitly programmed to do so. ... “One of the biggest challenges that we wish to address when it comes to a cancer diagnosis is ‘early detection.’ If a patient is diagnosed early, the chance of survival increases exponentially.

The Zero Server Web Framework Allows Developers to Create Web Applications With No Configuration

The Zero Server web framework allows developers to create, build and develop web applications with server-side rendering and little to no configuration. The recently released major iteration of Zero accepts a mix of Node.js, React, Vue, HTML, MDX, and static files, with support for Svelte poised to follow suite in upcoming versions. Zero 1.0 features automatic configuration, file-system based routing, automatic dependency resolution, and more. With Zero 1.0, developers organize the miscellaneous pieces of a web application into folders, whose structure and content will be mapped to the routes served by Zero Server. The file-system based routing maps files to routes according to the file extension. Following old PHP conventions, content that resides in ./api/login.js is exposed at http://<SERVER>/api/login. This is valid for any file with a .jsextension. Zero thus allows developers to define their API endpoints as individual functions. Zero additionally incorporates a route rewrite mechanism to allow for nested routes. Files with a .jsx extension are expected to contain React code which exports a React component which specifies the page to display at the appropriate route.

Microservices introduce hidden security complexity, analyst warns

Microservices security is something that needs to be tackled urgently, but this is challenging, said Balaganski, because there are almost no established design patterns, best practices or standards for the design, implementation and maintenance of microservices. “It is important for organisations to first realise that there is a problem that they were not previously aware of and that they need to start asking the right questions and looking for the answers,” he said. “If organisations are not aware of the problems, they won’t be looking for solutions.” Understanding the basics of how microservices work and the security implications of using this architecture is a good place to start, said Balaganski. “If you don’t know the basics, you can’t plan your further strategy based on an informed risk assessment,” he said. “In terms of finding out what questions to ask, they should be looking at the draft special publication from Nist [the US National Institute of Standards and Technology] on Security strategies for microservices-based application systems, which is basically a list of things that need to be considered.”

Tips for creating a successful big data lake

Most data collected by enterprises today is thrown away. Some small percentage is aggregated and kept in a data warehouse for a few years, but most detailed operational data, machine-generated data, and old historical data is either aggregated or thrown away altogether. That makes it difficult to do analytics. For example, if an analyst recognizes the value of some data that was traditionally thrown away, it may take months or even years to accumulate enough history of that data to do meaningful analytics. The promise of the data lake, therefore, is to be able to store as much data as possible for future use. So, the data lake is sort of like a piggy bank (Figure 1-4)—you often don’t know what you are saving the data for, but you want it in case you need it one day. Moreover, because you don’t know how you will use the data, it doesn’t make sense to convert or treat it prematurely. You can think of it like traveling with your piggy bank through different countries, adding money in the currency of the country you happen to be in at the time and keeping the contents in their native currencies until you decide what country you want to spend the money in

Is it still worth becoming a data scientist?

With slowing salary growth among data scientists and signs there may be a glut of junior talent, should aspiring data scientists pause for thought? Boykis' advice is to consider getting into the field by the "back door", by starting out in a tangentially related field like a junior developer or data analyst and working your way towards becoming a data scientist, rather than aiming straight for data scientist as a career. Stack Overflow's Silge has a slightly different interpretation of why salaries are levelling out and believes people shouldn't necessarily be deterred from entering the industry. "I think that what we're seeing is a little bit of the standardization and the professionalization of data science," she said. "The past ten years have been a bit of the Wild West when it comes to data science. 'How do you become a data scientist?', it's been a really open question. "I see the industry moving towards some consensus around 'What does it mean to be a data engineer? and 'What does it mean to be a data scientist?'. "When you get to that stage it becomes easier to hire for those roles, and when these roles are easier to hire for you don't have the crazy salary situation we had before."

CIO interview: Mark Holt, CTO, Trainline

“It’s just an amazing group of people,” he says. “We’ve gone from a quite slow-moving environment to one where we operate at e-commerce pace. We do more than 300 production releases every week. We have a team who are able to operate at that pace – and that requires a particular group of individuals, with the right skillset, attitude and approach.” Holt says it is not easy to find such talented professionals. He recognises that these highly skilled individuals are the types of people that Google or Facebook are looking to hire, and says the key to success is to continually think about how people work, the roles they fulfil and the supportive environment the business needs to create. “We focus on culture,” he says. “I like the phrase ‘intentional’ – we pay attention to our culture, we care about it and we nurture it on a daily basis. A lot of my conversations with my direct reports will be about culture and the cultural impact of doing something. If we make a change or move something around, what will happen? How does it feel to be in the development and infrastructure teams at Trainline?”

Revolutionary data compression technique could slash compute costs

In Zippads, as the new system is called, stored object hierarchical levels (called “pads”) are located on-chip and are directly accessed. The different levels (pads) have changing speed grades, with newly referenced objects being placed in the fastest pad. As a pad fills up, it begins the process of evicting older, not-so-active objects and ultimately recycles the unused code that is taking up desirable fast space and isn’t being used. Cleverly, at the fast level, the code parts aren’t even compressed, but as they prove their non-usefulness they get kicked down to compressed, slow-to-access, lower-importance pads—and are brought back up as necessary. Zippads would “see computers that can run much faster or can run many more apps at the same speeds,” an MIT News article says. “Each application consumes less memory, it runs faster, so a device can support more applications within its allotted memory.” Bandwidth is freed up, in other words. “All computer systems would benefit from this,” Sanchez, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering, says in the article. “Programs become faster because they stop being bottlenecked by memory bandwidth.”

4 best practices for improving governance strategies

As the role of technology in corporate America has evolved over the last 30-plus years, the term “IT governance” has risen to prominence. In the most basic sense, IT governance is a formal framework that provides structure for organizations that ensures all IT investments and systems support core business objectives. In other words, it helps align IT strategy with business strategy. “As changes rapidly occur, it is essential to have a well-defined IT governance framework, a state of compliance within regulatory requirements, and a preemptive approach to IT business risks,” Arbour Group explains. For large organizations that have dozens of priorities and millions of dollars invested into various strategies at any point in time, IT governance is an absolute necessity. A failure to articulate the correct approach to IT governance could result in costly mistakes that prevent the organization from being successful. For business leaders that haven’t empowered their companies with IT governance – or even those who have, but know they aren’t taking full advantage – there’s ample room for improvement.

Automating trust with new technologies

The need for trust starts when a product or component leaves the factory or farm. A manufacturer that has implemented automated trust creates a digital “birth certificate” with specifications, provenance, cost, and other relevant data. It then enters this birth certificate (usually an IoT tag) into its existing ERP system, integrated with blockchain to create a secure, immutable, cryptographically sealed record. This record is instantly available, in identical form, on the different servers of the participants in this supply chain, such as the manufacturer, logistics providers, distributors, and wholesalers. Next come IoT sensors, to record location, temperature, ambient vibrations, and other measures to provide continuous end-to-end provenance. The logistics provider scans the sensors to connect them to the blockchain and to the digital birth certificate. As assets change location and condition, IoT sensors gather the data. Blockchain stores it, securely and immutably, with a timestamp on the servers of all of the participants.

Using TypeScript with the MySQL Database

TypeScript, introduced in 2012, has had a recent surge in popularity. A recent JavaScript and Web Development InfoQ Trends Report notes that "TypeScript has had a dramatic rise in popularity, now in the top 10 most popular programming languages on GitHub...". In June 2018 TypeScript made its debut on the TIOBE Index of programming languages top 100 at #93 and the following month was ranked in the top 50. More recently TypeScript is ranked at 44 on the TIOBE index. TypeScript has emerged as a powerful environment for authoring web applications, providing significant improvements over standard JavaScript while remaining consistent with the language. In this article we'll explore in depth the details necessary to use TypeScript with Node.js, MySQL, and TypeORM to create a powerful solution for managing database access with server-side TypeScript. We'll build an example CRUD application to provide a complete end to end solution. The example application shall model a journal catalog. We shall assume familiarity with JavaScript.

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Quote for the day:

"Knowledge is like underwear. It is useful to have it, but not necessary to show it off." -- Bill Murray

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Daily Tech Digest - May 01, 2019

What Has Fintech Done, To Make Itself Feel Proud?

“What we are able to do as a fintech company is to offer better accessibility to financial products for this group of hardworking individuals, who are currently marginalized, particularly when it comes to accessing the lending system.” But what could the fintech industry do more of to prevent this financial worry in the first place. Boden points out the importance of “simplicity, accessibility and the user experience, keeping up the ‘mission to explain’. “As long as we continue to demystify subjects which can often intimidate people such as pensions and investments, we will be fighting the good fight on financial inclusion. What the fintech industry must not lose sight of is its ability to listen to customers and adapt to meet their needs. This is an area where traditional financial services companies struggle to compete.” Sarkar also discusses how impactful financial education can be, “while highlighting the unique position employers have to support improved financial wellbeing of their workforce. For instance, our research uncovered that 77 percent of people trust their employer when it comes to information about their personal finances, and also trust their employer to keep that information confidential.

How to Automatically Determine the Number of Clusters in your Data - and more

Determining the number of clusters when performing unsupervised clustering is a tricky problem. Many data sets don't exhibit well separated clusters, and two human beings asked to visually tell the number of clusters by looking at a chart, are likely to provide two different answers. Sometimes clusters overlap with each other, and large clusters contain sub-clusters, making a decision not easy. ... A number of empirical approaches have been used to determine the number of clusters in a data set. They usually fit into two categories: Model fitting techniques: an example is using a mixture model to fit with your data, and determine the optimum number of components; or use density estimation techniques, and test for the number of modes...; and Visual techniques: for instance, the silhouette or elbow rule (very popular.) In both cases, you need a criterion to determine the optimum number of clusters. In the case of the elbow rule, one typically uses the percentage of unexplained variance.

Fintech lobby spending targets cryptocurrency taxation

While the Securities and Exchange Commission has released some guidance on when it would consider a digital token a security, the nascent industry has complained that the SEC’s most recent comments have muddied the already murky matter. That’s why the fintech industry is lobbying hard for a bill from Ohio Republican Rep. Warren Davidson to exempt digital tokens from securities regulations, said Kristin Smith of the Blockchain Association. “That’s probably been our biggest focus,” she said. “And it will continue to be our biggest focus for the next couple of months.” Tax issues are another priority, Smith said. Because cryptocurrencies can alternately be considered currencies, securities, futures contracts or something else, their tax treatment is a complicated question that the industry hopes can be simplified soon. The IRS has issued scant guidance on how to tax digital coins, said Jerry Brito, executive director at Coin Center. Brito is hoping a pair of cryptocurrency tax bills introduced last year can advance this year.

Plandek co-CEO: 5 areas for Agile team self-improvement

Agile, is, after all, a relative term and fairly meaningless unless qualified. So do you know how agile your development is? One-way to embed the culture change required to answer that key question is through self-improvement (SI) processes underpinned by the right agility metrics. Agile is already closely linked to SI — let’s remember that the Agile Manifesto states: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.” In other words, Agile is about continuous, team-driven SI. The fact that retrospectives is among the top five Agile techniques underscores SI’s importance (source: State of Agile report). Nevertheless, SI efforts regularly fail due to inadequate leadership and follow-through. Teams either don’t have the right tools to collect the data or that they set the wrong metrics. The latter can be especially problematic when Agile development projects are scaling.

The story of smart data

You may have a series of sensors connected to a patient, where you’re monitoring their vital statistics which, in turn, may alert healthcare professionals or physicians as to their ongoing remote treatment and care. Indeed, smart data has many stories to tell, but we may not necessarily be privy to its journey. Moreover, in the evolution of smart objects or things, we may need the support of “smart agents” – autonomous entities that have been empowered to make decisions for us. However, in our current design doctrine human interaction is still needed. ... Of course, we’ve also empowered our smart agents to learn – a true cause and effect paradigm, in turn, slowly diminishing the need for human intervention and, again, realizing a truer definition of “machine learning.” Agents will also use blockchain technology to provide a ledger – an historical reference to what they have learned and might know for future situations – yes, predictive analytics is another reality. Our smart data is a diverse collection of values that offer many insights into the various journeys undertaken by our smart agents.

How a Google Street View image of your house predicts your risk of a car accident

It turns out that a policyholder’s residence is a surprisingly good predictor of the likelihood that he or she will make a claim. “We found that features visible on a picture of a house can be predictive of car accident risk, independently from classically used variables such as age or zip code,” say Kidziński and Kita-Wojciechowska. When these factors are added to the insurer’s state-of-the-art risk model, they improve its predictive power by 2%. To put that in perspective, the insurer’s model is better than a null model by only 8% and is based on a much larger data set that includes variables such as age, sex, and claim history. So the Google Street View technique has the potential to significantly improve the prediction. And the current work is merely a proof of principle. The researchers say its accuracy could be improved using larger data sets and better data analysis. The researchers’ approach raises a number of important questions about how personal data should be used. Policyholders in Poland might be startled to learn that their home addresses had been fed into Google Street View to obtain and analyze an image of their residence.

How machine learning could change science

There are several projects underway to cure, understand, or otherwise ameliorate the symptoms of different cancers - three of which in the DOE specifically use machine learning, as well as a broader machine learning cancer research program known as CANDLE. "In this case, the DOE and [NIH's] National Cancer Institute are looking at the behavior of Ras proteins on a lipid membrane - the Ras oncogenic gene is responsible for almost half of colorectal cancer, a third of lung cancers.” Found on your cell membranes, the Ras protein is what “begins a signalling cascade that eventually tells some cell in your body to divide,” Streitz said. “So when you're going to grow a new skin cell, or hair is going to grow, this protein takes a signal and says, ‘Okay, go ahead and grow and another cell.’” In normal life, that activity is triggered, and the signal is sent just once. But when there’s a genetic mutation, the signal gets stuck. “And now it says, grow, grow, grow, grow, again, just keep growing. And these are the very, very fast growing cancers like pancreatic cancer, for which there's currently no cure, but it's fundamentally a failure in your growth mechanism.”

Done Right, Cloud Native Culture Means Happier Java Developers

“What is ahead-of-time compilation? It’s pre-computation of application code using closed-world static analysis. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘do more at compilation time and less at runtime,’” Rocher said in his keynote at Code Rome. Micronaut moves dependency injection, aspect-oriented programming, configuration management, and bean introspection from the runtime part to the build-time part so that fast-launching services don’t eat up memory. But Rocher wasn’t done with optimizing. He whipped out a demo of GraalVM, “the new universal Java Virtual Machine from Oracle that converts Java to native machine code using AOT.” Not only does it work well with Micronaut, it also features a language framework called Truffle that allows languages to interoperate, so “a Java app can call a JavaScript app without any overhead.” In his demo of Micronaut on GraalVM, startup time was just 20 milliseconds and memory consumption was18MB. “For a Java app, that is quite remarkable,” he said.

2 Million IoT Devices Vulnerable to Complete Takeover

It’s hardly the first security issue in security and surveillance cameras, which hold sensitive data and video footage ripe for the taking for hackers. In July, IoT camera maker Swann patched a flaw in its connected cameras that would allow a remote attacker to access their video feeds. And in September up to 800,000 IP-based closed-circuit television cameras were vulnerable to a zero-day vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to access surveillance cameras, spy on and manipulate video feeds, or plant malware. “Security cameras continue to be the oxymoron of the 21st century,” Joe Lea, vice president of product at Armis, in an email. “This is a perfect storm of a security exposure for an IoT device – no authentication, no encryption, near impossible upgrade path. We have to stop enabling connectivity over security – this is a defining moment in how we see lack of security for devices and lack of response.” In a comment to Threatpost, Marrapese said that vendors have a big part to play when it comes to doing more to secure their connected devices.

Creating Meaningful Diversity of Thought in the Cybersecurity Workforce

We have been discovering the value of diversity of thought through programs such as IBM’s new collar initiative and the San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence (CCOE)’s Internship and Apprenticeship Programs. IBM’s initiative and the CCOE’s program rethink recruiting to pull workers into cybersecurity from adjacent disciplines, not just adjacent fields. Toward the end of my stay at Intuit, I participated in a pilot program that brought innovation catalyst training to leaders outside of product development. Innovation catalysts teach the use of design thinking to deliver what the customer truly wants in a product. While learning the techniques I would later use to coach my teams and tease out well-designed services — services that would delight our internal customers — I was struck by an observation: People of different job disciplines didn’t just solve problems in different ways, they brought different values and valued different outcomes.

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Quote for the day:

"Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you." -- Peter F. Drucker

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Daily Tech Digest - April 30, 2019

Microsoft tells IT admins to nix 'obsolete' password reset practice

Two years ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce, made similar arguments as it downgraded regular password replacement. "Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically)," NIST said in a FAQ that accompanied the June 2017 version of SP 800-63, "Digital Identity Guidelines," using the term "memorized secrets" in place of "passwords." Then, the institute had explained why mandated password changes were a bad idea this way: "Users tend to choose weaker memorized secrets when they know that they will have to change them in the near future. When those changes do occur, they often select a secret that is similar to their old memorized secret by applying a set of common transformations such as increasing a number in the password." Both the NIST and Microsoft urged organizations to require password resets when there is evidence that the passwords had been stolen or otherwise compromised. And if they haven't been touched? "If a password is never stolen, there's no need to expire it," Microsoft's Margosis said.

4 tips for agile testing in a waterfall world

Begin with the understanding that agile is not about Scrum or Kanban processes in and of themselves; it is a set of values. Even in a non-agile environment, you can apply agile values to daily work. Beyond that, when working in an organization that is undergoing an agile transformation, you as an agile practitioner can introduce specific best practices to help the agile transformation go more smoothly. Finally, when you're working in a truly waterfall environment, adapt your process with an understanding that groups will be resistant to Scrum processes for the sake of Scrum. Instead, bring the advantages of agile to the team by making agile values relevant to the team. Think about the principles of agile and how to achieve them within current organizational processes, or how you might tweak current processes to meet those principles. Here are four tips garnered from what I've found to be successful when adapting agile principles to waterfall environments.

Venerable Cisco Catalyst 6000 switches ousted by new Catalyst 9600

The 9600 series runs Cisco’s IOS XE software which now runs across all Catalyst 9000 family members. The software brings with it support for other key products such as Cisco’s DNA Center which controls automation capabilities, assurance setting, fabric provisioning and policy-based segmentation for enterprise networks. What that means is that with one user interface, DNA Center, customers can automate, set policy, provide security and gain assurance across the entire wired and wireless network fabric, Gupta said. “The 9600 is a big deal for Cisco and customers as it brings together the campus core and lets users establish standards access and usage policies across their wired and wireless environments,” said Brandon Butler, a senior research analyst with IDC. “It was important that Cisco add a powerful switch to handle the increasing amounts of traffic wireless and cloud applications are bringing to the network.” ... The software also supports hot patching which provides fixes for critical bugs and security vulnerabilities between regular maintenance releases. This support lets customers add patches without having to wait for the next maintenance release, Cisco says.

Everything done in enterprise information management should drive ROI

The goal here will always be to have the minimal amount of "stuff" doing the maximum amount of "value added things" at the "least cost." This has been a compelling argument for the big data and AI crowd in recent years, but the expense of these solutions in infrastructure, specialized skills and poor implementation has in many ways tainted the message of how to achieve return on investment in the EIM and data insights marketplace... the perception to the business is that sorting data is expensive and needs huge justification. This creates a very challenging environment for enterprise information management innovators committed to the less is more paradigm to business value...so such innovations need to get better at making their case stand out to business leaders... or the money munching will continue unabated and businesses will have no choice but to spend tens of millions of dollars on questionable results.

Seven use cases of IoT for sustainability

A key piece of a smart grid infrastructure, smart meters gather real-time energy data, as well as water and gas data. Rather than waiting for monthly manual readings, businesses and homes with smart meters get real-time data that enables them to make smarter decisions about their energy, water and gas consumption and to modify habits to save money and reduce their carbon footprint. Utility companies also benefit, as systems can be remotely monitored, allowing for better response to problems and efficient maintenance. ... In agricultural scenarios, be it on a farm or an orchard or a building's or resident's lawn, smart irrigation systems monitor soil saturation to prevent over- and under-watering. Water sensors are also instrumental in monitoring water quality, a critical task after floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters to ensure wastewater and chemicals have not tainted potable water supplies. Likewise, IoT sensors embedded into water management infrastructures can monitor local weather forecasts and control drainage to minimize flooding, stormwater runoff or property damage.

On The Future of Tesla and Full Self Driving Cars

The key to moving fast for carmakers is based on making complex trade-offs between backward compatibility and future optionality. And Tesla is the only one who have already demonstrated they can do that masterfully. Tesla is amassing massive amounts of learning from training real world data in shadow mode today. It’s at a scale that makes simulation data obviously weak in comparison. Do you want to ride in a car that has been trained in a simulated environment when there is no steering wheel, or one that learned in the real world? Let’s be honest: It’s hard to tell whether Tesla will emerge the winner in this market. That’s a complex calculus and the industry they play in today is a massively difficult one to succeed in. There are a few ways of looking at this. One is how can they possibly succeed? But another is how can anyone else succeed too? Others don’t have cars on the road and are relying on some future technology that may or may not see the light of day (solid state LiDAR), and will most certainly be obsolete by the time it does.

Intel's Interconnected Future: Combining Chiplets, EMIB, and Foveros

Intel has also uses full interposers in its FPGA products, using it as an easier and quicker way to connect its large FPGA dies to high bandwidth memory. Intel has stated that while large interposers are a catch-all situation, the company believes that EMIB designs are a lot cheaper than large interposers, and provide better signal integrity to allow for higher bandwidth. In discussions with Intel, it was stated that large interposers likely work best for powerful chips that could take advantage of active networking, however HBM is overkill on an interposer, and best used via EMIB. Akin to an interposer-like technology, Foveros is a silicon stacking technique that allows different chips to be connected by TSVs (through silicon vias, a via being a vertical chip-to-chip connection), such that Intel can manufacture the IO, the cores, and the onboard LLC/DRAM as separate dies and connect them together. In this instance, Intel considers the IO die, the die at the bottom of the stack, as a sort of ‘active interposer’, that can deal with routing data between the dies on top.

Huawei's Role in 5G Networks: A Matter of Trust

Security experts are questioning whether restricting high-risk vendors to nonsensitive parts of the network might be a viable security strategy - and whether one nation's choices might have security repercussions for allies. The U.S. has been spearheading a push to ban Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturing giants, including Huawei, from allies' 5G networks entirely, with one National Security Agency official saying it doesn't want to put a "loaded gun" in Beijing's hands. So far, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have agreed with the U.S. position and barred Chinese telecommunications gear from at least part of their 5G network rollouts. ... On Tuesday, news leaked that the U.K.'s National Security Council voted to allow Huawei to supply equipment for some "noncore" parts of the U.K.'s 5G network, such as antennas, although the government wasn't yet prepared to publicly make that declaration.

How to use Google Drive for collaboration

Many people think of Google Drive as a cloud storage and sync service, and it is that — but it also encompasses a suite of online office apps that are comparable with Microsoft Office. Google Docs (the word processor), Google Sheets (the spreadsheet app) and Google Slides (the presentation app) can import, export, or natively edit Microsoft Office files, and you can use them to work together with colleagues on a document, spreadsheet or presentation, in real time if you wish. With a Google Account, individuals get free use of Docs, Sheets and Slides and up to 15GB of free Google Drive storage. Those who need more storage can upgrade to a Google One plan starting at $2 per month. Businesses can opt for Drive Enterprise, which also includes Docs, Sheets and Slides, as well as business-friendly features including shared drives, enterprise-grade security, and integration with third-party tools like Slack and Salesforce. Drive Enterprise costs $8 per active user per month, plus $.04 per GB used.

Robots extend the scope of IoT applications

Robots like humans improve their motor skills with practice. Robots need a test bed where their instructions can be tested and debugged. Simulated test beds are better than physical ones as it is impossible to create a physical representation of every environment where the robot might operate. Isaac Sim is a virtual robotics laboratory and a high-fidelity 3D world simulator. Developers train and test their robots in a detailed, realistic simulation reducing the costs and development time. Robots improve as their decision models are revised to cover new situations that they encounter. Robots operate based on models they were programmed with, but they also send details of unexpected situations back to the cloud for review. This enables developers to refine the robot’s decision-making model to deal with the new conditions. The amount of feedback increases as more robots are deployed, increasing the speed at which all the robots collectively get “smarter.” NVIDIA Nano based robots can report new conditions they encounter to AWS IoT Greengrass modeling platform which lets them act locally on the data they generate, while still using the cloud for management, analytics, and storage.

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Quote for the day:

"Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off." -- Colin Powell

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Daily Tech Digest - April 29, 2019

10 Ways Technology is Transforming Warehouses

Sustainability is a hot-button topic these days, and this focus is changing nearly every industry in the world. Technology can help companies reduce energy consumption, cut down on product waste and lessen emissions while aligning with federal and local rules and regulations. Replacing traditional fluorescent lighting with LED alternatives can reduce power usage while saving the facility money. Smart warehouse designs rely on monitors to regulate power usage, becoming more energy efficient over time by preventing power ghosts from drawing energy when they’re not in use. Technology is helping warehouses become more sustainable, both in house and in their dealings with other facilities. Handheld devices, such as barcode scanners, have always been a part of the logistics and distribution industry, but recent advances have helped these devices become more efficient and useful than ever before. Warehouses that still rely on manual counts and physical paperwork should consider transitioning to digital inventories and handheld devices equipped with RFID scanners and GPS to increase efficiency and reduce theft and inventory loss.

How to write a good data governance policy

I find that getting principles agreed is a lot easier than asking a group pf people what they want included in a data governance policy. Plus the conversation around the principles will give you a really good idea about what they want covered in their policy. Once you've drafted and circulated those principles for feedback, you should be able to make amendments and agree a list of principles. With the principles agreed drafting your policy in accordance is fairly straightforward. However, don't make the mistake of believing that once it is drafted that everyone will immediately approve it because they already agreed the principles. Seeing the detail in black and white often gives rise to more questions, suggestions or changes from your key stakeholders At this point, I really have to emphasize that for data governance to be successful, you need the senior stakeholders engaged. So the answer is not to tell them they're wrong, or to railroad them into accepting what you want to have in the data governance policy.

Small business cybersecurity: The case for MSSPs

Clearly, the industry favors using AI and automated tools, which requires qualified personnel—something small businesses often lack. The good news is most MSSPs enhance their managed approach by using automated-security technology. This likely gives MSSPs the edge with small-business owners according to Canner. "By hiring a managed security provider, your enterprise could save money in the long term. Not only will you save on the costs of finding, hiring, and training new cybersecurity personnel, your enterprise can also reduce the number of cybersecurity members on staff." Venkatesh Sundar, founder and CMO at the MSSP Indusface, in this Trak.in article suggests that small businesses with web applications (most nowadays) may especially benefit from MSSPs that employ Managed Web Application Firewalls (MWAFs) as the first line of defense against malicious actors. "A MWAF ... supports custom and complex rules based on the needs of your business," writes Sundar. "An intelligent, managed WAF gives decision-making power to you or the security analyst to either block, flag or challenge requests."

Froid and the relational database query quandry with Dr. Karthik Ramachandra

If you look at relational databases today, the primary way to interact with the database is through this language called SQL, or structured query language, which falls under this declarative paradigm of programming, which basically says the user needs to tell the system what they need in this declarative high-level language, and the system figures out an efficient way to do what the user has asked. So that’s sort of one main paradigm, or the primary way we interact with databases today. That comes with the advantage that, you know, the users can stay at a higher level of abstraction, not having to go to the detailed implementation of how things are done. And it also allows the system to optimize and come up with efficient algorithms to solve the query or the question that the user is trying to ask. That is one paradigm, and on the other side, we have this imperative program style which is a slightly lower level of abstraction in the sense you are basically telling the system how to go about doing what you want it to do. And, as a result, you’re sort of binding the system to implement it in the way you are telling it to do.

Forget about artificial intelligence, extended intelligence is the future

While one of the key drivers of science is to elegantly explain the complex and increase our ability to understand, we must also remember what Albert Einstein said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” We need to embrace the unknowability – the irreducibility – of the real world that artists, biologists and those who work in the messy world of liberal arts and humanities are familiar and comfortable with. ... In order to effectively respond to the significant scientific challenges of our times, I believe we must respect the many interconnected, complex, self-adaptive systems across scales and dimensions that cannot be fully known by or separated from observer and designer. In other words, we are all participants in multiple evolutionary systems with different fitness landscapes at different scales, from our microbes to our individual identities to society and our species. Individuals themselves are systems composed of systems of systems, such as the cells in our bodies that behave more like system-level designers than we do.

These are the industries most likely to be taken over by robots

Workers in industry sectors like food service and manufacturing spend much of their time doing physical tasks in a predictable environment, and so are susceptible to automation. Meanwhile, industries like education and health care involve much more interpersonal work and application of deep expertise, competencies which current robots and software lack. McKinsey pointed out that their analysis focused on what tasks could potentially be automated using current technology, which doesn't necessarily mean that these jobs actually will end up being more heavily done by robots and software. Other economic and social concerns, like the cost of labor relative to new investment in advanced machines and the public's willingness to have robots do things like serve them food, are likely to be big factors in whether or not various jobs and tasks actually do become automated, according to the report.

The growing demand for managed detection and response (MDR)

According to ESG research, 82% of cybersecurity professionals agree that improving threat detection and response (i.e. mean-time to detect (MTTD), mean-time to respond (MTTR), etc.) is a high priority at their organization. Furthermore, 77% of cybersecurity professionals surveyed say business managers are pressuring the cybersecurity team to improve threat detection and response. So, what’s the problem? Threat detection and response ain’t easy. In fact, 76% of those surveyed claim that threat detection and response is either much more difficult or somewhat more difficult than it was two years ago. Why? Cybersecurity professionals point to issues such as an upsurge in the volume and sophistication of threats, an increasing cybersecurity workload, and a growing attack surface. Oh, and let’s not forget the impact of the cybersecurity skills shortage. Many firms lack the right staff and skills to make a significant dent in this area. Rather than deploying yet another point tool or muddle through, many CISOs are turning to third-party service providers for help, making managed detection and response (MDR) one of the fastest-growing segments in the cybersecurity market.

How cloud services can empower the future of work

More often than not, businesses are stuck with legacy applications and tools. As a result, employees rely on email and word processing for business communication. They depend on shared network drives and content management systems to store, organize, secure and access files. Users connect first to one application and then another to schedule appointments, develop plans, allocate resources, track results, make payments, update images and accomplish a whole host of business activities that are integral parts of their everyday jobs. Today's employees work in an application-centric -- not a task-centric -- environment.  Cloud-powered connectivity promises to transform the future of work. Modest additions to existing personal productivity tools and enterprise applications can go a long way toward modernizing the workplace. Employees and workgroups can focus on their immediate tasks at hand, save time and enhance productivity.

Why wearables, health records and clinical trials need a blockchain injection

"Patients can become owners of data and, with their consent, share data with practitioners and allow them to sell anonymous data to buyers," said Mehta, who took part in the blockchain-and-healthcare panel. By enabling patients to add their own details around lifestyle – what they eat, how much they exercise and sleep, a personal health record would offer physicians greater personal insights for more targeted clinical decision making. In order to securely record, share and crunch vast amounts of sensitive data coming from external sources such as wearable medical devices and fitness trackers, a standardized database with artificial intelligence capabilities is needed. ... Blockchain uses hashing, the creation of a unique digital signature for each encrypted block of data added to an electronic distributed ledger. The hashes map back to encrypted patient data as it's added sequentially to a blockchain ledger – and because it's immutable, it creates an audit trail for government oversight. Smart contracts – self-executing business automation apps – can also be used atop blockchain to automatically ingest and process new data.

Millennials, changing meeting priorities drive huddle room trends

Huddle rooms equipped with conferencing technology enable small meetings to happen without taking up an entire boardroom. Nearly 65% of people believe that at least half of huddle rooms within an organization need video conferencing tools, according to a Cisco-sponsored report from market research firm Dimensional Research. "We've been talking about getting video conferencing out of boardrooms and out to the masses for a while now," said David Maldow, founder of market research firm Let's Do Video. "Huddle rooms make video technology accessible to everyone." Meeting culture has become far less formal and scheduled. Teams now are focusing on increased productivity, requiring spaces that they can access quickly for impromptu meetings or last-minute brainstorming sessions. Unlike boardrooms, which are typically designed for larger-scale planned meetings, the trend for huddle rooms and ad hoc spaces is to design them to fit into smaller team workflows. According to the Dimensional Research study, 55% of respondents said that meetings held in huddle rooms helped increase productivity.

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Quote for the day:

"Uncertainty is not an indication of poor leadership; it underscores the need for leadership." -- Andy Stanley

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Daily Tech Digest - April 28, 2019

It’s all about people: Dispelling the five myths of process automation

In a memorable scene from the movie “The Founder” about the origin of McDonald’s, the McDonald brothers plot the layout of their restaurant in a life-sized mockup drawn in chalk on a parking lot. This example of process optimization was certainly “lean,” but it involved no software whatsoever. Today, in contrast, optimizing business processes almost always means automating them – at least in part. And when we say automation, we mean with software. Just what software, however, is an open question, as today’s frothy software marketplace has spawned several contenders. From the business process automation or BPA of the last decade to today’s robotic process automation or RPA to the latest entrant, digital process automation or DPA, information technology decision makers have a plethora of options to choose from. Be warned: This is a clear-cut case of caveat emptor. With the help of the big IT analyst firms, the providers in these overlapping categories have stirred up massive confusion. Let’s clear up the biggest misconceptions.

Confronting the risks of artificial intelligence

Because AI is a relatively new force in business, few leaders have had the opportunity to hone their intuition about the full scope of societal, organizational, and individual risks, or to develop a working knowledge of their associated drivers, which range from the data fed into AI systems to the operation of algorithmic models and the interactions between humans and machines. As a result, executives often overlook potential perils or overestimate an organization’s risk-mitigation capabilities. It’s also common for leaders to lump in AI risks with others owned by specialists in the IT and analytics organizations. Leaders hoping to avoid, or at least mitigate, unintended consequences need both to build their pattern-recognition skills with respect to AI risks and to engage the entire organization so that it is ready to embrace the power and the responsibility associated with AI. The level of effort required to identify and control for all key risks dramatically exceeds prevailing norms in most organizations. Making real progress demands a multidisciplinary approach involving leaders in the C-suite and across the company; experts in areas ranging from legal and risk to IT, security, and analytics; and managers who can ensure vigilance at the front lines.

How the UK’s cybersecurity and privacy watchdogs deal with incidents

In a joint session at the NCSC's CYBERUK 19 conference in Glasgow, the NCSC and the ICO outlined how the two organisations work together and create a better understanding for cyberattack victims who need to contact them with the aim of making it easier to deal with the right one at the right time. "It's important organisations understand what to expect if they suffer a cybersecurity breach. The NCSC has an important role to play in keeping UK organisation safe online, while our role reflects the impact cyber incidents have on the people whose personal data is lost, stolen or compromised," said ICO deputy commissioner for operations, James Dipple-Johnstone. "Organisations need to be clear on the legal requirements when to report these breaches to the ICO, and the potential implications, including sizeable fines, if these requirements aren't followed." In the event of a cyberattack, the NCSC will engage directly with victims to understand the nature of the incident and provide free and confidential advice to help mitigate its impact in the immediate aftermath.

5 Ways AI Is Already Being Used to Transform Business Operations

As machine learning and AI tools are allowed to digest bigger troves of data, an endless swarm of insights is being made available. Many of them can be used to improve existing operations, but there’s more, too. Some of that information can be used to identify and explore all-new opportunities. For example, data related to a particular product might reveal how customers are using the item, particularly in ways that were not originally intended. Extracted insights might also reveal desirable features and functions, which price points are most desirable, or even which additional products and services can be delivered to augment the experience. It’s about a whole lot more than just conventional business operations, however. AI technologies are being deployed in new ways, too. iCertis, for example, is leveraging AI to build smarter static contracts. More specifically, its AI solutions are designed to overcome enterprise contract management challenges through the power of enhanced data capabilities.

Statistically speaking, here’s how your SaaS company can succeed

The good news is that although there are higher expectations, the quality of customer engagement becomes stronger because you have a wealth of data to personalize experiences and customer interactions. And because there are more interaction points with your customers, you can make more informed decisions on how to drive loyalty and where to find more of those loyal customers to drive overall lifetime value. The upfront spend that subscription businesses invest to acquire customers is paid back over time. In order for subscription business to sustainably grow, it’s essential to increase that lifetime value. And over the lifetime of the customer, you’re paying back that customer acquisition cost until you reach ‘economic loyalty,’ earning back a multiple return on the cost of acquiring and serving your customers. “That’s the ability to optimize how you monetize through pricing and plan structures,” Clark explains. “Price optimization is one of the few ways where you can increase revenue, increasing lifetime value from your subscribers without also correspondingly increasing your cost of acquisition or your cost of goods and services.”

Uncovering the hidden talent on your staff

Tech companies have led the way in fostering creativity by using an agile approach. Teams break projects down into sprints, focusing intensely on solving one specific problem at a time in a short, set period. This can lead to quick, outside-the-box thinking and risk-taking, and gives staff the ability to pivot to new ideas as short-term findings become clear. And, as with hackathons, these methods can be adapted to work in any industry. Experimenting with an agile approach — and not just in your IT department — can reveal which individuals on your staff have the right mind-set for innovation and are most likely to be able to learn and adapt with your company’s needs.... Another way to find the innovators hiding in plain sight at your company is to create teams tasked specifically with coming up with new ideas. This responsibility isn’t in most employees’ job descriptions, so they might not be prioritizing it. But you can create formal innovation programs, or even tie a pilot to an existing project, to give employees the time and space they need to show what they’re capable of.

Bringing cloud services to the edge

What cloud users haven’t been able to overcome are the physical limitations imposed by centralized infrastructure, particularly the delays imposed by transporting data hundreds or thousands of miles between an application user and the application infrastructure provider. While these seemed minute when people were already accustomed to waiting seconds on database transactions in a Web form, they become significant in an era of 5G wireless connectivity delivering streaming media and interactive multiplayer games. The speed of light quickens for no one, not even Einstein, meaning that data cannot travel 1,000 miles faster than about 5ms; add in the latency of the network equipment along the way and the round-trip time, even to the nearest regional cloud location becomes noticeable, if not intolerable for many applications. The curse of latency is a primary argument for edge computing, but it’s not the only one as companies have long known the benefits of offloading popular content and workloads to geographically distributed locations closer to users.

6 Design Principles for Artificial Intelligence in Digital Business

CIOs can make the most of artificial intelligence by applying it to strategic digital business objectives. Artificial intelligence (AI) can augment or automate decisions and tasks today performed by humans, making it indispensable for digital business transformation. With AI, organizations can reduce labor costs, generate new business models, and improve processes or customer service. However, most AI technologies remain immature. “To overcome this hurdle, CIOs must ensure that applications intended to serve a strategic business purpose, such as increasing revenue or scaling services, are designed for strategic plans,” says Jorge Lopez, Distinguished Vice President Analyst, Gartner. Lopez outlines six design principles that will help CIOs and organizations evaluate all proposed AI applications with strategic intent — that is, applications intended to help achieve business results, not just operational improvements. Applications do not have to follow all six principles; however, designs that show two or fewer principles should be reconsidered.

Three out of five IT workers share sensitive information by email

The report shows that the current digital landscape within the companies surveyed is not meeting the needs of employees. And compared to last year, some problems are even getting worse. Over a quarter (28 percent) use instant messaging to share sensitive or private information, creating a major security risk for enterprises. Two thirds of tech workers (66 percent) use use non-approved communication apps because they are less likely to be monitored or tracked. Secure methods that track user access and support the use of watermarks are rarely used. Unsanctioned apps and software, referred to as shadow IT, can lead to information being shared on unsecured systems, and cause communication to be fractured and siloed in the enterprise. These communication challenges go beyond security risks — the report also highlighted restrictions in knowledge-sharing. Almost three-quarters (72 percent) of IT professionals said that they work remotely at least one time per week. Over two thirds (68 percent) say remote work presents challenges that could be solved by better technology solutions, and a digitally centric work culture.

Continuous architecture combats dictatorial EA practices

To encourage an Agile enterprise architecture, software teams must devise a method to get bottom-up input and enforce consistency. Apply tenets of continuous integration and continuous delivery all the way to planning and architecture. With a dynamic roadmap, an organization can change its planning from an annual endeavor to a practically nonstop effort. Lufthansa Systems, a software and IT service provider for the airline industry under parent company Lufthansa, devised a layered approach to push customer demand into product architecture planning. Now, the company can continuously update and improve products, said George Lewe, who manages the company's roster of Atlassian tools that underpin the multi-team collaboration. "We get much more input from the customers -- really cool ideas," Lewe said. "Some requests might not fit into our product strategy or, for technical reasons, it's not possible, but we can look at all of them." Lufthansa Systems moved its support agents, product managers and software developers onto Atlassian Jira, a project tracking tool, with a tiered concept.

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Quote for the day:

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

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