Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

Daily Tech Digest - May 06, 2017

Artificial intelligence will make or break us. Here's how we need to respond

The problem, for some, is the assumption that new technological breakthroughs are incomparable to those in the past. Many scholars, pundits, and practitioners would agree with Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt that technological phenomena have their own intrinsic properties, which humans “don’t understand” and should not “mess with.” Others may be making the opposite mistake, placing too much stock in historical analogies. The technology writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov, among others, expects some degree of path dependence, with current discourses shaping our thinking about the future of technology, thereby influencing technology’s development. Future technologies could subsequently impact our narratives, creating a sort of self-reinforcing loop.

Mind the Gap

The sheer number of IT departments that are not acknowledging the numerous security gaps for cyber-attackers to exploit is astonishing. The problem is that many of those within the industry believe they have their security posture under control but they haven’t looked at the wider picture. The number of threats is increasing every day and as new technologies and opportunities emerge, companies need new security infrastructure to cope with the modifications of the threat landscape. Currently, C-level executives struggle to keep up with the necessity to approve budget requirements to bring their enterprise security up to the next level of protection. If companies are not up to date with the latest trends, businesses are being left more vulnerable to data breached as a consequence.

APT10’s devastating cyber attack shows anti-virus defences can't be relied on

Using meticulously-acquired data, these emails masquerade as messages from a public sector entity, such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency, for example, while the attachments are crafted to address a topic of direct relevance to the recipient. For most employees, clicking open such an attachment will be virtually automatic, activating the malware code hidden in the structure or content of the file attachment. This sophisticated malware immediately rips through networks, heading for the plans, the designs and the data that these incredibly well-resourced threat-actors want to steal. ... These solutions are not only incapable of detecting 100% of the viruses out there, they cannot detect the sophisticated threats that hackers such as APT10 now deploy inside the instruments essential to everyday business – email attachments.

Concern mounts at Indian ID scheme as portals ‘leak’ 100m people’s details

The disclosures came as part of a report entitled Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A Documentation of Public Availability of Aadhaar Numbers with Sensitive Personal Financial Information, which focuses on just four of India’s numerous government portals: The National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP): which provides supports unemployed, elderly, sick and disabled citizens; The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme: which provides households in rural areas at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment each year; The Chandranna Bima Scheme, Govt. of Andhra Pradesh: which provides relief to families if a worker is disabled or killed; Daily Online Payment Reports of NREGA, Govt. of Andhra Pradesh: which tracks progress and payments under the NREGA scheme.

Digital Strategy Vs. Digital Transformation: What's The Difference?

How much appetite for going digital do you have? This is where the question of digital strategy versus digital transformation comes in. The two terms are often misused, in part by being used interchangeably when they are in fact two very different things. A digital strategy is a strategy focused on utilizing digital technologies to better serve one particular group of people (customers, employees, partners, suppliers, etc.) or to serve the needs of one particular business group (HR, finance, marketing, operations, etc.). The scope of a digital strategy can be quite narrow, such as using digital channels to market to consumers in a B2C company; or broader, such as re-imagining how marketing could be made more efficient through the use of digital tools like CRM, marketing automation, social media monitoring, etc. and hopefully become more effective at the same time.

HSBC adopts cloud-first strategy to solving big data business problems

“We deliberately picked projects that were real business problems, because we didn’t want to do a meaningless proof of concept that was kind of interesting to us but didn’t really solve anything,” says Knott. “We chose those five areas because they are important, but they’re not so big that we’re betting the bank on the success or failure of these things.” Some of these use cases, such as the bank’s anti-money laundering activity, requires sifting through billions of transactions looking for suspicious activity, and the organisation wants to use machine learning models to cut down the time it takes to do this work and improve its accuracy. ... “There was a huge appetite to do this, but we also needed to satisfy ourselves that cloud is safe and secure, our regulators are happy, and all the important people are comfortable with what we are doing,” he says.

Why Log Shipping is Better than Database Mirroring for Migrations

Using log shipping, I can go straight from failover to having the database in an AG in a matter of a few seconds, not hours. The set up time will be a little more work because I’m setting up 2 secondaries (2 sets of restores) during set up time, but those can run at the same time so the difference in set up time is negligible. The big difference is I don’t have to go through the restore process for the secondary database because the databases came from the same source database, their log chains are intact, and their logs are in sync already. The failover process for this log shipping scenario does have to be performed in a very specific manner. I wrote on this process previously in my article for SQL Server Pro magazine called 3 Log Shipping Techniques back in 2011. It is actually a very simple process once you understand it.

Can Design Thinking Unleash Organizational Innovation?

To support this “fail fast / learn faster” environment, we do our preliminary data science work using small data sets (10 to 20 GB) on jazzed up laptops (running all of our favorite data management and data science tools). We do this to accelerate the “fail fast / learn faster” process. We don’t want to get hung up on spending lots of time and resources setting up a big analytic sandbox with large data sets. Just the aggregation, cleansing, aligning, transforming and enriching of large terabyte-sized data sets can substantially hinder the rapid “fail fast / learn faster” data science process. We can learn a lot about the variables and metrics that might be better predictors of business performance in a small environment before we start to operationalize the resulting data and analytics in our data lake.

The Hidden Costs of Bad Data

Data is all around us and has a profound impact on our daily lives. But what happens when we rely on bad data to make a decision? Is it as simple as arriving late to work as a result of bad directions, or does bad data have a more costly and meaningful impact on our lives? Erroneous decisions made from bad data are not only inconvenient, but also extremely costly. IBM looked at poor data quality costs in the United States and estimated that decisions made from bad data cost the US economy roughly $3.1 trillion dollars each year. Research from Experian Data Quality also found that bad data has a direct impact on the bottom line of 88% of all American companies. The averages losses from bad data was 12% of the company’s overall revenue. A Gartner Reporter also found that 27% of data in the World’s top companies is flawed.

TensorFlow, an open source software library for machine learning

TensorFlow delivers a set of modules (providing for both Python and C/C++ APIs) that enable constructing and executing TensorFlow computations, which are then expressed in stateful data flow graphs. These graphs make it possible for applications like Google Photos to become incredibly accurate at recognizing locations in images based on popular landmarks. In 2011, Google developed a product called DistBelief that worked on the positive reinforcement model. The machine would be given a picture of a cat and asked if it was a picture of a cat. If the machine guessed correctly, it was told so. An incorrect guess would lead to an adjustment so that it could better recognize the image. TensorFlow improves on this concept by sorting through layers of data called Nodes. Diving deeper into the layers would allow for more and complex questions about an image.

Quote for the day:

"Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable." -- Denis Waitley

Daily Tech Digest - May 05, 2017

Backdoors: When Good Intentions Go Bad

If technology can hide communications, can't technology be used in a legal and safe way to reveal critical information when people's lives are at stake? Unfortunately, the answer is that these requests for access to encrypted information creates "backdoors" that can make all citizens vulnerable to attack. A backdoor in security is a way for an entity (like the government) to access encrypted information. Protecting data using encryption involves creating an encryption key, which is the equivalent of the key to the lock on the front door of one's house. The idea of a backdoor is to provide another key so that law enforcement can enter the house if necessary. Just as the backdoor to the house will open for anyone – friend or foe – with the correct key, an encryption backdoor can make users' information accessible for both good and bad purposes.

How YouTube plans to dominate your living room

YouTube is making a bigger push and investment in the living room because it believes it can improve on-demand services, make TV more personalized and include social components that are typically missing from other providers. “The idea there is we combine the best of cable and broadcast television with YouTube,” Mohan said. “We think there’s great content out there, but we wanted to build a television experience that was truly built for this century.” YouTube's foray into the living room is also boosted by what Mohan and many others are calling “the golden age” of video content. Massive investments are being made to produce videos across multiple platforms and the choices available to viewers has grown profoundly from the three major networks that dominated television as recently as three decades ago.

Third parties leave your network open to attacks

Markus Jakobsson, chief scientist at Agari, said the one big disadvantage to working with third-party vendors is the loss of control over security. "Not only does each vendor create a new entry point into an organization’s network for cyber criminals to exploit, but it also means every employee for that vendor is now a potential target to breach your brand. ... But in today’s digital world, this isn’t a reality." Mike McKee, CEO of ObserveIT, said the lack of visibility into what users at third-party providers are doing – accidentally or intentionally – is a huge security risk. “Every organization must ensure it has identified the outside parties with access to systems and data and have secure procedures in place, strict policies for these users to follow, and effective technology in place to monitor and detect if the third parties are putting their organization at risk," he said.

Why emotional intelligence is key for project success

"Unlike IQ, EQ can evolve and can scale depending on stressors, or even positive emotional states. So it's important someone understands their emotional intelligence so they can counteract whatever might sabotage not only their progress but their teams", said Caroline Stokes, founder of Forward, a team of senior search headhunters and certified executive coaches for global innovation leaders. At Forward, emotional intelligence quotient assessments, like EQ-i 2.0, are used with talent placements and leadership and career development coaches. "We get to work on their EQ within a few weeks of starting their new role to provide awareness and strategies to drive their goals forward," said Stokes. When it comes to the process of merging two companies during an acquisition, EQ can play a vital role.

Lib Dems decry surveillance plans exposed in leaked documents

The regulations state that companies could be forced to ‘modify’ their products in order to comply with government demands, the Open Rights Group points out, adding that the powers would also limit the ability of companies to develop stronger security and encryption. Although TCNs may be challenged on technical grounds and must be approved by Judicial Commissioners, the Open Rights Group said the criteria for making a sound judgement of risk to all parties are not set out in the Act or the draft regulations, and there is there a clear route of appeal. Liberal Democrat president Sal Brinton described the proposed regulations as “a full-frontal assault” on civil liberties and people’s privacy. “This lays bare the extreme mass surveillance this Conservative government is planning after the election.

Manage colocation costs to avoid billing surprises

The colocation market continues to grow, as organizations look to meet their growing needs for compute outside of their own on-premises data centers. An expansive marketplace of providers offers a plethora of colocation services, but a strong service-level agreement between providers and users -- and understanding colocation costs -- requires more than just a handshake. IT admins who oversee the transfer of systems and workloads from inside an organization to a colocation facility have a lot of moving parts to deal with. Security, service-language agreement (SLA) jargon and, of course, budget concerns can all be a major headache. Before making the move to colocation, consult with the business side to make sure it's a good financial decision. After the move, be sure to carefully monitor, manage and optimize colocation costs.

Google Docs Phishing Scam a Game Changer

The attack tricked victims into clicking a link that gave attackers access to their Google Drive through OAuth authentication connections commonly used by third-party applications. The attackers did so by sending victims lure messages claiming to contain links to a shared Google Doc. Instead of a legit document, the link actually initiates a process to give a phony app masquerading as "Google Docs" access to the user's Google account. If the user is already logged into Google, the connection routes that app into an OAuth permissions page asking the user to "Allow" access to the user's legitimate Google Drive. "You aren't giving your Google credentials directly to the attacker. Rather, OAuth gives the attacker permissions to act on behalf of your account. You're on the real Google permissions page. OAuth is a legitimate way to give third-party applications access to your account.

Don't fear the robots, embrace the potential

“Automation is creating a polar shift in how work gets done,” says ISG partner Craig Nelson. “While in the past humans have been supported by technology, we are now seeing a shift to technology being supported by humans to manage and operate business processes. This shift is eliminating much of the mundane cut-paste-and-compare work that humans manage in the cracks between enterprise systems.” The initial response to automation improvements is typically positive, says Nelson, as the technology takes over some of the dirty work employees are eager to offload. But then the anxiety can set in. The elimination of tasks can lead to the elimination of low-level roles, says Nelson. After all, the initial business case for automation was based on eliminating work and full-time employees.

Microsoft’s novel approach to securing IoT

Project Sopris has a sensibly secure IoT stack. It starts with a hardware root of trust, similar to the one developed by the Trusted Computing Group for its Trusted Platform Module. A separate, secured computing environment, this layer creates and manages the keys needed to cryptographically secure connections between devices and servers. It also stores and manages device firmware and software. Building software for Project Sopris devices is much like building code anywhere: What’s important is how the code is stored and managed. Compartmentalizing code so that a failure in one section doesn’t compromise the rest of your software helps prevent exploits from escalating, while building security tools in every layer can reduce the risk of attacks spreading throughout the device stack.

Surface Laptop: Everything you need to know

Microsoft is aiming the Surface Laptop at style-conscious, MacBook-Air-loving college students, though many non-student users are clearly intrigued by it. The Surface Laptop’s clamshell design adds another form factor to Microsoft’s premium line of Surface products, all of which boast beautiful displays and unique features. The Surface Book is the most expensive of the family: a premium 2-in-1 laptop with a striking Dynamic Fulcrum Hinge. The keyboard base is stuffed with extra battery and, in some configurations, a discrete GPU. The Surface Pro 4 is a 2-in-1 that leans more toward a tablet, with a kickstand and the option of a lightweight keyboard. Given the Surface Laptop’s pricing, the Surface Pro 4 is now the lowest-cost product in the family.

Quote for the day:

"You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer." --

Byron Katie

Daily Tech Digest - May 04, 2017

Cloud v. Data Center: Key trends for IT decision-makers

What's driving the move to the cloud? A rich source of data is RightScale's annual State of the Cloud survey, which has tracked the cloud-related activities of enterprises and SMBs for the past five years. When it comes to the perceived benefits of cloud-based computing, the main attractions have consistently been 'faster access to infrastructure', 'greater scalability', 'higher availability' and 'faster time-to-market'. Note also that there's a rising trend for citations of these four key cloud benefits ... There's also a gaggle of secondary benefits, cited by significantly fewer survey respondents (<40%): 'business continuity'; 'geographic reach'; 'higher performance'; 'moving CapEx to OpEx'; 'cost savings'; and 'IT staff efficiency'.

Using AI-enhanced malware, researchers disrupt algorithms used in antimalware

"Many machine learning algorithms are very vulnerable to intentional attacks," add the researchers. "Machine-learning based malware detection algorithms cannot be used in real-world applications if they are easily to be bypassed by some adversarial techniques." Hu and Tan came to this conclusion based on research by Szegedy et al, who were able to bypass malware-detection algorithms using altered information (adversarial examples) that maximized malware classification errors, making it impossible for the detection algorithm to spot malware. The two researchers then proceeded to build on the research of Szegedy et al by proposing the use of generative neural networks and the alteration of original samples to make input and output adversarial examples.

How to Integrate Threat Intel & DevOps

Integrating cyberthreat intelligence (CTI) into a DevOps platform is critical to prevent, detect, respond, and predict cybersecurity threats in a more timely and cost-effective manner. This is true because integration allows automation of everyday tasks such as patch management and vulnerability scanning, allowing employees to turn their attention away from these automated tasks to focus on more complex problems and analyses. At the same time, in our modern, complicated, fast-paced cyber environment, it's difficult to hunt for and find vulnerabilities. Ideally, you will subscribe to threat feeds that have information specific to your systems, networks, or industry, because a power plant operator will want different kinds of threat information than a bank IT team. If your threat feed is specific to your environment, it could help automate the discovery of vulnerabilities and help you prioritize fixes.

Agile development an 'IT fad' that risks iterative failure

One of the key tenets of an agile methodology is that it is an iterative process, where errors can be quickly resolved through continuous improvement. However, according to 6Point6, while fail fast is an intoxicating prospect, in practice, it can blur the distinction between continuous improvement and genuine failure. Specifically, Porter believes in agile projects it is hard to know when an agile project is on the road to ruin. He warned the iterative process may lead to iteratively improving, one failure at a time, towards the wrong outcome. “At no point will this become obvious in the same way it would if you were constrained and measured by a combination of time, budget and scope,” he said.

Blockchain Inadvertently Fuels Cloud Adoption

The biggest and hottest of these catalysts is blockchain—arguably one of the best technologies for the digital age. Blockchain’s inherent strengths have been designed to increase trust and virtually eliminate fraud. Based on algorithms, blockchain technology’s advanced encryption and validation form many independent parts, providing golden distributed ledgers, recorded provenance, and data lineage, as well as numerous benefits for the financial supply chain. Coupled together, blockchain and cloud become a powerful, secure trusted platform. Cybercrime —a constant threat for banks and once seen as a cloud inhibitor—has now also morphed into another catalyst for cloud adoption as banks seek greater security. That’s because core banking technology was originally based on paper and customers without mobile phones—a model that’s no longer applicable or tenable.

Smart Cities Are Going to Be a Security Nightmare

Simply put, smart cities rely on interconnected devices to streamline and improve city services based on rich, real-time data. These systems combine hardware, software, and geospatial analytics to enhance municipal services and improve an area’s livability. Inexpensive sensors, for example, can reduce the energy wasted in street lights or regulate the flow of water to better preserve resources. Smart cities rely on accurate data in order to properly function. Information that has been tampered with can disrupt operations — and constituents’ lives — for days. Several cities have adopted smart technologies, applying artificial intelligence to accelerate their transition into the future. In Barcelona, smart water meter technology helped the city save $58 million annually. In South Korea, one city cut building operating costs by 30% after implementing smart sensors to regulate water and electricity usage.

Artificial Intelligence: 10 influencers driving AI in business

As we move ever further into the age of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), we see more and more companies and AI influencers turning towards this technology in an effort to streamline their customer experiences, reduce their costs, or just wishing to push the boundaries. New research from Axelos and PRINCE2, found that 60% of IT professionals believe that machine learning and AI will have a huge impact on project managers, and that 59% believe automation will replace many routine PM tasks, and this is just one job. But what about the people driving this industry? Who are the most influential people currently making a splash in the field of AI? Take a look at CBR’s list of the top 10 AI influencers that you should be looking out for.

Credit unions look to blockchain to solve digital identity crisis

The concept of self-sovereign identity promises to give individuals their own digital existences apart from any company or government. Perhaps Descartes could be sure of himself simply as a result of his own cognition, but people's identities online are fragmented, out of their control, spread across countless proprietary platforms. Mark Zuckerberg could erase anyone's Facebook identity tomorrow if he chose. ... If people could be in control of their own digital identities, and the public keys to those identities could be stored securely and cheaply on a blockchain, "all of a sudden now the bank doesn't have to build an identity system, yet they get identities that are more trustworthy than they got when they were building their own," said Phillip Windley

Industrial robots that build cars can be easily hacked

"If these robots are welding a car chassis together or a wing on an airplane, two milimeters can be catastrophic,” said Mark Nunnikhoven, the vice president of cloud research at Trend Micro.
Robot controllers, which are typically handheld screens with buttons that are used for operating or programming the machines, are also often remotely accessible through the internet, and those internet connections are not always secure. It was through unsecured network connections that the researchers were able to alter the configuration file in the ABB robot that caused it to draw the line wrong in their tests. The researchers said robots from other manufacturers had similar security holes, but ABB was the only company that lent the team a robot to test for vulnerabilities. Many of the industrial robots probed also had security issues with how users were authenticated to access them.

How the insurance industry could change the game for security

The cyber insurance industry doesn't have anywhere near the kind of deep expertise as, say, property and causality, life insurance, or automotive. "You'd think they'd take their actuarial knowledge, analytical knowledge and amass a ton of information about the claims they paid out, what the underlying causes were, so they can improve their policies," he said. "And the reality is, they haven't." Instead, the industry is struggling with a dramatic shortage of personnel and a problem with getting good actuarial data. "Most people writing cyber insurance don't have technical backgrounds," he said. "They come from writing some other type of property and casualty insurance. They need to hire better people -- and collect more data."

Is Your Small Business Ready For a Data Breach?

Your online presence is the face you present to the world. The information needs to be accurate. The branding needs to be consistent. It needs to be in line with your business strategies. And it needs to protect the customers who place their trust in you. That’s especially true when it comes to data breaches. Having digital integrity in the context of data breach means that you are protecting your prospect and customer data from a number of bad actors trying to steal it. In 2015 alone, almost 160 million records containing sensitive information were compromised. And if you think you’re too small to be a target, you’re wrong. Small businesses are the target of 43% of all cyber attacks. Most criminals understand that small businesses don’t have the resources to enact security on the same level as a large enterprise. Unprepared businesses are the proverbial low-hanging fruit.

Quote for the day:

"Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one." -- Judith Martin

Daily Tech Digest - May 03, 2017

How Microsoft Plans To Reinvent Businesss Productivity

Intentional Programming was Simonyi's idea for making development easier for non-developers using domain-specific languages that describe all the details of an area of expertise, whether that’s marine engineering or shoe manufacturing. “The Intentional platform can represent domain specific information both at the meta-level (as schemas) and at the content level (as data or rules),” Simonyi notes in his rather vague explanation of the acquisition; it’s all about moving from generic applications that help anyone create a generic document like a letter or an invoice, to much more specific systems that incorporate rules and definitions but are still as easy to use as Word and Excel. An expert in pensions, for example, could write down the details of a pension contract as mathematical formulas and tables and test cases in text descriptions

Self Contained Systems (SCS): Microservices Done Right

It is important that an SCS does not just handle a specific domain object. For example a SCS for customer data does not make a lot of sense: There will be customer data in many different Bounded Contexts. So coming up with a single model for a customer and implementing it in a separate SCS is not possible. Even if it was, each system will use customer data and so there will be too many dependencies to that system. This is also the reason why the split into SCS should be motivated by user stories, Bounded Contexts or the user journey - this top-down-approach will lead to a set of decoupled systems. While it might make sense to identify common parts later on, this should not be the focus. Common logic might be separated in a different system, but that means that the SCSs will have a dependency on the common system, which means that they not that decoupled any more.

Cyber Security in Belfast: An Industrial Reinvention

Northern Ireland’s investment in CSIT and in developing a robust cyber security talent pool has already reaped significant dividends. An ultra-competitive recruitment market has driven U.S. tech companies to look overseas for talent, and Northern Ireland has taken advantage. Companies have been pouring into the area over the last few years enticed by the hard-to-find skillsets being nurtured at Queen’s and Ulster University. For instance, before making its decision on where to expand its Center for Open Source Research and Innovation, Massachusetts-based Black Duck advertised positions it was seeking to fill in both Boston and in Belfast. The result? Belfast produced five times as many qualified applicants as the U.S.

Is It Safe to Preserve Data in The Cloud

Eventually, it seems, that even the most secure organization can be infiltrated. As a result, organizations should also have a corruption detection and prevention system. Of course data stored in the cloud should be stored or sent to the cloud in such a way that a company can recover from any corruption or accidental deletion, and make it harder to accidentally delete cloud data, and the data must also be proactively monitored for corruption or attacks. Most cloud vendors do have the ability to have multiple copies of data in different geographies. However this is more of a HA rather than a preservation function as typically snapshot integration is not native nor simple in the cloud across tiers and across clouds. Traditional cloud vendors also do not yet support WORM functionality that could prevent accidental or malicious deletion or corruption of data, nor do they support automated integrity checks of the data.

In the digital era, CIOs not buying ‘this bimodal crap’

The CIOs say there were some bumps along the way, but nothing unexpected, while trying to cajole IT workers to unlearn years of learned processes. Management buy-in is also essential for success. "We have people who understand our business and secret sauce but they’ve been doing things a different way for 20 years," Shurts says. "They get excited about agile, they see that it’s better but then we do a pilot and it’s a lot harder than they think. They really want to do it but they have to unlearn habits learned over 20 years… The good news is we’re getting through that and we’re starting to see innovation and really good results." Schulze says people may need to be retooled because they were successful learning how to do IT in a certain way but success will ultimately hinge on having the right culture and mindset to facilitate change.

IoT Security Concerns

When looking at all of the different ways that IoT devices can be modified to do bad things a few different ideas come to mind in terms of risk. How easy is it for a non-authorized user to gain access to a given device and what kind of device is it? If the device is a network router, that is a big problem. If the device is a water sensor and you need a lot of networking equipment to do it, then the risk can be classified as a low risk. How an IoT device is modified is also a problem. If the IoT device is hacked in such a way that it becomes unusable, because the code ran out the the battery power that is a bigger deal than say an IoT device which can be fixed by sending it a reboot. Knowing something about the people involved and the process used to gain access can help assessing risk. There are also broadly speaking three classifications of users who work on accessing things which they don’t have access.

Microsoft will separate Edge from OS updates

It’s no secret that Microsoft’s Edge browser, the revamped browser that shipped with Windows 10 as a replacement for Internet Explorer, is struggling to gain any sort of traction. As IE fades rapidly, Google Chrome has been picking up share while Edge remains stubbornly at 5%. As I illustrated last week, Edge doesn’t really have one (and edge, that is). It’s painfully slow. I should not be able to watch a website load piece by piece in 2017 on a broadband connection. Much of the problem stems from the fact that Edge updates are tied to operating system updates. So Edge doesn’t get an overhaul until Windows does, and that has only really happened twice, with the Anniversary and Creators Updates. Compare that to Chrome, which seems to get a new build every week.

Making Sense Of Cybersecurity Qualifications

It’s a growing problem for many employers. Increasingly, hiring companies must sift through resumes that tout cybersecurity-related degrees, certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeship credentials, digital badges, micro master’s degrees, nanodegrees and other credentials – trying to determine what a candidate really knows and how those credentials fit together. The influx of credentials is causing plenty of confusion for students, employers, policymakers and for the certifying organizations themselves, says Holly Zanville, senior adviser for credentialing and workforce development Lumina Foundation, a private group focused on increasing success in U.S. higher education. “It used to be that most of these [credentials] would be awarded by colleges and universities, but not anymore,” Zanville says.

Serverless Takes DevOps to the Next Level

Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) provides a managed runtime for executing any arbitrary code that has been uploaded to this service. This may look identical to just deploying a runnable artifact onto a compute instance (server) and having an operating system execute it but it’s not. FaaS takes care of making the function available at the scale required to satisfy the current demand but only charges for the execution count and time. At the same time it abstracts away the setup of the actual runtime (like JVM or NodeJS) and the operating system itself. ... And that’s the beauty of it - the entire compute stack is completely managed by the cloud provider, including the OS process running the function code. This simplifies the management of the compute infrastructure immensely, and combined with a pay-as-you-go billing model, offers an incredibly flexible and cost-effective compute option, compared to a more traditional Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) compute model.

Financial Services Sector the #1 Target of Cybercriminals

"The primary goal is money," says Dave Hylender, senior network engineer at Verizon. "That is the driving force behind most of these attacks." Financial services organizations cut the intermediary step between cybercriminals and the funds they seek. Hackers can obtain troves of data in attacks on healthcare organizations, but they have to take additional steps to monetize that information and open fraudulent accounts. However, money is more easily accessible if you can get malware onto bank systems, he explains. Threat actors can access usernames and passwords, withdraw money, and create fake debit cards, among other illicit activities. "Financial services targets will always be a lucrative reward if successfully compromised," says Michelle Alvarez, threat researcher at IBM X-Force. "Healthcare and retail targets can be profitable

Quote for the day:

"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way." -- Charles Bukowski

Daily Tech Digest - April 27, 2017

Folks are fantasizing about Amazon's Alexa

“A deeper emotional attachment is starting to develop,” Mindshare writes. It says this increasing attachment is caused by improvements in understanding of the user, by the virtual assistant. Affinity increases the more the voice assistant understands the user. Artificial Intelligence (AI) improvements are behind those recent gains, and the user understanding is likely to increase as AI continues to improve over time. People like thinking they’re conversing with a genuine person when they talk to the devices, Mindshare says. According to its research, 70 percent of those interviewed want that. In addition, the report says, “Over a third (37 percent) of regular voice technology users say that they love their voice assistant so much that they wish it were a real person.”

How one organisation’s incident can become everyone’s defence

The Quantum Dawn exercises are one component of Sifma’s comprehensive work with its members on a variety of cyber security initiatives. These exercises create a cross-departmental incident response focus that is tough to achieve in daily business operations. For example, the cyber security team at a given bank may understand their realm extremely well, but may not fully understand how payment processing in their bank works and the impact if payment processing functions are attacked as part of a sophisticated criminal enterprise targeting the bank. But through such collaborative exercises, each department understands its roles and responsibilities. Rapid and accurate communication is key. Indicators of compromise discovered during the early parts of an attack may trigger specific parts of the incident response playbook.

The Long Slog To Getting Encryption Right

According to the Ponemon study, enterprises' focus on encryption and key management is being spurred on by increased cloud adoption as more data moves into third-party data centers. Approximately 67% of organizations report that they either perform encryption on premises prior to sending data to the cloud or encrypt data in the cloud using keys they generate and manage on premises. An additional 37% also report that they encrypt some cloud data using methods that turn complete control of keys and encryption processes to the cloud provider. This most recent study doesn't offer a fine point on how much data is going to the cloud completely unencrypted--but data out in 2016 from HyTrust showed that number to be pretty alarming. According to that study, about 28% of all data within all cloud workloads remain unencrypted.

How to implement DevOps: 5 tips for doing it right

The benefits of DevOps are clear: High-performing organizations deploy 200 times more frequently, with 2,555 times faster lead times, according to a study of more than 25,000 tech professionals from Puppet and DevOps Research and Assessment. High-performers are also twice as likely to succeed with product deployments without service impairments or security breaches. And when something does go wrong, they can fix it 24 times faster. "Tons of evidence showed us that [with DevOps], you can go more quickly and be more reliable at the same time," said Gene Kim, co-author of the report, and co-author of The DevOps Handbook. Here are five tips to help make sure your DevOps implementation reaps the maximum benefits.

Profiling The Insider Threat - Breaking Down a Complex Security Term

Frustration turned to anger, and after trying time and time again to get the company’s attention, Dave took it upon himself to destroy the software just to prove a point. This kind of situation is more common that usually thought: broken promises, the undervaluing of an employee’s opinion, and not heeding sensible advice can often result in those on the frontline of development to lash out against the company. In order to detect situations like Dave’s, the first line of defense is often looking out for the human signs of an unhappy employee. If this fails, then companies need to turn to technology to look for behavior on the network that is out of the ordinary. ... It’s also important to note that your data needs to be monitored at all time: while at rest, while it’s moving, and data in use for policy violations.

Are you prepared for a corporate crisis?

Understandably, companies spend more time trying to prevent crises than preparing for them. However, crisis readiness has become at least as important as risk management, takeover readiness, and vigilance over safety. Underpreparedness has consequences and helps explain why companies engulfed by a large crisis initially underestimate the ultimate cost by five to ten times.2Senior executives are frequently shocked by how quickly a problem can turn from a minor nuisance into an event that consumes and defines the company for years to come. ... When a crisis hits (or is about to hit), one of the first actions should be to create a cross-functional team to construct a detailed scenario of the main primary and secondary threats, allowing the company to form early judgments about which path the crisis may travel.

Hyundai app exposed vehicles to high-tech thieves

"The issue did not have a direct impact on vehicle safety," said Jim Trainor, a spokesman for Hyundai Motor America. "Hyundai is not aware of any customers being impacted by this potential vulnerability." The bug surfaced as the auto industry bolsters efforts to secure vehicles from cyber attacks, following a high-profile recall of Fiat Chrysler vehicles in 2015 and government warnings about the potential for car hacks. Risks have multiplied in recent years as vehicles have grown more complex, adding features like mobile apps that can locate, unlock and start them. "What's changed is not just the presence of all that hackable software, but the volume and variety of remote attack surfaces added to more recent vehicles," said Josh Corman, director of the Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft Initiative.

Systemic cybersecurity crisis looms

Because it is highly probable that an organization will fall victim to a data breach at some point, it is wise to be as prepared as possible for that attack. Having a cybersecurity program in place can minimize the damage. Similar to insurance, companies without an effective plan in place will pay a premium, facing both financial and reputational repercussions. That said, cyber insurance providers have emerged with nearly 70 carriers on the market now. However, given the evolving nature of technology, an organization’s network, systems and methods for securing these assets change, which means their cyber risk changes. As a result, determining the appropriate policy is challenging. Additionally, the cyber insurance market is brand new, so the offerings are questionable at best. It is much more advisable to focus on implementing and maintaining a strong security program instead.

How to share your Power BI dashboards and reports

The key thing to remember about Power BI sharing is that it is domain based. In other words, if my Power BI dashboard is created under the markwkaelin.com domain, it can be shared only with other email addresses in that domain. It is important that the enterprise IT department and Office 365 administrators understand this limitation and plan accordingly. To share a dashboard, first open Power BI. In this example, I am using the Office 365 version. Next, navigate to the dashboard you want to share. Right-click the dashboard name in the navigation panel or click the Share button on the tab bar in the upper-right corner. Either method will take you to a screen where you can list the email addresses of the people you want to share this dashboard with in your enterprise.

After early hype, smartwatches slowly emerge with enterprise uses

Workers already wear smartwatches on the job for quick access to notifications and emails, as well as an array of personal fitness data. Also, some employers are giving workers smartwatches for specific tasks, Ubrani said. Among the workplace uses for smartwatches, enterprise software company SAP has made mobile apps available for Apple Watch and Samsung smartwatches for more than a year, but it isn't clear how widely they have been deployed. In 2015, one ambitious concept design detailed how a medical device service technician could check the status of repairs on an Apple Watch with the SAP Work Manager app. The success of that project isn't known. A more recent example is the Salesforce Wave Analytics app, which works with the iPhone and the Apple Watch to provide sales reps and managers with current data on their customer accounts.

Quote for the day:

"Our minds can be convinced, but our hearts must be won." -- Simon Sinek