Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

Daily Tech Digest - June 05, 2017

Artificial intelligence will outperform humans in all tasks in just 45 years

A recent report suggests that those who are paid less than $20 an hour will be unemployed and see their jobs filled by robots over the next few years. But for workers who earn more than $20 an hour there is only a 31 percent chance and those paid double have just a 4 percent risk. To reach these numbers the CEA's 2016 economic report referred to a 2013 study about the 'automation of jobs performed by Oxford researchers that assigned a risk of automation to 702 different occupations'. Those jobs were then matched to a wage that determines the worker's risk of having their jobs taken over by a robot. 'The median probability of automation was then calculated for three ranges of hourly wage: less than 20 dollars; 20 to 40 dollars; and more than 40 dollars,' reads the report. The risk of having your job taken over by a robot, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman told reporters that it 'varies enormously based on what your salary is.'

Deep Learning 101: Demystifying Tensors

Tensorflow and systems like it are all about taking programs that describe a machine learning architecture (such as a deep neural network) and adjusting the parameters of that architecture to minimize some sort of error value. They do this by not only creating a data structure representing our program, but they also produce a data structure that represents the gradient of the error value with respect to all of the parameters of our model. Having such a gradient function makes the optimization go much more easily. But here is the kicker. You can write programs using TensorFlow or Caffe or any of the other systems that work basically the same way. But the programs that you write don’t have to optimize machine learning functions. You can write programs that optimize all kinds of programs if the ones you write use the tensor notation provided by the package that you have chosen.

Get ready for the ‘first robotic empathy crisis

Perhaps the most important thing humans can do to keep AI in check, according to Brin, is to apply accountability measures and regulation. “The only way that you have been able to make it so that our previous AIs — corporations, governments, and such — don’t become cheaters the way the kings and lords and priests were in the past is by breaking up power and setting it against each other in regulated competition, and that is the method by which we have division of powers, that’s the way we have healthy markets,” Brin said. Regulated competition and accountability have been vital to the protection and advancement of what Brin called the “five great arenas” over powerful interests: democracy, science, sports, law and courts, and markets. Beyond his work as a consultant to federal agencies and his writing, Brin is a Scholar-in-Residence at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Imagination at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

Serverless computing takes another step forward

Like most other serverless environments Functions uses webhooks as triggers. You're able to define the type of webhook used, and Functions' code editor will help you extract payloads that can then be delivered to the Twilio APIs. It's a relatively simple environment at present, offering node.js functionality for your code. That makes sense, as node.js works best when treated as a switch in a message-driven environment. Messages for Functions come in on webhooks and once processed, the output is delivered through Twilio's messaging APIs. Malatack sees the serverless model as a style of programming, where you need to think as little as possible about anything other than your code. "It's a progression for developers as things are abstracted. That's important as abstractions are better, they make it easier to focus on the outcome." It should result in developers getting more leverage, as there's no need to think about complex issues like scaling.

Five Ways To Cultivate a Data-driven Culture for Your Business

In today’s dynamic marketplace, the ability for businesses to use data to identify challenges, spot opportunities, and adapt to change with agility is critical to its survival and long-term success. Therefore, it has become an absolute necessity for businesses to establish an objective, data-driven culture that empowers employees with the capabilities and skills they need to analyse data and use the insights extracted from it to facilitate a faster, more accurate decision-making process. Contrary to what many people think, cultivating a data-driven culture is not just a one-time transformation. Instead, it’s more like a journey that requires efforts from employees and direction from both managers and executives. In this article, I am sharing five different ways businesses can accelerate their transformation into a data-driven enterprise.

How to find the real value in operational big data

You must first understand how to conceptually rationalize all your sites. What is the strategic importance of all the sites in your business operations, and how will you measure performance in aggregate? How do business operations contribute to the overall health of the company, and how will you communicate that through key performance indicators? This exercise should result in a scorecard that aligns with your technical efforts. Metadata analysis is your next step. The strategic team and the technical team must work together to map data from the scorecard all the way down to the sites. Generalization, filtration, and transformation are three key activities this team must perform. Generalization involves mapping up similar data points in to one common concept; filtration is the purposeful exclusion and inclusion of data; and transformation is the rule set that moves included data to common concepts.

The digital revolution: The future is … disruptive banking

A full-serviced digital bank is now a more attractive option, especially because by definition these types of banks are more flexible and instantly responsive, focused on removing the bottlenecks in the existing experience, delivering increased convenience and a more humanised experience with the customer’s interest at its core. These start-up digital banks are likely to not only add competition into the marketplace but to disrupt the entire sector, forcing change with their greater focus on customer experience and satisfaction. Digital banks are more agile than established institutions and create a better user experience and more value for the customer. This value is not fiscal, but delivered through a more personalised experience for each customer.

Is technology destroying the quality of human interaction?

Looking at the world around us today, many things which were not here 10 years ago are fully ingrained in our daily lives. A day without Google, FaceTime or WhatsApp would be quite an experience for me. I use WhatsApp to stay in touch with my family and thanks to FaceTime my kids can see their dad every day even if I am on the other side of the planet. Although I have never met any of the makers of the software, I trust these brands because their products work seamlessly. So instead of trusting the people behind the brand, I have built trust in the brand because their product continuously satisfies my expectations. Obviously, banking is richer than a simple messaging service. Our spectrum ranges from a basic transaction to a complex corporate financing deal. The latter cannot be acknowledged by just ‘two blue ticks’ as is the case for a WhatsApp message.

Continuous Delivery with Kubernetes the Hard Way

Why is continuous delivery so important? Deploying releases to an application continuously eliminates a “release day” mindset. The theory here is that the more frequently releases are done, the less risky releases are. Developers can also make changes to the application (whether implementing new code or rolling back to an older version) as code is ready. This means that the business can make changes more quickly, and therefore be more competitive. Since microservices use APIs to speak to one another, a certain level of backwards compatibility needs to be guaranteed between releases to avoid having to synchronize releases between teams. According to Conway’s law, software takes on the structure of the organization it belongs to. Thus, microservices and containers are just as much about organizational changes as they are about technological changes.

Benchmarks Don't Have to Die

Benchmarks are not just useful for improvements. They can be used as the basis for regression testing, ensuring that performance stays consistent as code is changed. Given that performance isn’t a binary state like broken/working, it’s not always obvious when a regression has occurred. Methodically tracking performance regressions is extremely important for mature projects. Perhaps most important of all, publishing a well-crafted benchmark can codify an entire community’s understanding of interesting workloads and user behaviour. Since the best optimisations figure out the common case and tune for that, benchmarks can guide all developers (especially new ones) towards improving the code that matters most. However, as the Google Chromium team pointed out, there are several drawbacks to benchmarks.

Quote for the day:

"What I've really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership." -- Bob Iger

Daily Tech Digest - June 01, 2017

What is Digital Transformation?

To make this Digital Transformation definition clear and actionable, we also need to define “digital capabilities,” which we’ll define as: Digital capabilities are: electronic, scientific, data-driven, quantified, instrumented, measured, mathematic, calculated and/or automated. While it’s very useful to have a definition, how about we highlight the value of digital transformation by illustrating the difference between a traditional organization and one that has been digitally transformed? So let’s consider a hypothetical case study comparing two companies in the Grocery industry – a traditional Grocer and a “Digitally Transformed” Grocer – to see what the differences might look like.

What Went Wrong In British Airways Data Center in May 2017?

Combining all the different sources shown later in this post, a fairly accurate reconstruction of what went wrong can be provided. The issue BA suffered is very similar to the total failure Delta Airlines experienced in August 2016. ... Most likely BA is using Rotary diesel UPS systems (aka Dynamic UPS) . Contrary to static UPS which uses batteries, a dynamic UPS uses kinetic to store energy. This is guessing but Dutch Hitec (Former Holec) could be the supplier. In normal operation, power is feed thorugh the green line. For maintenance and redundancy, the auto by-pass can be used. This black circuit feeds IT equipment directly from utility power. What likely happened is a failure in a component of the green line. The flywheel can typically supply only 8 to 10 seconds of backup. It is unknown if the UPS had batteries for temporary power.

Taming the Open Source Beast With an Effective Application Security Testing Program

Forrester specifically recommended the following: “Insert a software composition analysis (SCA) tool as early in the SDLC as possible and continue to scan applications, including older applications with inconsistent or long release cycles, to ferret out newly discovered vulnerabilities.” The best way to do this is to integrate open source discovery directly into the application security testing that you are already doing — making it an essential part of your DevOps strategy. IBM has made this process easy and transparent. With introduction of IBM Application Security Open Source Analyzer, part of IBM Application Security on Cloud, identifying open source components occurs automatically during static application security testing (SAST). These components are matched against a list of known vulnerabilities and results are returned.

SMB Security: Don’t Leave the Smaller Companies Behind

Most organizations prioritize risk, identify gaps, and then proceed to identify the people, process, and technology required to mitigate that risk and fill those gaps. This approach is most certainly a sound and methodical one, but it is one that demands a large amount of resources. For a security organization with 50, 100, or 200 staff members and an annual budget in the 10s of millions of dollars, this approach to risk mitigation is an obvious choice. But what are smaller organizations to do? For example, consider the typical mid-market organization. Their security team might consist of one, two, or perhaps five staff members. Their security budget may be a few million dollars, depending on their size, industry sector, and geographical location. Unfortunately, these organizations often find themselves left behind by the security community and without access to trusted circles that could help them make progress.

Securing Your Enterprise’s Expansion into the Cloud

In addition to scalability and segmentation, your underlying security infrastructure should offer automatic awareness of dynamic changes in the cloud environment to provide seamless protection. It’s not enough to detect bad traffic or block malware using discrete security devices. Security should be integrated into security information and event management (SIEM) and other analytics in private and public clouds, providing the ability to orchestrate changes to security policy/posture automatically in response to incidents and events. Individual elements need to work together as an integrated security system with true visibility and control. With these very complex, diverse environments, it becomes increasingly difficult for a human to make decisions intelligently, taking all the variables into consideration, and quickly enough to keep up with threats. Automating security is the goal.

‘Lone Wolf’ Criminal Hacker Gets Doxed Thanks To Series Of Dumb Mistakes

There's probably a lot of hackers just like him out there, but Symantec decided to expose him because it was a strange case. Igor is good enough to use custom-made malware, but also careless enough to make almost no effort to protect his real identity, DiMaggio argued. To hide his tracks in his more recent attacks, Igor has used covert channels such as randomly generated domains to communicate with his malware. But in 2013, when he uploaded an early version of the same malware to Virus Total, an online repository where anyone can upload files to check whether they are detected by antivirus companies, he used a regular domain, according to Symantec. That was one of his key mistakes. The other one was that throughout his years-long hacking career, Igor has used his real name—or at least a consistent persona or alias—to register domains

IBM’s Watson is really good at creating cancer treatment plans

Watson for Oncology is a cognitive computing system trained by physicians at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It's able to take a patient's medical records, extract pertinent information about their health, and come up with a personalized treatment plan. Watson can also suggest which treatments should not be pursued and provides relevant studies to back up its proposals. All in all, it's meant to help clinicians navigate each patient's case with the help of the latest available research. Watson's healthcare successes aren't new, but these additional findings make it that much more useful for doctors. Further, while Watson is already being used all around the world, it's adding nine new hospitals to its client list, including medical groups in Australia, Mexico, Brazil and throughout southeast Asia. However, financial and functional issues have postponed a planned launch at the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center.

A New Internal Threat to Your Environment? ‘Checkbox Security’

A checkbox security approach breaks down in this scenario – there are simply too many variables outside the scope of compliance-focused toolsets to ensure the security of your environment. A checkbox security approach that relies on your compliance policies is, simply put, vulnerable. Being compliant does not mean your environment is secure; and conversely, just because your environment is secure does not mean it’s compliant. Governance automation can go a long way in satisfying compliance requirements while also enforcing security policies to protect against internal and external threats. In a virtual or cloud-based (public, private or hybrid) environment with constantly shifting and distributed resources and possibly shared services, automated governance tooling is indispensable for implementing a comprehensive risk strategy at scale, no matter the size of your organization.

CIOs Key To Bridging The IT/OT Devide

"The intersection of IT and OT changes the relative importance of IT management disciplines for the IT organizations concerned. CIOs and other IT leaders need to evaluate and realign their roles and relationships to maximize the value of converging IT and OT," Gartner's Kristian Streenstrup, research vice president and Gartner fellow, said at the time. "CIOs have a great opportunity to lead their enterprises in exploiting information flows from digital technologies. By playing this role, they can better enable decisions that optimize business processes and performance." That still holds true six years later, Jouret believes, though the struggle to realize that opportunity remains. Jouret’s perspective is unique. He spent the early part of his career as Cisco's IT director for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), with a turn as CTO of Emerging Technologies at Cisco and CTO for Nokia before landing his current role as CDO at ABB Group about nine months ago.

Cyber security employee shortage barrier to effective threat detection

“Tools and training cannot be a one-time investment, and conversely, require constant attention to keep cybersecurity threat detection tools up to date, patched, and working in an integrated fashion—on top of constantly retooling and training to keep pace with the increasing frequency, sophistication, and diversity of global threats. Your security operations strategy must be underpinned by teams that are equipped with the latest tools, threat intelligence, security content, training, time, and budget to stay ahead of new security threats.” he added. A security operations centre (SOC) consists of a highly skilled team, that continuously monitors and improves an organisation’s security posture whilst preventing, detecting, analysing and responding to cyber security incidents. 81% of respondents agree that the most valuable SOC capabilities are rapid identification and remediation of attacks, while 74% feel that 24×7 threat intelligence monitoring and analysis was an extremely important capability.

Quote for the day:

"Leaders must always question the status quo, be aware of the ever-changing environment and be willing to act decisively." -- Mike Finley

Daily Tech Digest - May 31, 2017

Cisco and IBM announce historic cybersecurity partnership

While the relationship brings technology collaboration and integration to Cisco and IBM customers, it also brings two armies of cyber experts. The tech giants are two of the top 10 cybersecurity startup acquirers. With 40 security acquisitions under their collective belts, Cisco and IBM have snapped up some of the top information security talent along the way. IBM Security alone employs more than 8,000 people globally. One of the core issues impacting security teams is the proliferation of security tools that do not communicate or integrate, according to the press release that announced the new partnership. A recent Cisco survey of 3,000 chief security officers found that 65 percent of their organizations use between six and 50 different security products. Managing such complexity challenges over-stretched security teams and can lead to potential gaps in security.

Florida is Now Courting Hyperscale Data Centers

Data centers developed in rural areas burdened with agricultural tax exemptions can help grow a commercial real estate tax base to boost local budgets. These data centers do not require significant investments in local schools, roads, and parks in return for the entitlement to develop. They also have state-of-the-art security and fire suppression systems which help limit the impact on fire and police resources. The Florida legislature and governor have now taken a crucial step to make the Sunshine State more competitive. However, it isn’t a silver bullet. Notably, the Florida legislature removed economic incentives from Enterprise Florida, which only received $16 million in funding in this latest budget. Florida still has challenges to overcome in attracting massive data centers that could benefit from the new legislation, including: frequent lightning storms, hurricanes, and a harsh climate which requires robust HVAC systems to deal with sensible (heat) and latent (humidity) loads.

Hackers upgrading malware to 64-bit code to evade detection

“The high prevalence of these worms in the threat landscape is unsurprising, as all of them infect files which in turn infect more files, and cause this type of malware to spread quickly and widely,” said the report. “To combat this threat, cyber-security teams must gain a deep understanding of 64-bit systems, and the different mechanisms attackers can leverage to attack them,” said Propper. Bogdan Botezatu, senior e-threat analyst at Bitdefender, told SC Media UK that for specific attacks, 64-bit malware is required to be compatible with the operating system version targeted. These extremely niched families of malware include rootkit drivers (which must be compiled specifically for the target platform), process injectors (including some banker Trojans) and some file infectors (viruses) even if viruses are close to going extinct these days.

OS Instrumentation Framework: osquery

osquery exposes an operating system as a high-performance relational database. This allows you to write SQL-based queries to explore operating system data. With osquery, SQL tables represent abstract concepts such as running processes, loaded kernel modules, open network connections, browser plugins, hardware events or file hashes. SQL tables are implemented via a simple plugin and extensions API.. ... Management can be simple and flexible. The osquery daemon uses a configuration input plugin and logging output plugin. By default both use a filesystem path. Read using osqueryd for an overview of configuration. osquery can be controllable in real time through community-supported management services. These complimentary services and open source projects are documented in our configuration guide. And writing your own configuration input and results output is supported and encouraged.

eBook: Enterprise Architecture in Practice

The author gives a good account of enterprise architecture in practice but makes some other points and raises some fundamental issues related to the practice of enterprise architecture as it exists today:

Enterprise Architecture is a strategic skill that transcends companies, and industries i.e. the fundamental principles apply across the board; and Enterprise Architecture is much more than a tool for "business IT alignment" or being only about IT - it concerns the entire enterprise and its restriction to IT has limited its value. Toward that end, the ebook discusses: How to setup the enterprise architecture practice or capability in the enterprise; What "work" or "activity" does an enterprise architecture practice/department do and what business benefit does that produce?

Why mobile apps management trumps a traditional BYOD strategy

"We've started to see civil cases take shape," Silva said. "New York State is an example that comes to mind. Someone was a contractor; they signed away their rights on the dotted line. They ended their contract and left. The device got wiped and the last photos of a dead relative were destroyed. It found its way into a court room. That's had a chilling effect on this." In addition, in countries such as France and Germany, there are greater protections for an employee's personal electronic devices that make it even harder to implement tough BYOD policies, Silva added. "We've gotten a lot of questions from enterprises about how can they can manage this without locking down the whole device," Silva said. The majority of smartphones used in the workplace now are personally owned devices.

Why Microsoft's ARM-based Windows 10 laptops still have a lot to prove

The new machines will compete alongside Intel-based models in a sector Microsoft calls "always connected" PCs. These are Windows 10 machines intended to bring some of the best features of smartphones to laptops: an all-day battery life and fast, constant LTE cellular connection. "It's all around this idea that a PC should be connected, just like a smartphone," said McGuire. On current Windows 10 PCs, standby mode means the machine is shutdown but Qualcomm promises greater things from standby on the new computers. "With these systems, you're truly connected and you will be syncing data, Cortana will be available and it give you truly instant on," he said. During a demonstration at Computex in Taipei on Wednesday, Qualcomm showed off a Windows 10 ARM development system running on the Snapdragon 835.

Four Vectors Changing The Security Software Landscape: Gartner

The security software market is currently experiencing rapid transformation mainly because of four key developments, according to Gartner. The use of advanced analytics, expanded ecosystems, adoption of software as a service (SaaS) and managed services, and the prospect of punitive regulations are causing enterprises to rethink their security and risk management software requirements and investments. "The overall security market is undergoing a period of disruption due to the rapid transition to cloud-based digital business and technology models that are changing how risk and security functions deliver value in an organization," said Deborah Kish, principal research analyst at Gartner. "At the same time, the threat landscape and rise in the number of high-impact security incidents are also creating demand for security technologies and innovations that deliver greater effectiveness."

Why employees hate virtual collaboration and what to do about it

Despite the constant influx of new tools, most workplace communication still occurs through face-to-face conversations, phone calls, and email. Admittedly, some newer options have gained traction. For example, 61% of survey respondents reported using work instant messaging daily, and 53% said they participate in virtual meetings more than once a week. However, these media simply replicate the private, one-on-one and small-group conversations enabled by previous technologies while doing little to bring new voices into mix, increase traceability, and facilitate knowledge reuse. To improve the efficiency and quality of workplace collaboration, employees need to transition at least some of the interactions taking place privately in meetings, phone calls, and email to open forums such as communities of practice, enterprise social networks, and collaboration spaces.

Hackers Hide Cyberattacks in Social Media Posts

“Most people don’t think twice when they are posting on social media. They don’t think about people using the information against them maliciously,” Mr. Kaplan said. “They also don’t assume people on their network might be attackers.” According to a 2016 report by Verizon, roughly 30 percent of spear phishing emails are opened by their targets. But research published by the cybersecurity firm ZeroFOX showed that 66 percent of spear phishing messages sent through social media sites were opened by their intended victims. In the Defense Department attack, for example, 7,000 employees took the first step toward being compromised by clicking on a link, said Evan Blair, a co-founder of ZeroFOX. “The attacks are so much more successful because they use your personal timeline and the content you engaged with to target the message to you,” Mr. Blair said.

Quote for the day:

"You will face your greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle." -- Shannon L. Alder

Daily Tech Digest - May 30, 2017

8 Most Overlooked Security Threats

There's always a new security threat to worry about, whether it's from the latest breach headline or a cyberattack on your business. It's almost impossible to keep track of every factor putting an organization at risk. There is no avoiding the reality that cybercrime, or cyber espionage, will hit. Attackers are employing methods across the spectrum to deliver malware and steal credentials, from old vectors like malvertising, to new ones like appliances connected to the Internet of Things. Every security expert has a different perspective on which threats should be top of mind, and which ones businesses aren't paying enough attention to. Here a few security pros weigh in on the threats they thing are flying under the enterprise security radar.

Being a ‘Digital Bank’ Goes Beyond a Pretty App

Becoming a digital bank can transform a traditional banking organization from being a reactive product provider to being a proactive financial advisor. By developing a digital stack that operates in real-time, with the contextual engagement and the interests of the customer placed at the forefront, financial organizations can combine home grown services with those offered by outside organizations. By definition, digital banks will be more agile and instantly responsive, increasing revenue opportunities and decreasing costs. According to the Temenos report, Digital Banking, “A digital bank offers customers contextualized, seamless experiences that transform the customer journey. And becoming a digital bank means delivering a compelling and relevant customer experience through an open, integrated and flexible architecture.” In short, Temenos believes a digital banking solution provides:

11 Interesting Examples of How to Use Chatbots

Millions of people already get it. They're using chatbots to contact retailers, get recommendations, complete purchases, and much more. Adoption of chatbots is increasing. People are discovering the benefits of chatbots. All of this is good news for entrepreneurs and businesses because pretty much any website or app can be turned into a bot. Now is the perfect time to hop on the bandwagon. Even I've jumped on the bandwagon with my new startup. ... Many consumers know they want to buy some shoes, but might not have a particular item in mind. You can use chatbots to offer product suggestions based on what they want (color, style, brand, etc.) It's not just shoes. You can replace "shoes" with any other item. It could be clothes, groceries, flowers, a book, or a movie. Basically, any product you can think of. For example, tell H&M's Kik chatbot about a piece of clothing you have and they'll build an outfit for you.

'Proof of value' -- not proof of concept -- key to RPA technology

“RPA is a transformational tool, not a desktop macro builder. Look for pain points within the organization and identify what needs to change. This isn’t just a cost play; rather, it has to do with mitigating the challenges of growing in a linear fashion by increasing the number of full-time employees. For some, it is about improving speed and quality to differentiate in the market. Others are attracted by the insight and analytics that come from consolidating all transactional data into one database for real-time visibility.” ... “The next step is to analyze the business and map processes at keystroke level. To do so, use experts in RPA, as it is important to drill into the areas where configuration will be complex. Standard operating procedures, training materials and system manuals will be great inputs, but not enough by themselves.”

Philipp Jovanovic on NORX, IoT Security and Blockchain

Although the situation seems to be grim, there is hope nonetheless. Just to give an example: a while ago IKEA released its Trådfri smart lighting platform which apparently has a fairly decent security architecture. At a first glance it might come as a surprise that of all companies, it is IKEA that points the way of the importance to invest in good security design for IoT products. On a second thought, however, IKEA's decision becomes easily comprehensible: by not squeezing the last bit of revenue out of their IoT product, IKEA reduces the risk of their devices being hacked on a large scale which could force the company to do a costly product recall and might damage its image substantially. Thanks to this decision, the world is likely spared from experiencing a Trådfri-botnet with a gazillion IoT light bulbs against which the Mirai-botnet would be a bad joke.

10 best practices for master data management

Unfortunately, a common mistake that some organizations make is to treat MDM as a technical issue. While this approach helps an organization quick start its MDM initiative, it leaves most critical problems unattended, and dilutes the overall benefits of the MDM program. A technology-driven approach decreases business confidence in MDM, making it difficult to sustain the solution, thus causing the premature death of the global MDM program. However, a technical solution well integrated with business processes, along with a strong governance program, is the right way to start an MDM program. A business driven approach can ensure the success of MDM program and enable a path for further expansion.

Is DDoS Protection Right For You?

What is the actual cost to your business during a DDoS attack? Is it services deferred or services diverted? That is, are you in a market position where people will come back later to avail of the services? Or will they simply go elsewhere? If you’re in the former position, the “cost” of a DDoS attack is significantly lower than that of the latter case. Be wary of the “reputational harm” hype. It is hard to quantify. Take some time to understand what it means to you. For instance, if you’re a gaming site and you’re hit by DDoS attacks, it could mean the end of your business. If you’re a niche site that caters to ham radio operators in Austria, perhaps not so much. Be cautious of vendors who say the correct answer is to expand your DDoS protection services. That may not be the right answer. Determined attackers clearly have the ability to point more IoT devices at you than most reasonable DDoS protection services can handle.

Securing IoT Devices Requires a Change in Thinking

For the present, and for many years to come, detection and mitigation will remain essential, but they are costly. The more attack surfaces a device has, the more expensive it is to manage. Operating systems such as Windows and Linux offer a large attack surface to the opposition because their function is to be as flexible as possible. As a result, even the Linux kernel contains 15.9 million lines of code (v3.6). Almost all of it is written in C or C++ and, thus, is vulnerable to buffer overrun attacks. We are currently at the point of maximum IoT vulnerability. Five years ago, most embedded systems controllers were built around 8- or 16-bit CPUs, which rarely offered more than a few thousand bytes of RAM. Systems had to be simple, as programmers were forced to make every byte count. Today, a 32-bit CPU with a couple of gigabytes of memory costs only a few pennies more.

Internet of Things: Complexity breeds risk

First, not all organizations have the capability to fully test IoT devices. The onus is on the manufacturer to keep them secure. With devices having highly customized firmware, updates are difficult and often tied to the firmware. Therefore, service level agreements on security patching have to undergo strict scrutiny before committing your organizations to these devices. If the manufacturer abandons you, you have lost your investment. Second, this also means that there is a need to treat IoT devices the same way we treat personal devices in the enterprise: with caution and away from corporate networks. Deployment of IoT devices necessitate that they are segmented from the corporate network. Additionally, manufacturers need to talk about implementing security by design to all IoT devices as well as the creation of security standards against which we can measure IoT devices.

How CISCO Combats Fast-Maturing Cybercrime Networks

We will see others adapting and modifying the technique to bring new threats. That’s really part of what I think has changed in doing cybersecurity. Five to 10 years ago, we had people wanting to make a statement and disrupting services. We had hobbyist doing things to see what they could do, and we had nation state actors. Today, while they still exist, I think most organizations can defend from the hobbyist and many of the people wanting to make a statement. It’s very hard to protect yourself from a nation state as an individual company. The cybercrime network has matured and developed very quickly. Much like normal companies that are figuring out how to deliver their services at scale using web technologies, the cybercriminals around the world are doing the same thing, and they’ve built a supply chain that’s very effective.

Quote for the day:

"Most people live with pleasant illusions, but leaders must deal with hard realities." -- Orrin Woodward

Daily Tech Digest - May 29, 2017

Google will soon find you a job as the tech giant refines its mastery over AI

Not to be confused with reaching and including people at grassroots level, here we are talking about Google being inclusive of first world citizens and Apple fans. The most compelling use case of AI to make an average users' life better is through Google Assistant. The chatty, natural language assistant that aims to help us in real world was launched during io16 for Google Home and subsequently introduced for Pixel phones, it is now available for iPhone. On both Android and iPhone, Google Assistant will now work in French, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese. And coming soon are Italian, Spanish and Korean But that's not all. Google just opened the Assistant SDK for developers and OEM of any apps and electronic appliances to be Google Assistant compatible.

Cybersecurity RoI: Still a Tough Sell

At some point, panelists agreed, cyber insurance providers will get better at estimating the value of breaches. But that component of the industry is still in its infancy compared to decades covering property and vehicles. “They just don't have the data yet,” Stanley said. The reality, said Jim Cupps, senior director at Liberty Mutual, is that there is a long way to go. “I don’t think interactions between boards and CISOs have become a value proposition,” he said. That, Porter said, will require more education. “Cybersecurity is viewed as the CISO’s problem,” he said. “But ultimately it’s an enterprise problem. My job is to educate them about that.” Stanley agreed that is, “a difficult task, but it is getting better. Boards are learning. They need to know, and as it becomes more of a regulatory issue, they want to know,” he said. “Wise CISOs can educate the board and then get the budget they need to do the job.”

How Google’s cloud is ushering in a new era of SQL databases

The market for these new flavors of databases is still emerging. ... A handful of other newer companies offer NewSQL databases, including NuoDB, H-Store, Clusterix, VoltDB, MemSQL and others. Amazon Web Services offers Amazon Aurora, which supports MySQL and PostreSQL, which some consider NewSQL. One of the advantages of NewSQL databases is they support applications that run on traditional SQL databases, such as Oracle’s line of databases. Aslett and Pavlo point out, however that workloads running on those traditional databases are typically core applications that enterprises may be more reluctant to move to new databases unless there is a strong need to do so. NoSQL databases, on the other hand, excel at scalability and are typically used in new applications revolving around social, mobile and Internet of Things applications.

4 of the biggest IT project stressors and how to fix them

Take ample time to understand exactly what technologies or other tools are needed to help you to do your job better. Identify any time and cost savings or how it will improve the quality of any deliverables. If you don't know this answer, it's almost impossible to get management to approve it. Be prepared to outline how any expenditure is an investment in the future of an IT project. Companies seldom want to spend money on technologies or resources unless they can see a fairly quick recapture of costs or justify it through an ongoing need. This becomes particularly important for smaller companies with limited funds or larger organizations that have already invested large capital into existing technologies.

Why Cloud Security Needs Visibility-As-A-Service?

Public clouds need to handle hyperscale deployments, resource pooling, and continuous configuration changes based on demand, which brings unique challenges to ensuring visibility, security, and compliance. In February of this year, we surveyed over 220 senior IT staff at enterprise organizations on their cloud security concerns, and 76% of respondents were ‘very concerned’ or ‘concerned’ about security in their cloud environment. The top security concern with cloud adoption was ‘loss of control over network data’ and being able to achieve full visibility across their networks. The limitation is in traditional visibility architectures. They cannot deliver the agility and insight required to ensure proper operation and security of cloud workloads. On-premises solutions depend on physical hardware, taps, and the fact that the organization’s network deployment is unlikely to grow or shrink dramatically overnight.

How Can CIOs Take Control of App Sprawl?

From an IT perspective, this results in higher costs, more time required to administer systems, security and regulatory challenges, and, in the end, diminished productivity. "It's not unusual for an organization to wind up spending double, triple or even four times as much as necessary because people are using applications that already exist within the enterprise," Evolutionary IT's Guarino reports. "Too often, departments and employees make independent decisions outside the scope of IT. Many of these applications also introduce regulatory compliance and security concerns." Mobile apps add to the challenge. It's not uncommon for different divisions, groups and departments to develop mobile apps separately, or to offer different consumer-facing mobile apps for different customer segments. Such a scattershot approach can confuse users, diffuse an enterprise strategy, and lead to highly inefficient and often redundant development practices.

No-code/low-code project management best practices

When an engineering team begins work on a new feature, a set of guidelines is followed to ensure that all product changes have been made safely, and to the standard set forth by the organization. No-code/low-code products are no different. Things like quality assurance, version management, and efficiency should all be addressed and managed continuously. No-code/low-code or not, one of the most important parts of product development is establishing documented, repeatable processes that the whole team can follow. This can be doubly important when working with non-development staff who might have less experience with the product development lifecycle. Working directly with the product development team will help non-technical staff build effective applications and services in a timely and efficient manner.

Here's how MobiKwik hopes to survive the death of mobile wallets

“MobiKwik’s opportunity might lie in its relatively focused and cautious approach in building a payments business,” says Shubhankar Bhattacharya, venture partner at Kae Capital. “While Paytm has chosen to enter the banking space, MobiKwik might benefit from adding complements to its core offering, while staying true to its identity as a payments solution.” ... Doesn’t the new business model look similar to that of a slew of fintech startups that are already into lending and other financial services? Singh says there are enough differentiations. Take, for instance, the decision not to convert into a marketplace, where one can get a comparison of different kinds of financial products and lending rates. While there are different models in the fintech ecosystem, what would help MobiKwik is forging a stronger relationship with the customer, he adds.

Caught In The Breach - What To Do First

James Lugabihl, director, execution assurance at ADP, agreed that the key to limiting the damage of a breach is, “how quickly can you respond and stop it.” He said it is also crucial not to react without complete information. “It’s almost like a disaster scenario you see on the news,” he said. “It takes a lot of patience not to react too quickly. A lot of my information may be incomplete, and it’s important to get everybody staged. It isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. You need time to recognize data so you’re not reacting to information that’s incomplete.” With the right information, he said, it is possible to “track and eradicate” malicious intruders, plus see what their intentions were. Both panelists said legal notification requirements can vary by country, or even by state, and if it is not a mandate, notifying law enforcement is something they will sometimes try to avoid.

Calculating the Operations Cost of Software You Haven't Developed

We need to move to a model where projects request different budgets for different phases of their lifecycle, experiment vs exploit etc. Using microservices and the approach I discuss allows teams to use empirical data to estimate the operations costs for this budget. The "Sunk cost fallacy" does exist and can be more complicated that just misunderstanding. There needs to be a no blame culture so people are happy to raise "sunk cost" issues without recrimination, otherwise politics will prevent them for being surfaced. ... Although the approach is called DevOps, I feel if anything it is finally aligning the goals of the business with IT. Maybe it should be called BusIt! You honestly can't say that either organisational or technological change is more important than the other.

Quote for the day:

"Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take." -- Christopher Reeve