Daily Tech Digest - December 25, 2019

Is AI the Antidote to Network Complexity?

In what might sound like the plot of a “Terminator” movie, Gold says ML and later AI will play a big part in making this complexity manageable. He said EXFO sees ML being used to learn and identify what normal network traffic looks like to better identify the root cause of an issue when it crops up. Needless to say, our IoT devices probably won’t be turning against us anytime soon. But while EXFO is preparing to launch an AI and ML-based AIOPs platform in the near future, other vendors like Masergy, Nyansa, and Vitria have already opened their arms to our AI overlords. In fact, the degree of visibility made possible by AI has implications for more near-term applications than 5G and large scale industrial IoT including gains in operation efficiency, SD-WAN, broadband performance, compliance testing, and improved customer experiences. ... Nyansa’s Voyance AIOPs platform works by pulling in real-time and historical data from devices on the network. This information is then processed using a series of ML and AI algorithms designed specifically to solve network challenges.

WebAssembly hasn’t grabbed JavaScript developers

JavaScript developers are still getting their feet wet with WebAssembly, a survey of JavaScript developers has found.  Survey data published in the State of JavaScript 2019 report issued this week indicates that WebAssembly has drawn plenty of attention but not many users among JavaScript developers. Only 8.6 percent – 1,444 developers – of the 16,694 persons who said they were aware of WebAssembly had actually used it. WebAssembly has been highly touted as a mechanism to speed up web applications and support the use of languages such as C, C++, and Rust for client-side and server-side web development. JavaScript is a compilation target for WebAssembly. The State of JavaScript 2019 report, produced by developers Sacha Greif and Raphael Benitte, is based on a survey of 27,717 JavaScript developers worldwide, who weighted in on everythong from JavaScript language features and flavors to frameworks, utilities, editors, and testing tools.

AI Is Transforming Real-Time Data Governance

By adding AI to the mix, businesses can detect anomalies. For instance, if there is a breach in a data center, management can train an AI-based solution to identify any cyber attack. For this purpose, it goes through machine learning algorithms and consumes voluminous amounts of data. As a result, when a cyber threat emerges, AI can pick out the pattern and notify the authorities in time before data is compromised. This also means that AI can add a lot of automation in the privacy, compliance, and security of data. Hence, companies can ensure that they have a 24/7 protector that, unlike human resources, can tirelessly monitor their data transmissions.  AI makes sure that data reaches the right user without getting intercepted by cybercriminals who may employ man-in-the-middle, spear phishing, ransomware, spyware, or any other cyber attack. Essentially, AI is democratizing data governance. For instance, AI is used in automated process discovery to analyze behavioral data that is generated during data processing. In this way, digital records are derived from behavioral data.

Creating a JWT Authentication Web API in 5 Minutes

There is no denying that JWT is a cool breeze and a relief from the feature insanity of OAuth. I once spent a week trying to understand OAuth, I had to give up. There was simply no way I could wrap my brain around it. I could explain JWT to a 5-year-old child in less than 5 minutes. If OAuth is a scrapyard of madness and radioactive waste, JWT is a green field swimming in warm rays of sun after the morning dew has sprinkled the fresh grass made. A JWT token consists of three simple parts: a header describing the token, a payload that's the actual token, and a cryptographically secured signature, ensuring the token was created by a trusted source. All three components are base 64 encoded, separated by a ".", concatenated, and normally provided as a Bearer token in the Authorization HTTP header of your HTTP REST invocations — dead simple in fact. The reason why this is secure is because some sort of "secret" has been used when creating the signature, which is the last part of the token. Without the secret, you might as well try to brute force the unified theory of science. The thing is solid as a rock! Yet as simple as a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning.

McLaren COO Jonathan Neale on finding racing margins in IoT sensor data

Certainly, McLaren’s Applied Technologies arm is growing, using its knowledge of sensors, data collection and analytics to drive innovation in other industries. As well as being the sole supplier of batteries for Formula E, a class of motorsport that uses only electric cars, the business is also the main supplier of temperature and pressure sensors in F1. It also supplies its ECU to other F1 and Indy Car teams. “We are moving from engineering services,” says Neale, a nod towards increased digital innovation and development. “As well as connected technologies in other sports such as football and rugby, we are working in healthcare and the public transport sector.” ... “We need 5G now,” says Neale, claiming that this is the missing connectivity piece that will enable increased capability at the edge. He sees this as an essential development leap, the sort of advance that will create an acceleration in innovation and increased efficiency in operations.

What’s hot at the edge for 2020? Everything

“The evolution of business applications from monolithic constructs to flexible containerized workloads necessitates the evolution of the edge itself to move closer to the application data,” Uppal said. “This, in turn, requires the enterprise network to adjust and meet and exceed the requirements of the modern enterprise.” Such changes will ultimately make defining what constitutes the edge of the network more difficult. “With increased adoption of cloud-delivered services, unmanaged mobile and IoT devices, and integration of networks outside the enterprise (particularly partners), the edge is more difficult to define. Each of these paradigms extend the boundaries of today's organizations,” said Martin Kuppinger, principal analyst with KuppingerCole Analysts AG. “On the other hand, there is a common perception that there is no such perimeter anymore with statements such as “the device is the perimeter” or “identity is the new perimeter”. To some extent, all of this is true – and wrong. There still might be perimeters in defined micro-segments. But there is not that one, large perimeter anymore.”

Crafting an AI strategy for government leaders

AI strategy is still pretty new—and for many organizations, nonexistent. According to a recent IDC survey, half of responding businesses believed artificial intelligence was a priority, but just 25 percent had a broad AI strategy in place. ... And government is behind the private sector on the strategy curve. In a 2019 survey of more than 600 US federal AI decision-makers, 60 percent believed their leadership wasn’t aligned with the needs of their AI team. The most commonly cited roadblocks were limited resources and a lack of clear policies or direction from leaders. But a coherent AI strategy can attack these barriers while building a compelling case for funding. A winning plan establishes clear direction and policies that keep AI teams focused on outcomes that create significant impacts on the agency mission. Of course, strategy alone won’t realize all the benefits of AI; that will require adequate investments, a level of readiness, managerial commitment, and a lot of planning and hard work. But an effective AI strategy creates a foundation that promotes success.

Customer-driven open source is the future of software 

Despite the fact that open source has never been more broadly used, apparently we’re in an “open source sustainability” crisis. It’s the same “crisis” we’ve been in for the past 20 years, with persistent warnings that this can’t last. ... Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has been agitating for customer-driven open source for well over a decade: “Ultimately, for open source to provide value to all of our customers worldwide, we need to get our customers not only as users of open source products but truly engaged in open source and taking part in the development community.” There are many reasons why such customer-driven (or user-driven) innovation might be best, but Linux veteran Matt Wilson put it this way: “If I can risk predicting the future, I think you’ll see a lot more new open source software emerging from companies that are building it and using it to solve their business problems. And it will be better because of a positive feedback loop of putting the software into an applied practice.”

How Big Data And AI Work Together

Big data services companies were not in much use in the earlier times but now they are and this is because of the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Earlier, having big data was a problem as there were no methods to interpret such a large amount of data that too, in a wide variety. But this has changed now. Artificial intelligence and machine learning help a lot in interpreting all different types of data, be it in textual form or pictures, videos, etc. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, enterprises are able to unleash a whole lot of different uses from the big data they have and acquire continuously. Let’s understand a bit more. The type of relationship that exists between artificial intelligence and big data or big data analytics solutions is of the reciprocative type. Artificial intelligence is somehow meaningless without big data. If artificial intelligence does not have any data, how or on what will it work? One can say that it is mainly made for this purpose, to tackle large amounts of data and extract out meaningful insights from it.

DeepMind Builds Neural Networks that Simulate Imagination

Imagination is one of those magical features of the human mind that differentiate us from other species. From the neuroscience standpoint, imagination is the ability of the brain to form images or sensations without any immediate sensorial input. Imagination is a key element of our learning process as it enable us to apply knowledge to specific problems and better plan for future outcomes. As we execute tasks in our daily lives, we are constantly “imagining” potential outcomes in order to optimize our actions. Not surprisingly, imagination is often perceived as a foundational enables of planning from a cognitive standpoint. Incorporating imagination into artificial intelligence(AI) agents have long been an elusive goal of researchers in the space. Imagine AI programs that are not only able to lean new tasks to plan and reason about the future. Recently, we have seen some impressive results in the area of adding imagination to AI agents in systems such as AlphaGo.

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Quote for the day:

"Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it." -- Warren Bennis

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Daily Tech Digest - December 24, 2019

The neural basis of confirmation bias

Researchers combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with the behavioral task. Participants’ blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) variables were examined through moderated mediation analysis, capturing a relationship between brain activity and multiple levels of performance, and testing whether the mediation is different for conditions of agreement and disagreement. When participants learned their partners agreed with their opinions, they significantly increased their bets, thus confirming they were confident with their decision. Participants only slightly decreased their wagers when their partners disagreed. The impact of the partner’s opinion was far greater when it confirmed the player’s judgment, and the partner’s opinion was more likely to be disregarded when it was contradictory — consistent with confirmation bias. The functional brain imaging data revealed a region whose activity modulation was associated with decision-making and memory. The posterior medial prefrontal cortex mediated the strength of confirming opinions over disconfirming opinions, and tracked agreements more closely than disagreements.

Building Tech Solutions And Giving Back

One of my favorite success stories is a lady that had gone through Coburn Place as a resident, which means she was abused and needed to find shelter for herself and her children. We were doing our Holiday Home party where we provide Christmas trees, ornaments and other holiday decorations to the residents to have for their apartments. She came in with a pink t-shirt, her hair was pink and she came up to me asking for pink lights for her Christmas tree. She had a great smile and her positive attitude was contagious. I asked her why she wanted pink lights and she said her cancer was gone and she wanted everything to be pink for the Holidays. For any person to have gone through what she did and to have that positive attitude and outward happiness to me, defines success. ... Focusing on what we know about our industry and using it to educate the next generation through their teachers will provide more connection between what the kids are learning and a potential career in technology.

4 tips to help keep your APIs safe

Even when enterprises do all the right things and make sure everything is protected, they can still be at risk of breaches or attacks thanks to third-party services. Waugh said a fair chunk of the breaches he sees are not direct attacks on a company system but a compromise of a third party that has access to that system to process data.  "As an industry, we do a really poor job of understanding risk when it comes to third parties. As much as we work to keep ourselves secure, we have a very limited understanding of what third parties we have out there. How do we secure those?" he said. Companies should have a thorough understanding of third-party partners accessing their data, sending them security questionnaire, requests for certifications or demanding reports. But even this, Waugh said, can still leave companies vulnerable to attacks. Last year India's national ID database, which has identity and biometric information like fingerprints and iris scans on more than 1.1 billion registered Indian citizens, was exposed through a vulnerable API. According to ZDNet's Zach Whittaker, a utility provider, Indane, had access to the Aadhaar database through an API, which the company relies on to check a customer's status and verify their identity.

Scientists Develop World’s First ‘Unhackable’ Encryption System

The chip designed by the researchers generates one-time-only key when data is sent through it. The data is stored as light and passed through a specially designed chip that bends and refracts the light to scramble the information. The trick behind the tech is that the bending and refracting of light is unique every time as it depends upon the data being sent through the chip. It would be safe to say that the chip is a physical realization of the OTP mechanism which is popularly used today to authenticate several services. A paper published in the Nature journal titled “Perfect secrecy cryptography via mixing of chaotic waves in irreversible time-varying silicon chips” says that the new technology exploits correlated chaotic wavepackets, that are mixed in inexpensive and CMOS compatible silicon chips. The specially engineered chips can deliver 0.1 Tbit of different keys for every mm of the length of the input channel. According to Professor Andrea Di Falco from the School of Physics and Astronomy at St Andrews University, “It’s the equivalent of standing talking to someone using two paper-cups attached by string.”

How Can a Digital Twin Create a Seamless Workplace for Employees?

The way we work is changing. If you look at industry news headlines, you’ll see articles about the rise of shared working spaces, flexible work hours and remote working. Yes, Millennials and Gen Z’ers are big drivers of this change, but the conversation isn’t limited to the younger generations. In fact, in today’s economy, there is a multigenerational global talent war in many industries — like tech, finance and telecom — where workers of all ages and demographics are asking for flexible working arrangements, remote work and a more holistic perspective on productivity in exchange for their loyalty. Moreover, in our increasingly connected world, employees want their office environments to be as smart as their homes, cars and digital communities, with the ability to create a personalized experience. However, many traditional office buildings still operate in the “dark” with limited use of modern technology and little ability for employees to interact dynamically with their environment.

Slowing Data Security Tool Sprawl in a Hybrid Multicloud World

As information-as-a-service (IaaS), software-as-a-service (SaaS) and database-as-a-service (DBaaS) consumption becomes commonplace for enterprises, their data is becoming more dispersed than ever, making it extremely difficult for organizations to discover, visualize and protect their sensitive data across multiple environments. The same IBV study found that only 38 percent of organizations have the procedures and tools in place to operate a multicloud environment. Moreover, as data and workflows continue to move to the cloud, security teams are becoming inundated with security and compliance point tools, each designed to be used within specific environments and/or use cases. This is leading to what many refer to as “tool sprawl.” Tool sprawl can add significant operational complexity, not just in terms of security teams having to leverage disjointed dashboards and piecemeal reports, but it can lead to ineffective workflows and processes as well.

These AI-Powered Digital Health Devices Debut At CES 2020

Bruce Sharpe, Founder and CEO of Singular Hearing said that more than 466 million people worldwide are affected by some degree of hearing loss. “This staggering number is rapidly increasing. Modern hearing aids are miracles of miniaturization, customizability and flexibility. It's not their fault that noise has continued to be a problem,” said Sharpe. “Even powerful desktop computers were not good at handling noise. That is, until the last few years when good machine learning approaches came along.” “Now we finally have new, more effective solutions for noise, thanks to the perfect storm of new machine learning algorithms, the availability of better data sets, powerful GPUs for training, and smartphones in everyone's pocket that are capable of running the results,” added Sharpe. The Canadian startup’s new product, HeardThat, is an app that uses AI to tune out background noise, which enables users with hearing loss to hear speech more clearly.

How the CIO fought their way back from the edge of extinction

Some CIOs chose to draw a line in the sand. Their IT departments had a finite amount of resources and couldn't afford to implement dashboards for every person in every department. However, line-of-business employees weren't to be denied – and they had a crucial ally in the form of cloud computing. If the CIO wouldn't provision the tools they wanted, then workers chose to simply use their own departmental budgets to buy their own applications. Workers started circumnavigating IT departments entirely, establishing direct relationships with cloud vendors and signing up to their own software-licensing deals. The rise of shadow IT led many experts to speculate that the role of CIO was on borrowed time. After all, who needs a traditional IT director when the rest of the business can buy their own applications and run them on their own devices? The answer, in the end, turned out to be pretty much everyone. While it's easy to buy an application, it's not so easy to ensure the governance of a service is established, that the date is secure and that the software can be turned off – and the data extracted easily – when the contract is cancelled. It was here that CIOs excelled.

5 Ways Business Data Is Changing How People View Green Energy

While many companies are analyzing big data and choosing to adopt green energy, others believe that either there isn’t enough information to support it or it’s too confusing. Sustainability efforts are often difficult to measure because they affect society on a large scale. The specific implications, benefits and disadvantages are therefore hard to pinpoint and visualize. Further, the impact of these efforts is not always immediately obvious. As green energy has only become mainstream within the last few decades, there’s only so much evidence to support it. This information also comes in the form of different metrics and measurement systems. Businesses don’t know which one metric is better than the other and which would best fit their energy needs. Even leading brands need help deciding which ones will help them improve their efforts. While data to support green energy does exist, there’s still much to be understood about it. In the future, the green energy sector can gather more supporting evidence and information by continuing to monitor sustainability efforts.

IoT Security: How Far We've Come, How Far We Have to Go

Compounding the danger of IoT threats is the rise of nation-state attackers, who are targeting firmware at scale or leveraging connected devices in DDoS attacks. They don't have to attack a major entity in order to have far-reaching effects, either: as NotPetya demonstrated, a nation-state actor could target one single component supplier to have devastating consequences. Organizations' attitude toward IoT security is similar to their approach to smartphones several years back, Heiland says. Now, they're in the early stages of how they'll improve their business model and put together processes to stay secure. At the same time, standards and regulations are emerging to inform manufacturers how to build security into these devices from the start. A combination of poor device security and higher interest among attackers is driving businesses to pay more attention to the IoT. "The attack surface they're responsible for has grown so immensely," says Mike Janke, CEO of DataTribe, where a group of advisory CISOs uses the term "shadow IoT" to refer to the smartwatches, headphones, and tablets appearing on networks.

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Quote for the day:

"If you don't make things happen then things will happen to you." -- Robert Collier

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Daily Tech Digest - December 23, 2019

The Top Seven Technology Trends for 2020

Tokens will become an essential tool for the organisation of tomorrow. In fact, tokens will be the fuel of the decentralised economy. They will define our future society thanks to their unique characteristics. First of all, tokens are programmable. This means that certain features or rules can be embedded in the token. These rules could be related to dividend release (the longer you hold a token, the more dividend you will get), voting rights (the longer and the more tokens you have, the more voting rights you will get) or other privileges. These rules can then become an effective way to incentivise ownership and ensure price stability. A second significant benefit of tokens will be that it will result in an explosion of liquidity in the world economy. Security tokens are tokens that allow the owner of that token a (future) stake in a company or asset such as a painting, a car or a building, whether it be in the form of dividends, revenue share, or a price appreciation.

Twitter to Android users: We've just patched this nasty bug so update your app ASAP

Twitter said it lacked evidence that malicious code was ever inserted into the app or that the vulnerability was exploited, but it admitted that doesn't mean it hadn't been exploited.  "We don't have evidence that malicious code was inserted into the app or that this vulnerability was exploited, but we can't be completely sure so we are taking extra caution," Twitter said in a blog post. The bug didn't affect its iOS app for iPhone users. It's notifying Android users through email notifications and app notifications. "We have taken steps to fix this issue and are directly notifying people who could have been exposed to this vulnerability either through the Twitter app or by email with specific instructions to keep them safe. These instructions vary based on what versions of Android and Twitter for Android people are using," Twitter said. A note sent to one Twitter user read: "Please update to the latest version of Twitter for Android as soon as possible to make sure your account is secure." The Twitter Support account clarified on Twitter that the issue was fixed in "version 7.93.4 (released Nov. 4, 2019 for KitKat) as well as version 8.18 (released Oct. 21, 2019 for Lollipop and newer)."

Why Cognitive Technology May Be A Better Term Than Artificial Intelligence

In general, most people would agree that the fundamental goals of AI are to enable machines to have cognition, perception, and decision-making capabilities that previously only humans or other intelligent creatures have. Max Tegmark simply defines AI as “intelligence that is not biological”. Simple enough but we don’t fully understand what biological intelligence itself means, and so trying to build it artificially is a challenge. At the most abstract level, AI is machine behavior and functions that mimic the intelligence and behavior of humans. Specifically, this usually refers to what we come to think of as learning, problem solving, understanding and interacting with the real-world environment, and conversations and linguistic communication. However the specifics matter, especially when we’re trying to apply that intelligence to solve very specific problems businesses, organizations, and individuals have. ... Since no one has successfully built an AGI solution, it follows that all current AI solutions are narrow. 

Product Goals, not Sprint Goals

Product Goals will not all be the same size. Some will be easier than others to achieve. Some may take longer than others to achieve. For instance, some goals may be achieved within a Sprint, whereas others may take multiple Sprints to achieve. The point is that these Product Goals are worth achieving in terms of impact to your users, business and stakeholders. Sprint Goals on the other hand, are goals crafted specifically for a Sprint. Let us consider an example: One of the outcomes (product goals) we were working towards was the ability of our customers to ‘view, maintain and pay invoices’. Without these three parts together, we had determined that our customers would not get a whole outcome that they could meaningfully use. Each part relied on the other. Yet, since we couldn’t fit all of it into one Sprint, we built them over one and a half. The Product Goal, ‘view, maintain and pay invoices’ if split into two Sprint Goals, ‘view and maintain invoices’ in the first Sprint and then ‘pay invoices’ in the next, then the second Sprint gets padded with other stuff that came next in the order, making the second Sprint Goal a hodge-podge of parts of two Product Goals.

When should you consider moving to Kubernetes?

Migrating to Kubernetes works best if your company has already moved its platform to the cloud and has experience with containerisation, but is now beginning to have difficulties with scale or stability. A switch to Kubernetes can also be the right move if your team is having trouble managing your platform because it is spread across different cloud services. While most services offer their own container management tools, using a different one with its command-line interface for each service can quickly become cumbersome. With Kubernetes, you can use the same device for every container, no matter the platform it’s on. This can make container management easier and reduce training time if your platform relies on a few different cloud services. Because Kubernetes containers can also be deployed like a VM template, they typically require little to no configuration across services. As a result, Kubernetes shouldn’t be any more complicated to set up than a cloud service’s proprietary container management tool.

Watch out for phishing scams this Christmas

No longer overrun with work and only responding to emails days later – at which point you’ve already discovered that the email from your colleague that you skimmed but didn’t have time to open is bogus – you might now instead idly click the attached link as it’s something to keep you busy. And once you’ve taken the scammer’s bait, you expose your organisation to a world of trouble. Some phishing scams contain links to websites that replicate a real site with the intention of nabbing your login details, whereas others contain attachments loaded with malware. Either way, falling victim could cause you and your organisation a massive headache. With access to your username and password, criminals can break into your account and steal sensitive information. They might also try to leverage their attack by imitating you in an email a colleague, requesting information. As such, HR departments are a prime target for cyber criminals.

Use technology to accelerate through uncertainty

New solutions also help you harness data to generate insights that enable managers and senior leaders to make more objective, fact-based decisions, leading to better performance. For example, you can invest in supply chain technology that uses AI to generate more accurate demand forecasts and predict how and where the supply chain might break down in response to specific risks. But digital technologies have a customer-facing component, too, enabling business model innovation centered around new types of products and services. For example, companies increasingly offer mobile, cloud-based services rather than products, and customers no longer buy software outright but instead subscribe to software-as-a-service models. Even automakers, who have been selling cars the same way for decades, are rethinking how they do things. Most 4IR technologies are evolving rapidly, but they’re not risky. Rather, they’re market-tested solutions already in use across a range of industries.

Employee Engagement: 4 Keys to Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience

No matter how far removed a role may be from actual customer interaction, it still has something to do with customer experience. This is the truth of the new, customer-centric era of business, and it’s the way CIOs need to think about their organizations from top to bottom. According to 2019 State of the CIO research, 55% of CIOs are spending more time learning about customer needs as a way to create revenue-generating initiatives. How do you inspire employee engagement? The most engaged employees are those who feel their work really contributes to the success of your business. They’re the ones who feel they have a real impact on your products and services and the way customers engage with them. They’re people who embrace their purpose within your company, and are driven by it. With a customer-centric perspective, along with the right training and processes in place, every single one of your employees — from interns to the C-suite — can be a highly engaged employee. There simply needs to be an organization-wide sense of ownership of the customer experience. To take your company in that direction, follow these four steps.

2020 is when cybersecurity gets even weirder, so get ready

The continued expansion of the Internet of Things will greatly increase the number of devices and applications that security teams will have to protect. That's hard for teams that have been used to protecting just PCs and servers and now have to worry about everything from smart air-conditioning units or vending machines in the canteen, right through to power plants and industrial machinery. Half the battle for tech is likely to be just finding the stuff other parts of the business have accidentally connected to the web without realising it. The gradual rise of 5G, which also brings a new set of threats, is going to make this a bigger problem because these devices might be spread across a vast geography. As a result, tech teams may well find themselves spending less time at their desks and more time up ladders and poking around and playing find-the-unsecured-device than they are used to. Ransomware is likely to get odder, too. This year has shown just how much effort criminal gangs are willing to put into catching out large organisations. The aim now is to score a huge payday by encrypting whole networks, not just a few PCs.

What Is Account Creation Fraud? Complete Guide to Detection and Prevention

Because of the sheer number of threats that fake account creation is a necessary part of, and also because of the difficulty of detecting it, it can be difficult to assess how widespread the practice is. Some trends are beyond doubt, however. LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a research firm, has been compiling statistics on human-initiated attacks on their Digital Identity Network for a few years now, and these numbers show a worrying rise in the practice of fake account creation. The most recent report, for instance, showed a 13% increase in fraudulent account creation in the first 6 months of 2019, as compared to the last 6 months of 2018. Tellingly, this report also showed that account creation fraud was the only ‘use case’ that saw growth over the study period, with all the other types of attack the firm detected slowly decreasing. The largest-scale fraudulent account attacks over the last year are also a good indication of the varied ways in which these attacks can be performed, and the scale at which they can now be deployed.

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Quote for the day:

"Education makes a people difficult to drive, but easy to lead; impossible to enslave, but easy to govern." -- Lorn Brougham

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Daily Tech Digest - December 22, 2019

Ransomware takes horrific pivot to data leakage

The problem here [is] the apathy from companies who are breached. We don’t do enough to train people who work with networked computers how to handle them. … But couple that with a lack of spending by companies on basic security, and you have a situation that is ripe for exploitation. ... We've got all kinds of alphabet agencies and other miscellaneous government spooks … so why not just let them take the gloves off and sort things out. From a marketing perspective I don't think it's too hard to spin the attacks against hospitals, etc. [to get] about half of the country behind it. … Once a few bodies pile up I think that people will start to get the message. It won't stop the state actors targeting the state or military, but that's a separate ball game anyway. … [And] I think people would generally be on board with our own government agencies using U.S. companies and utilities for practice to help find and patch vulnerabilities. Normally the laws prevent well-meaning individuals from doing those things … but if the government does it there's a lot less protest, particularly since they're probably already spying on most of the country anyway.

Researchers were about to solve AI’s black box problem, then the lawyers got involved

The calculus for the AI industry is the same as the private healthcare industry in the US. Extricating biased black box AI from the world would probably put dozens of companies out of business and likely result in hundreds of billions of dollars lost. The US industrial law enforcement complex runs on black box AI – we’re unlikely to see the government end its deals with Microsoft, Palantir, and Amazon any time soon. So long as the lawmakers are content to profit from the use of biased, black box AI, it’ll remain embedded in society. And we also can’t rely on businesses themselves to end the practice. Our desire to extricate black box systems simply means companies can’t “blame the algorithm” anymore, so they’ll hide their work entirely. With transparent AI, we’ll get opaque developers. Instead of choosing not to develop dual use, or potentially dangerous AI, they’ll simply lawyer up. ... When things go wrong and AI runs amok, the lawyers will be there to tell us the most company-friendly version of what happened. Most importantly, they’ll protect companies from having to share how their AI systems work.

Mixed feelings about technology initiatives moving outside of IT departments

Overall, IT leaders see this as a good thing. More than three out of four, 78%, feel the shift in technology spending is a positive for their organizations. "Decentralized IT spending is likely to deliver a number of positive outcomes, as a shift in roles offers tactical decision-making among business units via SaaS and IaaS procurement," the IDG authors state. This "leaves time for IT leaders to focus on more strategic tasks. However, these positive outcomes can only be achieved if IT departments build the right framework to enable different business units to procure their own technology." User-driven IT really works out if, in the process, IT costs are kept transparent. If business users can weigh the costs of their technology against the benefits they are receiving, that's a real plus. "A critical part of this framework is ensuring that the costs, security and compliance requirements of software purchases are visible and understood throughout the procurement process. Only by doing this can the LOB feel empowered to procure and 'own' their technology, while reducing the burden on senior IT leaders."

The Value of Belonging at Work  

Our research demonstrates clear, actionable paths forward to help resolve the epidemic of workplace exclusion. Even the most effective recruiting strategy for diversity won’t lead to long-term change if new talent isn’t supported to succeed. Fortunately, our findings show that we are not powerless in the face of exclusion. Individuals coping with left-out feelings can adapt these new evidence-based tools of gaining perspective from others, mentoring those in a similar condition, and thinking of strategies for improving the situation. For team leaders and colleagues who want to help others feel included, our research suggests that serving as a fair-minded ally — someone who treats everyone equally — can offer protection to buffer the exclusionary behavior of others. They can also share stories about how they have coped with similar challenges and see what suggestions teammates have for improving the situation. These strategies would help workers not only navigate tricky workplace dynamics,but also drive their own version of change, especially when the system isn’t working for everyone.

What is the future of insurance?

The future of insurance was a front-line topic this week from three disparate sources- the UK, the US, and a setting in Bolivia. Not the entire globe speaking but certainly diverse locales, the coverage touched on insurance prospects that have global reach, and the sources were uniform in the principal that innovation is important, but customer and risk changes are more so. Consider insurance in the near future- more intangible risks, data sources that embrace forward-looking techniques and breadth of external data, customers that expect more than an annual ‘touch’ from their agents/carriers (if there are agents at all), and product/service evolution that is measured in days, not years. Denise Garth of Majesco writes in a recent article, “Are Insurers Prepared to Meet Future Customer Needs?”, that today’s consumers are becoming accustomed to fluid transactions- order on an app, have delivery (and possible put away) within a day, track the purchase on one’s phone, tablet, television, smart watch, or computer.

What Is The Artificial Intelligence Of Things? When AI Meets IoT

To fully understand AIoT, you must start with the internet of things. When “things” such as wearable devices, refrigerators, digital assistants, sensors and other equipment are connected to the internet, can be recognized by other devices and collect and process data, you have the internet of things. Artificial intelligence is when a system can complete a set of tasks or learn from data in a way that seems intelligent. Therefore, when artificial intelligence is added to the internet of things it means that those devices can analyze data and make decisions and act on that data without involvement by humans.  ... In a smart retail environment, a camera system equipped with computer vision capabilities can use facial recognition to identify customers when they walk through the door. The system gathers intel about customers, including their gender, product preferences, traffic flow and more, analyzes the data to accurately predict consumer behavior and then uses that information to make decisions about store operations from marketing to product placement and other decisions.

The Invention Of “Ethical AI”

The corporate, academic, and military proponents of “ethical AI” have collaborated closely for mutual benefit. For example, Ito told me that he informally advised Schmidt on which academic AI ethicists Schmidt’s private foundation should fund. Once, Ito even asked me for second-order advice on whether Schmidt should fund a certain professor who, like Ito, later served as an “expert consultant” to the Pentagon’s innovation board. In February, Ito joined Carter at a panel titled “Computing for the People: Ethics and AI,” which also included current and former executives of Microsoft and Google. The panel was part of the inaugural celebration of MIT’s $1 billion college dedicated to AI. Other speakers at the celebration included Schmidt on “Computing for the Marketplace,” Siegel on “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Algorithms,” and Henry Kissinger on “How the Enlightenment Ends.” As Kissinger declared the possibility of “a world relying on machines powered by data and algorithms and ungoverned by ethical or philosophical norms,” a protest outside the MIT auditorium called attention to Kissinger’s war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as his support of war crimes elsewhere.

Dell Technologies Edge and IoT Solutions Division opens up intelligent worlds to manufacturers

In the manufacturing sector, IoT deployments provide an enormous amount of data, and businesses that can tap into that data can step into a whole new world that allows them to look back into the past, observe the present, as well as glimpse into the future — or at least, get a 360-degree view of what the future can bring! A globally-recognized company, Boeing is using Edge and IoT to optimize manufacturing by gathering large amounts of data from operational aircraft. A twin-engine Boeing 737 for example, creates 333 gigabits of information per minute. All that data can be used by Boeing to build simulations and models – fueling use-cases such as predictive maintenance, software improvements, and new product development. One of Dell Technologies Edge and IoT’s clients, Brembo, an Italian manufacturer, a world-leader and innovator in the field of high-performance disc brake technology, embarked on the development of an advanced smart manufacturing plant. By installing Dell Technologies IoT Gateways to gather data from sensors that provide real-time production-line performance, company leaders can drive their business forward with data-driven decision-making.

How many PCs will still be running Windows 7 in 2020?

As of September 24, 2019, Microsoft officials said that more than 900 million active devices were running Windows 10. That figure includes 40-50 million Xbox One consoles, an insignificant number of HoloLens and Surface Hub devices, and a rapidly shrinking population of Windows Phones. After making those adjustments, let's call it 850 million Windows PCs. That number has been increasing by about 100 million every six months, and usage statistics I've reviewed show that the pace is ticking up slightly as the Windows 7 deadline nears. Given those trends, it's reasonable to project that the number of active Windows 10 devices will be over a billion by the end of the first calendar quarter of 2020. But how does that number compare to the current Windows installed base? After reviewing all the available evidence, I'm convinced that the current installed base of Windows PCs as we head into 2020 is down significantly since its peak and is probably close to 1.2 billion today.

Ethics In AI: Why Values For Data Matter

Companies should ask themselves: “Is data the core asset that I monetize?” or “Is data the glue that connects the processes that have made my products or services successful?” This is especially urgent as companies start to use third-party data sources to train their algorithms — data about which they know relatively little. Companies as also need to ask themselves: What is the quality of the internal and external data we’re using to train, and to input, algorithms?; What unknown and unintended biases could our data train into algorithms? How will machines know under which biases they operate if we don’t share how algorithms arrive at its answers?; and What will the impact of this automation be on our business, people, and society? How can we detect and quickly mitigate unanticipated impacts? ... In the end, the answer around ethics in AI seems to boil down to transparency; having the applications able to demonstrate what data was used, who trained the AI, and making clear how the AI came to its answers.

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Quote for the day:

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -- Aristotle Onassis

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Daily Tech Digest - December 21, 2019

Future Of Work Will Be A Result Of Multi-Dimensional Digital HR Transformation

The Digital HR enterprise is a harbinger of change in the global business environment and may be defined as an encapsulation of Cloud Enterprise, Cognitive Enterprise (Conversational UX, Intelligent Apps, Advance Analytics), and Connected Enterprise (Digital Integration, IoT, Blockchain). The digital workforce comprises a multi-generational, digitally and socially connected, tech-savvy workforce creating a compelling focus on employee experience. The digital workplace is the inevitable shift to next-gen technologies encompassing Cloud, Mobility, Robotic Process Automation, Conversational AI, Machine Learning, Analytics and Insights, Gamification, and IoT, all of which are the building blocks for enhancing employee experience. Every organization working in a highly competitive market is required to redraw its focus on employee experience to maximize productivity. The increased focus on HR transformation engagements has forced the organisations to fast track the employee experience to extraordinary levels.

A New Algorithm Is Designed for Large-scale Genomic Analysis

Genotyping makes it possible to know an individual’s alleles, i.e. the genetic variations received from his or her parents. However, without knowing the parental genome, we do not know which alleles are simultaneously transmitted to children, and in which combinations. “This information – haplotypes – is crucial if we really want to understand the genetic basis of human variation,” explains Emmanouil Dermitzakis, a professor at the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development at UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and SIB, who co-supervised this work. “This is true for both population genetics or in the perspective of precision medicine.” To determine the genetic risk of disease, for example, scientists assess whether a genetic variation is more or less present in individuals who have developed the disease in order to determine the role of this variation in the disease being studied. “By knowing the haplotypes, we conduct the same type of analysis, says Dermitzakis. However, we are moving from a single variant to a combination of many variants, which allows us to determine which allelic combinations on the same chromosome have the greatest impact on disease risk. It is much more accurate!”

Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Predictions For 2020 From IDC and Forrester

Building on the proven success of these IPA use cases, IDC predicts that by 2022, 75% of enterprises will embed intelligent automation into technology and process development, using AI-based software to discover operational and experiential insights to guide innovation. And by 2024, AI will be integral to every part of the business, resulting in 25% of the overall spend on AI solutions as “Outcomes-as-a-service” that drive innovation at scale and superior business value. AI will become the new UI by redefining user experiences where over 50% of user touches will be augmented by computer vision, speech, natural language and AR/VR. Over the next several years, we will see AI and the emerging user interfaces of computer vision, natural language processing, and gesture, embedded in every type of product and device. Emerging technologies are high-risk technologies. In 2020, warns Forrester, 3 high-profile PR disasters will “rattle reputations,” as the potential areas for AI malfunction and harm will multiply: The spread of deepfakes, incorrect use of facial recognition, and over-personalization.

The Open Application Model from Alibaba’s Perspective

In OAM, an Application is made from three core concepts. The first is the Components that make up an application, which might comprise a collection of microservices, a database and a cloud load balancer. The second concept is a collection of Traits which describe the operational characteristics of the application such as capabilities like auto-scaling and ingress which are important to the operation of applications but may be implemented in different ways in different environments. Finally, to transform these descriptions into a concrete application, operators use a configuration file to assemble components with corresponding traits to form a specific instance of an application that should be deployed. OAM’s core ideas came from our years of hard work on the application platform, and our extensive experience with the development and operation of Kubernetes in both internal cluster and public cloud offering. As engineers, we thrive on innovation-based learning from past failures and mistakes.

Why Your Startup Needs Data Science

Personalization is about taking a product that we think someone wants and putting it in front of that person and having a win. And so how do we do that? How do we go grab the product and show it to the person? Recently, I've seen companies who say they provide personalization, and what they're really doing is they're segmenting the audience into a small group. The first group to play with is gender, then maybe you segment by age, and so now you've got four different groups. That's not personalization, it's segmentation. Sure, it starts to get towards personalization, but it's not very informed. It's not what we might call intelligent use of data. When we start getting more predictive instead of descriptive, we start to look at past behaviors and how they predict future behaviors. That's where the really interesting work happens in the recommender space, or even in the classification space, where we might have a user onboarding with us and the user fills out a bunch of information, and then immediately we can treat the customer differently based on how we predict the customer's going to act in the future.

Rise of payment service providers – the pointers to the future of the retail banking industry

The development of the payment industry is already showing where the journey of the retail banking industry is going. It is surprising that while payment is one of the main tasks of banking, besides lending and investment, banks outsourced significant payment processes to third parties already decades ago. New business areas, such as the credit card business, banks have left to the credit card companies. Amazing, because with payments the private as well as business customers experience their banking daily and thus payments contribute to a substantial part of the customer loyalty. Last but not least, the payment transactions of the customers also give very good indications of the respective life and business situation and potential financial services needs. But banks have not only left the credit card business largely to third parties, but also the fast-growing market for online payments. This is the only way to explain that PayPal has now attracted more than 20 million users in Germany, PAYONE handles more than 2.6 billion transactions per year, and Wirecard has a larger market capitalization than Deutsche Bank- all of these would have been unthinkable ten years ago!

How to improve PC performance by fixing the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver

Let's face it, for most users, if a computer boots up and they can start using it, then the computer is working fine—well, at least good enough. However, this apathetic view of computer health and maintenance can lead to serious problems down the road, especially if your computer is using an outdated device driver. I recently repurposed an old gaming laptop as my new business PC. This process included updating the OS from Windows 7 to Windows 10. After the update, I noticed that the CPU fan was constantly running, and the PC performance was sluggish at best. So, I did some troubleshooting with the Windows Task Manager. I discovered that, for unexplained reasons and even after a lengthy update process, the computer was still using an outdated and deprecated device driver. This was causing major performance issues and was obviously unacceptable. This tutorial shows you how to use the Task Manager to identify bad acting devices, how to troubleshoot the problem, and then how to fix it.

Getting to Know Deep Java Library (DJL)

When structuring the data locally, I didn’t go down to the most granular level identified by the UTZappos50k dataset, such as the ankle, knee-high, mid-calf, over the knee, etc. classification labels for boots. My local data are kept at the highest level of classification, which includes only boots, sandals, shoes, and slippers. ... In DJL terms, a dataset simply holds the training data. There are dataset implementations that can be used to download data (based on the URL you provide), extract data, and automatically separate data into training and validation sets. The automatic separation is a useful feature as it is important to never use the same data the model was trained with to validate the model’s performance. The training dataset is used by the model to find trends and patterns in footwear data. The validation dataset is used to qualify the model’s performance by providing an unbiased estimate of the model’s accuracy at classifying footwear. If the model were validated using the same data it was trained with, our confidence in the model’s ability to classify shoes would be much lower because the model is being tested with data it has already seen.

4 Cyber Financial Risks And How To Defend Against Them

It’s every chief information security officer’s (CISO) worst nightmare—a cyberattack in which hackers obtain access to private customer information like names, birth dates and credit card and social security numbers. If this data is compromised, erosions in consumer trust, brand reputation and investor confidence are possible. Tossing salt on the wounds are punitive fines for a data breach from regulations in Europe and California. Effective January 1, 2020, violations of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) can result in civil penalties of up to $7,500 per infringement. ... Cybercriminals are always au courant. They are well aware that investors are increasingly concerned over companies’ reputational risks, such as poor environmental sustainability practices and reported employee ethics violations. They also know that these reputational events could have a material impact on the organization’s share value. Hence, hackers continually scour IT networks and systems looking for evidence of such corporate fallibilities. If discovered, a ransom may be demanded to keep a lid on the bombshell information.

Sorry, but cryptocurrency will likely make you uncomfortable in 2020

There’s obviously a big problem with this. Many people don’t trust Facebook with their private data, see it as a threat to democracy, or both. Now the company wants to launch its own currency? Is it just trolling us? At this point the company might emphasize that it won’t be in charge of the Libra Association, the nonprofit it created to manage the currency. The group, made up of 20 other firms in addition to Facebook, will manage a “reserve” of government-issued money that is supposed to back each digital unit and keep the currency stable. Half of that reserve will be US dollars, and the other half will be made up of British pounds, Japanese yen, euros, and Singapore dollars. Fine, but the design itself has worried US policymakers, who say they can’t even tell what Libra is, much less how to deal with it. Whatever it is, it will probably be hard to ignore in 2020. ... Many cryptocurrency enthusiasts argue that true cryptocurrency is the product of a decentralized, “permissionless” network like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is designed to provide freedom from corporate and government censorship, and its network is controlled by a global public network made up of thousands of computers.

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Quote for the day:

"Leadership is a dynamic process that expresses our skill, our aspirations, and our essence as human beings." -- Catherine Robinson-Walker

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