text stringlengths 234 589k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 62 values | url stringlengths 16 734 | date stringlengths 20 20 ⌀ | file_path stringlengths 109 155 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.65 1 | token_count int64 57 124k | score float64 2.52 4.91 | int_score int64 3 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
One of the security factors I’ve heard espoused about IPv6 is that the large address space (128 bits: 64 bits of network and 64 bits of host address) makes it impossible to scan the network for hosts. On initial inspection, this seemed like a reasonable thought.
However, when you look at IPv6’s use of multicast for router and route prefix discovery, the security advantage doesn’t make as much sense. Nothing prevents a system from monitoring the multicast address and collecting information about other systems on the local subnet. Since the networks of small companies and home networks are typically a single subnet, this approach works well for finding other local systems.
But what about remote subnets? Doesn’t the large address space help reduce scanning there? It sure does. However, it doesn’t inhibit the exploitation of peer relationships. Think of the addresses of the application servers known by the end stations on your network. Another source is the IP addresses contained in email headers. Overall, I see that there is still a reasonably rich set of address data that can be harvested through other mechanisms.
I predict that the black hat community will quickly find these and other sources of addresses to replace address space scanning techniques. Defense in depth is the only viable recourse.
Re-posted with Permission
NetCraftsmen would like to acknowledge Infoblox for their permission to re-post this article which originally appeared in the Applied Infrastructure blog under http://www.infoblox.com/en/communities/blogs.html | <urn:uuid:7632eb33-37c0-4e7b-b16f-b21712a17fc9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://netcraftsmen.com/ipv6-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337339.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002181356-20221002211356-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.929616 | 325 | 2.640625 | 3 |
"I'm in the doghouse with my editor."
There's nuance there. It could mean, I'm physically in a doghouse or I'm in trouble with her.
Much of what people need is tied up in language and having computers accurately interpret linguistics is important in the age of technology. Context shapes our interpretations of language, but computers struggle with those same skills.
Researchers in the natural language processing field created an online game, "Madly Ambiguous," to test a computer's ability to understand linguistic ambiguities, according to their whitepaper. Through the game, Mr. Computer Head was born.
"People are quick to overestimate how well computers can understand human language because it's so easy to underestimate just how complex our day-to-day language is," said Ajda Gokcen, a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington and researcher for "Madly Ambiguous," in an emailed statement to CIO Dive.
To computers, words and sentences are just sequences of letters but "computers have to meet us where we live with language and not the other way around," Michael White, associate professor in The Ohio State University's Department of Linguistics and researcher for "Madly Ambiguous," told CIO Dive in an interview.
People are increasing their reliance on AI-based or voice-enabled technologies and while their progress is profound, it needs polishing, according to Gokcen. When a system accomplishes a better understanding of language, it "directly creates a better experience for people."
Humans are naturally inclined to "tolerate" ambiguities because we can, for the most part, correctly understand the true meaning of an ambiguity, according to White. It's been argued that ambiguity exists in language because language didn't evolve directly to support communication. Others argue that there is a trade-off between ambiguity and efficiency, therefore "language can only become completely unambiguous by becoming intolerably inefficient," according to White.
Either way, this makes ambiguities essential to making human language work and computers need to adapt to it.
How computers process sentences
"Madly Ambiguous" defines lexical ambiguity as using a word, with multiple meanings, in a sentence in which both meanings make sense. The example the game gives is "Jane had a picnic by the bank." Bank can be defined as a financial institute or the edge of a river. Such ambiguity trips up a computer's understanding of a situation.
The game defines structural ambiguity by how a sentence is formed. The example is "Jane ate spaghetti with a fork" and then asks the user "would Jane likely be using the fork or eating the fork?"
As humans, we know the latter is not the case. However, if the sentence read "Jane ate spaghetti with meatballs," humans understand that her food contains meatballs, not that she is using one as a tool to eat with.
But it is human instinct to differentiate how Jane ate the spaghetti or what she ate it with. Computers do not possess the same instincts, at least not yet.
White, Gokcen and Ethan Hill created Mr. Computer Head to test a computer's ability to interpret the true meaning of a sentence and to interact with the user.
Mr. Computer Head is the game's opponent and works to identify different meanings in a sentence, or a word's semantic role "to describe the manner of the action" like if the sentence read "Jane ate spaghetti with gusto."
Mr. Computer Head can correctly assume Jane is eating her spaghetti with some excitement. The computer can also recognize that Jane is eating with a friend, not using the friend as a utensil if the sentence read "Jane ate spaghetti with Mary," according to the game.
Face off against Mr. Computer Head
Users are paired against the Mr. Potato Head-style character and it keeps tally of its wins and losses. Since its demo last year, Mr. Computer Head scores with 64% accuracy in basic mode and 70% in advanced mode, according to the research.
So now, after learning what ambiguities lie in language, users get the chance to create a sentence that Mr. Computer Head can't correctly interpret. And I obliged.
With the prompt, "Jane ate spaghetti with ____." I entered "dogs." Unfortunately, Mr. Computer Head's interpretation was not accurate. It incorrectly translated my sentence to mean "Jane had spaghetti and dogs."
That was "basic mode," which uses "part-of-speech tags and lemmas" to decide "what the most important word of the input is," according to the research. Mr. Computer Head then looks up the most important word in WordNet, which is a database in which linguistics group together words that mean similar things organized in a hierarchy of abstractness and specifics, according to White. Mr. Computer Head incorrectly assumed that "dog" was short for "hot dog."
But WordNet also doesn't doesn't really accommodate new words, or adjust meanings that have become "archaic" and can therefore misconstrue the meaning or intent of a word.
I then switched to "advanced mode" and instead of "dogs," I entered "Parmesan cheese." The computer correctly guessed that Jane was enjoying her spaghetti with Parmesan on it.
Advanced mode uses word embeddings that are "trained on" words in Google's word2vec tool, which gives a point of meaning to words and compares it to words that are already known, according to White.
Words with similar meanings are clustered together. For example, if dogs and cats tend to appear in the same semantic space in a sentence, they have a similar meaning to Mr. Computer Head, said White.
The again in advanced mode, I inputted "Jane ate spaghetti with her dog," instead of just an undefined dog. Mr. Computer Head correctly paraphrased the sentence to mean Jane was having her dinner "in the presence" of her dog. The computer was able to follow the expression. "You'll know the meaning of the word by the company it keeps," said White.
Still, technology, as highlighted by Mr. Computer Head, has a long way to go and so do the people creating it. "People making these technologies can't really fix society," said Gokcen, "but we are still responsible for how our systems can both help and harm people even if the issues originate outside our control."
Implicitly, this means experts behind the creation of intelligent systems need to be extraordinarily careful with how and what data is used for. | <urn:uuid:5cfa4190-411b-40cf-a2fa-a71fab32115f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ciodive.com/news/for-computers-discerning-linguistic-ambiguities-the-struggle-is-real/526845/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337339.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002181356-20221002211356-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.96386 | 1,359 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Cloud computing security, also called Cloud Security, is a set of control-based technologies and policies designed to adhere to regulatory compliance rules and protect information, data applications and infrastructure associated with cloud computing use.
The Trusted Computing Group was formed to develop, define, and promote open, vendor neutral, industry standards for trusted computing building blocks and software interfaces across multiple platforms. Trusted computing platforms provide five main components:
• Root of trust for measurement (RTM)
• Root of trust for storage (RTS)
• Root of trust for reporting (RTR)
• Root of trust for verification (RTV)
• Isolation technology
The core component to establishing trust in an IT system is the trusted platform module (TPM) which is bound to a platform. A TPM must be completely protected against software attacks and it must be tamper-evident; that is, provide a limited degree of protection against a physical attack. See also Trusted Computing Group
In a nutshell, cloud computing security processes should address the security controls the cloud provider will incorporate to maintain the customer's data security, privacy and compliance with necessary regulations. | <urn:uuid:05ed2929-dfb5-44a1-bca5-62c6c6f13984> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.dialogic.com/glossary/cloud-computing-security | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337625.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005105356-20221005135356-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.925406 | 233 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The U.S. energy infrastructure is the cornerstone of the economy. Without a working energy grid, daily life as we know it would grind to a halt and both health and welfare would be in danger. That is why securing critical infrastructure is considered a top priority, and is highly regulated, often subject to local and state as well as federal guidelines from organizations such NERC (North American Reliability Corp.) that govern both physical and cyber security concerns.
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, “Presidential Policy Directive 21 identifies the Energy Sector as uniquely critical because it provides an ‘enabling function’ across all critical infrastructure sectors. More than 80 percent of the country’s energy infrastructure is owned by the private sector, supplying fuels to the transportation industry, electricity to households and businesses, and other sources of energy that are integral to growth and production across the nation.”
In the overall scheme of energy sources, renewable energy — such as solar, wind and water — make up approximately 3 percent of the total energy sector in the U.S. But when it comes to securing these types of facilities they can present some unique challenges.
In the Wind Power industry, for example, the size and location alone can set these facilities apart.
One leading provider of clean, renewable wind power in the U.S., for example, provides more than 6,000 MW of owned and controlled wind and solar power facilities. They produce an economic windfall for numerous rural communities while providing clean, affordable power to customers. A single facility (out of several) has a 1.2 mile fence line perimeter.
While on the forefront of technology when it comes to new types of energy, these typically remote facilities don’t always have the most efficient or effective security they need. Here are some of the challenges and suggestions for this unique energy sector.
Wind power facilities require a lot of space. As a result, security challenges on sites like these are enormous primarily due to the size or footprint of the facilities. Wind towers can cover thousands of square miles, more than solar plants, which — though still large —are more compact than wind. When it comes to wind, the smaller the area the smaller the capacity to generate energy.
Because of these space requirements, renewable wind facilities tend to be in rural areas — the proverbial “middle of nowhere.”
In the U.S., that means that many of these facilities (both solar and wind) are situated at the Mexican border, primarily because it is rural and flat, to take advantage of the wind, and heat (for solar needs). Also, land is cheaper there. Unfortunately that also means that these facilities routinely need to work closely with the FBI and border patrol. Illegals from Mexico often run through the wind and solar farms as a way of trying to enter the United States. Other trespassers such as hikers and drug runners are also common occurrences.
In addition to space considerations, like the entire energy sector, renewable wind providers are subject to strict regulation and compliance enforcement.
The main regulatory body affecting all energy companies is NERC, but many of their regulations have not caught up to the renewable industries. The largest difference between renewable energy and the other subsectors within energy (electricity, nuclear, etc.) is that renewables are not on-demand energy. They are dependent on Mother Nature for their product. This means if a wind provider takes on a contract to provide wind energy and the wind doesn’t blow, they then have to buy a different type of energy from other sources.
NERC regulations were written with these on-demand energy industries in mind. But as alternative energy sources have become increasingly popular, NERC has had to adjust more and more, leading to more frequent changes in requirements. It is incumbent upon the security department to stay on top of those because if you fail a NERC audit it can be very expensive to rectify.
Health safety compliance is also important because — like in any energy environment — the wrong move can kill you. So training and enforcement must be applied and kept up with.
Securing Wind Facilities
While wind energy facilities may be considered “cutting edge” when it comes to the type of energy they supply, when it comes to how they secure it, often they rely on unsophisticated or lower security programs such as fencing, mechanical keys and locks, and similar measures. Not only are these methods not necessarily adequate, or in compliance with regulations, but they also don’t provide the most benefit for the security department.
Budgets are always a concern as well. Security is often faced with walking a fine line of balancing how to secure the sheer amount of space that needs to be covered with the capacity or resources they have to accomplish it. It often becomes a matter of how do you balance cost with value?
Due to the typical size of these operations, there is typically no line-of-sight from one end of the facility to the other at the perimeter. Thus, to be more effective they must rely on some sort of camera system.
Some of the most commonly used technologies include both standard and thermal video cameras. In the case of thermal cameras, they can provide a double benefit for the cost. Transformers are at risk of blowing up so having thermal cameras pointed at those transformers can let security know ahead of time that there is a problem with overheating.
Another technology recently introduced to the security market is drones, which can be useful in remote areas with a lot of land to cover. However, the downside is they can be quite expensive; and they still require people to operate them consistently, and possibly even an FAA license depending on the type of drone.
While the outside perimeter is always a concern, keeping safe from an outside threat is actually very little of what security does. They are just as, if not more concerned about inside threats and general safe behavior for all workers.
A common scenario for many facilities is to have their own SOC (security operations center), which typically manages the security side of the operation including intrusion detection, intercom systems, motion systems, video, alarms, identity management systems and access control. But most also operate a second operations center for operations and maintenance. Recently more utilities — and other facilities — are starting to see the benefit to combining the two for efficiency.
The rationale to combine would include keeping costs lower and finding modern efficiencies in operations, security and safety procedures. While it isn’t widely implemented yet, some utilities are moving towards this model. It is the model of the future.
One final note: Whether you are looking to upgrade from “basic” security to higher-level options, or to do a fully integrated smart facility with combined operations centers, when it comes to implementing these types of plans, it is worth consulting with a security integrator before starting a project. Not only can they help you get the best fit for your facility, those that specialize in the energy sector typically also understand best practice and compliance standards. | <urn:uuid:84541b81-7226-4faf-a1fa-075fb5351911> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.amag.com/post/securing-renewable-energy-today | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337855.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006191305-20221006221305-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.960412 | 1,440 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a public cloud service platform that supports a broad selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases, and devices. AWS uses a shared security model meaning that while Amazon takes responsibility for protecting the infrastructure that runs AWS services, the customer is responsible for the data and applications utilized by end users. Because of this, it is important that customers take the necessary steps to protect their data, applications and networks by securing their digital property with a firewall of some type.
The term AWS Firewall refers to any computer security system that monitors the traffic, network, applications, or data running on the Amazon cloud. Generally, these security systems fall into two categories: Web Application Firewalls and Network Firewalls.
AWS Web Application Firewall
Web Application Firewalls play a critical role in the protection of web-based applications running on the Amazon cloud. They form the backbone for defensive against cloud-based exploits that compromise security or harm the availability of applications and data. There are numerous companies that offer Web Application Firewalls on the AWS marketplace, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. While each AWS WAF differs in technology and implementation, they most generally provided:
- Application Security: Protecting web applications is any Web Application Firewall primary purpose. A powerful WAF should be able to protect applications, data, APIs, and mobile app backends from common cyber attacks such as OWASP Top 10, zero-day threats, data leakage, and DDoS attacks.
- Traffic Filtering: Traffic filtering is one of the most practical and important operations performed by a Web Application Firewall. By filtering traffic based on a factors such as HTTP headers, keywords, IP addresses, and even URI strings, the Web Application Firewall can prevent harmful interactions before they reach an application.
While Amazon does offer their own internal firewall service, users can often find more specialized third party firewalls on the AWS Marketplace better tailored to their needs. Currently, there are several major features that the native AWS Web Application Firewall lacks deemed important to the protection of applications in the modern age. Features such as integrated SSL offloading, more detailed reporting, wider region support, and a more flexible pricing model are just a few reasons why users are tending to move toward using third-party WAFs.
With AWS maintaining its position as the most popular public cloud infrastructure platform, comprising 41.5% of applications workloads in the public cloud, applications utilizing Amazon infrastructure are often under constant attack. It is important that companies and individuals invest in the security of their applications and data with a powerful and proven Web Application Firewall.
AWS Network Firewalls
Network Firewalls (most predominantly NextGen Firewalls) on AWS offer network protection that compliment the application protection provided by Web Application Firewalls. While there is some overlap between what a Network Firewall and Web Application FIrewall protect (most notably data), Network Firewalls provide security over the entire network perimeter which includes the highly vulnerable port and protocol levels. In addition, they add powerful security features to AWS deployments such as:
- Packet Filtering: By monitoring all incoming and outgoing packets the firewall can regulate which applications and hosts are allowed to interact with the network.
- Virtual Private Network (VPN): Many modern firewalls offer VPN technology to allow virtual point-to-point links between two nodes through a safe and regulated source.
- Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): DPI is a method that inspects not only the packet’s multiple headers, but also the actual data content of the packet. In this way the firewall can filter protocol non-compliances, viruses, spam, intrusions, or other defined criteria.
- Antivirus Inspection: Antivirus inspection checks packets for virus that travel through the network to infect endpoint devices.
- Website Filtering: Website filtering is a technique used to check incoming web pages to see if the page needs to be censored or declined to show at all. Reasons for blockage could be advertising, pornographic content, spyware, viruses and other unsafe content.
- DNS Reputation Filtering: By filtering content against a database which records the reputation and validity of an IP address, firewalls can block harmful content more easily.
Currently AWS does not offer a native Network Firewall, therefore customers must turn to third party companies for network protection on their AWS deployments. Many AWS customers are often misled into believing that a Web Application Firewall is enough protection within the popular cloud deployment. However, It is important to consider the vulnerability of your data and application-related-packets on their way to and in retrieval from the cloud. In both these cases a Web Application Firewall is not enough to guarantee their protection.
Often hackers will try and steal data or information on its way out of an AWS Network and into a private network. As companies continue to spread their online resources across multiple clouds and infrastructures (public and private) the opportunity for cyber criminals to strike continues to grow.
Whether you interact with AWS on your own or not, there is a good chance that some personal information of yours is stored on an AWS server operated by some organization you interact with. When companies have their data or applications hijacked by cybercriminals, it can have far reaching effects for both the company and the user’s themselves. AWS Firewalls provide the necessary protection and security so that a company’s private and user data remains safe.
- Blog: Barracuda Achieves AWS Security Competency
- Data Sheet: Barracuda Email Security Gateway
- Data Sheet: CloudGen Firewall for AWS
- Data Sheet: Firewall Control Center for AWS
- White Paper: Unlocking the Public Cloud
- Solution Brief: Barracuda CloudGen WAF on AWS
- Solution Brief: Cloud Deployments Demand Cloud Generation Firewalls
How Barracuda Can Help
Barracuda Networks offers two distinct solutions to protect your data and applications running on the Amazon cloud.
The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall for AWS provides native network protection to AWS and hybrid networks. It helps ensure reliable access to applications and data running in AWS with full support for auto-scaling and metered billing. In addition, the CloudGen Firewall provides VPN clients for both desktop and mobile users with highly granular access control that can be defined both by users and applications.
The Barracuda CloudGen WAF is a state of the art web application firewall designed to detect and stop a wide variety of application security flaws, along with countless zero-hour and advanced threats. In addition, it's a non-invasive, cloud-based tool, with no impact on your operations. The Barracuda CloudGen WAF has achieved the AWS APN Security Competency, meaning it's been pre-qualified by AWS Solution Architects as a well-designed solution. Its performance-tuning features include SSL offloading, load balancing, and content caching.
Have questions or want more information about AWS Firewalls? Get in touch right now! | <urn:uuid:39df555f-7cdf-42c4-bfe1-85f0f1c27458> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.barracuda.com/glossary/aws-firewall | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337855.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006191305-20221006221305-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.922287 | 1,458 | 2.75 | 3 |
Single Phase vs Three Phase UPS: What’s The Difference and How to Choose?
When purchasing UPS for your business or organization, many factors should be taken into consideration, among which the choice of power supply between single phase UPS and three phase UPS is the foremost one. Though both of the UPS offer consistent backup power for dealing with unexpected situations, they have different roles. Here is a brief introduction of single phase vs three phase for those who are unfamiliar with their difference.
What Is the Phase in Electrical Terms？
If you are new to the world of electrical power, you may know little about the term phase. Phase, at its most basic, is the distribution of electrical power, which shows the alternating current (AC) power supply varies with respect to the time period. There are one phase, two phase and three phase power supply types.
Single phase is commonly called “residential voltage” because it is widely available in homes. For example, the microwave oven, the coffee machine, your PC in your household can be single phase devices. In different regions there is a similarity for single phase connections: It requires two wires (one voltage wire and one neutral wire) for completing the circuit. The figure below shows the current flow in single phase AC power.
Figure 1: Single phase AC power
Two phase is basically the same thing as single phase, which consists of AC with two wires. It is also called the split phase. The power is supplied by either one of the two 120V power circuits in loads using low power circuits such as light, television, etc. Nowadays, three phase has replaced the original two phase power systems for power transmission and utilization.
Three phase power contains either 3 live wires or 4 wires (3 phase wires and a neutral one), providing three alternating currents, separated in phase angle. The total loads are shared by the three wires. Most commercial buildings in North America use three-phase, four-wire power setups.
Figure 2: Three phase AC power
UPS System—Single Phase UPS or Three Phase UPS?
UPS units come in two different formats: single phase and three phase. The common phase configurations for UPS are shown in the following chart:
|Input||Output||Nomenclature||US Mains Voltage|
|1 Phase||1 Phase||1/1||120/120Vac, 60Hz|
|3 Phase||1 Phase||3/1||220/120Vac, 60Hz|
|3 Phase||3 Phase||3/3||220/208Vac, 60Hz|
Single Phase UPS System (1/1)
As shown in the chart, single phase UPS has a single input and output of 120Vac (for Canada and the U.S.). A single phase installation consists of two wires where AC voltage is a single sine wave. The standard voltage of single phase varies in different countries or regions. The standard single phase voltage in America is 120V and Europe, Asia or other regions take 230V as a standard voltage.
Three Phase UPS System (3/1 and 3/3）
The three phase UPS can be subdivided into three phase input/three phase output UPS system and three phase input/single phase output system types. If you need to connect to a three phase supply, you must need a UPS with a 3/x configuration. A 3/1 UPS takes in 3 phase power but delivers single phase to the downstream load while a 3/3 UPS not only takes in but also puts out 3 phase power.
What's the Difference Between Single Phase and Three Phase UPS?
The key difference between single phase UPS and three phase UPS are the following points:
Conductor: The number of the conductor in single phase and three phase system is different. Single phase UPS contains one conductor while three phase UPS supply power through three conductors.
Sine wave: Single phase UPS provides a single sine wave, while three phase UPS provides three sine waves, each out of phase and spaced 120° apart from each other.
Voltage: Single phase voltage is 120V in North America, while the phase to phase voltage for a three phase system is 220V, and the phase-to-neutral voltage is 120V.
Maintenance: The plug and play characteristic of single phase UPS makes it easier than three phase counterpart to install and set up without the need for outside installation.
Efficiency: For low power requirements, single phase UPS is more efficient that three phase UPS. But when the demand for power is higher, three phase UPS shows more efficiency to carry a greater load in a safer manner.
Cost: The equipment in three phase UPS system will have longer life expectancies and the transmission lines for three phase power do not need the heavy gauge copper wires as single phase UPS, thus, in the long run, three phase UPS will save more money.
Application: Single Phase UPS units are available in those applications with lower kVA requirements, generally less than 20kVA, such as homes, small business and satellite offices. Three phase UPS units are commonly used in large installations, such as data centers, and large industrial power applications with higher power requirements.
How to Choose Between Single Phase UPS and Three Phase UPS?
Whether single phase UPS system and three phase UPS system should be chosen depends on the power needs of your applications as well as what power source the equipment is connected to. You will need to confirm the load the UPS will protect and access their voltage range. Generally loads less than 20kVA can safely use the single phase UPS, or larger loads tends to use three phase UPS. Once you deicides the 3-phase UPS, the downstream loads that the UPS protects will judge whether 3/1 UPS or 3/3 UPS is the most suitable one. If you are interested in how to calculate your UPS needs, you can further refer to How to Figure Out the Required UPS Capacity? | <urn:uuid:7d3b89d7-5124-4e68-9793-50bbcc058865> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.fs.com/blog/single-phase-vs-three-phase-ups-whats-the-difference-and-how-to-choose.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030333541.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924213650-20220925003650-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.922361 | 1,230 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Sun recently announced it would open-source its Solaris operating system. While declining to get specific about timetables and the type of open-source license the company plans to use, John Loiacono, executive vice president of Sun’s software group, promised that Sun will “be very aggressive and progressive in our approach.” For now, all we can do is speculate.
There is a widely held assumption that Sun’s motivation is to emulate the Linux phenomenon with Solaris. If we apply the computer-science principles of emulation to this announcement, the license (once it is available) will provide considerable hints as to where Sun is going.
Emulator design is the process of examining aspects of a system in its native environment and determining which native aspects are essential, which are undesirable and which “emulator aspects” should be introduced to further the goals of the emulator designer. A well-designed emulator removes the undesirable aspects and introduces emulator aspects not present in the native system, while replicating the essential aspects as closely as possible.
A tornado simulator is a good example of an emulator. A well-designed tornado simulator will accurately replicate and measure airflows — either in the lab or in a computer model — that are found in the tornado’s native environment, remove undesirable aspects like flying houses or cars, and add emulator aspects such as cameras in the eye of the tornado.
Emulation Design Focus
A good example of computer emulation is my Palm OS emulator, which allows me to run Palm OS programs on my PC. The essential aspects include interaction with a Palm OS database and presentation of a user interface that replicates the Palm display and buttons. Undesirable aspects include a requirement that I own each version of the Palm device I want to emulate. Other emulator aspects include the ability to monitor variables and step through programs more slowly than real-time.
Another good example of an emulator is the SimCity line of computer games, wherein the essential aspects of a town (layout, citizenry and economy) are replicated while leaving off undesirable aspects (such as the money, the timescale and the land needed) and introducing emulated aspects, which includes the ability to put a whole town in suspended animation while you go to your day job in real life.
Looking at the differences between the native system and the emulation features, you can discern the emulator designer’s focus. In SimCity, you cannot insert a tornado or provide eight types of cream cheese on the bagel shop’s menu because that was not something the SimCity designers focused on. But you can generate a daily newspaper, emulate a mayoral election and so on.
What does this have to do with Solaris?
Let’s assume that Sun wants to emulate the success of the Linux movement. The terms of the license agreement the company uses to open source Solaris will indicate what aspects of the Linux phenomenon the company considers essential, what it sees as undesirable and what emulator aspects it decided to add.
The Linux phenomenon is more than just the code. It includes a community, a perception, a market, press coverage, developer attitudes and corporate attitudes. In essence, it is a brand. There is more to it than just the wrapper.
So what essential aspects of Linux does Sun want to emulate? First would be widespread use of the code and considerable mindshare. If Solaris could get half the installed base of Linux to switch, Sun would succeed beyond everyone’s expectations.
To get there, Sun needs open-source terms that keep everyone talking about Solaris, which would encourage programmers to tinker with it, create jobs and, most importantly, get discs to people who would put them in their drives and install the operating system.
At a minimum, the license would allow others to tinker freely without Sun’s prior permission or oversight.
Of course, Sun could replicate the Linux phenomenon by just running the native environment and distributing Linux itself, but then it would not really be emulation. It could not remove the undesirable aspects and add the emulator aspects.
We already know that one of the aspects of Linux that Sun considers undesirable is that it is splintered into several code forks. We can expect Sun to craft licensing terms that it hopes will reduce the incidences of code forking.
Another is that Linux is licensed under a “modified GPL license.” Because the text of the GPL is arguably ambiguous, the interpretation of the terms by different licensors creates legally different licenses from the same words. Under the modified GPL license, it is not clear exactly when a derivative work is created. While this is not part of the code, it is part of the Linux phenomenon. Sun would likely not want to replicate this aspect, given the heat that some have — wisely or unwisely — put on the GPL.
If Sun’s goal is widespread development for corporate use, Sun might include licensing terms where downstream constraints against constraints are not required.
The revenue model also is undesirable. The original developers do not receive direct remuneration from Linux, while others, such as RedHat, make significant money. The developers get speaking engagements, prestigious jobs and the adoration of fans. But without salaries, these benefits are not aspects of Linux that Sun would care to emulate.
Sun will undoubtedly add emulator aspects that provide more control. Expect to see license terms that provide control over third-party claims, such as third-party, patent-infringement claims over some elements of Solaris. With the appropriate license terms, Sun can terminate downstream licenses to specific elements of the code base to prevent ongoing infringements, or allegations of infringement, of third-party patents.
Another emulator aspect Sun might want is an improved provenance, and one that originates with Sun. For instance, Sun might want license terms that limit an ability to claim that a distribution is Sun-authorized or that originated with Sun when other code was added. Sun might also want to include a requirement that added code be vetted by Sun to make it into an “official” distribution, something that cannot be entirely accomplished with Linux.
Divining the Emulator’s Intent
So far, we can only guess what Sun is up to. Once Sun specifies exactly what its open-source license will look like, we can examine it carefully and extract the company’s intent — what it believes is essential and undesirable, and what it hopes to add.
To be clear, the license terms only provide limited insight. Some terms of the Solaris open-source license will derive not from any emulation paradigm but from the need to reduce risk. Sun also might want a patent-retribution clause to pull the rug out from under anyone who might sue them for patent infringement. There is no guarantee that what Sun has in mind will actually come to pass.
While we can only speculate about Sun’s motivations, it is fair to point out that emulation is a sign of respect. We emulate mentors, teachers or role models. Imitation, on the other hand, is a sign of flattery. We imitate rivals or competitors. Perhaps, in the long run, this distinction will provide all the insight we need into Sun’s decision.
Phil Albert, a LinuxInsider columnist, is a patent attorney and partner with the San Francisco office of the intellectual property law firm Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP. | <urn:uuid:6bb8d42c-b74e-45c2-8bcd-4a9cfe19f33d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/can-sun-emulate-linux-by-open-sourcing-solaris-34487.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030333541.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924213650-20220925003650-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.94143 | 1,527 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Alcoholism and depression often go hand-in-hand.
According to studies, alcoholism has risen sharply in the 2000s, to the point that one such study suggests that one in eight people meet the criteria as an alcoholic.
And depression affects many of the 140 million people worldwide struggling with alcohol use disorders. Only a few drugs are approved for treating the disorder.
The goal of those medications is to reduce alcohol cravings, but they do not treat psychiatric disorders.
Help may be on the way.
Purdue University researchers have developed a technology that may treat alcohol use disorder by reducing alcohol intake while also having the potential to treat depression.
The Purdue team focused on a G protein-coupled receptor, called the delta opioid receptor, which is a novel drug target that is different from the receptor in the body that binds prescription opioids.
They developed drugs that bind to this new target and selectively activate a particular protein-signaling cascade of this receptor.
“We can then use this unique property of the drug to provide a therapeutic effect and avoid a side effect,” said Richard van Rijn, an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, who led the research team.
“Current types of delta opioids have been failing in clinical trials because, unlike ours, they activate multiple cascades, including those associated with increased side effects like seizures.”
The Purdue drug has proven effective in preclinical tests in reducing alcohol use and has pharmacological properties that should enable it to reduce depression without inducing seizures.
“Our lab’s research is focused on providing new hope for patients dealing with neurological disorders and addictions,” van Rijn said.
More information: Bridget F. Grant et al. Prevalence of 12-Month Alcohol Use, High-Risk Drinking, and DSM-IV Alcohol Use Disorder in the United States, 2001-2002 to 2012-2013, JAMA Psychiatry (2017). DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.2161 | <urn:uuid:8c46dc66-0a08-4332-baad-fb39566b70dd> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://debuglies.com/2018/09/21/alcoholism-and-depression-often-go-hand-in-hand/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.921926 | 417 | 3.546875 | 4 |
A solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the most popular, fastest, and energy-efficient solutions for…
You wake up, the sun is shining and you decide today will be a good day. You get ready, have your morning coffee, avoid turning on the news or looking at your phone in the event either may dampen your mood, then head to your office to start your day. Once you sit down and settle in, you turn on your computer.
There’s only one problem. When your screen comes on, you see this error: “boot device not found.” Really? On a day that started out perfect, your computer isn’t working, “boot device not found” what does that mean? As scary as this error sounds, the issue can usually be fixed.
Boot device not found errors are a relatively common computing issue. There are a few different explanations for why it happens, but the result is always the same. Even if you can’t resolve this issue you can recover your data with the assistance of a data recovery company like DriveSavers. But more on that later.
For now, here’s what you need to know about no bootable device found errors, what causes them, and what you can do to fix the problem.
What is a boot device not found error?
You’ve probably been blissfully unaware of the critical role played by the boot device… until it failed. When your computer tells you the boot device is not found, this means it can’t find the hard drive containing the instructions for loading your operating system. Of course, you know the drive is there because you haven’t taken your computer apart and physically removed it. And you’re pretty sure no one has played a cruel joke on you. So what gives?
Usually, when you press the power button, the BIOS recognizes the boot device and uses the software to start your computer’s operating system. But without the instructions to start the operating system, your computer is stuck, and you’re most likely staring at a black screen with a blinking command prompt.
What causes no bootable device to be found?
There are a few reasons why your computer may experience a no bootable device found error. These are four of the most common.
Failed hard drive
Most boot devices are part of the computer’s internal hard drive. If your hard drive malfunctions or becomes corrupt, your boot device will too. The BIOS can’t recognize startup software in a malfunctioning drive and will believe there’s no boot device to be found.
SATA/IDE cable malfunctioning
Sometimes, the cable connecting the hard drive to the motherboard malfunctions or becomes disconnected. If this happens, the BIOS has no way to communicate with the boot drive and will tell you there’s no bootable device to be found.
Boot sector or partition table corruption
When a disc’s metadata drive is corrupt, the partition of the drive housing the operating system could appear empty to the BIOS. If so, the BIOS believes the boot drive to be missing and returns a no bootable device found error.
Have you recently updated your operating system or made a significant change to the software architecture on your computer? If so, the BIOS could be confused. When this happens, the BIOS may attempt to boot from the wrong drive, find no software to start the computer, and show you the no bootable device found error.
Can you fix a boot device not found error?
Depending on the cause of the boot device not found error, you may be able to fix the problem quickly and easily. If the problem is the hard drive itself, you’ll need to replace your current hard drive with a new one. Don’t worry, though, DriveSavers can help you recover your data and get back to work quickly if you need to recover your digital data from the failed drive.
Here are a few easy steps you can take on your own that may resolve a boot device not found error.
Check the connections
We mentioned the SATA/IDE cable in the previous section. An excellent place to start is to make sure that the cable is connected and secure. Although this problem is rare, checking the cable is worth it, because the error can be resolved simply by plugging the cable back in.
Check your computer’s settings
You need to make sure the BIOS is looking for the correct boot drive. Most computers have more than one disc, and if the BIOS isn’t programmed to load the right drive first, a boot device not found error will occur. (Instructions for checking the BIOS can be found here.)
If neither of these options fixes the error, you’re probably dealing with a more significant issue like hard drive failure. If that’s the case, hopefully, you’ve taken our advice and have been following the 3-2-1 method of backing up your data.
If not, there’s still hope! Our technicians can determine what’s causing a boot device not found error and can safely and efficiently recover your data. Contact DriveSavers today for the help you need. | <urn:uuid:cbd9f8ef-7e21-4b5f-b873-7b9ef720a608> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com/what-does-boot-device-not-found-mean-and-how-can-you-fix-it/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.916676 | 1,087 | 2.5625 | 3 |
One of the traditional centerpieces of network cybersecurity is the firewall. And with the matter of security being a crucial component for every organization in the modern world of cyberthreats, the presence and use of firewalls is more important than ever. Regardless of the size of your organization, having a robust security infrastructure is critical for your business’ finances and its reputation among your customers. One of the measures you can take is the regular care and maintenance of your company’s network security firewall. Here’s how:
What is a Network Security Firewall?
Before we get too far, let’s first take a look at what a firewall is and what it does. Firewalls have long been a core component of network security, but for the uninitiated, firewalls are a security device—either a piece of hardware or software—which protects your network by creating a boundary between the computers on your network and the outside world.
What does it do? A firewall acts as a gatekeeper—monitoring all attempts to access the computers on your network and blocking unwanted traffic from unrecognized sources. How? The firewall creates a barrier between one network and another.
Why do they matter? Firewalls are essential for protecting networks from cyber threats such as data breaches and viruses. Firewalls protect both the micro- and macro-levels from incidents: individual computers and the network as a whole.
How Can You Maintain Your Network Security Firewall?
Now that we know what the network security firewall is and how it works, how are they maintained? To explore this, it’s important to remember that internal security is different from perimeter security. A firewall is an example of internal security while zero trust security is an instance of perimeter security.
- By access, block all access
When setting up the firewall, start with the basics—blocking access to the network from all traffic. From there, rules and policies can then be introduced which outline who is allowed into the network. Blocking devices and traffic decreases the risk of a data breach since only trusted traffic is given access to the network.
- Keep rules and policies updated
As rules are added over time, it’s only natural that some rules eventually become obsolete. This is why it’s important to regularly audit rules and settings to remove any unused or old rules and any that conflict with each other. An antiquated rule can be exploited to gain access to the network, which increases the risk of a cyberattack. Therefore, by highlighting and updating old rules, firewalls are made more efficient and more secure.
- Keep the firewall itself up-to-date
Like other pieces of software, an outdated firewall can represent a security vulnerability. Firewall software should be regularly updated so any vulnerabilities the vendor reports may be corrected. The latest version of the firewall software will be as efficient as possible.
- Know who the authorized users are
Firewall management is an important responsibility—one that, if neglected, poses a severe risk in allowing too many users to access firewall settings. Those with the setting should only be senior network administrators and all changes should be monitored. Users should have varying degrees of access on a case-by-case basis. Control of authorized users limits the risk of accidental or malicious changes.
- Document all changes
Changes to firewall rules should be well-documented within the organization so any damaging changes can be quickly identified and reversed. If rules are documented, it lessens the risk of conflicting rules causing unforeseen access issues in the network. A clear process for recording and approving changes to firewall rules should be set up as part of the management system; documentation should record the business requirements for any changes as well as the context for the decision.
How Innovative Integration Helps
Innovative Integration provides firewall installation and maintenance to our customers. We help our clients effectively use their firewalls and other pieces of critical cybersecurity infrastructure to protect their data and that of their customers. Firewalls are just one of the many helpful tools we provide to our customers, so to learn more about our services and how we can help you, contact the Innovative team today; we look forward to helping you! | <urn:uuid:ed601947-accb-4803-be2f-888c56b053ce> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://innovativeii.com/how-to-maintain-your-network-security-firewall/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.926942 | 857 | 2.953125 | 3 |
What is Malware?
Malware is a generic term that covers any type of unwanted malicious software designed to destroy, copy or intercept data that is installed on the computer without your consent. There are various forms of malware 'in the wild' and we have covered four of the main threats below:
A program or piece of code which normally attaches itself to an executable file. The virus will remain dormant on the computer until the program or file is interacted with, for example someone runs the program or opens the file. Once this interaction takes place the virus then infects the computer potentially damaging your hardware, software and files. Like their biological equivalent computer viruses can self-replicate to consume all of the computer's resources and bring the system to a halt. More dangerous viruses can spread across networks and bypass security systems.
Similar to viruses, worms are programs that propagate over a network and can travel without human interaction. Worms are self-replicating, so rather than a single worm infecting the network, a compromised computer can send hundred or even thousands of copies of the worm. This can not only use up all of a single computer's resources, possibly to the extent that the system shuts down, but can also affect the bandwidth of the whole network. Worms can also create a backdoor into your system to allow unauthorized access. Unlike viruses, worms do not attach themselves to other files or programs.
Trojans (Trojan Horse)
Named after the wooden horse of Troy from Homer's Iliad, a Trojan is a non-replicating destructive program masquerading either as a legitimate application or as a file from a legitimate source. Trojans can damage and delete data as well as compromise security by retrieving and intercepting personal or confidential data and can also create a backdoor for unauthorized users to gain access to your system.
Designed to covertly gather information through the internet connection and installed without the user's knowledge, spyware applications are typically bundled as a hidden component with freeware of shareware programs. Once installed the user's internet activity is monitored and this information diverted to someone else. Some spyware can record all of the user's keystrokes, scan files and other applications and even install other spyware programs. The data intercepted by spyware can range from basic details that the recipient may use or sell on for advertising purposes through to the retrieval of email addresses, passwords, credit card and banking data. Spyware can be thought of a similar to Trojans, as both are unknowingly installed by the user when installing legitimate software. Spyware not only comprises the security, but through its use of the computer's resources can also lead to system instability in addition to consuming high levels of network bandwidth.
What do you want to do? | <urn:uuid:b29a9f79-8f17-4746-80eb-4993251cbccd> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://documentation.n-able.com/remote-management/userguide/Content/mav_bdagent_malware.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335034.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927131111-20220927161111-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.937161 | 572 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Cities produce large amounts of waste, from litter to sewage; managing this waste is a constant challenge for municipal authorities. The smart city model, then, involves the use of IoT technology and machine learning to run and to optimize a municipality’s waste management system.
AI-optimized waste management improves the efficiency of waste management systems while reducing costs. The resulting effects improve the health of citizens, especially of the waste management employees.
Not to be discounted is the effect of beautifying the city itself.
To build an effective waste management system, begin with the location and condition of all city garbage bins, sewage lines and tanks, and any other waste collection and transportation equipment. Also include the current waste collection schedules and history of overflows or increased collection needs.
Necessary external waste management data includes sensor data from garbage bones, septic tanks, and trucks. Event data also provides important information on the amount and type of waste a city can expect.
Weather and natural disaster data straddle the line between merely useful and essential since, depending on the city location, extreme weather and natural disasters cause regular waste management problems. For example, seasonal monsoons lead to sewer system flooding.
Traffic data can also help waste transportation vehicles to work without adding to city congestion.
Implementation of any type of waste management technology is very difficult and costly. The scale alone makes many balk at implementation. Many cities, therefore, adopt new technologies in a piece-meal fashion or outsource the collection of waste to private companies. However, this outsourcing removes one of the most basic public service from the public office, which leaves citizens with diminished ability to seek satisfaction from cities whenever they have complaints.
In addition, municipal bin sensors cannot measure garbage if citizens don’t bother to throw it in the bins; human laziness can defeat technology sometimes.
Guangdong-based firm Xiaohuanggou (XHG) has rolled out intelligent recycling bins, which are able to guide users to sort their household trash with the help of computer vision and auto calculations. The company also incentivizes users that put their garbage in the right place with cash rewards that can be exchanged for products on Xiaohuanggou’s app, online games, or even converted into donations to charities. The firm has set up facilities in over 40 cities across the country, including Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Dongguan, and Guangzhou, according to its website.
Companies are also employing AI-assisted machines to sort garbage in recycling plants and waste disposal factories, alleviating human labor in dirty and hazardous garbage processing plants.
Table of INEBase Amount of non hazardous and hazardous waste managed by type of waste and type of treatment and type of hazardous. National. Statistics on the Collection and Treatment of Waste
Table of INEBase Amount of urban waste collected classified by type of waste and Autonomous Communities. Autonomous Communities. Statistics on the Collection and Treatment of Waste
Table of INEBase Amount of waste generated by economic activity CNAE-2009, type of waste and type of danger. National. Surveys on Waste Generation
Waste Regulation Management The National Transfrontier Waste Shipment Office in Dublin City Council is the single point of contact for national waste imports and exports, including the administration and enforcement of environmental regulations. This data is extracted from Dublin City Council’s Waste Regulation Management System (WRMS) tracking system for Waste Collection Permits, Waste Facility Permits, National Hazardous Waste Movement and Transfrontier Shipments of Waste. The two datasets include a list of authorised waste collectors and waste facility permits (permits, names and addresses). Data covers national areas. Permits available through EPA.
Irys on Cities and Government provides detailed geolocation maps, tools, and reports. on infrastructure, housing, and transportation problems | <urn:uuid:1d7ba612-beac-4516-8aa7-5b90d644dba6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.data-hunters.com/use_case/waste-management/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335286.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928212030-20220929002030-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.911504 | 787 | 3.3125 | 3 |
The NIST Cyber Security Professional Foundation training will learn you how to Engineer, Operationalize and Improve a NIST Cybersecurity Framework Program. NCSP is based on the NIST Cyber Security Framework (NCSF), a publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. NIST implements practical cybersecurity and privacy through outreach and effective application of standards and best practices necessary for organizations to adopt cybersecurity capabilities.
The NIST Cyber Security Framework (NCSF) provides a policy framework of computer security guidance for how organizations can assess and improve their ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks. It provides a high-level taxonomy of cybersecurity outcomes and a methodology to assess and manage those outcomes. Originally aimed at operators of critical infrastructure, the framework is now being used by a wide range of businesses and organizations, and helps shift organizations to a proactive approach to risk management. Internationally the framework has been adopted in over 27 countries, and Japan and Australia have made NCSF central to its Government programs.
The NIST Cyber Security Framework focuses on using business drivers to guide cybersecurity activities and considering cybersecurity risks as part of the organization’s risk management processes. The Framework consists of three parts: the Framework Core, the Implementation Tiers, and the Framework Profiles. The Framework Core is a set of cybersecurity activities, outcomes, and informative references that are common across sectors and critical infrastructure. Elements of the Core provide detailed guidance for developing individual organizational Profiles. Through use of Profiles, the Framework will help an organization to align and prioritize its cybersecurity activities with its business/mission requirements, risk tolerances, and resources. The Tiers provide a mechanism for organizations to view and understand the characteristics of their approach to managing cybersecurity risk, which will help in prioritizing and achieving cybersecurity objectives.
While the NCSF was developed to improve cybersecurity risk management in critical infrastructure, the Framework can be used by organizations in any sector or community. The Framework enables organizations – regardless of size, degree of cybersecurity risk, or cybersecurity sophistication – to apply the principles and best practices of risk management to improving security and resilience. The Framework provides a common organizing structure for multiple approaches to cybersecurity by assembling standards, guidelines, and practices that are working effectively today. Moreover, because it references globally recognized standards for cybersecurity, the Framework can serve as a model for international cooperation on strengthening cybersecurity in critical infrastructure as well as other sectors and communities.
The Framework offers a flexible way to address cybersecurity, including cybersecurity’s effect on physical, cyber, and people dimensions. It is applicable to organizations relying on technology, whether their cybersecurity focus is primarily on information technology (IT), industrial control systems (ICS), cyber-physical systems (CPS), or connected devices more generally, including the Internet of Things (IoT). The Framework can assist organizations in addressing cybersecurity as it affects the privacy of customers, employees, and other parties. Additionally, the Framework’s outcomes serve as targets for workforce development and evolution activities.
This course will prepare participants to take the official NIST Cyber Security Professional Foundation examination. | <urn:uuid:ed8e6acf-d047-4358-b4d1-15dbdeec64e4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cybiant.com/product/nist-cyber-security-professional-foundation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335444.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930051717-20220930081717-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.927019 | 646 | 2.875 | 3 |
Robots have come a long way in the past century from science fiction stories to active members of the modern workforce doing stationary real-world assembly line tasks for the automotive industry. Their presence has also been helpful for increased safety level in the workplace since robots could be assigned dangerous high-speed tasks. Today, they are crossing over into new occupations, and sightings of robots in the travel industry are becoming more common.
One of the key characteristics of robots is they are machines programmed to execute specific tasks, often with precision and speed. The different forms of robots include virtual assistant software, machine learning software, algorithmic software, and autonomous to semi-autonomous vehicles. The field of artificial intelligence generally overlaps deeply with advancements in robotics and automation.
AI is helping usher in a new era of robots in the travel industry since it’s now possible to automate booking and communicate with chatbots that can be better at answering questions than humans. Voice-activated software is now making online booking even easier. Talking with and getting recommendations from computers is now part of the mainstream.
Keep reading: How AI is Driving Industry 4.0
Robots as Hosts and Monitors
Monitoring an operation such as a hotel can now be conducted with IoT sensors as well as Hollywood-style robots. The growing adoption of smart technology allows a hotel to gather extensive data about guests and accommodations in various ways. Analyzing this information can lead to streamlining the operation to become more cost-efficient and eco-friendly.
The idea of human-like robots was popularized in novels and movies to the point it spilled over into science. Now it’s possible for toy dolls to come to life in the digital age. In 2015, Marriott introduced its robot Mario to welcome guests, then the following year Hilton’s robot Connie also debuted as a concierge. While Mario was designed by Belgian company QBMT, Connie is a product of IBM. Both robots resemble toy dolls for children.
AI technology has made the Henn-na Hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, the first lodging facility on earth staffed entirely by robots. These humanoid robots can be used for meetings and conventions to make welcome and farewell speeches, which is a memorable experience for business travelers. Tourist attractions can further benefit from the use of human-like robots that are able to answer tourist questions.
Nearly every type of business can benefit from machine learning software that resolves problems. This type of robot exists more in the digital realm as it reviews vast amounts of data from multiple sources in seconds to generate a conversation about the information. The combination of voice recognition and machine learning technology allows a guest to ask for complex directions based on current weather and traffic conditions. The robot can then provide routing recommendations based on scoring multiple factors.
Assistance at Your Service
But a robot doesn’t have to take the form of software, a machine, or a humanoid. It can be a suitcase, which is practical for travelers. Yes, travelers can now bring with them a rolling robotic suitcase called Travelmate. The smart suitcase contains a GPS chip so you know its exact location at all times and can be controlled wirelessly through a Bluetooth connection. The battery can also be charged with wireless technology.
Robots can further provide assistance in many other ways for travelers, such as with machines that move luggage at airports. Don’t be surprised if you see an uptick in security robots that assist security officers at airports. Knightscope is a company that manufactures human-size autonomous security robots that assist security personnel in providing real-time intelligence.
You’ll likely see more and more robots in the travel industry as time goes on. You may be greeted by a doll-like robot at a hotel desk or you may have informative conversations with chatbots through digital portals. Robots are diversifying and expanding in the travel industry to make travel more convenient, efficient, and in some ways, even entertaining. | <urn:uuid:d52d6151-1685-4332-b2df-170508404097> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://iotmktg.com/the-arrival-of-robots-in-the-travel-industry/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337480.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004054641-20221004084641-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.950675 | 809 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The Federal Aviation Administration has collaborated with NASA and unmanned aircraft system testing partners to conduct three safety demonstrations of drone operations at an altitude of below 400 feet. FAA said Wednesday that the field tests demonstrated the possibility of conducting UAS flights beyond visual line-of-sight in airspace without air traffic services.
The Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership, Northern Plains UAS Test Site in North Dakota and the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems in Las Vegas hosted the low-altitude drone tests during the past three months as part of the UAS Traffic Management Pilot Program.
Data from the program will help the government develop a UTM proof of concept and lay the groundwork for technology deployment efforts, FAA noted. The agency introduced UPP in April 2017 as part of efforts to define operational safety requirements for commercial drones. | <urn:uuid:153dee7f-219d-4739-9e8b-b542b93a6590> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://executivegov.com/2019/09/faa-nasa-demo-low-altitude-drone-operations-under-pilot-program/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337631.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005140739-20221005170739-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.916934 | 171 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Pop quiz: How many passwords do you use online? It’s probably more than you can remember right away, and most of the world is right there with you. According to a report from cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows, the average person uses 191 services that require passwords — and more than 15 billion stolen credentials are in circulation. That’s a 300% increase since 2018!
Because of this abundance of passwords, it’s no surprise that hackers and cybercriminals have made phishing campaigns a priority. After all, they’re one of the most effective ways to steal passwords and other data from hapless victims. Tap or click here to see why phishing scams are on the rise.
With so many scams and attacks targeting your passwords these days, it’s never been more important to protect your accounts. To help you stay safe, we’ll show you how you can make your passwords work to your advantage rather than against you. From complex passwords to security checkups, there’s no shortage of ways to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals.
Security warning: Your passwords are in grave danger
Digital Shadows’ password report paints a stark picture of the cybersecurity landscape in late 2020. There are 15 billion passwords — most of them stolen from more than 100,000 data breaches in recent years — floating around on the web waiting for anyone to try them.
In fact, this is one of the main methods hackers are using to crack into otherwise secure accounts. Programs like Sentry MBA and OpenBullet allow hackers to brute-force their way into accounts using hundreds of stolen passwords in sequence. Because so many passwords are repeated across platforms, odds are good that something among the 15 billion will open the lock.
How many passwords are repeated? Well, out of 15 billion analyzed by Digital Shadows, only 5 billion are unique! That means about 10 billion passwords are repeated across multiple accounts. And if a hacker is able to come up with a successful combination of username and password, you can bet they’ll try the same combination on other websites.
This isn’t the only grave news from Digital Shadows’ report, either. Here are a few sobering highlights that show just how dire the situation has become:
- Many passwords are given away by hackers for free, but the average password sells for around $15.43.
- Key systems belonging to major organizations are hot-ticket items, with some selling to the highest bidder for up to $140,000.
- Bank and financial accounts sell for an average of $70.91.
- Account accesses for antivirus software tend to go for around $21.67.
- Accounts for media streaming, social media, file sharing, virtual private networks (VPNs) and adult-content sites sell for well below $10 apiece.
- More than 2 million email addresses were exposed through financial invoices.
- Brute-force hacking tools sell for an average of $4 apiece, and entire identities can be “rented” for access online for around $10.
The solution? There are multiple ways to keep your accounts safe, but the primary one is using separate passwords for every single account.
This may be harder to remember, but you’ll be much safer if one of them happens to get leaked. Instead of all your accounts going down at once, you’ll only lose access to one at a time.
What other ways can I keep my account passwords safe?
Aside from using unique passwords across multiple accounts, there are a few additional steps you can take to keep your accounts secure and your passwords out of the wrong hands.
- Two-factor authentication: By activating 2FA, any login attempts will now require a second form of verification to be successful. This means that your physical smartphone is required to log in, so only you will have access. Plus, you’ll be alerted when someone attempts to log in to your account without your permission. Tap or click here to see how to set up 2FA for your favorite websites.
- Stronger passwords: Create stronger passwords by using a random collection of letters (uppercase and lowercase), numbers and symbols. Try to make them eight characters or longer, too. If it helps, try using a memorable phrase or song lyric and swapping letters for numbers.
- ex: “Take my hand, off to never-never land” becomes “T/V\ho2nnL.” In this example, cases alternate, the “M” in “My” becomes two symbols and a letter, and the “to” becomes the number 2.
- Give your accounts a privacy checkup: Use an email address for several accounts? You can use a security-checkup service like HaveIBeenPwned to see if that email address was involved in any major data breaches. If your account was “pwned,” that means it’s time to change any passwords associated with that email address.
Tap or click here to see how haveibeenpwned can help you protect your accounts.
In addition to the methods listed above, another option you can take advantage of is a secure password manager.
If you’re using unique passwords for all your accounts, it can be tricky to remember every single one of them. That’s where a password manager like our sponsor Roboform comes in. Not only does Roboform save your passwords using secure encryption, but it can also suggest stronger passwords for you that are less likely to get cracked or guessed.
Somewhere out there, there’s a cybercriminal or two hoping to get lucky and break into your account. As convenient as it is to use simple passwords or share them across all your accounts, this convenience goes both ways. Don’t give the bad guys a chance. | <urn:uuid:bd043e4a-efba-4fc0-a3c3-f17ed04f62a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/safely-protect-your-password/753862/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337631.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005140739-20221005170739-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.926359 | 1,220 | 2.859375 | 3 |
||Use the Map designer menu and toolbar to create, edit, and
delete the maps in your system, as well as arrange the map objects on your map.
||Selection tool (): Click a map object to select it. You can also do the following:
- Click and hold the map background to move it.
- Zoom in to an area of the map by holding the Ctrl key, and then clicking and
- Select multiple map objects with a rectangle, by holding the Alt key, and then clicking and dragging.
- Select all the map objects of the same type that are in view, by holding the
Alt key, and then clicking a map object.
||Draw vector objects:
- Draw line
- Click and drag to draw a single line segment to represent a
- Click and drag to draw a rectangle. Drag a handle to change its
size. Note that you cannot change a rectangle into a different type
- Click once for each endpoint, and click the first endpoint to close the polygon. Use Shift+click to add or remove a point between two points. Double-click a point to complete the polygon without closing it.
- Draw ellipse
- Click and drag to draw an ellipse. Drag a handle to change its size.
||Insert images and text:
- Opens a browser for you to select an image file, and click to place
it on the map.
- Click to place a text box on the map. Double-click the text box to
enter the text. Use the widgets to adjust the appearance of the
||Create map objects representing entities:
- Area view
- Click the area view to create map objects representing areas, intrusion
detection areas, cameras, camera sequences, monitoring layouts, doors, ALPR
cameras, and zones.
- Click, select, and drag an alarm to the map.
- Click, select, and drag a macro to the map.
- Click, select, and drag an input pin, output relay, or a unit to the map.
NOTE: It is possible to select I/Os federated and local cameras.
||Use the widgets to configure the selected map object. When multiple map objects
are selected, only the common widgets are displayed.
||Click and drag the FOV to position it on the map. | <urn:uuid:b8f82957-1365-48ae-9919-930f72b1a0a6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://techdocs.genetec.com/r/en-US/Security-Center-Administrator-Guide-5.9/Overview-of-the-Map-designer-task | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337889.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006222634-20221007012634-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.789664 | 575 | 2.6875 | 3 |
From Drive Savers…
The summer months are upon us bringing with them heat, lightning storms and sever weather
conditions that can wreak havoc upon the sensitive electronics of computers and other devices.
It’s no secret that heat buildup, inside computers and external storage enclosures, can cause a total information
meltdown if not properly controlled. And although small fans inside these units help keep things cool, the nature
of a hard drive’s design can sometimes contribute to its early demise.
Inside a hard drive mechanism, platters spin at high speeds and generate heat that is transferred to the drive’s
housing and electronics – the printed circuit board (PCB). Solder joints, controller chips and other circuitry can
all become extremely hot, leading to loose or broken connections.
But heat isn’t the only source for summer hard drive failures. Power problems at local substations, triggered by
greater demands for electricity to drive air-conditioners, can cause spikes, surges and blackouts. Without some
protection from heat and power fluctuations, data loss is bound to happen as data storage systems are affected.
To help prevent data loss during the hot summer months, DriveSavers recommends the following:
· Avoid installing servers in small enclosed areas where heat cannot be dissipated.
· Use adequate ventilation, fans and/or air conditioning to keep servers at the proper operating temperature.
· Install an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) instead of low-cost surge protection strips which may not
provide an adequate defense against all kinds of power problems.
· Choose a UPS with battery backup and automatic shutdown software which can gracefully shutdown a computer during a blackout.
· Don’t combine the use of surge-protectors with a UPS. Doing so may overload the UPS device. | <urn:uuid:8a8287fd-4e01-4436-bf40-50d945dbc2f0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.fcnaustin.com/why-heat-and-hard-drives-dont-mix/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337889.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006222634-20221007012634-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.883711 | 378 | 3.03125 | 3 |
The electrical components necessary to handle the electrical supply that runs servers, computers, and networking devices in data centers are power distribution units (PDUs). Though power distribution units (PDUs) began as simple power strips with limited capabilities, modern PDUs can handle huge organizations and include features such as remote monitoring and access.
Your firm may enhance efficiency, lower maintenance costs, and safeguard your equipment from surges by using a powerful rack- or floor-mounted PDU. PDUs are devices that control the electrical power in a data center. A PDU can be a power strip without a surge protector in its most basic form, but these sorts of PDUs don’t provide much protection or efficiency for your data center.
Instead, all modern data centers rely on rack- or floor-mounted power distribution units (PDUs) that offer statistics on power utilization effectiveness. Every PDU converts one or more power inputs into multiple power outputs, usually eight in total.
A PDU can transfer AC and DC power from an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and protect your equipment from damage during electrical surges, even though it cannot create electricity. Datacenter high-power PDUs are so efficient that they allow managers to consolidate equipment and save money on receptacles and plugs.
Types of PDU
For households and small enterprises, simple PDUs are sufficient, but data centers must invest in high-power PDUs. These PDUs can handle adequate power for large businesses, and the racks may be joined together to construct larger PDU systems. The more intelligent the PDU, the better the investment and the more money you may save on energy efficiency, productivity, and maintenance.
Rack-mounted PDUs, also known as intelligent or smart PDUs, monitor the flow of power to switches, servers, and the rest of the devices in your data center. They are typically 19-23 inches wide, balance enormous power loads, and protect against electrical surges. A three-phase display and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) remote management capabilities are included with each rack-mounted PDU.
PDUs, or main distribution units, are floor-mounted power distribution units that connect your office’s principal power to the equipment racks in your network operations center and data centers. PDUs can manage more energy than standard power strips and power numerous equipment racks.
Visit our blog section to learn more about various components of a data center. | <urn:uuid:8cf512e3-3226-439c-8973-afcc57db37c7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.akibia.com/what-is-pdu-in-data-center/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334514.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925035541-20220925065541-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.923527 | 497 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Being able to rapidly respond to a crisis is paramount for any public safety effort. For first responders in tribal nations, communications devices are a particularly critical component to success. However, there are several challenges that tribal communities face when it comes to public safety.
With vast nations and lands to patrol, first responders serving tribal communities need to ensure that they are fully connected when responding to emergencies. In addition, satellite-based technologies can fill the gap that cell towers leave in a crisis in these remote areas.
These were the key themes in the third part of our “Critical Communications in Tribal Communities” podcast public safety, hosted on Government Technology Insider, where we were joined by Lynda Zambrano, Executive Director, National Tribal Emergency Management Council, and George Barela, Public Safety Manager, Verizon, to discuss this topic further.
“Satellite technologies can work really well with filling connectivity gaps,” said Zambrano. “We recently had an experience with our incident command center, and had zero reception for cell phones or radios. Bringing in a satellite unit to establish communications was a godsend for us to be able to not only communicate with each other, but also with other tribal nations. Finding ways of partnering with corporations and business partners to enhance connectivity is a high priority for us.”
Listen to the full podcast below: | <urn:uuid:78db6283-e0e1-4b00-b494-815253da252c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | http://governmenttechnologyinsider.com/critical-communications-in-tribal-communities-podcast-series-part-3-public-safety/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335304.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929034214-20220929064214-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.955332 | 274 | 2.625 | 3 |
Certificate (CERT) records are a type of resource record that stores certificates and their related certificate revocation lists (CRLs) in the domain name system (RFC 4398).
Common Use Cases for Cert Records
These certificates act as a means of domain security by binding public keys to digital signatures and are used to verify the authenticity of the sending and receiving parties of DNS queries.
- A domain is already added to your Constellix account
- You have all the necessary certificate information that applies to your domain
How to Create CERT Records in Constellix
1: Log into Constellix and Select Domain
Log into Constellix. Once in the dashboard, select your domain from the Recently Updated Domains list or search for the domain in the top-left search bar.
Note: Options available may vary depending on the current configurations set for your domain.
2. Expand CERT Record Options
After selecting the domain that needs the CERT record, you will be taken to the Records page. If you have not configured any CERT records for this domain yet, click the green + icon beside CERT Record to expand options, otherwise skip to step 3.
3. Add CERT Record
Once options are expanded, click the green + icon to create your CERT record.
4. Enter Record Values
You should now see the Add CERT Record pop-up window. Fill out the following values:
A. Name: Enter the name of the record. Alternatively, this field can be left blank to signify it is at the root domain.
B. TTL: Time to live (measured in seconds) determines how long a record is cached in nameservers. Visit our What is TTL resource for more information and best practices for TTLs.
C. Disable Record: With this feature, you are able to remove records from our nameservers without removing the record configuration in the Constellix DNS control panel. See our Disabling a Record tutorial for more information.
Note: We recommend setting the TTL for CERT records be set to 3600 (the default in Constellix). If the record is not expected to change, you can enter a longer TTL.
D. Certificate Type: This field is where you add the numerical value that specifies the certificate type (defined by RFC 4398).
E. Key Tag: The key tag field is the 16-bit value computed for the key that is embedded in the certificate using the RRSIG key tag algorithm.
F. Algorithm: Add the cryptographic algorithm used to create the signature.
G. Certificate: Enter the actual certificate value
H. Add Another Value: This option allows you to add another CERT under the same record name
I. Notes: The note section lets you add important details and keywords so you can easily search for specific records later (optional, but recommended).
J. Save: If you need to add an additional CERT record, tap the green Save and Continue button, otherwise, click on Save and Close.
Note: In order for your CERT record to take effect, you must review and apply changes.
Visit our website for more information on our services and features. | <urn:uuid:0e94ba2c-8149-497d-b944-033d8ba7b245> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://support.constellix.com/support/solutions/articles/47001103592-cert-records | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335304.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929034214-20220929064214-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.808725 | 661 | 2.75 | 3 |
Quantum Sensing: Delivering the Quantum Advantage
(Evan Salim, Director of Quantum Technologies, ColdQuanta Inc.) When the futuristic discussion of quantum is raised, quantum computers are often the first thing that comes to mind. Afterall, we’ve seen much written about this in the press or played up in movies. While these advanced computers are one of the first tangible quantum products, the application of quantum technologies extends far beyond this. Quantum technologies have the potential to significantly disrupt information processing, communications, standards and sensing across numerous industries including aerospace, agriculture, finance, energy, national defense, telecommunications, shipping and logistics, and more.
Sensing, in particular, is one key area of quantum experiencing rapid advancement. Quantum sensors are devices that leverage the quantum phenomena to measure something useful in the physical world – location, distance, time, etc. Quantum sensing systems will one day become the norm as they are more sensitive, accurate, and stable than their classical counterparts that perform these critical activities.
One of the first applications of quantum sensing is the creation of Quantum Positioning Systems (QPS). These systems are set to displace the multi-billion dollar GPS market. Reducing the reliance on GPS technologies is critical for scenarios where signals from these systems are not available, such as underwater or in space, or when they suffer disruptions due to technical issues, cyberattacks, and atmospheric effects.
QPS provides reliable signals that are stable over long periods, combatting GPS disruptions or denials. It enables autonomous mission durations of days or weeks versus the hours offered by current technologies, and allows us to determine how fast an object has traveled, for how long and in what direction. For instance, a submarine could spend weeks underwater versus needing to surface in order to orient itself.
Another important application is Quantum RF (Radio Frequency) Sensing, which is poised to impact dozens of industries. Radio Frequency spectrum is wide and dense and its current infrastructure requires multiple antennas to support this wide array of frequencies. Quantum RF Sensing can receive a wide array of frequencies and very weak signals with greater than 10 times sensitivity compared to existing state-of-the-art technologies. It can identify precisely where signals originate and enable highly secure, stealth communications. Quantum RF sensing devices can also be provided at a fraction of the size of today’s devices, consuming less space and power.
These two types of sensing – QPS and Quantum RF Sensing – can be used together to deliver breakthrough advancements. For example, fully autonomous vehicles need quantum sensing to become a reality. Positioning systems in these vehicles require a reliable “ground truth” source as a trusted point of reference. Quantum RF sensors are a viable solution, and they can work in combination with QPS to ensure reliability and accuracy of less than 10 centimeters.
Quantum sensing is opening the door to new possibilities that will affect nearly every aspect of human life. These systems are undergoing rapid development today, so that we can benefit from the quantum advantage they provide in the not so distant future. While sensors are already a multi-billion dollar market, future performance requirements will demand quantum sensors for their accuracy and reliability.
ColdQuanta is the vertical sponsor (“Quantum Sensors”) at IQT NY 2021 online event May 17-20, 2021. Evan Salim will deliver a keynote 9am ET May 18th, 2021. | <urn:uuid:2fec2e58-e6a6-429c-9c20-36ed1de9661f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.insidequantumtechnology.com/news-archive/quantum-sensing-delivering-the-quantum-advantage/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335469.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930113830-20220930143830-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.922058 | 690 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Firewalls are software-/hardware-based security components that divide computer networks into two logical segments: an unsecured side that remains exposed to computer users from the outside world, typically to provide access to Web servers or other such public parts of a network; and a second, secure side that's off-limits to intruders yet remains accessible to authorized users.
Firewalls give authorized LAN users freedom to dial into or out of a network to use e-mail, to access the Internet, or to make remote-access connections into a central LAN from a remote computer (for telecommuters dialing in from home or dialing up a central office network from a branch site). They enable system managers to provide the far-reaching, flexible access that customers (both internal and external to a network) demand, while at the same time limiting a network's exposure to interlopers; either malicious or accidental.
There are three types of firewalls: packet filters, application servers, and circuit-level gateways.
Packet filters are hardware firewalls (implemented in bridges or routers) that examine the source or destination address of a data packet to determine whether it should be forwarded to the next segment of a network.
Application servers are software firewalls that exist only to support particular applications (such as e-mail or a Web server) and grant access to such services according to guidelines set by the system manager who configures the application.
Software-based circuit-level gateways fall somewhere between the other two types of firewalls. They don’t actually host network services like application servers do; rather, they grant access to such services based on the unique identity of the network port through which the request for service is received—like a packet filter routing data | <urn:uuid:84cdc75a-961b-4b18-ab26-7a5ccf4b584c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.blackbox.com/en-ca/insights/blackbox-explains/inner/detail/networking/security-and-surveillance/what-is-a-firewall | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337668.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005203530-20221005233530-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.916294 | 367 | 3.765625 | 4 |
While most discussions with respect to SDN are focused on a variety of architectural questions (me included) and technical capabilities, there’s another very important concept that need to be considered: control and execution.
SDN definitions include the notion of centralized control through a single point of control in the network, a controller. It is through the controller all important decisions are made regarding the flow of traffic through the network, i.e. execution.
This is not feasible, at least not in very large (or even just large) networks. Nor is it feasible beyond simple L2/3 routing and forwarding.
There is very little more dynamic than combat operations. People, vehicles, supplies – all are distributed across what can be very disparate locations. One of the lessons the military has learned over time (sometimes quite painfully through experience) is the difference between control and execution. This has led to decisions to employ what is called, “Centralized Control, Decentralized Execution.”
Joint Publication (JP) 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, defines centralized control as follows: “In joint air operations, placing within one commander the responsibility and authority for planning, directing, and coordinating a military operation or group/category of operations.”
JP 1-02 defines decentralized execution as “delegation of execution authority to subordinate commanders.”
Decentralized execution is the preferred mode of operation for dynamic combat operations. Commanders who clearly communicate their guidance and intent through broad mission-based or effects-based orders rather than through narrowly defined tasks maximize that type of execution. Mission-based or effects-based guidance allows subordinates the initiative to exploit opportunities in rapidly changing, fluid situations.
Applying this to IT network operations means a single point of control is contradictory to the “mission” and actually interferes with the ability of subordinates (strategic points of control) to dynamically adapt to rapidly changing, fluid situations such as those experienced in virtual and cloud computing environments.
Not only does a single, centralized point of control (which in the SDN scenario implies control over execution through admittedly dynamically configured but rigidly executed) abrogate responsibility for adapting to “rapidly changing, fluid situations” but it also becomes the weakest link. Clausewitz, in the highly read and respected “On War”, defines a center of gravity as "the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be directed." Most military scholars and strategists logically imply from the notion of a Clausewitzian center of gravity is the existence of a critical weak link.
If the “controller” in an SDN is the center of gravity, then it follows it is likely a critical, weak link.
This does not mean the model is broken, or poorly conceived of, or a bad idea. What it means is that this issue needs to be addressed. The modern strategy of “Centralized Control, Decentralized Execution” does just that.
The major issue with the notion of a centralized controller is the same one air combat operations experienced in the latter part of the 20th century: agility, or more appropriately, lack thereof. Imagine a large network adopting fully an SDN as defined today. A single controller is responsible for managing the direction of traffic at L2-3 across the vast expanse of the data center. Imagine a node, behind a Load balancer, deep in the application infrastructure, fails. The controller must respond and instruct both the load balancing service and the core network how to react, but first it must be notified.
It’s simply impossible to recover from a node or link failure in 50 milliseconds (a typical requirement in networks handling voice traffic) when it takes longer to get a reply from the central controller. There’s also the “slight” problem of network devices losing connectivity with the central controller if the primary uplink fails.
-- OpenFlow/SDN Is Not A Silver Bullet For Network Scalability, Ivan Pepelnjak (CCIE#1354 Emeritus) Chief Technology Advisor at NIL Data Communications
The controller, the center of network gravity, becomes the weak link, slowing down responses and inhibiting the network (and IT) from responding in a rapid manner to evolving situations.
This does not mean the model is a failure. It means the model must adapt to take into consideration the need to adapt more quickly. This is where decentralized execution comes in, and why predictions that SDN will evolve into an overarching management system rather than an operational one are likely correct.
There exist today, within the network, strategic points of control; locations within the data center architecture at which traffic (data) is aggregated, forcing all data to traverse, from which control over traffic and data is maintained. These locations are where decentralized execution can fulfill the “mission-based guidance” offered through centralized control.
Certainly it is advantageous to both business and operations to centrally define and codify the operating parameters and goals of data center networking components (from L2 through L7), but it is neither efficient nor practical to assume that a single, centralized controller can achieve both managing and executing on the goals. What the military learned in its early attempts at air combat operations was that by relying on a single entity to make operational decisions in real time regarding the state of the mission on the ground, missions failed. Airmen, unable to dynamically adjust their actions based on current conditions, were forced to watch situations deteriorate rapidly while waiting for central command (controller) to receive updates and issue new orders.
Thus, central command (controller) has moved to issuing mission or effects-based objectives and allowing the airmen (strategic points of control) to execute in a way that achieves those objectives, in whatever way (given a set of constraints) they deem necessary based on current conditions.
This model is highly preferable (and much more feasible given today’s technology) than the one proffered today by SDN. It may be that such an extended model can easily be implemented by distributing a number of controllers throughout the network and federating them with a policy-driven control system that defines the mission, but leaves execution up to the distributed control points – the strategic control points.
SDN is new, it’s exciting, it’s got potential to be the “next big thing.” Like all nascent technology and models, it will go through some evolutionary massaging as we dig into it and figure out where and why and how it can be used to its greatest potential and organizations’ greatest advantage.
One thing we don’t want to do is replicate erroneous strategies of the past. No network model abrogating all control over execution has every really worked. All successful models have been a distributed, federated model in which control may be centralized, but execution is decentralized. Can we improve upon that? I think SDN does in its recognition that static configuration is holding us back. But it’s decision to reign in all control while addressing that issue may very well give rise to new issues that will need resolution before SDN can become a widely adopted model of networking. | <urn:uuid:c6410378-32c4-42d1-a9ed-9ee917eef74c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.f5.com/t5/technical-articles/applying-lsquo-centralized-control-decentralized-execution-rsquo/ta-p/280638 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.942924 | 1,493 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Dealing with cybersecurity in the contemporary healthcare environment is undoubtedly challenging, and some aspects of this can even be overlooked by those familiar with the field. One such issue is the dangers of medical devices being hacked and used to penetrate company systems. And this will become an ever-increasing threat as the Internet of Medial Things becomes prominent, and health devices are connected to the Internet.
Indeed, this is already becoming an issue. A survey conducted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) discovered that nearly 20 per cent of provider organisations had experienced their devices being subjected to malware or ransomware in the past 18 months. This is more than a major annoyance; such incidents threaten network security and even continuity of care.
So securing medical devices should be a priority for all organisations in the healthcare industry. Yet this can be difficult to achieve, with the level of systems knowledge on such devices less prevalent than for other more conventional computing equipment. Safeguarding these devices often requires support, particularly as the risk grows exponentially due to the increasing levels of interconnectedness.
When dealing with security breaches, the reality is that manufacturers of medical devices are often to blame. Indeed, a study conducted by CHIME found that 96 per cent of providers pointed to manufacturer errors as being central to data breaches and device-related security issues. This may be a sobering reality, but no matter how much healthcare providers may be reassured that devices are secure, they need to start out from a point of assuming that they are, in fact, vulnerable.
Yet even the possession of this knowledge may not be enough to form active partnerships with device manufacturers, as many healthcare organisations already find that their existing IT resources are stretched. In the CHIME study, 76 per cent of providers concluded that their resources were “insufficient and too strained to adequately secure medical devices.”
Nonetheless, there is some room for optimism. This may be a relatively new field, but already established security companies are coming forward to assist with eliminating malware from medical devices. McAfee is one of the big names involved, and the esteemed company is already working closely with medical device manufacturers in an attempt to thwart attacks and comply with an increasingly strict regulatory environment.
With this in mind, devices are now being produced with a variety of different security measures built-in. These can include application control, whitelisting, anti-virus and anti-malware protection, device security management, advanced data protection, and encryption. Aside from this, device manufacturers are working on ensuring that device management is more streamlined, providing less potential for ransomware and malware to be installed in the first place. With customisation also possible, the design requirements for all medical devices can be ably met by both manufacturers and malware protectors.
Siemens Healthineers has recently spoken out on the dangers of malware and ransomware in the medical environment, and how medical practitioners need to be ready to meet this threat. Siemens has become a leader in diagnostics and medical equipment and has recognised that system security can be compromised by vulnerable medical devices. Thus, the company has worked closely with McAfee in order to craft a suitable solution.
And the Siemens Ultrasound System Security is the result of this collaboration, providing an antivirus solution that is powerful and highly flexible. And the RapidLab1200, also developed via a partnership between the two organisations, uses McAfee whitelisting to secure the device, preventing any unauthorised applications that may do damage from running on medical devices.
This early partnership is indicative of the fact that safeguarding medical devices will require a joint effort from the provider organisations and device manufacturers. There is no silver bullet nor easy answer at this point in time, rather medical experts in both the hardware and software departments will need to pool their resources over a period of time.
However, the good news is that many companies and organisations in the healthcare environment are beginning to get on top of the problem. At least, this is the case according to Adam Gale, president of KLAS Research, whose organisation recently authored a major benchmarking report. “Many providers have the basic building blocks for a general security program in place and are making progress, although it is difficult and time-consuming, toward developing a mature program. We also are seeing some manufacturers being more proactive and accountable,” Gale observed, suggesting that clinical partners can begin to solve the malware issue in the foreseeable future.
Another influence on securing healthcare devices from virus influences will be the legislative environment created by governance. In this regard, government oversight will play a critical role in improving security, and in this area, there is definitely room for improvement. When CHIME spoke to manufacturers of devices on the subject of government regulation, several noted that regulations from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) actually hinder security by making certain necessary changes legally impossible.
The FDA has already implemented measures in an attempt to improve the situation, with a memorandum of agreement having been inked between the organisation and the Department of Homeland Security. This is intended to secure a framework, which will enhance coordination and information sharing about potential medical device vulnerabilities, according to Suzanne B. Schwartz, the FDA’s associate director for science and strategic partnerships.
In the meantime, ensuring that devices are updated regularly, that all patches are applied as soon as possible, recruiting experts in the security field, and layering security solutions can help protect systems and medical devices, even hackers do manage to exploit a particular vulnerability. As the use of the connected medical devices continues to expand, the battle between hackers and device security is only just beginning.
Julie Cole, VPNpro.com (opens in new tab)
Image Credit: Photo_Concepts / iStock | <urn:uuid:3fb15f02-639d-4ebb-a7e7-e3c826953e57> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/features/medical-device-manufacturers-against-healthcare-malware-and-ransomware/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925070216-20220925100216-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.959163 | 1,174 | 2.796875 | 3 |
A man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack is a type of cyberattack where a perpetrator positions themself in a conversation between two parties — two users, or a user and an application or server — so that all communications are going to or through the attacker. The attacker can also play both sides, stealing the information a user sends to a server (such as login credentials, account details and credit card numbers) while also sending corrupted packets (such as malware or HTTP requests in a DDoS attack) to an innocent third party.
MitM attacks are becoming increasingly common and increasingly difficult to prevent, especially with the ready availability of sophisticated phishing kits that include tools to launch man-in-the-middle attacks to steal MFA tokens. Remote workers on unsecured networks present a particularly soft target. Knowing how to recognize and how to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks is essential for effective enterprise and personal cybersecurity.
How to Prevent Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
Types of Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
Although the overall concepts are generally the same, the execution and processes of different MitM attacks can vary significantly. These nuances mean that knowing what to look for and how to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks can be difficult. Let’s take a look at the most common tactics.
1. IP Spoofing
In this type of MitM attack, the hacker manipulates its network packet information to present themselves as having the IP address of a legitimate device or application. This allows them access to restricted networks and its resources. The attacker can also spoof the IPs of both user and server to intercept and snoop on all communications between them.
2. ARP Spoofing
The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) attempts to match IP addresses to MAC addresses where it does not know them. By using a forged ARP message, an attacker can resolve the request with its own MAC address, allowing them to steal important traffic, including session cookies. ARP Spoofing is only possible on 32-bit IP Addresses (IPv4) and not on IPv6, however most of the internet still works on IPv4.
3. Session Hijacking
When you log in to an account, a session token is used to confirm your identity. The session token continues to confirm your identity until you log out or the token expires. If an attacker can hijack or steal the token, they can pass as a legitimate user and bypass all authentication procedures.
4. Rogue Access Points
An attacker can set up a network access point close to a device by taking advantage of devices set to connect to the strongest open signal. This allows the attacker to manipulate all traffic to and from the user.
5. Public WiFi Eavesdropping
Like rogue access points, a fake “public” network is a classic MitM attack. The attacker sets up a legitimate-sounding WiFi network in a hotel, restaurant or even inside a workplace. Users connect to it thinking it is the correct one, giving the attacker the ability to eavesdrop on traffic or escalate the attacks, such as forcing users into SSL stripping.
6. DNS Spoofing
This is where the attacker manipulates traffic using the domain name system (DNS) to direct a user to their website instead of the one the user wanted. The user will usually be greeted by a fake version of the legitimate website, such as their online bank, with the details entered visible to the attacker.
7. HTTPS Spoofing
The counter to DNS spoofing is to ensure sites use HTTPS instead of HTTP. HTTPS encrypts the HTTP requests and responses using TLS (SSL), making it far more secure than HTTP. The SSL certificate authenticates the web server identity so an HTTPS-secured site is harder to spoof. However, attackers can get around this by using non-ASCII characters or languages like Cyrillic or Turkish as part of the URL, which are virtually indistinguishable from valid characters.
8. SSL Stripping
Another way around HTTPS encryption is to force traffic to HTTP sites instead. This can be done if the attacker has already successfully infiltrated a router or controls the WiFi network the user is connected to. The hacker becomes the party communicating directly with the HTTPs site, and connects the user to an HTTP version of the site. They can now see all the user’s communications in plain text, including access credentials. Strategies on how to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks often rely on creating security obstacles for attackers, but this type of attack shows how they can get around them fairly easily.
If an attacker has successfully installed malware on a user’s device, they can observe all online actions and exfiltrate that data to perform attacks. This attack is referred to as a man-in-the-browser attack.
10. Email Hijacking
This is a man-in-the-middle attack where the attacker gains access to a user’s email, usually through a phishing attack. This then allows them to monitor all incoming and outgoing communications. This also allows them to act as the user if they wish, such as to request to change bank details or demand payment of an invoice.
How to Prevent Man-in-the-Middle Attacks: 4 Best Practices
Once underway, MitM attacks are notoriously difficult to spot since hackers disguise themselves as a legitimate endpoint in a line of communication. However, best practices in how to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks can go a long way in protecting organizations.
Educate employees, particularly remote workers, about the dangers of MitM attacks. Remind them to always check the address of websites they are logging into to ensure that users never exchange data or fill out forms on websites that do not use SSL (HTTPS), always heed network security warning messages, and to look for misspellings, unnecessary capitalization and erroneous number sequences (ex: FreeATLAirport vs. FreeATLairPort123). Employees should be trained on the dangers of connecting to public WiFi networks from any device accessing corporate data, and only use up-to-date, high-security browsers.
2. Intrusion Detection
Firewalls and intrusion detection systems constantly monitor networks for suspicious activity and attempts at infiltration. These systems are effective at blocking external attempts to compromise a network. Unfortunately, remote workers’ devices often live outside these protections.
Enterprises can prevent some types of man-in-the-middle attacks by deploying virtual private networks (VPNs). A VPN encrypts data, helping stop attacks from infiltrating your network attack and if an attack occurs, rendering any data gathered unreadable. They also provide protection for employees connecting to public WiFi. By setting VPNs to “force HTTPS,” all traffic goes through the most secure versions of sites. VPNs themselves, however, are an increasingly popular attack vector.
4. Strong Authentication
Most modern cyberattacks stem from compromised passwords and account takeover. Attackers then have complete access to networks and will never show up on intrusion detection systems. The counter to this is to deploy more secure authentication protocols, at a minimum multi-factor authentication (MFA) which requires users to provide two or more proofs of their identity. The highest level of authentication security, mandated as part of the Zero Trust architecture delineated by the federal government, is phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, thus completely removing one of the most vulnerable points in your security posture.
How Passwordless MFA Prevents Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
MitM attacks are hard to detect and prevent, making them a nightmare scenario for any CISO. VPNs can help, but only if access is protected through strict authentication protocols. This is why any MitM security strategy needs to start with phishing-resistant passwordless MFA (PMFA).
Phishing-resistant PMFA uses public-key cryptography for the authentication process so there are no secrets or credentials that can be intercepted and leveraged in MitM attacks. FIDO-based passwordless MFA is considered the gold standard by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as well as the OMB and other regulatory bodies. Solutions that are FIDO Certified end to end don’t use OTPs, SMS codes, compromisable push notifications or any other phishable factor.
To Sum Up
MitM attacks come in various forms, but all involve the attacker surreptitiously positioning themselves to monitor data and communication exchanges. Many also allow attackers to pretend to be one or both parties in the exchange. Understanding how to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks requires education and best practice as well as security measures that include intrusion detection, VPNs and secure authentication protocols.
One of your strongest defense pillars against these attacks is to remove passwords completely by deploying phishing-resistant passwordless MFA. HYPR’s True Passwordless™MFA is fully FIDO Certified in all of its components and provides a seamless, secure login experience from the desktop through to applications, including VPNs and other remote access points. To learn how HYPR helps secure your networks and users against MitM attacks, read more here or talk to our team. | <urn:uuid:0470f1c8-365b-4153-ace8-59bc1976c8af> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.hypr.com/how-to-prevent-man-in-the-middle-attacks | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334912.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926144455-20220926174455-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.928125 | 1,914 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Email encryption is a method of securing the content of emails from anyone outside of the email conversation looking to obtain a participant’s information. In its encrypted form, an email is no longer readable by a human. Only with your private email key can your emails be unlocked and decrypted back into the original message.
Email encryption works by employing something called public key cryptography. Each person with an email address has a pair of keys associated with that email address, and these keys are required in order to encrypt or decrypt an email. One of the keys is known as a “public key”, and is stored on a keyserver where it is tied to your name and email address and can be accessed by anyone. The other key is your private key, which is not shared publicly with anyone.
This encryption process is commonly referred to as public key infrastructure (PKI). These key pairs can be created and distributed by various companies that operate as certificate authorities (CAs). They are trusted third party businesses that provide proper certification for the public key and then enter the public key into a large directory of other public keys. The private key on the other hand is always only known to the owner of that specific key.
When an email is sent, it is encrypted by a computer using the public key and the contents of the email are turned into a complex, indecipherable scramble that is very difficult to crack. This public key cannot be used to decrypt the sent message, only to encrypt it. Only the person with the proper corresponding private key has the ability to decrypt the email and read its contents.
There are various types of email encryption, but some of the most common encryption protocols are:
- OpenPGP - a type of PGP encryption that utilizes a decentralized, distributed trust model and integrates well with modern web email clients
- S/MIME - a type of encryption that is built into most Apple devices and utilizes a centralized authority to pick the encryption algorithm and key size
Email encryption can often be difficult for individual users, so companies that decide to employ email encryption usually set it up as an automatic process using an encryption service.
This way, companies don’t need to rely on their employees to carry out the process of using email encryption themselves and it takes the decision out of the user’s hands. With this type of software, emails are usually configured to pass through a gateway appliance that is set up to be compliant with the company’s security policies. Email encryption is a popular option for companies because of its ease of use. It usually requires no employee training and it is often much less expensive than alternative security options.
Email encryption services can be used to provide encryption in a few separate but related areas:
- The connection between email providers can be encrypted, preventing outside attackers from finding a way to intercept any incoming or outgoing emails as they travel between servers
- The content of the email can be encrypted, ensuring that even if an email is intercepted by an attacker, the contents of the email will still be entirely unreadable
- Old or archived emails that are already stored within your email client should also be encrypted to prevent attackers from potentially gaining access to emails that aren’t currently in transit between servers
See which threats are hiding in your inbox today.
Our free Email Threat Scan has helped more than 12,000organizations discover advanced email attacks. START YOUR EMAIL THREAT SCAN
Emails are an especially vulnerable access point for attackers looking to intercept messages and gain important information from them. Hackers can gain access to all of your most important personal information sent through email - like SSNs, bank account numbers or login information - but they also have access to any attachments or content that others have sent to you and have the ability to take complete control of your email account.
Emails are most vulnerable went sent over an unsecured, public network, but they can also be vulnerable within a more secure setting such as a company network. Encryption is an important added security measure that makes sure that even if a message is intercepted it’s information cannot be accessed. By utilizing the public/private key pair system, email encryption also helps verify the authenticity of the sender and recipient of the message.
How Barracuda Can Help
Barracuda Email Protection secures your mail by encrypting it during transport to the Barracuda Message Center, encrypting it at rest for storage in the cloud, and providing secure retrieval by your recipients through HTTPS Web access.
Do you have more questions about Email Encryption? Contact us now. | <urn:uuid:6db4637b-80d4-4153-a9db-f39e3c02c685> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.barracuda.com/glossary/email-encryption?switch_lang_code=en | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927225413-20220928015413-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.956475 | 939 | 3.40625 | 3 |
KNOW MORE ABOUT URL Filtering
What is URL Filtering
URL filtering technology helps organizations to prevent computer users from viewing inappropriate web sites or content, or to prevent access of known malware hosts.
The filter checks the origin or content of a Web page against a set of rules provided by company or person who has installed the URL filter. An URL filtering solution can be installed as a standalone solution, on a firewall or on a proxy server.
At the beginning, the technology was developed for productivity reasons. But, with the evolution of malware, the security takes the first place. More and more, malware attacks have moved from the e-mail based attacks to web based attacks.
Modern internet world is a dynamic one and what is good now, in 10 minutes can become a threat. Legitimate websites are compromised without any knowledge of the owner. A user thinks that is it safe to surf to his usual news website but doing this, can lead to malware infection. More advanced solutions use engines that analyze pages on the fly, to detect dangerous scripts or to allow the user to see only the good content on a webpage and block malicious content.
URL filtering companies are protected against compromised websites. User access to Internet content is logged and permitted or blocked based on policies. Reports can be generated and action can be taken based on the user’s web usage.
Minimize legal risk: there is also a legal liability issue when a user engages in illegal or inappropriate surfing activities. An URL filtering solution can effectively suppress offensive sites and can prevent download of inappropriate files and helps manage employee internet access and enforce usage policies to mitigate legal liability up front if an employee seeks to engage in improper behavior.
From the security point of view, an organization using URL filtering technology is able to minimize the costs related with virus outbreaks.
Resources planning: by understanding the web traffic generated a company, based on different reports, an organization can foreseen the real need of bandwidth and can save costs just because it will utilize the exact resources necessary to perform business processes and not spend money to buy additional bandwidth.
Boost productivity: URL Filter can reduce the use of bandwidth-intensive files, such as streaming media. This can significantly improve the performance of your business applications while optimizing the use of network resources. This can be done by eliminating recreational and non business traffic and allow business traffic to have more resources. | <urn:uuid:bc9e0463-ba69-46b4-ad26-37f0112f4dcf> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.abs-mena.com/solutions/url-filtering/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335491.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930145518-20220930175518-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.916664 | 487 | 2.734375 | 3 |
ESET researchers discovered Kobalos, a malware that has been attacking supercomputers – high performance computer (HPC) clusters – as well as other targets such as a large Asian ISP, a North American endpoint security vendor, and several privately held servers.
“Perhaps unrelated to the events involving Kobalos, there were multiple security incidents involving HPC clusters in the past year. Some of them hit the press and details were made public in an advisory from the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) CSIRT about cases where cryptocurrency miners were deployed. The EGI CSIRT advisory shows compromised servers in Poland, Canada and China were used in these attacks. Press articles also mention Archer, a breached UK-based supercomputer where SSH credentials were stolen, but does not contain details about which malware was used, if any,” ESET researchers noted.
“We’ve worked with the CERN Computer Security Team and other organizations involved in mitigating attacks on scientific research networks. According to them, the usage of the Kobalos malware predates the other incidents.”
The malware attacks supercomputers, servers…
ESET researchers have reverse engineered this small, yet complex malware that is portable to many operating systems including Linux, BSD, Solaris, and possibly AIX and Windows.
“We have named this malware Kobalos for its tiny code size and many tricks; in Greek mythology, a kobalos is a small, mischievous creature,” explains Marc-Etienne Léveillé, who investigated the malware. “It has to be said that this level of sophistication is only rarely seen in Linux malware.”
Kobalos is a backdoor containing broad commands that don’t reveal the intent of the attackers. It grants remote access to the file system, provides the ability to spawn terminal sessions, and allows proxying connections to other Kobalos-infected servers, Léveillé notes.
Any server compromised by Kobalos can be turned into a Command & Control (C&C) server by the operators sending a single command. As the C&C server IP addresses and ports are hardcoded into the executable, the operators can then generate new Kobalos samples that use this new C&C server.
In addition, in most systems compromised by Kobalos, the client for secure communication (SSH) is compromised to steal credentials. “Anyone using the SSH client of a compromised machine will have their credentials captured. Those credentials can then be used by the attackers to install Kobalos on the newly discovered server later,” Léveillé added.
Setting up two-factor authentication for connecting to SSH servers will mitigate the threat, since the use of stolen credentials seems to be one of the ways it is able to propagate to different systems.
“From a network perspective, it is possible to detect Kobalos by looking for non-SSH traffic on the port attributed to an SSH server. When the Kobalos backdoor communicates with an operator, there is no SSH banner (SSH-2.0-…) exchanged, neither from the client nor the server,” the researchers shared.
More technical details about the malware, IoCs and YARA rules are available in this whitepaper. | <urn:uuid:1abe49f5-158d-4d27-a34a-e6258409cac4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/02/02/linux-malware-backdoors-supercomputers/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335491.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930145518-20220930175518-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.941973 | 685 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important with the prevalence of ransomware attacks. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that hackers design to exploit vulnerabilities within an infrastructure, hold data for “hostage” and demand compensation for its release usually in the form of Bitcoin. It works by encrypting documents across networks or an individual desktop and has been highly effective due to several factors, including low security awareness and weakness in security.
Ransomware doesn’t have to be limited to large enterprises, either. Ransomware attacks have affected hospitals, schools and even charities, and has morphed into a billion-dollar industry, according to eWeek. A CyberEdge Group study also highlighted that this type of malicious software compromised 61 percent of organizations across 15 countries alone. With this type of presence and capability to do financial damage, it’s important to have a plan in place to avoid these malicious attacks. Here are a few aspects to consider:
How Can Ransomware Be Prevented?
The best way to avoid ransomware is by putting prevention best practices into use. There are several ways accomplish this, too. Here are some ways to get it done:
Train your employees. Without proper training, your employees can be a weak spot that hackers can exploit. That’s because a breach is as easy to accomplish as an employee clicking a link that he may not realize is fake or malicious. Avoid ransomware attacks by training your employees on ransomware identification techniques, including how to spot vulnerabilities and safety precautions to take, such as changing their passwords frequently and using two-step authentication.
Update your software on a regular basis. It’s important to keep your software updated with the latest security enhancements. Minimize the breach of your infrastructure by taking advantage of automatic security updates.
Leverage experts. When you don’t have the right setup or expertise on your staff, it can be challenging to deter ransomware attacks. However, you can still get the help you need by leveraging expertise from IT companies, such as GXA. IT companies can help you put together a contingency plan to prevent ransomware attacks. Moreover, they can assist you with training employees, too.
What If It’s Too Late?
If you’re already a victim of ransomware, you don’t want to panic. Instead, take the necessary steps to recover from the attack. As soon as you discover your computer has fallen victim to a ransomware attack, disconnect it from all external drives, networks or other computers that it may be connected to in order to isolate the attack to one device. Take a picture of the ransom note with your mobile phone or a camera so that you have evidence when you file a police report.
Also, avoid paying the ransom. There is no guarantee that you will get your money back. Try to remove the ransomware from your device by using anti-malware or antivirus software and use tools to recover any deleted files if possible. Get your IT department or consultant involved to handle the issue. When the issue is resolved, make sure you review protocols, including how you back up a files and any infrastructure vulnerabilities.
Avoiding ransomware calls for preparation and making smart decisions. From training employees to updating software automatically on a consistent basis, your team has several options for deterring a ransomware attack. Also, consider taking advantage of the expertise of a professional IT team with experience in ransomware attacks and cybersecurity protocols, such as GXA. GXA helps clients reduce their infrastructure vulnerabilities to mitigate ransomware attacks by applying several best practices, including devising a cybersecurity plan that’s modernized and providing data and network security. By having a plan in place, you can keep ransomware attacks at bay. | <urn:uuid:96bfce8a-f961-420a-b600-15afcc78690b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://gxait.com/network-security/what-is-ransomware/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.923858 | 1,090 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Let’s start with a couple of questions: are you reading this in a public place or open plan office and if so, is there any chance that someone could see your screen? Have you ever seen something on someone else’s screen that was clearly not for sharing? Both anecdotal evidence and several studies suggest that the majority of people would answer ‘yes’ to one or both of these questions and this indicates that ‘visual hacking’ is a very real security risk.
Sometimes also referred to as ‘shoulder-surfing’, visual hacking is the ability to view and even photograph information on someone else’s screen. That information can then be exploited for malicious or illegal purposes, such as sold to a third-party, used for identity theft or to perpetrate a cyber-attack.
Until recently, visual hacking often took a back seat to other forms of infosecurity, but that is changing fast, partly driven by the fact that visual privacy is implicit within the General Data Protection Act. As a principle-based regulation, organisations are not given a set of specific actions, but rather, are required to think about what General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR) compliance requires. In practice, this means that it is immaterial whether a breach is caused by digital or physical means.
Ensuring visual privacy is also explicit or implicit within a variety of industry guidelines and standards in the UK, across financial services, the legal profession and public sector, including government departments and education. Visual privacy is often included within ISO27001 compliance strategies too.
An aspect of visual hacking of particular concern is that it is fast and easy to achieve, without requiring any specialist skills. Back in 2016, 3M, the science-based technology company, commissioned the Global Hacking Experiment, carried out by the independent and global security specialist, The Ponemon Institute. Covering eight countries, including the UK, France and Germany, a ‘white hat’ hacker posed as a temporary contractor, complete with ID (with the permission of the participating companies). In total, there were 157 trials, which involved trying to obtain sensitive or confidential information in one of three ways: walking through an office looking for information in full view on desks, monitor screens, printers and so on; taking a stack of business documents labelled confidential from a desk and putting them in a briefcase; and using a smartphone to take images of confidential information displayed on computer screens. All tasks took place in full view of other office workers.
The results underlined the theoretical threat of visual hacking. On average, hacks were successful in 91% of attempts and around half of those taking less than 15 minutes. Information obtained included personal identification information, access and log-in details, financial data and a wide variety of other confidential material. Plus, the white hat hacker was only challenged in an average of 30% of the time.
The potential risk landscape increases the more that people work in public spaces. Another Ponemon study for 3M, the Open Spaces survey, found that nine out of ten people questioned said they had caught someone looking at data on their laptops in public. That risk is set to rise unless steps are taken: in analyst firm, Quocirca’s recent Print2025 survey of more than 1500 organisations across the globe, two-thirds believe their workforces will be mobile in five years’ time.
Prevention in practice
There are a variety of measures that can be put in place to improve visual privacy and some of them are particularly easy, fast and cost-effective to implement, especially when compared to many other security investments. The starting point has to be better awareness, with staff aware not just of the risks, but their individual roles in preventing visual hacks. That needs to be a top-down mandate, supported by senior management, including making it clear to employees that they are encouraged – indeed, required – to confront or report someone they do not recognise, or not wearing clear ID, or in an unauthorised part of a building.
Many firms already have policies around clear desks, but the need to avoid documents and other material containing sensitive material being visible in offices needs to reinforced.
Confidential documents should be kept in locked cabinets when not in use, plus staff should not leave documents in mailroom, copier, fax and printer trays. Many modern multi-function printers support ‘pull printing’, whereby a document is only released to an authorised user at point of collection. It goes without saying that shredding and an overall reduction of unnecessary paper usage should already be in place.
The Ponemon Global Hacking Study found that approximately half of all sensitive data obtained was via viewing people’s screens, so clearly, protecting these from onlookers needs to be a priority. Screen-savers and automatic log-ins are ‘old school’ but highly effective at reducing the amount of time a screen may be visible. Screens should also be angled away from passers-by: for instance, in a public place, employees are advised to sit with their backs to a wall.
Of course, that is not always viable, for example when in the audience at a conference, on a plane or train. This is where privacy filters make a difference, because screens are only viewable at very close range to the user. The latest generation of privacy filters are designed to be easily flipped up or down, depending on when someone wants to share their screen. Filters can be applied to monitors, laptops, tablets and even smartphones.
While digital security threats continue to become more complicated and often harder to address, locking down visual hacking is at least one way in which those responsible for risk, compliance and security can better protect organisations, their employees and customers’ data.
By Peter Barker, EMEA Market Development Manager, Display Materials and Systems Division at 3M | <urn:uuid:db46239c-e7c1-4414-ae94-a7cd087e3e10> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://internationalsecurityjournal.com/visual-hacking-time-to-take-a-closer-look/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.954046 | 1,212 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Django is a free open-source Python web framework which takes care of the web development process so users can focus on writing the app instead of reinventing the wheel. Django was built by experienced developers in 2003 and was later released to the public in July 2005 and has since been updated to increase performance and speed. It has been translated into fifty languages and is used by developers all over the globe.
If you’re using Windows, Mac or Linux, often Python is already pre-installed on your system, making Django ready to be downloaded. However, if not, you can download the appropriate version of Python for your OS on the official Python site. It’s necessary to have Python installed before you attempt to download Django as this is the programming language used for the framework.
Some key features of Django include:
1. Versatility. Django can be used for a wide variety of projects, including content management systems, scientific computing platforms and social network sites. It can be used to build applications for use on different domains but remains high-speed, reliable and secure.
2. Speed. Django was created by web developers with the aim of taking applications from concept to completion in as little time as possible. It’s safe to say they have achieved their goal as Django is one of the fastest web frameworks on the market, which makes it a real time-saver.
3. Fully-loaded. Django includes extras which will sort out dozens of common web development task, such as RSS feeds, user authentication and content administration. Django is simple to use and is intended to take the stress out of projects both big and small for all those perfectionists out there.
4. Scalability. The reason Django is so popular today is vastly due to its ability to quickly adapt to heavy traffic demands. It is highly flexible in its scaling and can meet any demand of web traffic to keep users’ sites up and running without fear of crashing.
5. Security. Django understands that the internet can often be frightening, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s why security is at the heart of everything they do. Django has frequent security updates to block all potential risks and threats from sabotaging your projects. With security taken seriously, Django helps developers avoid common security mistakes, including clickjacking, cross-site scripting, SQL injection and cross-site request forgery. Why risk it? Download Django today.
We offer our customers a dependable service 24/7. We’re based in the UK, so you don’t have to worry about language barriers, time zones or bothersome phone connections. All of our friendly staff members use simple language and terms, instead of incomprehensible and intimidating jargon to give every customer a stress-free experience. Whether you have a quick question or want to chat in-depth and learn more about Django, get in touch today and we promise to do everything we can to support you. Enquire today to find out more about Django or the numerous other technological services we provide at Catalyst2 – we’d love to hear from you.
Upcoming technology is what we specialise in and we’re dedicated to giving you a heads-up on the latest and greatest technological advancements. Django is a great open-source web developing platform, which we believe is one of the best on the market at the moment. That’s why we’re offering you the best service at the best prices. Give our team a call using the contact details provided for advice and information on any one of our services. | <urn:uuid:f95da793-28ed-48d2-9e80-2dc47e4633d5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.catalyst2.com/servers/software-specific/django-hosting/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337404.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003070342-20221003100342-00391.warc.gz | en | 0.951208 | 736 | 3 | 3 |
Discover the foundational components of data quality, why it is important for your business, and how to better manage data quality.
What is Data Quality?
Data quality is an integral part of data governance that ensures that your organization’s data is fit for purpose. It refers to the overall utility of a dataset and its ability to be easily processed and analyzed for other uses. Managing data quality dimensions such as completeness, conformity, consistency, accuracy, and integrity, helps your data governance, analytics, and AI/ML initiatives deliver reliably trustworthy results.
What do I need to do know about data quality?
Quality data is useful data. To be of high quality, data must be consistent and unambiguous. Data quality issues are often the result of database merges or systems/cloud integration processes in which data fields that should be compatible are not due to schema or format inconsistencies. Data that is not high quality can undergo data cleansing to raise its quality.
What are the benefits of data quality?
When data is of excellent quality, it can be easily processed and analyzed, leading to insights that help the organization make better decisions. High-quality data is essential to cloud analytics, AI initiatives, business intelligence efforts, and other types of data analytics.
In addition to helping your organization extract more value from its data, the process of data quality management improves organizational efficiency and productivity, along with reducing the risks and costs associated with poor quality data. Data quality is, in short, the foundation of the trusted data that drives digital transformation—and a strategic investment in data quality will pay off repeatedly, in multiple use cases, across the enterprise.
What activities are involved in data quality management?
Data quality activities involve data rationalization and validation. Data quality efforts are often needed while integrating disparate applications that occur during merger and acquisition activities, but also when siloed data systems within a single organization are brought together for the first time in a cloud data warehouse or data lake. Data quality is also critical to the efficiency of horizontal business applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM).
The Foundational Components of Data Quality
The success of data quality management is measured by how confident you are in the accuracy of your analysis, how well the data supports various initiatives, and how quickly those initiatives deliver tangible strategic value (Want to assess your data quality ROI? Use our online calculator). To achieve all those goals, your data quality tools must be able to:
- Support all use cases: Data migration requires different data quality metrics than next-gen analytics. Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach in favor of one integrated solution that lets you choose the right capabilities for your particular use cases. For example, if you are migrating data, you first need to understand what data you have (profiling) before moving it. For an analytics use case, you want to cleanse, parse, standardized, and de-duplicate data.
- Accelerate and scale: Data quality is equally critical for web services, batch, big data, and real-time workloads. It needs to be trusted, secure, governed, and fit for use regardless of where it resides (on-premises, cloud) or its velocity (batch, real-time, sensor/IoT, and so on). Look for a solution that scales to fit any workload across all departments. You may want to start by focusing on the quality of data within one application or process, using out-of-the-box business rules and accelerators plus role-based self-service tools to profile, prepare, and cleanse your data. Then, when you’re ready to expand the program, you can deploy the same business rules and cleansing processes across all applications and data types at scale.
- Deliver a flexible user experience: Data scientists, data stewards, and data consumers all have specific capabilities, skill sets, and interests in working with data. Choose a data quality solution that tailors the user experience by role so all your team members can achieve their goals without IT intervention.
- Automate critical tasks: The volume, variety, and velocity of today’s enterprise data makes manual data quality management impossible. An AI-powered solution can automatically assess data quality and make intelligent recommendations that streamline key tasks like data discovery and data quality rule creation across the organization.
Dimensions of Data Quality
Data quality operates in six core dimensions:
- Accuracy: The data reflects the real-world objects and/or events it is intended to model. Accuracy is often measured by how the values agree with an information source that is known to be correct.
- Completeness: The data makes all required records and values available.
- Consistency: Data values drawn from multiple locations do not conflict with each other, either across a record or message, or along all values of a single attribute. Note that consistent data is not necessarily accurate or complete.
- Timeliness: Data is updated as frequently as necessary, including in real time, to ensure that it meets user requirements for accuracy, accessibility and availability.
- Validity: The data conforms to defined business rules and falls within allowable parameters when those rules are applied.
- Uniqueness: No record exists more than once within the data set, even if it exists in multiple locations. Every record can be uniquely identified and accessed within the data set and across applications.
All six of these dimensions of data quality are important, but your organization may need to emphasize some more than others to support specific use cases. For example, the pharmaceuticals industry requires accuracy, while financial services firms must prioritize validity.
Examples of Data Quality Metrics
Some data quality metrics are consistent across organizations and industries – for example, that customer billing and shipping information is accurate, that a website provides all the necessary details about products and services, and that employee records are up-to-date and correct.
Here are some examples related to different industries:
Healthcare data quality metrics
Healthcare organizations need complete, correct, unique patient records to drive proper treatment, fast and accurate billing, risk management, and more effective product pricing and sales.
Public sector data quality metricsPublic sector agencies need complete, consistent, accurate data about constituents, proposed initiatives, and current projects to understand how well they’re meeting their goals.
Financial services data quality metricsFinancial services firms must identify and protect sensitive data, automate reporting processes, and monitor and remediate regulatory compliance.
Manufacturing data quality metricsManufacturers need to maintain accurate customer and vendor records, be notified in a timely way of QA issues and maintenance needs, and track overall supplier spend for opportunities to reduce operational costs.
Data Quality Issues
The potential ramifications of poor data quality range from minor inconvenience to business failure. Data quality issues waste time, reduce productivity and drive up costs. They can also tarnish customer satisfaction, damage brand reputation, force an organization to pay heavy penalties for regulatory noncompliance—or even threaten the safety of customers or the public. Here are a few examples of companies that faced the consequences of data quality issues and found a way to address them:
- Poor data quality conceals valuable cross-sell and upsell opportunities and leaves a company struggling to identify gaps in its offerings that might inspire innovative products and services or allow it to tap into new markets. Nissan Europe’s customer data was unreliable and scattered across various disconnected systems, which made it difficult for the company to generate personalized offers and target them effectively. By improving data quality, the company now has a better understanding of its current and prospective customers, which has helped it improve customer communications and raise conversion rates while reducing marketing costs.
- Poor data quality wastes time and forces rework when manual processes fail or have to be checked repeatedly for accuracy. CA Technologies faced the prospect of spending months manually correcting and enhancing customer contact data for a major Salesforce migration. By incorporating automated email verification and other data quality measures into the migration and integration process, the company was able to use a smaller migration team than expected and complete the project in a third of the allotted time with measurably better data.
Four Steps to Start Improving Your Data Quality
You can only plan your data quality journey once you understand your starting point. To do that, you’ll need to assess the current state of your data: what you have, where it resides, its sensitivity, data relationships, and any quality issues it has.
2. Define rules
The information you gather during the discovery phase shapes your decisions about the data quality measures you need and the rules you’ll create to achieve the desired end state. For example, you may need to cleanse and deduplicate data, standardize its format, or discard data from before a certain date. Note that this is a collaborative process between business and IT.
3. Apply rules
Once you’ve defined rules, you will integrate them into your data pipelines. Don’t get stuck in a silo; your data quality tools need to be integrated across all data sources and targets in order to remediate data quality across the entire organization.
4. Monitor and manage
Data quality is not a one-and-done exercise. To maintain it, you need to be able to monitor and report on all data quality processes continuously, on-premises and in the cloud, using dashboards, scorecards, and visualizations.
Data Quality Customer Success Stories
This storied Major League Baseball team relies on data to deliver richer ballpark experiences, maximize marketing opportunities for branded merchandise, and decide how best to invest in players, staff, and infrastructure. Using Informatica Data Quality lets the team cleanse and improve data from 24 on-premises and cloud systems as well as third parties so it can drive new revenue, make faster decisions, and build lifelong relationships with millions of fans around the world.
One of Singapore’s leading financial services and insurance firms, AIA Singapore deployed Informatica Data Quality to profile its data, track key performance indicators (KPIs), and perform remediation. Higher-quality data creates a deeper understanding of customer information and other critical business data, which in turn is helping the firm optimize sales, decision-making, and operational costs.
Start Unlocking the Value of Your Data
Data is everywhere and data quality is critical to making the most of it for everyone, everywhere. Keep these principles in mind as you work to improve your data quality:
- Make it an enterprise-wide strategic initiative.
- Emphasize the importance of data quality to data governance.
- Integrate data quality into your operations.
- Collaborate with business users to contextualize data and assess its value.
- Extend data quality to new areas (data lakes, AI, IoT) and new data sources.
- Leverage AI/machine learning to automate repetitive tasks like merging records and pattern matching.
All of these become much easier with Informatica’s integrated Intelligent Data Platform, which incorporates data quality into a broader infrastructure that touches all enterprise data.
Data Quality Resources
- Data Quality ROI Calculator
- eBbook: 10 Dividends of Data Quality
- 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Data Quality Solutions
- Article: How Data Governance Can Help Your Decision-Making
- Blog: Moving House = Moving Data: Lessons Learned from Cloud Data Quality Methodology
- Blog: Machine Learning Needs Data Quality
- Webinar: How to Succeed as a Data-Driven Company with MDM and Data Quality
- Free Trial: Informatica Cloud Data Quality | <urn:uuid:25a55a51-a845-451d-b029-e89cfaf8f828> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.informatica.com/hk/resources/articles/what-is-data-quality.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.913631 | 2,382 | 2.546875 | 3 |
With the help of a cluster of PCs running Linux, Canadian researchers have made a major breakthrough in tackling the deadly SARS virus.
The scientists, at the Genome Sciences Centre at the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Vancouver, used a 232-node Linux cluster to uncover the genetic sequence of the coronavirus
believed to be responsible for SARS.
The sequence was completed earlier this week, using one millionth of a gram of purified genetic material from Canadian patients with the virus, supplied by Canada?s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg.
With the virus? genetic sequence in hand, doctors can begin working on a diagnostic test for the virus, as well as anti-viral medications to combat it.
The Linux cluster the scientists used to do the research was built over three years, according to IBM, which supplied the hardware and clustering software for the system. It contains several generations of Intel processors, ranging from 1 Ghz Pentium IIIs to 2.8 Ghz Xeon CPUs, all of them with one gigabyte of memory.
According to the New York Times, SARS has affected 3,042 people so far, causing the deaths of 154 of them in 22 countries and Hong Kong. The fatality rate has risen to 5.1 percent from 4 percent in recent days. | <urn:uuid:91f536d3-77d2-4e92-be2f-6fc634726b51> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cioupdate.com/linux-tackles-deadly-sars-virus/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930181143-20220930211143-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.933996 | 266 | 3.15625 | 3 |
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,49570,00.html Reuters 11:15 a.m. Jan. 8, 2002 PST U.S. computer systems are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, partly because companies are not implementing security measures already available, according to a new report released Tuesday. "From an operational standpoint, cyber security today is far worse that what known best practices can provide," said the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, part of the National Research Council. "Even without any new security technologies, much better security would be possible today if technology producers, operators of critical systems, and users took appropriate steps," it said in a report released four months after the events of Sept. 11. Experts estimate U.S. corporations spent about $12.3 billion to clean up damage from computer viruses in 2001. Some predict viruses and worms could cause even more damage in 2002. The report said a successful cyber attack on the U.S. air traffic control system in coordination with airline hijackings like those seen on Sept. 11 could result in a "much more catastrophic disaster scenario." To avert such risks, the panel urged organizations to conduct more random tests of system security measures, implement better authentication systems and provide more training and monitoring to make information systems more secure. All these measures were possible without further research, it said. Investments in new technologies and better operating procedures could improve security even further, it noted. Herbert Lin, senior scientist at the board, said information technologies were developing at a very rapid rate, but security measures had not kept pace. In fact, he said, recommendations for improving security made by the panel a decade ago were still relevant and timely. "The fact that the recommendations we made 10 years ago are still relevant points out that there is a real big problem, structurally and organizationally, in paying attention to security," Lin said. "We've been very frustrated in our ability to get people to pay attention, and we're not the only ones," he added. Increased security concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington could provide fresh impetus for upgrading computer security, Lin said. But he warned against merely putting more federal funds into research, noting that it was essential to implement technologies and best practices already available. "The problem isn't research at this point. We could be so much safer if everyone just did what is possible now," Lin said. For instance, the report notes that passwords are the most common method used today to authenticate computer users, despite the fact that they are known to be insecure. A hardware token, or smart card, used together with a personal identification number or biometrics, would provide much better security for the computer system, the report said. The report urged vendors of computer systems to provide well-engineered systems for user authentication based on such hardware tokens, taking care to make sure they were more secure and convenient for users. In addition, it said vendors should develop simple and clear blueprints for secure operation and ship systems with security features turned on so that a conscious effort was needed to disable them. One big problem was the lack of incentives for companies to respond adequately to the security challenge, the report said. It said one possible remedy would be to make software companies, system vendors and system operators liable for system breaches and to mandate reporting of security breaches that could threaten critical social functions. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Jan 09 2002 - 10:13:16 PST | <urn:uuid:f36754e6-0afd-4c5d-888e-b5c42b1ee7a8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | http://lists.jammed.com/ISN/2002/01/0048.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.970635 | 747 | 2.515625 | 3 |
What does responsible AI look like—and who owns it? Will artificial intelligence (AI) help us or hinder us? AI as a problem-solving tool offers great promise. But cyberattacks, social manipulation, competing financial incentives, and more warn of AI’s dark side. For organizations expecting AI to transform their companies, ethical risks could be a chief concern.
Copyright by: https://www2.deloitte.com
What are AI ethics?
AI is a broad term encompassing technologies that can mimic intelligent human behavior.1 Four major categories of AI are in increasingly wide use today:
- Machine learning: The ability of statistical models to develop capabilities and improve their performance over time without the need to follow explicitly programmed instructions.
- Deep learning: A complex form of machine learning used for image and speech recognition and involving neural networks with many layers of abstract variables.
- Natural language processing (NLP): A technology that powers voice-based interfaces for virtual assistants and chatbots, as well as querying data sets, by extracting or generating meaning and intent from the text in a readable, stylistically neutral, and grammatically correct form.
- Computer vision: A technology that extracts meaning and intent out of visual elements, whether characters (in the case of document digitization) or the categorization of content in images such as faces, objects, scenes, and activities.2
Ethics is “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation,” as well as “the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group.”3 In commerce, an ethical mindset supports values-based decision making. The aim is to do not only what’s good for business, but also what’s good for the organization’s employees, clients, customers, and communities in which it operates.
Bringing together these two definitions, “AI ethics” refers to the organizational constructs that delineate right and wrong—think corporate values, policies, codes of ethics, and guiding principles applied to AI technologies. These constructs set goals and guidelines for AI throughout the product lifecycle, from research and design, to build and train, to change and operate.
Considerations for carrying out AI ethics
Conceptually, AI ethics applies to both the goal of the AI solution, as well as each part of the AI solution. AI can be used to achieve an unethical business outcome, even though its parts—machine learning, deep learning, NLP, and/or computer vision—were all designed to operate ethically.
For example, an automated mortgage loan application system might include computer vision and tools designed to read hand-written loan applications, analyze the information provided by the applicant, and make an underwriting decision based on parameters programmed into the solution. These technologies don’t process such data through an ethical lens—they just process data. Yet if the mortgage company inadvertently programs the system with goals or parameters that discriminate unfairly based on race, gender, or certain geographic information, the system could be used to make discriminatory loan approvals or denials.
In contrast, an AI solution with an ethical purpose can include processes that lack integrity or accuracy toward this ethical end. For example, a company may deploy an AI system with machine learning capabilities to support the ethical goal of non-discriminatory personnel recruiting processes. The company begins by using the AI capability to identify performance criteria based on the best performers in the organization’s past. Such a sample of past performers may include biases based on past hiring characteristics (including discriminatory criteria such as gender, race, or ethnicity) rather than simply performance.
In other words, the machine learns based on the data that it processes, and if the data sample isn’t representative or accurate, then the lessons it learns from the data won’t be accurate and may lead to unethical outcomes. To understand where ethical issues with artificial intelligence could arise and how in the future of work those issues might be avoided, it helps to organize AI along four primary dimensions of concern):
- Technology, data, and security. Look at the organization’s approach to the AI lifecycle from an ethical perspective, including the ways it builds and tests data and models into AI-enabled solutions. Leadership in this dimension comes from the organization’s information, technology, data, security, and privacy chiefs.
- Risk management and compliance. Find out how the organization develops and enforces policies, procedures, and standards for AI solutions. See how they tie in with the organization’s mission, goals, and legal or regulatory requirements. The heads of risk, compliance, legal, and ethics play a role in this dimension.
- People, skills, organizational models, and training. Understand and monitor how the use of AI impacts the experiences of both employees and customers. Continuously assess how operating models, roles, and organizational models are evolving due to the use of AI. Educate all levels of the workforce and implement training initiatives to retool or upskill capabilities. Establish protocols to incentivize ethical behavior and encourage ethical decisions along the AI lifecycle. In this dimension, the human resources function shares responsibility with learning and development teams, ethics officers, and broader executive leadership.[…]
Read more: www.2.deloitte.com | <urn:uuid:5fdde354-349b-4db7-a0e4-40c5cb5d8b99> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://swisscognitive.ch/2020/05/19/ai-ethics-a-business-imperative-for-boards-and-c-suites/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.929299 | 1,086 | 3.5625 | 4 |
U.S. Army researchers have come up with a model that seeks to advance team-like partnerships between humans and artificial intelligence.
The three-dimensional construct developed by Army Combat Capabilities Development Command researchers maps out the capabilities of computational and biological intelligence and charts the capabilities along three axes: information certainty, available time and complexity of the problem, the service said Wednesday.
“The idea of capability as a key variable to compare humans and AI is a pretty unifying notion,” said Jason Metcalfe, Army research kinesiologist.
“Two critical factors that show up broadly in the science on this are the time available to execute a response and the level of certainty in the information about the task. With all that, a key element of our argument is that these discussions almost always neglect task complexity as an important factor,” he added.
Metcalfe said the task complexity factor enables the construct to provide a more accurate representation of AI and human capabilities that should be taken into consideration by engineers and scientists.
Researchers believe the theoretical construct could help developers design learning algorithms and control frameworks that could address blind spots facing humans and facilitate human support for smart technologies. | <urn:uuid:3fe14582-46ba-4516-8ded-67f3480480a0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://executivegov.com/2021/08/army-seeks-to-advance-human-ai-synergy-with-theoretical-construct/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337524.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004184523-20221004214523-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.933442 | 241 | 2.765625 | 3 |
One of the questions we keep getting frequently from businesses as well as others is why do hackers hack? What do they get from doing damage? Is it just about money? Or ego?
Well, there are numerous reasons why hackers hack a website or an app or even servers. And this is nothing new. In the early days of the internet, hackers hacked websites or took down services just to show they could break a system. So, you could say it was more about their ego or showing off or sometimes just to make a point that something can be broken. These days, it's way more complicated and so are the intentions behind such activities.
Before deep-diving into the reasons which motivate hackers to hack, let us know more about the 3 common categories of hackers and some of the common hacking techniques they use.
Table of Contents
What are the 3 Categories of Hackers?
Generally, hackers are classified into three categories based on their motives behind hacking:
1. Black Hat Hackers:
Black hat hackers are notoriously known to infiltrate into networks and systems by creating and spreading malware. Basically, they are the ‘bad hackers’. They are generally motivated by monetary gains but on many occasions, they just do it for fun also. From amateurs to expert cybercriminals, anyone can be a black hat hacker as long as they are hacking with the motive of spreading malware and stealing personal data.
2. White Hat Hackers:
Not all hackers are bad, some are white hat hackers also. Commonly known as ‘ethical hackers’, white hat hackers are often contracted by businesses and government agencies to check for security vulnerabilities. They implement commonly known cybersecurity techniques like penetration testing and thorough vulnerability assessments to ensure that the security systems are in place.
3. Grey Hat Hackers:
These hackers have characteristics from both black and white hat hackers, but they generally carry out their hacking missions without seeking permissions from anyone. Mostly they do report the vulnerabilities found to the concerned parties, but they also demand compensations in return. If not rewarded properly, they might exploit the vulnerabilities as well.
Why Do Hackers Hack?
1. Steal/Leak Information
I am sure you guessed this. One of the most common reasons for hackers to hack is to steal or leak information. This could be data and information about your customers, your internal employees or even private data specific to your business. These are cases where hackers typically go after big targets in order to get the most attention.
Some of the biggest examples are the Ashley Madison hack or the Starbucks app hack. In the Ashley Madison hack, hackers were able to break into the customer database and get access to all the information including many private pictures of popular celebrities. This incident was a big shakeup in the Internet world which also affected the private lives of many people.
A lot of times, hackers hack information in order to assume your personal identity and then use it for something else like transferring money, taking a loan, etc. Such incidents have increased after Internet banking and mobile banking have started to become more popular. With the growth of smartphones and mobile devices, the potential for monetary gain through hacking has also increased.
Many big businesses have fallen prey to this - Sony, Target, Yahoo, Equifax, eBay, HomeDepot, Adobe, to just name a few. Even though there has been a lot of media attention about all the above companies being hacked, most businesses still believe this won't happen to them. By not being proactive about security, you are only putting your data at risk.
2. Disrupt Services
Hackers just love to take something down. And then also leave a statement on the website - more on that later. But hackers have successfully taken down many services by creating bots that overwhelm a server with traffic, thus, leading to a crash. It is known as a DoS (Denial of Service) attack and can put a company’s website out of service for a while. These days, there's also DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks which use multiple infected systems to take down a single major system leading to a denial of service.
There are other ways also, like infecting a large network with malicious software inserted onto one computer either through email or otherwise which leads to a chain reaction affecting the whole network.
Server disruption attacks usually have their own personal motive. Mainly, it is to render a service or website useless. Sometimes it can also be to make a point.
3. Make a Point
The hackers who fall into this category are very interesting. They don't care about money or data. They seem to feel that they have a higher purpose in life. They want to steal information or disrupt your network in order to make a point.
Again, going back to the Ashley Madison hack, the hackers had access to account details of 32 million users but before they made this public, the hackers left a message on the website to inform everyone on what they are done. They also mentioned what they thought about the website and why they thought a service like this was immoral. Here's a screenshot of the message left on the website by the hackers:
This is what everyone usually fears about. We've seen many businesses reach out to us at the stage when they have already been hacked and a hacker is demanding money. Hackers not only hack businesses and ask for ransom but they also try hacking into regular user accounts and try to take advantage of things like online banking, online retail, etc. where financial transactions are involved.
Last year also saw the biggest ransomware attack called WannaCry where millions of computers around the world were hacked and users had to pay a ransom to get back access to their computers.
5. Driven by Purpose - Hacktivism, Idealism, Political Motives
Many hackers are also drive by a specific purpose. Sometimes, this comes out only when they get caught. Some of them aim to be idealists and take it upon themselves to expose injustice, some have political motives, some simple target the government, and so on. A major example is a hacktivist group called Anonymous who have been popular around the world for challenging and taking down many governments. These hackers can target religious groups, governments, movements, to promote a particular agenda.
Another example of a politically driven agenda was when France was having an election last year. In fact, at the beginning of May, we all got to know that Emmanuel Macron, President-elect for France, had his presidential campaign emails leaked following a hack. Giving the timing of the hack, many speculate that it was done with a purpose – to sway the votes.
And so are the speculations about the US presidential elections when Donald Trump became President.
What is the Most Common Ethical Hacking?
When it comes to hacking techniques, the list is surprisingly long. However, we will only talk about some of the most commonly employed techniques by threat actors:
Phishing is a commonly known hacking technique where a hacker creates a replica of some web page in order to steal money or personal information of users.
2. UI Redress
Similar to Phishing, UI redress is a hacking method where a hacker creates a fake or hidden user interface with some inappropriate content.
3. Denial of Service (DoS\DDoS)
One of the most common types of attacks, DoS or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) is employed to disable or crash a server. Hackers generally do this by sending tonnes of server requests via bots.
4. DNS Spoofing
DNS spoofing or DNS cache poisoning is used by hackers to infect DNS servers and redirect internet traffic to a similar but fraudulent website.
5. SQL Injection
Using this technique, hackers place malicious code in SQL statements and are able to access and control sensitive databases.
Good Read- How to Prevent SQL Injection Attack?
6. Brute force
Considered as one of the simplest methods gain access, brute force is a hacking technique where a hacker tries numerous combinations of usernames and passwords until he is able to get into the target system.
7. Man in the Middle Attack
In this MITM attack, a hacker positions himself in the middle of a conversation happening between a user and an application. Mostly, the motive is to gain sensitive user or business information.
What Can You Do To Be Safe from hacking
Businesses often tend to give it away rather easily because they think they will not be hacked. Some of them also have a reactive nature where they'd only do something once a situation arises. The fact is that hacks happen all the time. They've been happening for years and they've only increased with time. It happens to business and users, all shapes and sizes.
One of the best things you can do as a business is to proactively test the security of all your interaction entities - websites, mobile apps, networks, etc. by performing penetration tests either through service providers or using an automated security testing tool like Appknox. Run these tests on a regular basis and make sure your systems are up to date. Additionally, always keep an action plan ready on what to do if a breach happens. It's always better to be safe than be sorry. | <urn:uuid:530f5fe2-5b2a-4469-90e3-42afeb97ab9d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.appknox.com/blog/why-do-hackers-hack | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337524.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004184523-20221004214523-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.958049 | 1,909 | 2.609375 | 3 |
DANE (DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities) is the option to use secured DNS infrastructure to store generic verifiable information for multi-factor verification. The most common use of DANE today is the TLSA record type (Transport Layer Security Authentication), which allows users to verify the PKIX certificate received from a website by querying for its information in DNS. TLSA is specified in RFC 6698.
Why Use DANE?
For decades now, we have attempted to secure the Internet by associating cryptographic keys with names, and call them “certificates.” Then we have several entities known as Certificate Authorities (CAs) that we pay to issue and to maintain the integrity of these certificates. This public CA module is fundamentally flawed because the typical list of trusted CA’s in a web browser number in several dozens, and they range from DigiCert, VeriSign, to the lesser known Tubitak (Turkish Government) and HongKong Post Office.
A single trusted CA can undermine the security of the entire system, because, by design, any CA can issue certificates for any domain name, such as www.infoblox.com, and that particular illegitimate certificate would not raise warnings on the billions of web browsers. Over the past few years, we have seen malicious and deliberate attempts by attackers or governments to forge certificates for well-known domain names such as google.com or microsoft.com, in an attempt to wiretap or subvert TLS-protected websites.
Another common technique uses the man-in-the-middle style attack to intercept the user’s connection handshake with an intermediate device. This is common in many corporate environments where a web proxy intercepts the user’s secure web connection in order to analyze the encrypted traffic, but this can also be employed by an attacker for snooping.
DANE offers the option for clients to seek a second source of verification, in the case of TLSA, certificate information. Leveraging the authentication inherently in DNSSEC, organizations can publish the legitimate TLS certificate information in DNS, allowing clients to verify that the certificate information published over HTTPS matches the one published over DNS.
How Does DANE/TLSA Work?
Figure FAQ-2 below illustrates the simplified steps of clients using DANE to verify a website’s certificate information.
- The client browser connects to https://www.example.com
- The web server replies with its certificate
- The client asks its local DNS server for the TLSA record of www.example.com
- The DNS server performs a normal DNS lookup for www.example.com TLSA record, uses DNSSEC to validate the response that came from the example.com authoritative name servers
After receiving the validated TLSA record, the client browser computes and compares the value of the TLSA record from DNS with the certificate received from web server. If the two do not match, the web browser displays a warning and does not load the page.
What is in the TLSA record?
Figure FAQ-3 shows an example of a TLSA record for the domain www.example.com:
In this example, the administrators of example.com took the certificate it published for the website, and generated a SHA-256 hash of the certificate, and published the hash as a TLSA resource record in DNS. This can be done using open source tools such as OpenSSL, or free online tools such as Shumon Huque’s page: https://www.huque.com/bin/gen_tlsa.
Once published, supported clients (browsers) will seek out this record after it has received a copy of the website’s certificate, and run its own computation to ensure that the information received over HTTPS matches the information received over DNSSEC.
TLSA is not limited to only verifying website identities, it can also be used to verify other services such as mail. Figure FAQ-4 shows an example of a TLSA record that provides information about an IMAP server:
The same principle applies here, if the user is using supported email software when it connects to the IMAP server, it double checks the identity of the IMAP server received over port 993 against the information it received over DNSSEC on port 53. If the two do not match, the email client does not proceed to send the email.
Dependencies for DANE
Although it is not a strict technical dependency, it goes without saying that one cannot have DANE without having DNSSEC. Publishing all of this verification information for security purposes is a waste of time if the publishing mechanism itself (DNS) is not secured. Without DNSSEC, an attacker who spoofed the web site’s certificate could just as easily spoof the TLSA record, rendering this second layer of checking useless.
Another dependency for DANE that is currently lacking is client support. While no major browsers have DANE/TLSA support built-in natively yet, many will support it through plugin or extension; same for other software such as email. | <urn:uuid:fc221087-8c4e-4101-80eb-781fc9878fec> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.infoblox.com/dns-security-resource-center/dns-security-faq/what-is-dane/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337524.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004184523-20221004214523-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.908726 | 1,056 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Downgrade attacks have been an issue with TLS and SSL protocols and may constitute a severe risk if left unchecked.
Read below to learn more about a downgrade attack, how it works, and how to prevent it.
Downgrade attack definition
A downgrade attack is an attack that seeks to cause a connection, protocol, or cryptographic algorithm to drop to an older and less secure version. It is also known as a version rollback attack or bidding-down attack.
This attack aims to enable the exploitation of vulnerabilities that are associated with earlier versions. It is enabled by backward compatibility – the principle of ensuring interoperability with legacy servers. If a downgrade attack is successful, it allows other attacks to be performed and can lead to data theft, including credentials, personal financial and medical data, and more.
Downgrade attacks are frequently launched against the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, whose purpose is to secure traffic over the internet via cryptography.
Downgrade attacks seek to downgrade the use of HTTPS in web applications to HTTP, though these will not be explored here in detail. They can also be used against mail servers to downgrade their cryptographic protocols, such as STARTTLS, and force emails to be sent as plaintext.
Read our blog post on What Is TLS, SSL, HTTP & HTTPS? How Do They Work Together? to learn more about the connection between the SSL/TLS protocols and HTTP/HTTPS.
How does a downgrade attack work?
Typically, a downgrade attack is part of a larger attack scenario, as the downgrade in itself does not lead to a system compromise. It creates favorable conditions (vectors) for further attacks, such as cryptographic attacks.
A common approach is to achieve the downgrade via a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM). This enables attackers to interfere with the traffic of the user. After that, they will use their position in the middle to force the server to downgrade to an older protocol TLS or SSL version – also known as a downgrade dance.
Depending on the specifics of the attack, a MITM may be used to passively capture traffic between a client and server once the downgrade is achieved. At the same time, it can also be used to actively interfere with traffic and send various requests to the server to decipher the cryptographic key, the session cookie, or something else.
The above is only one possible scenario of exploiting the vulnerabilities that a downgraded protocol version reveals. Learn more about the different types of downgrade attacks below!
Types of TLS downgrade attacks
Following are some of the main types of attacks that could use a downgrade approach to achieve their aims.
Whether a downgrade is required depends on the status of the target – if a system is already using old or obsolete protocol versions (which includes, at minimum, all versions of SSL), then a downgrade is not necessary. However, this is less likely, so a downgrade attack will usually be part of the below scenarios.
Running the code will allow the attacker to position themselves in the middle and begin sending requests to a server running some version of TLS to establish a secure connection and then drop these attempts. After a while, if the server supports SSL due to backward compatibility, it will interpret these unsuccessful connection attempts as a cue to switch to SSL 3.0 instead of TLS.
Once it has downgraded the version, the attacker can move on to exploiting a vulnerability found in the cipher block chaining (CBC) mode of encryption that is used in SSL 3.0.
At this stage, a padding oracle attack includes sending requests with varying input to the server and monitoring its responses. Based on the responses, an attacker can slowly reveal the encrypted contents of the ciphertext. This exposes the session cookie, hijacks a user’s session, and possibly steals their credentials and data.
The FREAK attack (Factoring RSA Export Keys) utilizes a MITM and a downgrade attack scenario. It is directed at TLS and SSL implementations that allow export-grade ciphers that use RSA encryption.
Instead of downgrading the whole protocol version, attackers will use their position in the middle between client and browser to request that the server switch from a standard RSA cipher suite to an export-grade one. This is done as part of the cipher suite negotiation process in the client Hello message to the server.
Once the server switches to this less-secure cipher suite, attackers can gain access to the suite’s decryption key and decrypt and inject traffic.
The LogJam vulnerability operates similarly to FREAK. This attack is launched against servers that use TLS with a Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Using a man-in-the-middle approach, attackers force the server’s TLS protocol to downgrade to using a 512-bit Diffie-Hellman export-grade key exchange algorithm (i.e., DHE_EXPORT).
After causing the downgrade, an attacker can proceed with cracking the encryption parameters and thereby gain access and control over the connection.
The BEAST attack (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS) seeks to exploit a vulnerability found in CBC mode in the TLS 1.0 and SSL protocols. It is similar to the POODLE attack, though the conditions required to execute a BEAST successfully are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, making it an impractical attack.
Like other attacks in this category, BEAST relies on a man-in-the-middle interfering, causing the protocol to be downgraded. After that, attackers perform record-splitting, which means they interfere with the traffic between client and server. They inject data blocks that manipulate cipher block boundaries into the session and observe the server’s response. Based on the response, they can slowly guess the contents of the blocks of ciphertext that are exchanged between the server and the client without knowing the encryption key.
SLOTH (Security Losses from Obsolete and Truncated Transcript Hashes) is an attack that targets the signature and hash algorithms, downgrading them to a weaker version. This allows attackers to capture traffic and decrypt it fairly easily.
This attack can be launched against a client and a server independently or together. Like other attacks described above, it also relies on a man-in-the-middle for both the downgrade and the subsequent interference in the traffic.
Downgrade attack prevention
To prevent a downgrade attack, you must address its attack vector. If the vulnerability is due to support for export-grade ciphers, then the appropriate measure is to stop supporting such ciphers. If, on the other hand, the vulnerability is associated with support for previous versions of TLS or SSL, this needs to be addressed.
Implementing a secure and stable TLS configuration is one of the best measures you can take to address a host of causes that can lead to a downgrade attack. This includes providing support only to strong protocols such as TLS 1.2 and 1.3 (i.e., removing backward compatibility) and solid ciphers with no known downgrade vulnerabilities.
Enabling the TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV signal as part of your TLS configuration is another good step in preventing downgrade attacks. Suppose you do decide to support lower protocol versions. In that case, this will prevent your server from downgrading its protocol if the client can meet it at a higher version but is advertising a lower one (possibly due to man-in-the-middle interference).
Downgrade Attack Video Explanation
What is a downgrade attack?
A downgrade attack is a scenario in which a malicious actor attempts to force a server or client to use a lower version of a cryptographic protocol (such as TLS or SSL), a cipher suite (such as an export-grade cipher, instead of a standard one), or a connection type (HTTP, instead of HTTPS).
How do downgrade attacks function?
A typical scenario is for attackers to position themselves as a man-in-the-middle (MITM) and interfere with traffic between clients and servers. They can attempt to cause a server or client to downgrade the version of a protocol or cipher. Once the downgrade is successful, they will exploit the vulnerabilities associated with the lower version.
How to protect against downgrade attacks?
Removing backward compatibility and implementing a secure and strong TLS configuration is one of the best steps you can take to protect against downgrade attacks. Implementing TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV is also very useful if you decide to support older protocol versions.
What version of SSL does the POODLE attack downgrade clients to?
The POODLE attack attempts to downgrade servers and clients specifically to SSL 3.0, although newer versions of the attack can also be launched against CBC in TLS 1.0 – 1.2. | <urn:uuid:d549e75e-502d-4950-8f22-e95c280a6ed1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://crashtest-security.com/downgrade-attack/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334579.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925132046-20220925162046-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.930593 | 1,864 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Phishing is today’s nastiest threat. It brings disastrous cybersecurity threats like ransomware in its wake. Cybercriminals are using devious techniques like social engineering and spear phishing to entice employees into clicking on or interacting with cleverly disguised phishing emails, with sometimes disastrous consequences.
See how ransomware rocks businesses in The Ransomware Road to Ruin. DOWNLOAD IT NOW>>
These 10 facts about phishing illustrate just how dangerous phishing is for your business.
- 75% of organizations around the world have experienced some kind of phishing attack
- 35% of organizationshave experienced spear phishing
- 65% of organizations faced BEC attacks
- 74% of organizations in the United States have experienced a successful phishing attack
- 65% of active cybercriminal gangs relied on spear phishing as the primary infection vector
- Google had registered 2,145,013 phishing sites as of Jan 17, 2021. This is up from 1,690,000 on Jan 19, 2020 (up 27% over 12 months)
- A cyberattack is attempted every 39 seconds.
- 48% of malicious email attachments are Office files
- 94% of malware is delivered by email.
- Phishing attacks account for more than 80% of reported security incidents.
- See if your email security solution is getting the job done to secure your business with our checklist Can Your Email Security Do These 10 Things?
Still relying on an old-fashioned SEG? See why Graphus is better! SEE THE COMPARISON>>
Ransomware & Phishing Go Hand in Hand
Cybercrime is booming, and while that’s good news for the bad guys it’s very bad news for everyone else. Phishing is leading the charge as a profit center for cybercriminals, and with it comes ransomware among other dangers. Worldwide, cybercrime costs small and medium businesses more than $2.2 million a year. There are several ways that ransomware can enter a company’s IT environment. A hacker or disgruntled employee could deploy it directly. It could be slipped in a bogus software update. it may even arrive through a third party that has legitimate access to the company’s network and gets hacked themselves. But the most likely delivery system for ransomware is a phishing message – and that can be prevented. Learning more about ransomware’s relationship with phishing sheds light on the best ways for a company to reduce the risk of a devastating blow like a ransomware attack due to phishing.
5 Ransomware Facts to Remember
- An estimated 94% of ransomware arrives at businesses via email.
- 48% of infectious attachments that contain malware like ransomware are Office files.
- 90% of IT pros had clients that suffered ransomware attacks in the past year
- 51% of businesses worldwide were negatively impacted by ransomware in 2020
- 74% of respondents in a 2021 survey said that their companies had been successfully phished in the last year
Learn more about the relationship between ransomware and phishing: What is the Relationship Between Ransomware and Phishing?
See how to avoid cybercriminal sharks in Phishing 101. DOWNLOAD IT>>
Business Email Compromise Starts with Phishing
A phishing message is the most common vector for a business email compromise (BEC) attack on an organization. Anti-phishing technology also helps prevent BEC attacks. This potentially ruinous threat that is 64 times worse than ransomware according to this year’s internet crime report from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), yet often flies under the radar. FBI cybercrime analysts determined that business email compromise (BEC) schemes were the costliest cybercrime reported to IC3 in 2020, clocking in at 19,369 complaints with an adjusted loss of approximately $1.8 billion. All told, BEC was responsible for 37% of all cybercrime losses last year, pulling down an estimated unadjusted total of $2.1 billion.
5 BEC Facts to Remember
- The most common type of BEC scam is invoice or payment fraud
- BEC offshoots like billing scams have climbed by 155%
- An estimated 62% of BEC scams involve the cybercriminal asking for gift cards, cash app transfers or money cards
- A whopping 65% of organizations have faced down a BEC threat
- Many BEC attacks also include spoofing, a technique that ballooned by more than 220%
Learn more about the relationship between BEC and phishing: Business Email Compromise (BEC): What Is It & Why Is It Dangerous?
Learn the secret to ransomware defense in Cracking the RANSOMWARE Code. GET BOOK>>
AI-Powered Phishing Defense Helps Stem the Tide of Risk
Graphus is the industry’s first simple, powerful, automated phishing defense platform that provides three layers of comprehensive email security. Old-fashioned security tools just aren’t up to the challenge of protecting your business from today’s email threats – sophisticated email attacks routinely bypass technical controls such as Office 365 security, G Suite security, and Secure Email Gateways (SEGs). But they don’t bypass Graphus. SEE HOW GRAPHUS BEATS SEGs >>
Powered by AI technology, Graphus learns and evolves with your business to provide advanced protection against phishing, spear phishing, business email compromise (BEC) scams, account take over (ATO) attacks, and malicious attachments and web links.
- TrustGraph keeps phishing email away from employee inboxes by analyzing over 50 different attributes of your employees’ communications, including the devices they use, who they message most, what time of day they communicate, and more to detect suspicious email.
- EmployeeShield places warning banners on messages that may be unwanted and Phish911 empowers employees to report potential phishing email with just one click.
- Messages that are flagged as potential phishing threats are removed from every employee’s inbox as soon as they’re reported and quarantined for further review by IT staff to avoid accidents.
- Affordable automation and instant configuration mean you avoid the soft-costs that typically accompany new security solutions, freeing the IT team to focus on other activities and increasing operational efficiency.
- See how security automation saves businesses money in the eBook Automated Email Security Makes Cents.
- The smart algorithm never stops learning, refining your protection against new threats by harvesting data that helps it make future decisions without relying on traditional threat intelligence or human intervention with patches and updates.
Phishing threats will never stop growing, and neither will your company’s protection with Graphus. Contact our experts to see how smart, affordable, automated phishing defense from Graphus will benefit your business today. | <urn:uuid:13dcf5db-f21e-4e6e-b188-349615691b2a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.graphus.ai/blog/10-facts-about-phishing-in-2021-that-you-need-to-see/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334579.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925132046-20220925162046-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.92786 | 1,401 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Whether it’s HR systems, payment systems, or client databases, your data falling in the wrong hands can turn into a weapon of irreparable harm. Not only is a data breach expensive to correct, but it may also end up costing you in legal settlements and fines. According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach rose to $4.24 million in 2021 — the highest figure on record. Every organization that deals with digital data should conduct a regular cybersecurity risk assessment to avoid these threats.
What is a Risk Assessment in Cybersecurity?
A cybersecurity risk assessment is an analysis of threats to your information and operational technology systems. A completed cybersecurity assessment will result in a report detailing the risk and remediation measures for all your network-connected assets. These can be obvious things like your computers and servers, but also less-obvious Internet of Things (IoT) objects like printers, digital thermostats, and even fish tanks.
Hackers aim to breach your security systems in any way possible to steal your company’s data to make money. Whether it’s stolen credit card info, bank account numbers, personnel files, patient records, hackers can find a willing market for stolen data on the dark web where information can go for as little as few dollars, but cost organizations big money.
And that’s just if they steal your information. Another rising form of cyber threat is ransomware which locks your systems until you pay the hacker a fee — and even then recovery is not guaranteed. Having a business continuity and disaster recovery framework in place can help, but breach prevention is a much easier and more cost-effective measure.
A regular cybersecurity risk assessment is essential to ensuring your organization is prepared for any cyber risk. It’s good for your business relationships and your bottom line.
Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Framework
Before committing to a cybersecurity risk assessment, it’s important to choose a framework. A framework is a system of standards, guidelines, and best practices that can help you identify baseline controls and creates a methodology for systematically improving cybersecurity. There are many frameworks to choose from. While choosing the right framework is important, more important is deploying it effectively.
One of the most common is the NIST cybersecurity risk assessment. NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a government agency that develops technological standards for industry and government.
NIST has a general cybersecurity framework as well as frameworks for specific, highly sensitive industries such as healthcare and financial services. NIST is required for many government contracts in sensitive industries such as defense or election management.
There are other cybersecurity standards such as ISO and HITRUST which have their own specified use cases. Whatever cybersecurity risk assessment template you choose, your cyber risk management policy will only be as effective as you are proactive.
How to Conduct a Cybersecurity Risk Assessment
Regardless of the security standard, you choose to implement, conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment follows the same general steps. You will inventory your cyber assets, assess them for vulnerabilities, identify the various potential threats, and prioritize your risk remediation strategies.
An easy-to-understand way to conceptualize this is to think about your business’s technology infrastructure as a house. Cybercriminals are like thieves trying to break in and steal your belongings. With this in mind, let’s discuss how you can secure your home.
Identify Your Entryways (Assets)
Like the windows and doors of your home, your information and operational technology (IT and OT) are access points that cybercriminals can use to break into your business. Before you can work on securing these entry points, you have to know where they are.
The first step in a cybersecurity risk assessment is to identify and itemize all your IT and OT assets. Begin by creating an itemized list that also details what software they run and what in your network they are connected to.
Many organizations find it helpful to apply labels to digital assets to keep track of them. In businesses with good cybersecurity, it’s fairly common to see barcodes on CPU towers, on the bottom of mice, and on projectors. This allows you to track your assets on an ERP or other asset tracking system.
Identifying and labeling assets will help you when it comes time to install and update cybersecurity tools and configurations. With labeled assets, you can ensure that all of your assets receive the appropriate cybersecurity protections. This will also make it easier for SOC analysts to identify which devices are associated with SIEM log events.
For organizations starting from scratch, conducting a risk assessment on the entire organization may be a large task. In that case, it’s a wise idea to break down your cyber infrastructure into manageable chunks. In our house metaphor, this means securing your front door and first-floor windows (personal computers, servers, and networks).
Identify Your Valuables (Risks)
When a burglar breaks into your home, it’s unlikely they’re interested in your family photos or cookbook collection. Instead, they’re after the high-value items like cash, technology, and jewels. Likewise in your business, there are certain objectives or items that are more valuable to cybercriminals than others.
Once you understand what entry points you have, it’s time to think like a thief.
An easy way to do this is to classify your risks in a systematic way.
- Magnitude: If this item was stolen or breached, what would the monetary or reputation cost be? Is this like stealing a Matchbox car or a Ferrari?
- Timescale: How long will it take for someone to notice if these assets are left unsecured? Is this like an open garage door that poses an immediate risk or an unlocked attic window?
- Origination: Where is the threat of a security lapse coming from: individual teams, or automated systems? Are you worried about someone with keys to your home or a shadowy figure with a crowbar?
- Impact Type: What kind of consequences would a breach have: financial, reputational, environmental, etc? Will you need to file an insurance claim or just grab a mop and bucket?
- Affected Parties: If you get attacked, who is going to pay the price: your employees, customers, shareholders? You likely aren’t the only one who will be affected by a break-in to your home.
Not all assets and information carry the same risk. Some risks may not result in any negative consequences while others may stand to bankrupt your whole business. Knowing which are the serious and likely threats is crucial to a sensible cybersecurity policy.
One helpful way to visualize a risk assessment is to plot the likelihood and magnitude of possible threats. The chart above gives an example of such a plot, with zero-day APTs, DDoS attacks, and social engineering plotted based on a company’s security profile. If your business has DDoS protection and doesn’t deal with government secrets, your plot may look like this.
While you can remediate all risks that you can find, this probably isn’t a feasible way to approach security assessment. A better approach is to prioritize risks according to their likelihood and severity. In this way, you fix the biggest vulnerabilities first, protecting your business from massive damage.
Once you know what you have to lose and how you could be attacked, it’s time to think about how cybercriminals would break into your home. Will they sneak in while you’re sleeping? Will they walk in the front door like a guest?
With your vulnerabilities identified, you need to analyze how those risks can be turned into threats. This step will probably require the most research, as new threats are developing every day.
From ransomware to backdoors to social engineering, threats are multiplying every day. With the shift to remote work, identity verification is more difficult leading to an increase in cyberattacks and scams.
Here a just a few examples of recent real-world examples:
- The Colonial Pipeline Co. was a victim of a ransomware attack that investigators believe was the result of a single compromised password. Hackers were able to implant ransomware, locking their entire network until they paid a $4.4 million ransom. The hack caused nationwide fuel shortages in the US. With the intervention of the FBI, the company was able to recover part of the ransom. Most companies aren’t so lucky.
- The United States Office of Personnel Management was the victim of a data breach that exfiltrated personal identifying information of government employees and contractors including social security numbers. It’s suspected that the attacks were carried out by the Chinese government. As a result of the hack, the government provided identity monitoring services to affected personnel.
- In the healthcare sector there has been a wave of ransomware attacks from Russian cybercriminal gangs. These attacks have cost hospitals millions of dollars and led to actual deaths.
Identifying threats is very difficult, and the opportunity for error is massive. New threats are developing every day motivated by greed, politics, or espionage. For this reason, it’s a good idea to consult with a cybersecurity expert.
With your threats identified you’re ready to strategize about mitigation. However, it is unlikely that you can (or should) completely patch every vulnerability. After all, if you put up a 10-foot tall steel fence with a lava-filled moat around your home, it’s going to be a pain trying to get in or out. Likewise, many vulnerabilities are necessary for communication or easy data access in your business.
For this reason, every risk should be given a risk rating, so that risks and their remediation can be prioritized. A helpful approach is to use a cybersecurity risk assessment matrix when identifying risks.
How do you remediate a vulnerability? There are many cybersecurity tools you can buy, but off-the-shelf software is not the same as a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. Employees need to be trained to recognize social engineering. Software needs to be properly configured. In short, you need a base of knowledge to guide you through a cybersecurity risk assessment.
Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Tools
A cybersecurity risk assessment is the first step in a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. Your business has lots of digital parts— likely more than you can think of off the top of your head. Ensuring these parts are protected is crucial to the functioning of your business.
Cybersecurity risk assessments used to be a tedious manual process of checking individual devices for software and hardware configurations. Now these processes have largely been automated.
Foresite offers cybersecurity automated solutions to help companies understand their risk and align to security frameworks quickly. ProVision is an all-in-one cybersecurity solution that provides vulnerability assessments, network monitoring, and breach response while FIRM makes it easy to achieve framework compliance in days, not weeks or months.
Thinking about your technology infrastructure like a home for your data makes it easy to understand the associated assets, risks, and threats.
Tristin Zeman is the Digital Marketing Manager at Foresite. For the past 10 years, she has helped organizations of all sizes create and scale marketing programs through digital and traditional marketing channels and efficient marketing operations. | <urn:uuid:28ff87b6-d59f-43d4-98b2-c7fe91db5f2b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://foresite.com/blog/performing-a-cyber-risk-assessment/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335124.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928051515-20220928081515-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.939983 | 2,328 | 2.765625 | 3 |
In BGP configuration especially where Multihoming scenarios are used, AS prepend is one of commonly used a BGP feature which is used for path manipulation to influence the direction of the incoming traffic to an AS.
As a general understanding, AS prepend is applied only in an outbound direction to affect the incoming traffic to an AS.
Related – What is VRF
However, in this post, we will configure the AS prepend feature to IN direction and see how we can still achieve the same path manipulation as we could have achieved when AS prepend applied in OUT direction.
In this topology, on R1 we are getting the route R4 (188.8.131.52) from two routers R2 & R3. Without any traffic manipulation we see we are able to reach R4 from R1 via path R1 -> R3 -> R4.
R1#traceroute 184.108.40.206 source 220.127.116.11
We will now apply BGP AS prepend on R3 inbound to make path R1 -> R2 -> R4 the preferred path to reach router R4.
Now we have applied route-map in-prepend in inbound direction on R3 to make the AS-Path for 18.104.22.168 via R3 the longer one.
Verifying now on R1 we see the path via R2 is best and via R3 is not preferred anymore as it has longer AS-path.
Below is the Traceroute output to validate the expected output after configuration change –
Related – Interview Questions of BGP | <urn:uuid:9756e78a-03a2-41c3-b1fd-c27cffcb9142> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ipwithease.com/bgp-as-prepend-inbound-configuration-example/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335124.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928051515-20220928081515-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.905852 | 337 | 2.78125 | 3 |
They’re more withdrawn and quieter than usual. Come to think of it, they’ve been on their phone for a while now, but they finished their homework hours ago.
“What you doing over there?”
You try again. “Sweetheart, what are you doing on the phone?”
“Nothing! Leave me alone!” your usually sweet child snaps back.
What’s happening? Did they see something they shouldn’t have? Is someone bullying them? You’re not sure what’s happening, but you know it probably has something to do with something on their device and the Internet. But how can you best get to the bottom of this and tackle this thorny issue?
The online world is full of education, information, and fun, and used correctly it can offer huge benefits to every child. The problem is, according to a recent survey from Kaspersky, parents are struggling with how best to keep their kids safe online, with 84% feeling worried about what their child may be exposed to when surfing the Net.
Globally, more than 9 in 10 children 7- to 12-years-old have an Internet-enabled device, smartphone, or tablet. It seems that while worried about the many threats to children online — from exposure to sexual and violent content to active grooming — parents still feel the need for their children to have online devices. Understandably, this exponential growth of technology in our modern lives has left parents feeling unsure how to balance the need to protect their children’s online experience with giving kids access to the Internet for basics like school work and socializing with friends.
I have two teenagers, and as they have grown up, it has become more and more important for me to educate myself about the risks and responsibilities of allowing my children time online — particularly as the Internet has evolved.
As a psychological practitioner, I am well aware of the harm that can befall children and young people when they are left to navigate the complex cyberworld without appropriate advice, guidance, and supervision. Among families, 60 percent say they’ve directly experienced or seen an online safety threat incident, with children seeing sexual or violent content and Internet addiction being the most common real-life experiences. Even scarier, 13% have experienced online grooming and 14% identity and information theft. All too often, we hear about unfortunate situations where young people have trusted online connections with personal and sensitive information only to discover that the “friend” was a predator in disguise.
And it’s not just intentionally malicious actors that parents need to worry about. We see things every day that add pressure to conform with certain body image standards — ads with troubling messages about diet pills, cosmetic surgery, and more are often seen by very young children, and even though some parents may not find these types of messages too worrying, growing evidence suggests they affect young people’s self-esteem and can cause body dissatisfaction in children.
I have read countless stories in the press about children who unwittingly spend thousands on in-app purchases without their parent’s knowledge, and yet these stories don’t seem to act as a deterrent, suggesting parents are not savvy about the risks children face from smart technology.
I completely understand that parents do not want to fear the online world; it is a realm of mass information and a democratic platform where education is concerned. As a mother, I embrace everything that the Web has to positively offer my children, but I also recognize that as the adult in the family, it is on me to educate myself about how best to police and protect my children’s online experience. We need to balance monitoring with fostering independence, which is a complex requirement. All this isn’t something we necessarily understand when signing up to be a parent, teacher or carer, which is why we often look to reliable educational resources for parents and children.
The average parent discusses online safety with their children for around 46 minutes in total through their childhood, and yet, this research demonstrates that young people are spending many hours unsupervised online. Think about all the other areas where children have to learn new skills, whether that is a new sport, learning to read, or understanding how to negotiate an art project. In all of those cases, children are taught, advised, supervised, and guided to ensure that they fully understand what they are doing. Moreover, this type of instruction lasts for their entire education.
Parents must take a similar approach to the online world. This means checking in on your kid’s online behavior regularly — which can be as simple as asking what they’ve been up to online, discussing their positive and negative experiences. It’s also critical to get to know the type of things they are being exposed to so that you can fully inform and protect them.
I think of my online world in much the same way that I do my physical one. In my home, I have many security measures, from windows that lock to an alarm system that notifies me should my home be compromised, because I want to keep my children safe. I know that even while my kids may be safely in their bedrooms, they can be exposed to a host of dangers online — unless I have a highly effective cybersecurity system that provides features such as content filtering, app usage control, and real-time alerts.
No parent wants their child to be a victim of phishing, doxing, bullying, or other predatory behavior, and that is why protecting them as best you can from online threats and exploitation is key. It requires a mix of parental monitoring and software tools, such as Kaspersky Safe Kids. This technology means you can manage your child’s screen time and monitor the apps they use, and you will be notified about their Facebook activity, which means you’ll see any new connections.
Sometimes kids find themselves being singled out by trolls simply for commenting on a social media post, so it can be really helpful to keep track of the interactions they have online.
Kaspersky ensures that adult websites are blocked, meaning your kids won’t be subjected to age-inappropriate material, and we work closely with psychological experts to get you the information you need to feel equipped about how to talk to your kids about online dangers. The cybersecurity industry doesn’t necessarily know everything about parenting, so this part for me is vital.
But sometimes, software alone is not enough. You may notice a change in your child’s behavior after they’ve been online alone, for example. Even with protective solutions in place, nothing beats face-to-face communication when it comes to educating your children. So even if you do use these types of online cybersecurity solutions, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t discuss your child’s Internet behaviour and exposure on a regular basis.
If you notice that your child seems unusually quiet, or conversely snappy after spending time online, or on their smart technology, it may be that they have had a negative experience online and it’s best to open a dialogue.
What is fantastic about this type of open communication is that you identify risks and problems before they spin out of control, and you simultaneously give your kids a direct message about how much you value them.
Education is power, and as a parent it is your duty to ensure that your kids are kept safe and informed in both the physical and cyber worlds. If you take the issue of cybersafety seriously, so too will they, meaning they can enjoy their lives online without fear, and grow into teenagers and young adults with an understanding of “Netiquette.”
It really is time for action if we want to offer our children the happy, healthy, and cybersecure futures they unquestionably deserve.
Tips to keep children safe online
Here are my top tips for helping your children stay safe online:
- Surf together. Seeing where your child spends their time online means you can explore how best to keep them safe, and have more meaningful conversations about their activity. By spending time online together playing games and so forth, you can learn from each other.
- Keep devices out in the open. Instead of letting your kids use the Web in their bedroom, keep devices in communal areas to help you stay on top of any potential issues. Bonus: Kids will self-check because they know you are right there.
- Use safe search technology such as Kaspersky Safe Kids for a sense of ease when you are not around to monitor your child’s Internet use in person.
- Limit online time. Kids need boundaries, so agree the amount of time they can spend online and stick to it. Children need a balance of activities to enjoy a healthy childhood. Most operating systems allow you to set online activity to a timer.
- Block and report. Teach children how to block and report when they see, or experience something problematic online. This helps create good online etiquette and empowers your child to feel in control.
- Share responsibly. Teach your child how to act online as they would offline. If they wouldn’t send, share, or say something in the physical world, then they shouldn’t do it online.
- Chat with your child regularly to discuss their online experiences. That means checking in about their concerns and being open to concerns they bring to you. Create a communication strategy in which they understand they can reach out whenever they have any worries.
- Don’t judge! From time to time kids will get themselves in hot water online and the way you react can have a very big impact. Instead of getting angry, help them to work out what they can do better next time and check in with them to ensure the lesson has been learned.
- Be real with your children about how information you put online can remain there for the rest of their lives. Talk about the consequences of photos being seen by a teacher or grandparent, or when they’re older and working in an important career. Help them frame potential actions as potential consequences.
- Debrief daily! Every day, spend ten minutes before bed discussing your kids’ day — including their online activity. Ask them to discuss a positive and a negative that they encountered online. This normalizes conversation and contributes to a cybersmart approach to safety — and after a short time, it feels less like making a special effort to “check in.”
- Educate yourself! When you understand the cyberworld, you will feel more confident talking to your kids about it. Take the time to read up on emerging trends, games, and channels to understand how they may affect your child’s online activity. | <urn:uuid:de253a61-aab4-48a4-b2cf-da4cddfb5912> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/family-tips-2019/28572/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335355.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929131813-20220929161813-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.958133 | 2,204 | 2.578125 | 3 |
In terms of cybersecurity, the phrase backdoor refers to a wide range of methods by which unauthorised or authorised users can circumnavigate standard security measures to obtain high level user access (also known as root access) to a dedicated computer network, system or application. After they have gained access, a cybercriminal can use the backdoor for a variety of insidious activities. These include stealing personal data and financial credentials, installing additional malware and hijacking devices.
It’s worth noting that backdoors are not solely employed by threat operators. Backdoors are also installed by hardware and software manufacturers to provide a deliberate way of accessing their technology. Non-criminal backdoors are sometimes used to help customers who are locked out of their machines or for troubleshooting and fixing software problems.
Attributes of backdoor malware
As mentioned, backdoors end up on devices due to intentional manufacturing or via an attack. Backdoor malware is typically categorised as a Trojan. Trojans are a malicious computer programs masquerading as a legitimate piece of software or app but designed to deliver malware, steal data or open a backdoor on a computer system. Just like the Greek legend after which it was named, a Trojan (or Trojan horse) malware always contains an unwelcome surprise designed to penetrate defence systems and infiltrate a secure space.
Trojans are an exceptionally versatile tool for cybercriminals and come in many guises. Trojans can take the form of a seemingly harmless email attachment or an infected app ready for download in an online store and can deliver multiple kinds of malware threat.
To exacerbate the issue, Trojans often exhibit worm-like capabilities to duplicate and then spread laterally to other vital systems without additional commands being required by their creators.
Backdoor malware at work
In one instance of backdoor malware, threat operators hid malware within a file converter application offered for free. However, the app was not designed for conversion, instead it was built to open a backdoor in systems. Other examples of backdoor malware can be found when cybercriminals hide their solutions inside tools used to pirating software from verified applications, but other instance involved authentic apps being mimicked, like CoinTicker for cryptocurrency users.
If cybercriminals gain a foothold in the system, they can deploy a rootkit. Rootkits are malware packages designed specifically to avoid detection and hide internet activity from both users and operating systems. They give attackers persistent access to the infected systems. Effectively, a rootkit ensures that the backdoor stays open and the system remains vulnerable.
Stay safe with the Galaxkey workspace
While backdoors can be useful in some instances, the risks they represent make them a liability for system and data security. If an attacker gains access via a backdoor it can quickly lead to a dedicated data breach, stolen information or the start of an insidious ransomware assault. To combat these issues, at Galaxkey we have designed a secure workspace for enterprise and government employees to work safely with zero backdoors that attackers can exploit.
For a free two-week trial, contact us today. | <urn:uuid:f262f379-7c0d-41ee-beea-d0ac778f0ae4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.galaxkey.com/blog/how-does-backdoor-malware-work/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003133425-20221003163425-00791.warc.gz | en | 0.931701 | 619 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Biometric System Accuracy Testing
The accuracy of a biometric system is quantified most typically by a “receiver operating characteristic”, or “ROC curve” plot indicating its “false match rate (FMR)” and “false non-match rate (FNMR)” against some biometric sample gallery. The false match rate is the frequency with which biometric samples from different sources are erroneously assessed to be from the same source. The false non-match rate is the frequency with which samples from the same source are erroneously assessed to be from different sources. A well-performing biometric system is characterized by prompt results and low rates of false matches and false non-matches. The accuracy of a system falls on a point on the ROC curve whose location is a function of the matching “threshold” applied. A higher match threshold reduces false match rate but increases false non-match rate (higher security, lower convenience). A lower match threshold reduces the false non-match rate but increases false match rate (higher convenience, lower security; See Figure 3). Higher quantities of data (e.g. more fingerprints) and higher-quality (highly consistent) samples are required for one-to-many search processes as compared to one-to-one matching for verification.
It is important to recognize that biometric system accuracy is highly dependent on the nature of the biometric data in the system. Every different biometric data gallery against which a set of probe samples is searched will yield a different accuracy ROC curve. There are biometric galleries in the public domain, and they serve to provide common benchmarks to compare different matching algorithms. But algorithms can be “trained” to work better on known databases, which is analogous to seeing the questions on a test before taking it. Doing so will improve their comparative accuracy on known databases, but does not necessarily indicate the performance of the system on unknown data, as is the case in a real-world scenario. So the best way to predict how a biometric system will behave in a real-world deployment is to test its performance on data to which it has not been explicitly trained.
Figure 2 – An ROC curve for a given biometric matching system and dataset
Figure 3 – Density functions of comparison scores between a) samples from different sources and b) samples from the same sources, illustrating FMR and FNMR. | <urn:uuid:59599bdf-be58-497e-8d5a-6e8aaa2f0433> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.aware.com/what-are-biometrics-biometric-system-accuracy-testing/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334596.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925193816-20220925223816-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.931176 | 495 | 2.84375 | 3 |
So, you’ve built a machine learning model. Great. You give it your inputs and it gives you an output. Sometimes the output is right and sometimes it is wrong. You know the model is predicting at about an 86% accuracy because the predictions on your training test said so.
But, 86% is not a good enough accuracy metric. With it, you only uncover half the story. Sometimes, it may give you the wrong impression altogether. Precision, recall, and a confusion matrix…now that’s safer. Let’s take a look.
Both precision and recall can be interpreted from the confusion matrix, so we start there. The confusion matrix is used to display how well a model made its predictions.
Let’s look at an example: A model is used to predict whether a driver will turn left or right at a light. This is a binary classification. It can work on any prediction task that makes a yes or no, or true or false, distinction.
The purpose of the confusion matrix is to show how…well, how confused the model is. To do so, we introduce two concepts: false positives and false negatives.
- If the model is to predict the positive (left) and the negative (right), then the false positive is predicting left when the actual direction is right.
- A false negative works the opposite way; the model predicts right, but the actual result is left.
Using a confusion matrix, these numbers can be shown on the chart as such:
In this confusion matrix, there are 19 total predictions made. 14 are correct and 5 are wrong.
- The False Negative cell, number 3, means that the model predicted a negative, and the actual was a positive.
- The False Positive cell, number 2, means that the model predicted a positive, but the actual was a negative.
The false positive means little to the direction a person chooses at this point. But, if you added some stakes to the choice, like choosing right led to a huge reward, and falsely choosing it meant certain death, then now there are stakes on the decision, and a false negative could be very costly. We would only want the model to make the decision if it were 100% certain that was the choice to make.
Cost/benefit of confusion
Weighing the cost and benefits of choices gives meaning to the confusion matrix. The Instagram algorithm needs to put a nudity filter on all the pictures people post, so a nude photo classifier is created to detect any nudity. If a nude picture gets posted and makes it past the filter, that could be very costly to Instagram. So, they are going to try to classify more things than necessary to filter every nude photo because the cost of failure is so high.
Finally, confusion matrices do not apply only to a binary classifier. They can be used on any number of categories a model needs, and the same rules of analysis apply. For instance, a matrix can be made to classify people’s assessments of the Democratic National Debate:
- Very poor
- Very good
All the predictions the model makes can get placed in a confusion matrix:
Precision is the ratio of true positives to the total of the true positives and false positives. Precision looks to see how much junk positives got thrown in the mix. If there are no bad positives (those FPs), then the model had 100% precision. The more FPs that get into the mix, the uglier that precision is going to look.
To calculate a model’s precision, we need the positive and negative numbers from the confusion matrix.
Precision = TP/(TP + FP)
Recall goes another route. Instead of looking at the number of false positives the model predicted, recall looks at the number of false negatives that were thrown into the prediction mix.
Recall = TP/(TP + FN)
The recall rate is penalized whenever a false negative is predicted. Because the penalties in precision and recall are opposites, so too are the equations themselves. Precision and recall are the yin and yang of assessing the confusion matrix.
Recall vs precision: one or the other?
As seen before, when understanding the confusion matrix, sometimes a model might want to allow for more false negatives to slip by. That would result in higher precision because false negatives don’t penalize the recall equation. (There, they’re a virtue.)
Sometimes a model might want to allow for more false positives to slip by, resulting in higher recall, because false positives are not accounted for.
Generally, a model cannot have both high recall and high precision. There is a cost associated with getting higher points in recall or precision. A model may have an equilibrium point where the two, precision and recall, are the same, but when the model gets tweaked to squeeze a few more percentage points on its precision, that will likely lower the recall rate.
Get more on machine learning with these resources:
- BMC Machine Learning & Big Data Blog
- Machine Learning: Hype vs Reality
- Interpretability vs Explainability: The Black Box of Machine Learning
- Machine Learning with TensorFlow & Keras, a hands-on Guide
- This great colab notebook demonstrates, in code, confusion matrices, precision, and recall
For a mathematical understanding of precision and recall, watch this video:
For a more humorous look at confusion matrices: | <urn:uuid:ecc0c96c-113a-4d36-84fb-92a6ce39b3f6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.bmc.com/blogs/confusion-precision-recall/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334987.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927033539-20220927063539-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.902162 | 1,151 | 3.171875 | 3 |
What is the difference between analogue and digital transmission?
July 31, 2018
When we talk about analogue or digital, we are referring to the type of transmission of a signal. There are a number of key differences between analogue and digital signal transmission.
An analogue signal (otherwise known as a wave form) is characterised by being continuously variable along both amplitude and frequency. In the case of telephony, when we speak into a handset, our voice is converted into current, or voltage fluctuations. Those fluctuations in current are an analogue transmission of the actual voice pattern.
To transmit an analogue signal effectively, we need to define the frequency in which is operates. In telephony, the usable voice frequency band ranges from approximately 300 Hz to 3400 Hz, and so the network provider (phone company) will allocate a bandwidth of around 4,000Hz for voice transmission.
Because of the limited bandwidth analogue facilities have, they cannot support high-speed data transmission.
Digital signals are much simpler than analogue signals. Instead of a continuous wave form, analogue signals are made up of a series of pulses that represent either one bit or zero bits. Each computer system uses a coding scheme which defines what combinations of ones and zeros make up all the characters in the character set.
The data (ones and zeros) are carried throughout the network depending on whether it is an electrical or optical transmission system.
Transmitting digital signals over an electrical system essentially means that the ones are represented by high voltage and zero bits are represented as low voltage (or nothing at all).
In optical networks, the ones are represented as the presence of light and zeros as the absence of light.
Get all of our latest news sent to your inbox each month. | <urn:uuid:3f6f258c-a393-4be8-89ff-c3ebada6d6be> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.carritech.com/news/digital-vs-analogue-transmission/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337322.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002115028-20221002145028-00191.warc.gz | en | 0.934191 | 370 | 3.765625 | 4 |
The study of international business is a cross-functional discipline involving other topics such as economics, marketing, finance, and organization behavior. Cultural issues, for example, must be analyzed when marketing a product to another country. Financial issues such as cost of capital and currency exchange rates also affect decisions involving international IT investments.
Management Information Systems
The discipline of management information systems (MIS) is the study of the application of people, process, and technology to solve business problems. Many mistake this term with information systems (or IS) itself, which is specifically concerned with the processing of data and is generally associated with computer science. From this perspective, IS may be considered a component of MIS.
This traditional definition of MIS is often represented with systems that go by other names—including decision support systems, business intelligence systems and knowledge management systems. In addition, IT service management is often considered to be related to MIS.
You may be using a variety of skills and methods to plan and implement one of these management systems—including business process analysis, enterprise architecture, systems integration, database administration and application development.
One definition of this discipline is the science of making decisions using mathematics or statistical analysis. The key point is to rely upon a systematic approach of using logic or reason, rather than a “seat-of-the-pants” method to make business decisions.
One can readily see how this may or may not work in practice. If you are a support representative helping diagnose an incident of a failed customer’s system, you will probably rely upon your experience and intuition rather than a formula in a spreadsheet. Clearly, not all technical issues can be explained using a mathematical formula.
On the other hand, having skills in management science topics such as optimization or forecasting may be important for the IT practitioner. There are many technical decisions that are best served by objective logic, especially when large sums of investment capital are at stake. When choosing the appropriate mainframe or SAN capacity, or determining how much bandwidth to contract for in a WAN circuit, it probably best not to rely on a “gut feeling” alone.
Many people think of marketing as synonymous with advertising or brand management. In reality, it is a multi-disciplinary craft that involves many aspects of a business. For example, there is a marketing framework called the “marketing mix” that includes upwards of seven activity sets to help define products and services.
Understanding these “seven P’s of marketing” can be invaluable in enabling your IT organization to become a strategic partner in your enterprise. | <urn:uuid:4cca7c07-75d3-48d3-adc6-f22f3170cf6d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cioupdate.com/understanding-the-10-fundamentals-of-any-business/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030331677.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924151538-20220924181538-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.943055 | 530 | 2.75 | 3 |
A passport is a travel document purchased from a government, primarily for the purpose of allowing its holder to travel internationally. The document certifies the personal identity and nationality of its holder. Standard passports contain the full name, photograph, place and date of birth, signature, and the expiration date of the passport.
Many countries issue (or plan to issue) biometric passports that contain an embedded microchip (smart card), making them machine-readable and difficult to counterfeit. As of January 2019, there were over 150 jurisdictions issuing e-passports. Previously issued non-biometric machine-readable passports usually remain valid until their respective expiration dates. | <urn:uuid:7e76294c-bbdb-49d0-b31e-f756605b4e1f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cardlogix.com/tag/passport/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334620.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925225000-20220926015000-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.935687 | 129 | 3.078125 | 3 |
By: P. Chaudhary, B. Gupta
- Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics [1, 2] field aims at developing computational system that are intelligent in decision making, planning, object recognition, and other complex computational tasks that require minimum human intervention. This field emphasizes upon the development of cognitive algorithms for a variety of domains including e-commerce, healthcare, transport, manufacturing, gaming, defense industry, logistics, to name a few. It includes the application of popular emerging technologies such as Deep leaning, machine learning, Natural language processing (NLP), robotics, evolutionary algorithms, statistical inference, probabilistic methods, and computer vision. Some of the eminent research areas includes the following:
- Knowledge representation and reasoning
- Estimation theory
- Mobility mechanisms
- Multi-agent negotiation
- Intelligent agents
- Semantic segmentation
- Assistive robotics in medical diagnosis
- Robot perception and learning
- Motion planning and control
- Autonomous vehicles
- Personal assistive robots
- Search and information retrieval
- Speech and language recognition
- Fuzzy and neural system
- Intelligent embedded system in industries
- Object detection and capturing
- Intelligent information systems
2. Big Data Analytics
Big data analytics [3, 4] research field involves design and development of techniques/algorithms/frameworks to explore the large amount of data to fulfill organization’s objectives. This area includes mathematical, statistical and graphical approaches to mine useful knowledge patterns from heterogeneous raw data. It is one of the potential and emerging research domains as almost every organization is attempting to utilize available data to enhance their productivity and services to their customers. Some of the distinguished research areas are following:
- Predictive analysis
- Data capturing and transmission
- Parallel Data processing
- Uncertainty in data
- Data anonymization methods
- Data processing in distributed environment
- Privacy protecting techniques
- Semantic analysis on social media
- Intelligent traffic surveillance
- Topological data analysis
3. Biometrics and Computational Biology
This field embraces enormous potential for researchers as it amalgamates multiple research areas including big data, image processing, biological science, data mining, and machine learning. This field emphasizes on the designing and development of computational techniques for processing biological data [5, 6]. Some of the potential research areas includes:
- Structure and sequence analysis algorithms
- Protein structure anticipation
- Data modeling of scientific applications
- Virtual screening
- Brain image analysis using data mining approaches
- Design predictive models for severe disease analysis
- Molecular structure modeling and analysis
- Brain-machine interfaces
- Computational neuroscience
4. Data Mining and Databases
This field motivates research on designing vital methods, prototype schemes and applications in data mining and databases. This field ensembles all methods, techniques, and algorithms used for extracting knowledgeable information from the available heterogenous raw data [7, 8]. It enables classification, characterization, searching and clustering different datasets from wide range of domains including e-commerce, social media, healthcare, to name a few. This field demands parallel and distributed processing of data as it operates on massive quantity of data. It integrates various research domains including artificial intelligence, big data analytics, data mining, database management system, and bioinformatics. Some of the eminent research areas comprises as follows:
- Distributed data mining
- Multimedia storage and retrieval
- Data clustering
- Pattern matching and analysis
- High-dimensional data modeling
- Spatial and scientific data mining for sensor data
- Query interface for text/image processing
- Scalable data analysis and query processing
- Metadata management
- Graph database management and analysis system for social media
- Interactive data exploration and visualization
- Secure data processing
5. Internet of Things (IoTs)
Internet of Things has transformed the lives of people through exploring new horizons of networking. It connects physical objects with the internet as per the application to serve the user. This field carries enormous potential in different research areas related to the IoT and its interrelated research domains [9, 10]. These areas include as follows:
- IoT network infrastructure design
- Security issues in IoT
- Architectural issues in Embedded system
- Adaptive networks for IoT
- Service provisioning and management in IoT
- Middleware management in IoT
- Handling Device Interoperability in IoT
- Scalability issues in IoT
- Privacy and trust issues in IoT
- Data storage and analysis in IoT networks
- Integration of IoT with other emerging technologies such as fog computing, SDN, Blockchain, etc.
- Context and location awareness in IoT networks
- Modeling and management of IoT applications
- Task scheduling in IoT networks
- Resource allotment among smart devices in IoT networks.
6. High-Performance Computing
This field encourage the research in designing and development of parallel algorithms/techniques for multiprocessor and distributed systems. These techniques are efficient for data and computationally exhaustive programs like data mining, optimization, super computer application, graph portioning, to name a few [11, 12]. Some of the eminent research challenges includes the following:
- Information retrieval methods in cloud storage
- Graph mining in social media networks
- Distributed and parallel computing methods
- Development of architecture aware algorithms
- Big data analytics methods on GPU system
- Designing of parallel algorithms
- Designing of algorithms for Quantum computing
7. Blockchain and Decentralized Systems
This field [13, 14] revolutionize the digital world through processing network information without any central authority. This field is an emerging computing paradigm and motivates the design and development of algorithms that operate in decentralized environment. These techniques provide security, robustness and scalability in the network. Some of the eminent research areas includes the following:
- Enhancing IoT security using blockchain
- Precision agriculture and blockchain
- Social blockchain networks
- Blockchain based solutions for intelligent transportation system
- Security and privacy issues in blockchain networks
- Digital currencies and blockchain
- Blockchain and 5G/6G communication networks
- Integration of cloud/fog computing with blockchain
- Legislation rules and policies for blockchain
- Artificial Intelligence for blockchain system
With the development of new technology such as IoT, attackers have wider attack surface to halt the normal functioning of any network. Attackers may have several intentions to trigger cyber-attacks either against an individual person, organization, and/or a country. Now-a-days, we are living in a digital world where everything is connected is to the internet, so we are prone to some form of security attacks [15, 16]. This field carries massive potential for research on different techniques/methods to defend against these attacks. Some of the emerging research areas comprise the following:
- Intrusion detection system
- Applied cryptography
- Privacy issues in RFID system
- Security challenges in IoT system
- Malware detection in cloud computing
- Security and privacy issues in social media
- Wireless sensor network security
- Mobile device security
- Lawa and ethics in cybersecurity
- Cyber physical system security
- Software defined network security
- Security implications of the quantum computing
- Blockchain and its security
- AI and IoT security
- Privacy issues in big data analytics
- Phishing detection in finance sector
9. AI and Cyber Physical System
Specifically, Cyber physical system integrates computation and physical methods whose functionalities is determined by both physical and cyber component of the system. Research in this area motivates the development of tools, techniques, algorithms and theories for the CPS and other interrelated research domains [17, 18]. Research topics includes the following:
- Human computer interaction
- Digital design of CPS interfaces
- Embedded system and its security
- Industrial Interne to things
- Automation in manufacturing industries
- Robotics in healthcare sector
- Medical informatics
- AI, robotics and cyber physical system
- Robot networks
- Cognitive computing and CPS
10. Networking and Embedded Systems
This field [19, 20] encourages research on the designing of contemporary theories and approaches, effective and scalable methods and protocols, and innovative network design structure and services. These mechanisms improve the reliability, availability, security, privacy, manageability of current and future network and embedded systems. Research in this domain comprises of following topics:
- Cyber physical system
- Design of novel network protocols
- Cognitive radio networks
- Network security for lightweight and enterprise networks
- Resource allocation schemes in resource-constrained networks
- Network coding
- Energy efficient protocols for wireless sensor networks
- AI and embedded system
- Embedded system for precision agriculture
11. Computer Vision and Augmented Reality
Computer vision [21, 22] is a multidisciplinary field that make computer system to understand and extract useful information from digital images and videos. This field motivates the research in designing the tools and techniques for understanding, processing, extracting, and storing, analyzing the digital images and videos. It embraces multiple domains such as image processing, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, virtual reality, augmented reality, semantic structuring, statistics, and probability. Some of the eminent research topics includes the following:
- Computer vision for autonomous robots
- Object detection in autonomous vehicles
- Object detection and delineation in UAVs network.
- Biomedical image analysis
- Augmented reality in gaming
- Shape analysis in digital images
- Computer vision for forensics
- Robotics navigation
- Deep learning techniques for computer vision
- Automation in manufacturing sector
- 3D object recognition and tracking
12. Wireless Networks and Distributed Systems
The research in this field emphasizes on the developments of techniques that facilitate communication and maintain coordination among distributed nodes in a network [23, 24]. It is a broad area that embraces numerous domains including cloud computing, wireless networks, mobile computing, big data, and edge computing. Some of the eminent research topics includes the following:
- Message passing models in distributed system
- Parallel distributed computing
- Fault tolerance and load balancing
- Dynamic resource allocation in distributed system
- Resource discovery and naming
- Low-latency consistency protocols
- Designing of consensus protocols
- Efficient communication protocols in distributed system
- Security issues in distributed networks
- Privacy and trust models
- Optimization of distributed storage
- Distributed and federated machine learning
Wisskirchen, G., Biacabe, B. T., Bormann, U., Muntz, A., Niehaus, G., Soler, G. J., & von Brauchitsch, B. (2017). Artificial intelligence and robotics and their impact on the workplace. IBA Global Employment Institute, 11(5), 49-67.
Kortenkamp, D., Bonasso, R. P., & Murphy, R. (Eds.). (1998). Artificial intelligence and mobile robots: case studies of successful robot systems. MIT Press.
Dai, H. N., Wang, H., Xu, G., Wan, J., & Imran, M. (2020). Big data analytics for manufacturing internet of things: opportunities, challenges and enabling technologies. Enterprise Information Systems, 14(9-10), 1279-1303.
Müller, O., Junglas, I., Vom Brocke, J., & Debortoli, S. (2016). Utilizing big data analytics for information systems research: challenges, promises and guidelines. European Journal of Information Systems, 25(4), 289-302.
Waterman, M. S. (2018). Introduction to computational biology: maps, sequences and genomes. Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Imaoka, H., Hashimoto, H., Takahashi, K., Ebihara, A. F., Liu, J., Hayasaka, A., … & Sakurai, K. (2021). The future of biometrics technology: from face recognition to related applications. APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing, 10.
Zhu, X., & Davidson, I. (Eds.). (2007). Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: Challenges and Realities: Challenges and Realities. Igi Global.
Tseng, L., Yao, X., Otoum, S., Aloqaily, M., & Jararweh, Y. (2020). Blockchain-based database in an IoT environment: challenges, opportunities, and analysis. Cluster Computing, 23(3), 2151-2165.
Stoyanova, M., Nikoloudakis, Y., Panagiotakis, S., Pallis, E., & Markakis, E. K. (2020). A survey on the internet of things (IoT) forensics: challenges, approaches, and open issues. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 22(2), 1191-1221.
Nižetić, S., Šolić, P., González-de, D. L. D. I., & Patrono, L. (2020). Internet of Things (IoT): Opportunities, issues and challenges towards a smart and sustainable future. Journal of Cleaner Production, 274, 122877.
Hager, G., & Wellein, G. (2010). Introduction to high performance computing for scientists and engineers. CRC Press.
Wang, G. G., Cai, X., Cui, Z., Min, G., & Chen, J. (2017). High performance computing for cyber physical social systems by using evolutionary multi-objective optimization algorithm. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 8(1), 20-30.
Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H. N., Chen, X., & Wang, H. (2018). Blockchain challenges and opportunities: A survey. International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 14(4), 352-375.
Nguyen, D. C., Ding, M., Pham, Q. V., Pathirana, P. N., Le, L. B., Seneviratne, A., … & Poor, H. V. (2021). Federated learning meets blockchain in edge computing: Opportunities and challenges. IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
Tawalbeh, L. A., Muheidat, F., Tawalbeh, M., & Quwaider, M. (2020). IoT Privacy and security: Challenges and solutions. Applied Sciences, 10(12), 4102.
Boubiche, D. E., Athmani, S., Boubiche, S., & Toral-Cruz, H. (2021). Cybersecurity Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks: Current Challenges and Solutions. Wireless Personal Communications, 117(1).
Gupta, R., Tanwar, S., Al-Turjman, F., Italiya, P., Nauman, A., & Kim, S. W. (2020). Smart contract privacy protection using ai in cyber-physical systems: Tools, techniques and challenges. IEEE Access, 8, 24746-24772.
Kravets, A. G., Bolshakov, A. A., & Shcherbakov, M. V. (2020). Cyber-physical Systems: Industry 4.0 Challenges. Springer.
Duan, Q., Wang, S., & Ansari, N. (2020). Convergence of networking and cloud/edge computing: Status, challenges, and opportunities. IEEE Network, 34(6), 148-155.
Wang, C. X., Di Renzo, M., Stanczak, S., Wang, S., & Larsson, E. G. (2020). Artificial intelligence enabled wireless networking for 5G and beyond: Recent advances and future challenges. IEEE Wireless Communications, 27(1), 16-23.
Chen, C. H. (Ed.). (2015). Handbook of pattern recognition and computer vision. World Scientific.
Esteva, A., Chou, K., Yeung, S., Naik, N., Madani, A., Mottaghi, A., … & Socher, R. (2021). Deep learning-enabled medical computer vision. NPJ digital medicine, 4(1), 1-9.
Farahani, B., Firouzi, F., & Luecking, M. (2021). The convergence of IoT and distributed ledger technologies (DLT): Opportunities, challenges, and solutions. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 177, 102936.
Alfandi, O., Otoum, S., & Jararweh, Y. (2020, April). Blockchain solution for iot-based critical infrastructures: Byzantine fault tolerance. In NOMS 2020-2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Cite this article:
P. Chaudhary, B. Gupta (2021) 12 Most Emerging Research Areas in Computer Science in 2021, Insights2Techinfo, pp. 1
FAQ on this topic
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Big Data Analytics, Biometrics and Computational Biology, Data Mining and Databases, Internet of Things (IoTs), High-Performance Computing, Blockchain and Decentralized Systems,Cybersecurity
Big data research field involves design and development of techniques/algorithms/frameworks to explore the large amount of data to fulfill organization’s objectives. Some of the distinguished research areas are following: Data capturing and transmission, Parallel Data processing,Data anonymization methods,Data processing in distributed environment
Artificial Intelligence field aims at developing computational systems that are intelligent in decision making, planning, object recognition, and other complex computational tasks that require minimum human intervention. Some of the eminent research areas includes the following: Knowledge representation and reasoning
Autonomous vehicles, Fuzzy and neural system, Intelligent information systems
Some of the eminent research areas comprises as follows:Distributed data mining, Multimedia storage and retrieval, Data clustering, Pattern matching and analysis, High-dimensional data modeling, Spatial and scientific data mining for sensor data.
The research areas in IoT include as follows: IoT network infrastructure design, Security issues in IoT,Architectural issues in Embedded system, Service provisioning and management in IoT, Middleware management in IoT | <urn:uuid:500e60c6-b4ab-4a0e-8b60-920ca6ad1607> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://insights2techinfo.com/12-most-emerging-research-areas-in-computer-science-in-2021/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334992.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927064738-20220927094738-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.80587 | 3,857 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a mathematical formula that could help wireless networks, including 5G, select and share communications frequencies more efficiently.
According to a May 26 post on the agency’s website, computer simulations suggest that the new formula could be 5,000 times more efficient at detecting the communications frequencies compared to traditional trial-and-error methods. The machine learning-based formula selects a frequency range based on prior experience in the network environment and could be programmed into the transmitters of real-world networks.
By helping transmitters quickly choose the best subchannels for the simultaneous operation of Wi-Fi and Licensed Assisted Access networks, the formula enables transmitters to learn to maximize data rates by communicating with each other.
“This work explores the use of machine learning in making decisions about which frequency channel to transmit on,” NIST engineer Jason Coder said. “This could potentially make communications in the unlicensed bands much more efficient.”
By instituting a Q-learning technique, the formula can map environmental conditions to maximize the value that returns the signal. The technique also allows the algorithm to try different actions and learn which provides the best outcomes.
According to a NIST study, an “exhaustive effort” to identify the best communication frequently would take approximately 45,600 trials, but the formula could select a similar solution after just 10 trials. | <urn:uuid:77e61a7d-d83e-47fc-9909-efd7780294c6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://origin.meritalk.com/articles/nist-creates-formula-to-boost-5g-frequency-sharing/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334992.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927064738-20220927094738-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.935656 | 291 | 3.515625 | 4 |
In this new series of articles about electronics, I will try to transfer my experience in electronics. Hopefully you’ll like it.
For now, let’s start with some basics – volts amps watts and ohms (grammar Nazi’s – I know it’s volts, amps, watts and ohms but muh SEO o.O).
Volts, the potential to power the world
Volts are a measure of potential difference with respect to something else. For example, if we take a 9V battery, its positive lead will be 9V with respect to its negative terminal. Think of it like a glass of water 9cm above another glass sitting on the table. If you connected a straw in the middle, water could flow from the glass with higher potential downwards to the glass with the low potential – the one that’s sitting on our table.
For negative voltages, it’s also useful to know that volts are really just a measure of potential difference and that you can assign anything as a ground. So if you were to use 2 9V batteries and connect the first battery’s negative terminal to the other battery’s positive terminal and assign ground potential to it, then the first battery’s positive terminal would be +9V while the second battery’s negative terminal would be -9V respectively. Very useful for inverters, audio amplifiers, and whatnot.
In the thought experiment with our glasses of water, this would be like attaching a second straw to our glass on the table, to another one somewhere underneath. For example, one that’s sitting on the chair. Water wants to flow from the top glass to the second one, into the bottom one. Since the glass is underneath the one on the table, its potential will appear to be negative.
I’d also like to mention that this is why in mains AC the current keeps on switching directions. When the wave is at +230V (or +120V if you’re in the US), current will want to flow from the live wire (which holds our wave) into the neutral wire (which is 0V), because 230V is higher than 0V. When the wave is at -230V, current will want to flow from neutral into live, because -230V is smaller than 0V.
In other words, the pushing and pulling between live and neutral causes the current to switch directions.. the direction of the pull, if you will.
WARNING: Please do not try to dabble with mains AC at home if you’re not experienced in electronics, it can be lethal!!! Use a transformer to step the voltage down to safe levels and wear safety gloves!!
Amps, the speed of the electronics race track
Current which is measured in Amperes or amps, is created when different electrical potentials are connected to one another, only limited by the resistance of the stuff in between (which I’ll cover later). You can think of this as the amount of water that can flow through the straw in our water glass thought experiment. The wider the straw is, the more water can flow at a given time. Similarly, a smaller straw will allow less water to flow through. For our electronics circuit we can think of it as the wires that are used to connect everything together.
The current that is being fed through a circuit is determined by the load. This is why you could buy a 4A charger for your phone, but if the phone only asks for 1A, the charging speed wouldn’t increase – it would just stay 1A. But you could at least rest assured that the 4A power supply is more than beefy enough to supply your phone with the power it needs.
Ohms, the bumps in the road
Resistance which is measured in Ohms, tries to limit the amount of electrons that can pass at a given time. In our thought experiment, we can think of this as squeezing on the straw. The straw’s width hasn’t changed, but the squeezing onto it will limit the amount of water that can pass through it. In electronics circuits, resistors are used like this to limit the current going from positive to negative or live to neutral to safe levels. After all, if we were to just connect them with a wire, we’d essentially be short-circuiting them – only limited by the very small resistance of our wire, and with it trip a breaker or make the battery explode. Resistors on the other hand can handle this job of current-limiting really well.
To calculate the current that a resistor will pass through, we can use Ohm’s law (V=I*R) where V=voltage in volts, I=current in amps, and R=resistance in ohms.
We can also rearrange this equation to derive different values.
To calculate V: V=I*R
To calculate I: I=V/R
To calculate R: R=V/I
Let’s put that into context with some examples.
If we have a 9V battery and want to calculate the resistance required to make it pass 50mA or 0.05A, we can plug in these values – 9/0.05 – and see that we need a 180 ohm resistor to achieve this.
If we have a 9V battery and want to calculate the current that we’ll get when we use a 1k resistor, we can plug in these values – 9/1000 – and see that this would pass 0.009A, or 9mA of current.
If we have a resistor of 200 ohms and we want to send 25mA (0.025A) through it, we can calculate the voltage required to do that by with this equation – 200*0.025 – and see that we need 5V to do this.
Watts, the power to run everything
So now that we’ve got a definition of volts and amps, let’s discuss watts. The watt is the product of volts and amps, and is described by the letter W, though since the formula to derive watts is V*A you’ll also sometimes see it being described as VA. It enables you to measure power consumption regardless of the voltage and current. By using watts, we can find that a 5 volt device consuming 1 amp uses the same amount of power as a 2.5 volt device that consumes 2 amps – both consume 5 watts of power.
Watts are also used to describe efficiency. If you want to know the efficiency of a power supply, you’d measure how much voltage and current goes in (let’s say 100VDC at 1A) and it spits out 10VDC at 8A. This would translate to 100W on the input, and 80W on the output. Therefore our supply’s efficiency would be 80% – which is not too bad. Ideally we’d want our efficiency to be as high as possible though, and watts can help us determine what would be the best design to achieve that.
Phew, that sure was a mouthful. If you’re still with me at this point, congratulations! You should now have a good understanding of volts, amps and ohms and how they relate. I hope that you enjoyed the article. Next up, we’ll discuss LED’s and Kirchoff’s voltage law. Stay tuned! | <urn:uuid:0b5eae90-e328-4e01-b7bf-2ed232fa3fe9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://hackingvision.com/2018/03/24/volts-amps-watts-ohms-explained/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.952394 | 1,557 | 3.796875 | 4 |
Power distribution provider REO UK has created an infographic outlining three ways to overcome problems with power quality in smart cities.
Smart cities, such as Amsterdam, Barcelona and Milton Keynes, use digital, electronic and information technology (IT) to create an environmentally and economically sustainable community.
Although most of the technology that facilitates a smart city already exists, there are still many power quality challenges that must be overcome. These include the prevalence of harmonic currents in electrical networks, which require engineers to use harmonic mitigation technologies to increase grid efficiency, issues with electromagnetic interference (EMI) in medical environments.
The infographic also looks at electric vehicles and how the biggest challenge for autonomous vehicles is battery technology. While making a more powerful battery is an obvious solution to this problem, REO UK explains how reducing the weight of the car and its powertrain is more efficient.
“We can make significant changes to the world around us that not only improve the quality of our lives but also the environment,” explained Steve Hughes, managing director of REO UK. “When making changes, whether it’s to our infrastructure, healthcare systems or transport networks, engineers must ensure that power quality problems don’t hold us back.
“For example, with the British government announcing plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040, it’s clear electric vehicles will be a prominent element in our smart cities. This means that design engineers must ensure that electric vehicles are able to operate reliably, which may involve the use of lightweight aluminium instead of copper-wound induction motor technology to overcome problems with battery technology.
“The infographic outlines some key considerations for electrical and design engineers to ensure that smart cities can become a reality. By drawing attention to small changes, such as reducing the weight of electric cars, manufacturers can eliminate power quality issues and can create an efficient and cost-effective mode of transport.” | <urn:uuid:202f7c0a-e508-4e19-8f04-9aac2124bf79> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.iot-now.com/2017/09/13/66383-overcoming-smart-city-power-problems/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.933662 | 390 | 3.15625 | 3 |
- AI will make a medical breakthrough
In the realms of the medical sector, software is capable of solving complex problems which would take humans an inordinately long period of time to achieve. As AI becomes less dependent on computing capacity, I expect that next year we will see some major medical research breakthroughs with very limited AI learning. Even the most intelligent doctors can only think of a few things at a time, if you channel hundreds of doctors’ research and thoughts through AI, the possibility of breakthroughs in medical research for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and HIV becomes much more achievable. While AI will not replace people in the medical profession, it will certainly aid diagnoses, decision-making and eventually aid surgical procedures. As the NHS continues to experience issues with underfunding and overworked staff in 2018, AI could very well be the tool to aid overburdened medical professionals as they continue to treat an unprecedented number of patients.
Whilst many people may be wary of the role AI might play in medicine, the consistency of quality assured technology and automated processes will take away the inconsistencies of human error which are bound to happen with overstretched medical staff.
- Virtual reality will help doctors perform operations
Virtual reality (VR) will also play a major role in the medical sector in 2018. Of course, VR made headlines this year for helping surgeons separate conjoined twins. Incredibly, VR will allow doctors to perform medical procedures via robotics. This could mean the end of patients having to travel long distances, sometimes to different countries, to have lifesaving operations from world-leading medical professionals. Robotics is already being used in surgery, but VR could revolutionise how these operations are performed.
- Voice technology will lead the way
2018 will see the mass adoption of voice-controlled technology as it moves away from being a novelty, and will be used on a wider scale. This will happen as the real-world application of this technology begins to make a genuine impact on people’s lives. The impact that voice control will have in a domestic environment, as it is integrated into more products, will be hugely beneficial. Especially for less able sections of our society, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. For instance, the advances in disabled accommodation will greatly improve the quality of life for people who may have found everyday tasks a challenge. While voice-activated kettles and voice-activated central heating may seem like minor innovations, they will help a large portion of people greatly. Innovation that will make a positive change, is simple technology that has a massive impact on the way we function as human beings.
- Blue-collar workers are not the only people who will be out of work
Automation and AI are often cited as being a potential threat to the working class, blue-collar worker. While I still believe that 30 per cent of jobs as we know them today will be obsolete, it will not just be blue-collar workers who are left looking for employment. I predict that any process orientated roles will be replaced by intelligent software. We have already seen this at firms such as Goldman Sach’s where 600 of its traders have now been replaced by 200 computer engineers as traders are replaced by software. In 2018, we will see an increase in the number of highly educated employees having to change their job. Clearly, the need for the mass retraining of a large section of society is needed and we mustn’t just think about drivers and factory workers, AI and software advances will affect our entire workforce to a differing degree and that must be addressed.
Companies should look to re-train their staff now. The traditional blue-collar worker we describe is using technology in their everyday lives, from smart phones, to banking to deciding which paint to buy, and they are more than capable of re-training to be relevant in a digital workforce.
- Hacking must be regulated and taken seriously
2018 must be the year that the UN sets up a hacker group to test the cyber security of nations, businesses and Non-Governmental Organisations to ensure they are doing the things they are meant to do. At present, we are relying on talented hackers who are doing us all a favour by exposing poor cyber security practices in business and government. Thankfully, many of the major 2017 hacks have resulted in relatively minimal damage to businesses and organisations. The majority of people orchestrating these attacks have been non-malicious and are either doing it for fun or to prove a point. We must not rely on “ethical” hackers lurking in the shadows of the internet to warn businesses and governments. This must become official and regulated by organisations such as the UN in 2018.
- Driverless vehicles are the future, not electrical
Britain has seen a whole raft of new legislation around cars and vans this year, including the ban of all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040. In my eyes, electric vehicles are clearly not the future. The innovation, while theoretically a step in the right direction, has seen very little uptake in the scheme of things and will be superseded by hybrid technology models or hydrogen based engines. Electric powered vehicles will not have a significant impact on our quality of life, but autonomous vehicles certainly will by offering mobility and freedom to sections of society who may not be able to drive due to disabilities, old age or socioeconomic status.
- RIP Apps – deceased 2018
I believe that 2018 will mark the end of an era for applications (apps). The app was very interesting to businesses and the public alike when it was a new concept. But, as thousands of apps continue to flood the market, we are going to see a more integrated system where the app is no longer separate, but integrated into our day-to-day life. There are quite frankly too many apps and the way we want to use them is changing. The network has become vast, access to WiFi and 4G now makes it much easier to stay connected. In 2018, we will see apps become much more integrated into one platform, as the business model for apps continues to change.
[su_box title=”About SQS Group (SQS)” style=”noise” box_color=”#336588″][short_info id=’61255′ desc=”true” all=”false”][/su_box] | <urn:uuid:ff125a00-d2d5-4d2b-8b3a-f13ee64ddaa6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/study-research/2018-predictions-sqs-ceo/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335573.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001070422-20221001100422-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.964374 | 1,306 | 2.875 | 3 |
These days, Telepsychiatry is trending in the healthcare sector due to a rise in the incidence of mental health disorders. According to the report of the WHO, currently, around 450 million people are suffering from mental or neurological disorders all across the globe. Increasing acceptance for telepsychiatry among both doctors and patients is one of the factors that is increasing its demand. The time and cost of traveling are saved, most of the people are preferring to get treatment by telemedicine. Telepsychiatry services are available at the fingertips and also saves the time of consultation and thereby boosting the demand for telepsychiatry.
Telepsychiatry: a part of telemedicine
Telepsychiatry types of health care services and facility that offer treatment from a distance with the help of technology such as videoconferencing. It is a part of telemedicine, which embraces psychiatric therapy, evaluations, patient medication management, and education. Telepsychiatry gives the option of direct interactions between patients and the psychiatrist.
It is used for different types of therapies such as individual, family, or group therapy. It also offers facilities such as session recording in form of images or audio-video files, for later reviewing the file. With the help of this technology, patients from remote places can also be treated.
Effectiveness of Telepsychiatry
Most of the patients, psychiatrists, and other professionals find it satisfactory with the services offered and the accessibility of Telepsychiatry. It is considered equivalent to in-person care. All age groups including children, adolescents as well as older people find it convenient to talk and share their problems with the medical professional virtually. The accuracy of diagnosis, treatment process and the quality of care provided in Telepsychiatry are acceptable by the patients. For those patients who suffer from anxiety disorders or some serious mental disorders, telepsychiatry is a good option to get treatment remotely.
Benefits of Telepsychiatry
- It brings medical care at the door of the patient.
- There is no delay in the care and follow-up.
- Avoids the traveling of patients to visit the doctors.
- Patients can conveniently access the services.
- Saves the money for long-distance transportation.
Limitations of Telepsychiatry
- There is no face-to-face interaction between doctors and patients.
- Patients are more worried regarding telepsychiatry because of privacy issues.
- Disruption of internet connectivity may occur during the treatment sessions that will reduce the effectiveness of the treatment.
- As each country has separate laws and Telepsychiatry is reducing the fine line between medicine and technology.
Telepsychiatry can be done in different settings
Telepsychiatry can be practiced in a variety of settings such as in hospitals, nursing homes, private practice, schools, or military treatment centers. According to their convenience, patients can take video or audio appointment. After the consultation, they can be shared with relevant information like the recording of consultation and e-prescriptions.
The sub-specialties of Telepsychiatry
When the psychiatric treatment is given to the patients in the home or other private settings is commonly called home-based telepsychiatry. It only requires internet service and a webcam. According to the interest and convenience of the patients, more psychiatrists are adopting this method of treatment. Home-based telepsychiatry is useful for elderly and disabled persons.
It is also called routine telepsychiatry. It provides behavioral health care to the people. Psychiatrists are remotely consulted for the management of medication, supervision, or for assessment.
Telepsychiatry when used to prove counseling facilities to prisoners remotely, it is called as forensic telepsychiatry. These facilities include psychiatric assessment, suicide watch, medication consultation, etc.
Telepsychiatry consultation is used for any emergency psychiatric patients like suicidal, homicidal, depressed, manic, or depressed for their evaluation and counseling. On-demand telepsychiatry is also called crisis telepsychiatry
Effect of COVID-19 on Telepsychiatry
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, which is a highly infectious respiratory disease caused by the novel virus SARS-coV-2. Almost every country has taken essential measures like complete lockdown, social distancing, large scale quarantine, etc. in order to prevent the spread of the virus. The complete lockdown has had a negative impact on the mental health of the people locked in homes. At the same time, those patients who were already suffering from any health problems were unable to visit hospitals. Thereby the demand for telemedicine including telepsychiatry has increased in the pandemic.
The Telepsychiatry Market has been witnessing swift growth due to rising awareness about mental health and increasing demand for treatments of mental health among end-users. The many advantages associated with the adoption of telepsychiatry including better continuity of care and follow-up treatments, almost no delays in care, reduction in need of transportation, and the no need to wait long hours at hospitals, are aiding in the telepsychiatry market growth.
Information Technology and telecommunication equipment are also used to provide medical diagnoses even from a distance, and Telepsychiatry is exploiting it properly to provide better treatment facilities especially to patients suffering from mental health-related problems. Besides, it also removes the barrier and rural communities can also get benefitted. | <urn:uuid:f1b5d4fd-e0b4-423f-ba53-972611d08f52> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/telepsychiatry-trending-due-to-covid-19-pandemic | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.948784 | 1,131 | 2.6875 | 3 |
While the type of cyberattacks and security breaches targeting small and medium-sized businesses vary, most of them begin with weak or stolen passwords. An easy way to mitigate your risk is to require strong passwords and deploy two-factor authentication (2FA).
What Is Two Factor Authentication (2FA)?
Two-factor authentication (2FA) requires an additional step when users sign on to their accounts or access company networks. The additional step strengthens security by forcing users to verify their identity beyond just entering their username and password.
When logging in with 2FA enabled, systems can automatically generate a random code that is sent to a user’s smartphone. They will be unable to log in until they then enter the code. Different 2FA systems allow codes to be sent via text (SMS), email, phone call, app, or hardware token.
There are also apps that can be used for 2FA. For example, users download a security app that generates random codes that are only usable for a brief period. Other apps simply require an acknowledgment from the user that they are trying to log in.
Besides codes, users may be asked instead to answer a security question or use fingerprint, facial recognition, or voice recognition to verify their identity. For even greater security, some companies use hardware tokens.
Hardware tokens are fobs you can put on a keychain that produce random codes every 30 seconds or so. When users log in, they need to check with the device and enter the code shown on the token. Unless a hacker has login credentials and the hardware token for an employee, they will not gain access to your network. Even if the hacker somehow captures the random code, it won’t be of any use since it changes constantly.
2FA is an effective way to protect against many security threats and prevent unauthorized access. Even if a hacker has stolen someone’s username and password, 2FA prevents them from logging in unless the cybercriminal also has physical possession of someone’s cell phone or token.
Why Is Two Factor Authentication (2FA) Important?
People are notoriously lax with passwords. They use weak passwords that are easy to guess and tend to use many of them repeatedly. An analysis of 15 billion passwords showed that less than 15% were unique.
Shockingly, people are still using basic passwords. Here are the top 10 in use today:
People also have many online accounts, so they tend to use passwords that are easy to remember. Unfortunately, that also makes passwords easy for hackers to guess. Children’s birthdays, pet names, and favorite teams are also common and relatively easy to figure out by checking someone’s social media account.
Tools to crack passwords are readily accessible online. Of the top 20 most commonly used passwords, it took these online tools less than one second to find the password for 16 of them. Only one of the top 50 most used passwords took a day to crack.
People also tend to reuse passwords from site to site. So, once a hacker gains access to one account, they can likely access several more. So, even if hackers don’t have access to your site, once they grab someone’s password from somewhere else, they may be able to get into your system.
There are also marketplaces on the dark web where passwords are aggregated, bought, and sold.
While hacking someone’s password is easy, stealing someone’s password and cell phone is a lot harder. So, adding 2FA is a simple way to decrease the odds of hackers getting into your systems.
If your business is looking for reliable protection from security breaches or a comprehensive, proactive Managed IT solution, talk to the experts at HIG today. | <urn:uuid:c2c1e49e-9b3a-4424-a645-d89212a4c50c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://higherinfogroup.com/what-is-two-factor-authentication-2fa-and-why-is-it-so-important/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.925527 | 931 | 3.25 | 3 |
As I write this blog post related to Cyber Security, on 04 October, 2021, social media giant Facebook and its family of online products are down for millions of users worldwide. If it can happen to an industry giant, it could happen to your business too. Continue reading to learn what you can do to protect critical data from loss or leakage.
Cyber attacks remain in the headlines as a constant reminder that the technology on which we depend, can be fragile, easily exploited, and used against us. Zero-day vulnerabilities, phishing scams, ransomware, malware, denial of service attacks. It can be overwhelming, and the damage caused by cyber attacks can be costly to repair.
Now more than ever, it is important the employ sound cybersecurity on all of the interconnected devices on which we rely for our livelihoods, our communications, and our convenience in our daily lives.
Before we can effectively do that, we must understand the threats, our vulnerabilities, and the meaning of cybersecurity itself.
What is Cyber security?
Cyber security, information technology security, or computer security refers to safeguarding computer systems and networks from electronic data theft, unintentional information leaks or disclosure, disruptions or misdirection of services, damage to software and even hardware, either through malicious intent, or by accident.
While reports of cyber attacks dominate the headlines, human error, often at the hands of well-meaning employees, is responsible for far more data breaches than deliberate cyber attacks by cybercriminals. Web filtering and cybersecurity tools can lessen the likelihood of human error by keeping employees away from harmful websites, or from falling victim to email phishing scams. But they don’t replace knowledge and awareness that comes through training.
What are the Benefits of Cyber security?
Good cyber security is a proactive approach that protects all categories of data from theft, misdirection, or damage. This includes personal information, personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), intellectual property, government data, industry information systems, and other forms of electronically stored sensitive data. Cybersecurity can protect your brand, your assets, and your business’s reputation. It can mitigate your employees’ risk from phishing, malware, and ransomware, and even annoying adware. Viruses can slow computers, making work difficult, if not impossible. Eliminating the viruses from computers can increase productivity.
Is Today’s Facebook Outage the Result of a Cyber Attack?
Although it is too early to tell if Facebook has again become a victim of a cyber attack today, it is clear that the internet giant was hacked in April of this year, exposing personal data of an estimate 530 million users. Today’s outage can serve to remind us that everyone connected online is vulnerable, whether from deliberate maliciousness or unintentional error. So, it just makes good sense to have a solid cybersecurity plan, complete with monitoring and proactive security updates in place.
Can Business Owners Enjoy Peace of Mind?
Cybersecurity can seem overwhelming. Loss of critical data and leaks of personal data can be a scary thing to think about. Being held hostage in a ransomware attack, or repairing the damage done to brand and reputation by a data breach can be costly for businesses of any size. That’s why it’s critical for businesses to understand and practice good cybersecurity. We offer our customers our “Peace of Mind” promise. This promise can be comforting to business owners who know that with Kustura Technologies, their data is safe and secure 24/7.
Kustura Technologies’ Proactive Approach to Data Integrity
Kustura Technologies’ proactive approach to protecting your business data offers “Peace of Mind” Cybersecurity solutions including:
- Anti-Virus Protection securing your business from harmful viruses with constant, ongoing monitoring of your company’s data
- Cybersecurity Audits to proactively address cyberthreats and security concerns with preventative solutions offered through scheduled meetings
- Firewall Installation & Maintenance to ensure that your company continues to run smoothly through comprehensive, ongoing management
- Business Continuity provided through Kustura’s resilient technology enables business stability
- Reliability your company can depend on Kustura for service and support, protecting your data from malware and viruses
These are the five elements of Kustura’s “Peace of Mind” approach to cybersecurity. They lay the foundation of a sound data security architecture that addresses all aspects of information security for any company. Kustura customers benefit from expert planning, implementation, auditing, monitoring, and management of security solutions.
We at Kustura Technologies pioneered Managed IT Services in Jacksonville. We specialize in providing our cutting-edge technology services to small to midsize businesses along the First Coast. Our services include Cybersecurity, Networking Services, Cloud Solutions, Disaster Recovery and Protection, VoIP Telephone System and much more.
We are passionate about our exceptional service, including Jacksonville’s best cybersecurity solutions. If your business is in or near North Florida, we want to be your cybersecurity partner and your IT service provider. We offer FREE cybersecurity assessments for any small to midsize company in the Jacksonville metro area. We’ll help you identify vulnerabilities and outline a proactive plan to keep your data safe and secure through vigilant 24/7 monitoring.
Contact us today to take advantage of this offer and get your FREE Cybersecurity Assessment. | <urn:uuid:fd5b7057-4296-4c88-b2fc-60c3977e72f4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.kustura.com/kusturas-cyber-security-solutions-understanding-the-need-for-cyber-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.913534 | 1,101 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Most attention is given to data breaches counted in the tens or hundreds of millions, but there is also a continuous stream of small data breaches that make no headlines but present outsized risks to individuals and organizations.
In a recent analysis by Enzoic of breach data collected from the Internet and Dark Web, a full 90% of credential exposures had less than 5,000 accounts exposed, representing a very long tail of small data breaches.
The frequency and nature of these small data breaches suggests several risk factors that shouldn’t be ignored:
1. Smaller sites may not be aware they’ve been compromised
The larger breaches are more likely to be uncovered, either because these companies have breach detection tools or because word spreads from the hacker community to the general public and media.
Smaller and less sophisticated sites may never find out they’ve been compromised. Evidence shows that companies are often repeatedly breached over the course of months or even years – presumably because they never learned of the first breach and the vulnerability was still present at a later date.
This risk is then shared with larger companies because people often reuse the same password. This allows bad actors to use the compromised credentials to conduct credential stuffing attacks on multiple sites.
2. Users are less likely to be notified of smaller breaches
Either because the breached site wasn’t aware or because they didn’t send out notifications, users may not get the message that their account was compromised.
Without notification, users don’t have the opportunity to reset their password on the affected site or others where they may have reused the same credentials.
Again, this vulnerability is shared across small and large sites due to the password reuse issue.
3. Passwords from smaller sites are easier to crack
Smaller sites are less effective at protecting the passwords stored in their systems. Enzoic’s analysis showed 96% of breaches with less than 5,000 exposed accounts were plain text, compared with 68% in larger breaches.
The availability of plain text passwords doesn’t necessarily mean they were originally stored that way. In many cases, they’re plaintext because someone cracked them before publishing, which highlights the very weak password hashing algorithms being used. While neither of these figures is good, clearly passwords are more vulnerable on smaller sites.
How organizations of any size can respond to small data breaches
In the sea of data breaches, the ones that make the news are really only the tip of the iceberg. Organizations need protection from data breaches of all size.
One solution is to detect and prevent the use of passwords that have been previously compromised in 3rd party data breaches. This approach effectively hardens the password layer against risky password reuse behavior and the vulnerabilities from the numerous small data breaches that occur each year. | <urn:uuid:9f9da04d-8520-429f-a54a-68ee9579681a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.enzoic.com/small-data-breaches/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335609.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001101652-20221001131652-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.954091 | 567 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Last major update on 23.10.2013
As promised previously in my last article, I will guide you through the
creation process of a rudimentary font. I will use the glyphs of my font
to draw captchas and incorportate the implementation in my brand new
captcha plugin for wordpress. There are already quite a few captcha
plugins out there, some of them are better than mine
(RECAPTCHAfor instance translates
books and thus solves two problems at the same time),
others are worse, because the
math equations can simply be parsed (As far as I can judge without
inspecting the code further).
In this article however, I will center the focus entirely on the font
and abstract from it's future usage in the captcha.
Technical background of fonts
A logical start of font creation is to answer the question what type of
font we are going to create. But lets first introduce some concepts that
are of importance when it comes to font design.
In short: A font is a collection of glyphs. Each glyph has a shape and
there are various ways of describing that shape. You can imagine a glyph
as a instanteation of a character. Whereas … | <urn:uuid:4d7c132d-9ae8-481e-a98f-3bb88b8175a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://incolumitas.com/tag/captcha.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337339.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002181356-20221002211356-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.921835 | 260 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Credential stuffing attacks are driven by a tendency for people to use matching passwords between multiple online accounts. Despite the risk posed by this habit, it remains a common occurrence. In a survey of 3,000 people, Google found that just over a third of respondents used a different password for all their accounts, while just over half used the same password across multiple accounts and 13% used the same password for all their online accounts.
Credential stuffing shares many similarities with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The Mirai botnet was first used for DDoS attacks, but was later repurposed for credential stuffing (and other variants), as it proved more profitable. Both DDoS and credential stuffing rely on botnets to automate the bombardment of websites.
“Instead of randomly generating multiple password guesses against a service (as in a brute force attack), credential stuffing exploits people’s tendency to re-use username and password combinations,” says a spokesperson for the National Cyber Security Centre.
“Along with password spraying, credential stuffing is one of the most persistent types of cyber attacks – ever-present malicious internet traffic that’s difficult to see. Both cause significant disruption to victim organisations, even when they haven’t caused significant breaches.”
As an example, attackers recently gained access to Uber’s GitHub repository using employees’ login credentials that had been compromised in previous data breaches. The hackers subsequently located credentials for the company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) datastore and were able to access the records of 32 million users and 3.7 million drivers.
Credential stuffing attacks have become an increasingly potent risk for organisations. As more and more data breaches occur, releasing more login details into the wild, more data is available for hackers to work with. “Every time there’s a substantial data breach event, we absolutely see a rise in attempted credential stuffing,” says Sam Crowther, founder of Kasada.
Credential stuffing in disguise
Due to their similarities, it is entirely possible that a DDoS attack could be used to disguise credential stuffing. Rather than repeating the same action and thereby overwhelming the server in the case of DDoS, credential stuffing attempts a login combination – email address and password, for example – before moving on to the next. As credential stuffing involves different, and frequently failed, login attempts, it can be easy to miss.
To detect credential stuffing attacks, organisations need to be cognisant of sudden bursts of high numbers of failed login attempts. Configuring intruder detection system (IDS) modules to not only detect, but report such instances will allow organisations to become aware of such attacks and to take appropriate action.
It is worth noting that hackers are not only attempting to log into online systems, but also the application programming interfaces (APIs) that exist behind a website. While APIs are not the ultimate goal of such attacks, they are less protected than typical login systems, and allow hackers to access user permissions and associated functions.
“In the last couple of years, attacks have been directed towards API interfaces and development interfaces, which don’t necessarily have the same authentication server systems in place,” says Colin Tankard, managing director of Digital Pathways. “They’re certainly not as well protected, like a financial site would be, on logons.”
Despite credential stuffing attacks stemming from a human problem, there are still educational and technological solutions that organisations can implement to mitigate the risk of credential stuffing.
Increasing the number of steps in the verification process, such as through two-factor authentication (2FA) or multifactor authentication (MFA), reduces the danger posed by credential stuffing. Such additional verification measures can be through biometrics or using one of the many available 2FA and MFA authenticators.
The reason that 2FA and MFA are so successful against credential stuffing attacks is that they provide an additional level of verification to gain access. As credential stuffing attacks are based on previously obtained login information, the additional information required for 2FA will never be present.
However, 2FA and MFA are not flawless, as there are some concerns about the effectiveness of such technologies. Furthermore, as there are multiple types of 2FA systems, users might feel bombarded by authentication requests and struggle to recall which 2FA app is used in each instance. “The industry now has thousands of different variations of multifactor and you end up just getting swamped when you log on to the site,” observes Tankard.
Enforcing users to regularly change their passwords can be beneficial, especially if passwords cannot be repeated. However, this does not prevent users changing their passwords to those used on other sites. Similarly, users might become frustrated with having to change their passwords frequently.
While credential stuffing attacks can be blocked from accessing a website, this does not prevent them from causing secondary damage by taking the website or login server down, due to the DDoS effect. In such cases, network traffic filters can help mitigate such risks.
Nonetheless, credential stuffing attacks are markedly different to DDoS attacks. In credential stuffing, a user and password combination are only attempted once before moving on, ergo it will show as a single failure to login in that instance, with no repeated attempts.
Since credential stuffing is an automated process using botnets, login systems for websites can add a layer of security by detecting the platform from which each login requests originates. By confirming that the login request is from a web browser, this indicates that the login request is more likely to be legitimate, rather than part of a botnet.
“Instead of looking at the IP address, they make sure that whatever is connected is, in fact, a legitimate browser,” says Crowther. “Before you can even access one of our websites, it will profile your browser from the inside to make sure there’s no automation going on.”
Although this particular technique obtains data regarding the user, it avoids any data protection concerns as it does not harvest any of the device or regionalisation data.
Forewarned is forearmed
Since the number of credential stuffing attacks increases following each new data breach, being forewarned is forearmed. Therefore, those IT departments that keep abreast of current events within the realm of cyber security will be better placed to anticipate potential credential stuffing attacks and to prepare accordingly, such as setting time aside for responding to attacks or ensuring that sufficient network resources will be available.
“Be aware of an unusual increase in users saying, ‘I can’t get into the system’ or ‘My password seems to be different’, because so many companies don’t link all of these bits together and see something’s going on,” advises Tankard.
Ultimately, for all the technological measures that may mitigate the problem, credential stuffing is a symptom of a very human problem. Investing in educating employees in basic password security can pay dividends in the future, as it will further raise awareness of the dangers that poor password habits can bring.
“Individuals need to be more cautious with passwords,” says Tankard. “If they see an alert for a website they think they’ve been on, that it has been compromised, they should change their password.”
Not only should employees use unique passwords for each of their user credentials, but they should also regularly check the Have I been pwned (HIBP) website. Launched in 2013, HIBP allows internet users to check whether their email address and associated personal data have been compromised by security breaches. The service collects and analyses hundreds of database dumps, allowing users to search for their own information by entering their username or email address. Users are also able to register, for free, to be notified if their email address appears in future dumps.
In addition, employees could be encouraged to use password management systems, such as LastPass. Password management systems are particularly effective, as they generate strong and unique passwords that can be robustly protected. However, if a weak password is used to protect the database, there is a risk that all a user’s passwords could be exposed.
With the growing number of data breaches, the outlook for credential stuffing attacks is that their number and frequency is likely to increase. “Credential stuffing will continue to get worse as an arms race,” says Crowther. “Barnes and Noble announced that they had a breach, and that’s going to now add to the ‘well’.”
Credential stuffing stems from poor password habits and is ultimately a symptom of a human problem. However, there are several technological and educational measures that organisations can undertake to protect themselves against such attacks.
Investing in measures such as 2FA or MFA increases the number of verification processes, while network filtering can prevent an organisation’s login servers from being overwhelmed. Advocating password management systems and educating employees regarding the dangers posed by using the same password across multiple platforms also allows organisations to take further proactive steps in protecting themselves against what is becoming an increasingly common vector for cyber attacks. | <urn:uuid:b3059b94-a220-400d-a71f-46bdb89092ee> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Credential-stuffing-When-DDoS-isnt-DDoS | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337473.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004023206-20221004053206-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.951438 | 1,898 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Secure your business with CyberHoot Today!!!
A Check Digit is a digit added to a string of numbers for error detection purposes. Normally, the check digit is computed from the other digits in the string. A check digit helps digital systems detect changes when data is transferred from transmitter to receiver.
Check digit algorithms calculate a check digit based on an original character string, such as an account number. The receiver recalculates the check digit to verify data entry accuracy. If the recalculated character string contains the correct check digit, the data is error-free and may be used. However, a character string that does not include the correct check digit indicates a transfer error, which signals that data must be re-entered and/or reverified.
When a check digit system is used, error detection and data implementation complexities and compromises are inevitable. Simple check digit systems easily understood by humans cannot detect errors with complete accuracy, unlike complex systems that use more complicated error detection algorithms.
What does this mean for an SMB or MSP?
Error Detection is at the Internet’s Foundation
CyberHoot’s Minimum Essential Cybersecurity Recommendations
The following recommendations will help you and your business stay secure with the various threats you may face on a day-to-day basis. All of the suggestions listed below can be gained by hiring CyberHoot’s vCISO Program development services.
- Govern employees with policies and procedures. You need a password policy, an acceptable use policy, an information handling policy, and a written information security program (WISP) at a minimum.
- Train employees on how to spot and avoid phishing attacks. Adopt a Learning Management system like CyberHoot to teach employees the skills they need to be more confident, productive, and secure.
- Test employees with Phishing attacks to practice. CyberHoot’s Phish testing allows businesses to test employees with believable phishing attacks and put those that fail into remedial phish training.
- Deploy critical cybersecurity technology including two-factor authentication on all critical accounts. Enable email SPAM filtering, validate backups, and deploy DNS protection, antivirus, and anti-malware on all your endpoints.
- In the modern Work-from-Home era, make sure you’re managing personal devices connecting to your network by validating their security (patching, antivirus, DNS protections) or prohibiting their use entirely.
- If you haven’t had a risk assessment by a 3rd party in the last 2 years, you should have one now. Establishing a risk management framework in your organization is critical to addressing your most egregious risks with your finite time and money.
- Buy Cyber-Insurance to protect you in a catastrophic failure situation. Cyber-Insurance is no different than Car, Fire, Flood, or Life insurance. It’s there when you need it most.
Each of these recommendations, except cyber-insurance, is built into CyberHoot’s product and virtual Chief Information Security Officer services. With CyberHoot you can govern, train, assess, and test your employees. Visit CyberHoot.com and sign up for our services today. At the very least continue to learn by enrolling in our monthly Cybersecurity newsletters to stay on top of current cybersecurity updates.
CyberHoot does have some other resources available for your use. Below are links to all of our resources, feel free to check them out whenever you like:
- Cybrary (Cyber Library)
- Press Releases
- Instructional Videos (HowTo) – very helpful for our SuperUsers!
Note: If you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter, visit any link above (besides infographics) and enter your email address on the right-hand side of the page, and click ‘Send Me Newsletters’. | <urn:uuid:a499daa3-2cbc-43d3-991d-9c45bbfdcdc7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cyberhoot.com/cybrary/check-digits/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337855.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006191305-20221006221305-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.899241 | 813 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Improving the delivery of care through pharmacists
You can see a pharmacist for that? See how expanding roles for pharmacists can help improve access to health services.
The current challenges within the US healthcare system of access to care, cost and anticipated shortage of physicians is providing new important roles for pharmacists to embrace.
As a pharmacist, I enthusiastically say, “Bring it on — we’re ready!” Let me explain why.
Pharmacists are medication experts
Pharmacists spend a minimum of 6 years in pharmacy school learning how drugs work so that they can identify and resolve drug-related problems. Post-graduation, more than 25% of pharmacists complete at least one year of residency and provide pharmacy services directly to patients. As of January 2021, there are more than 50,000 board certified pharmacists in one of 14 specialty areas of pharmacy practice, such as cardiology, critical care and infectious diseases.1
Pharmacists improve patient satisfaction and medication adherence. For example, pharmacists know if a medication has an unpleasant side effect or taste, and they can proactively warn patients or offer mitigation strategies. Pharmacist knowledge of drug costs and price tiering can save patients money.
Pharmacists expand access to health services and improve outcomes
Multiple studies have shown that pharmacist-provided clinical services expand access to care, improve chronic disease management and decrease cost of care. A US Surgeon General report found that pharmacist-delivered patient care services related to medication management can yield a cost efficiency return-on-investment as high as 12:1 (average 4:1). These cost savings arise from reduced hospital admissions, unnecessary or inappropriate medication use, reduced emergency departments admissions and decreased physician visits.2
When pharmacists are part of the healthcare team, studies show improvement in health outcomes related to preventing or managing chronic disease (such as blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, obesity and smoking cessation) and medication adherence3, 4.
Pharmacist-led vaccination programs have helped immunize Americans
Pharmacists have long been identified as trusted healthcare professionals who are easily accessible in the community. A Gallup poll listed pharmacists among the most trusted healthcare professionals.5 In addition, pharmacists in drug stores and other retail locations are often accessible when physician offices and clinical pharmacies are closed.
In 1981, the American Public Health Association declared that pharmacists were an underutilized resource in promoting public health and disease prevention. Since then, several public health needs–such as public access to immunizations–have been addressed by community pharmacists.6
The pharmacist’s authority to administer vaccines and deliver clinical care is determined by state law and regulations.7 All states permit vaccine administration by pharmacists as part of the scope of pharmacy practice, although the details vary state by state.
Pharmacists are increasing vaccination rates against COVID-19
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, multiple US Health and Human Services (HHS) orders have given pharmacists additional authority, such as:
- Pharmacists can now order and administer FDA-approved COVID-19 tests in all 50 states.8 This expands public access to testing and offers pharmacists an opportunity to educate patients about vaccination against COVID-19.
- HHS amended the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) to allow all state-licensed pharmacists to immunize children over the age of 3 “to increase access to childhood vaccines and decrease the risk of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks.”9
- HHS launched the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program for COVID-19 Vaccination so retail pharmacies can receive COVID-19 vaccine supply directly from the federal government. As of March 2021, 21 retail pharmacy partners were participating with more than 41,000 locations administering doses.10
With this trusted relationship, community-based pharmacists can educate patients about common misconceptions regarding COVID-19 vaccination. With almost 90% of Americans living within 5 miles of a community pharmacy, we welcome these opportunities.11
Pharmacists are expanding their clinical roles in health care
Collaborative Practice Agreements (CPAs) establish a formal relationship between a pharmacist and a health care provider that allows the prescriber to delegate certain patient care functions to the pharmacist beyond the pharmacist’s typical scope of practice. This is an exciting area for pharmacists to explore in their career paths.
Typical activities include initiating, modifying, or discontinuing prescription medications or over-the-counter medications. Ordering and interpreting laboratory tests may also be included if these services are not already authorized in the pharmacist’s regular practice.12 Nearly all states permit some type of pharmacist-prescriber collaborative practice authority, although laws and regulations vary by state.13 Importantly, pharmacists are starting to be reimbursed for certain clinical or primary care activities.14
Pharmacist-provided clinical services provided through CPAs have led to improved patient outcomes for diabetes, hypertension, anticoagulation, and other chronic diseases.15, 16, 17 The 2014 Community Preventive Services Task Force demonstrated strong evidence for team-based care involving pharmacists and nurses to improve hypertension control and other chronic disease risk factors.18
Rising healthcare costs, complexity of care and an ongoing shortage of physicians is powering a reimagining of roles and responsibilities for all healthcare team members as well as healthcare settings. Pharmacists, already a key partner in high-performing care teams, are poised to step up and provide clinical services in three major areas:
- As medication experts, pharmacists have proven they can optimize medication regimens and improve patient outcomes.
- As trusted and readily available healthcare professionals in the community, pharmacists should continue to help identify, prevent and solve their patients’ drug-related problems by listening to their patients and coordinating care with providers, as appropriate.
- As public health practitioners, pharmacists can continue making sure patients are current with their vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.
So fellow pharmacists, which roles are you going to embrace?
- BPS Specialties, Board of Pharmacy Specialties, www.bpsweb.org
- Gilbertson, S., Yoder, S., and Lee, M.P., Improving patient health system outcomes through advanced pharmacy practice: A report to the U.S. Surgeon General, Washington, D.C. Office of the Chief Pharmacist, US Public Health Service, December 2011, www.accp.com
- Doucette WR, McDonough RP, Klepser D, McCarthy R. Comprehensive medication therapy management: identifying and resolving drug-related issues in a community pharmacy. Clin Ther. 2005 Jul;27(7):1104-11.
- Fera T, Bluml BM, Ellis WM. Diabetes Ten City Challenge: final economic and clinical results. J Am Pharm Assoc. 2009;49:383-391.
- Nurses Continue to Rate Highest in Honesty, Ethics, Gallup, January 2021, news.gallup.com
- Advancing Team-Based Care Through Collaborative Practice Agreements, www.cdc.gov
- Pharmacist Immunization Authority, NASPA.us, April 2021, naspa.us
- Guidance for Licensed Pharmacists and Pharmacy Interns Regarding COVID-19 Vaccines and Immunity under the PREP Act, HHS.gov, September 2021, www.hhs.gov
- Pharmacists now allowed to administer childhood vaccines, but pediatricians disapprove, CNN, August 2020, www.cnn.com
- Understanding the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program for COVID-19 Vaccination, CDC.gov www.cdc.gov
- Get to Know Your Pharmacist, www.cdc.gov
- Pharmacist collaborative practice agreements: Key elements for legislative and regulatory authority: A report of the collaborative practice workgroup convened by the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations, July 2015, www.accp.com
- Sachdev G, Kliethermes MA, Vernon V, Leal S, Crabtree G. Current status of prescriptive authority by pharmacists in the United States. J Am Coll Clin Pharm. 2020;3;807-817, accpjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
- Chisholm-Burns MA, Kim Lee J, Spivey CA, Slack M, Herrier RN, Hall-Lipsy E, et al. US pharmacists’ effect as team members on patient care: systematic review and meta-analyses. Med Care 2010;48(10):923–33, connect.ashp.org
- Chiquette E, Amato MG, Bussey HI. Comparison of an anticoagulation clinic with usual medical care: anticoagulation control, patient outcomes, and health care costs. Arch Intern Med 1998;158(15):1641–7.
- Davidson MB, Karlan VJ, Hair TL. Effect of a pharmacist-managed diabetes care program in a free medical clinic. Am J Med Qual 2000;15(4):137–42.
- Proia KK, Thota AB, Njie GJ, Finnie RK, Hopkins DP, Mukhtar Q, Pronk NP, Zeigler D, Kottke TE, Rask KJ, Lackland DT, Brooks JF, Braun LT, Cooksey T; Community Preventive Services Task Force. Team-based care and improved blood pressure control: a community guide systematic review. Am J Prev Med. 2014 Jul;47(1):86-99. | <urn:uuid:bc28122c-0652-4042-9902-6ba429cbe624> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson-health/why-pharmacists-matter/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337855.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006191305-20221006221305-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.901236 | 2,003 | 2.59375 | 3 |
25G Ethernet–A New Trend for Future Network
As the requirement for bandwidth in Cloud data centers is increasing strikingly, networking and the Ethernet industry are moving toward a new direction, that is 25G Ethernet. It seems that 25GbE is more preferred and accepted by end users when comparing upgrade paths of 10GbE-25GbE-100GbE and 10GbE-40GbE-100GbE. Why choose 25GbE? What are the benefits of 25GbE? This tutorial will interpret 25G Ethernet in an all-sided perspective.
The Emergence of 25G Ethernet
Network engineers were once shocked at the idea of 10GbE link. Then, virtualization and cloud computing created new networking challenges requiring more bandwidth. Top of Rack (ToR) switches, typically the largest number of connections in data centers, are rapidly outgrowing 10GbE. Then the IEEE ratified a 40GbE and 100GbE standard to keep up with the demands, but 40GbE isn't cost-effective or power-efficient in ToR switching for cloud providers and the deployment of 100GbE is relatively difficult and costly. Against such a backdrop, 25G Ethernet standard was developed by IEEE 802.3 Task Force P802.3by, used for Ethernet connectivity that will benefit Cloud and enterprise data center environments. The 25GbE specification makes use of single-lane 25Gbps Ethernet links and is based on the IEEE 100GbE standard (802.3bj), achieving 100GbE through 4x25Gbps lanes.
25G Ethernet Optics & Cables
The 25GbE physical interface specification supports two main form factors—SFP28 (1x25 Gbps) and QSFP28 (4x25 Gbps). Commonly used transceivers are 25GbE SFP28.
The 25GbE PMDs (Physical Medium Dependent) specify low-cost, twinaxial copper cables, requiring only two twinaxial cable pairs for 25Gbps operation. Links based on copper twinaxial cables can connect servers to ToR switches, and serve as intra-rack connections between switches and/or routers. Fan-out cables (cables that connect to higher speeds and “fan-out” to multiple lower speed links) can connect to 10/25/40/50 Gbps speeds, and can now be accomplished on MMF (multimode fiber), SMF (single-mode fiber), and copper cables, matching reach-range to the specific application needs. Commonly used cables are 25GbE DAC and 25GbE AOC.
|Physical Layer||Name||Reach||Error Correction|
|Electrical Backplane||25GBASE-KR||1 m||BASE-R FEC or RS-FEC|
|Electrical Backplane||25GBASE-KR-S||1 m||BASE-R FEC or disabled|
|Direct Attach Copper||25GBASE-CR-S||3 m||BASE-R FEC or disabled|
|Direct Attach Copper||25GBASE-CR||5 m||BASE-R FEC or RS-FEC|
|Twisted Pair||25GBASE-T||30 m||N/A|
|MMF Optics||25GBASE-SR||70 m OM3 / 100 m OM4||RS-FEC|
Table 1: Specification of 25GbE Interfaces.
Why Choose 25G Ethernet?
While 10GbE is fine for many existing deployments, it cannot efficiently deliver the needed bandwidth but requires additional devices, significantly increasing expenses. And 40GbE isn't cost-effective or power-efficient in ToR switching for Cloud providers. Thus, 25GbE was designed to break through the dilemma.
Number of SerDes Lanes
SerDes (Serializer/Deserializer) is an integrated circuit or transceiver used in high-speed communications for converting serial data to parallel interfaces and vice versa. The transmitter section is a serial-to-parallel converter, and the receiver section is a parallel-to-serial converter. Currently, the rate of SerDes is 25 Gbps. That’s to say, only one SerDes lane at 25Gbps is needed to connect one end of 25GbE card to the other end of 25GbE card. In contrast, 40GbE needs four 10GbE SerDes lanes to achieve connections. As a result, the communication between two 40GbE cards requires as many as four pairs of fibers. Furthermore, 25G Ethernet provides an easy upgrade path to 50G and 100G networks.
Figure 1: Numbers of Lanes Needed in Different Gigabit Ethernet.
More Efficient 25GbE NIC for PCIe Lanes
At present, the mainstream Intel Xeon CPU only provides 40 lanes of PCIe (PCI Express) 3.0 with a single-lane bandwidth of about 8 Gbps. These PCIe lanes are used for not only communications between CPU and network interface cards (NIC), but also between RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) cards, GPU (graphics processing unit) cards, and all other peripheral cards. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the utilization of limited PCIe lanes by NIC. Single 40GbE NIC needs at least one PCIe 3.0 x8 lane, so even if two 40GbE ports can run at full speeds at the same time, the actual lane bandwidth utilization is only: 40G*2 / (8G*16) = 62.5%. On the contrary, 25GbE NIC card only needs one PCIe 3.0 x8 lane, then the utilization efficiency is 25G*2 / (8G*8) = 78%. Apparently, 25GbE is significantly more efficient and flexible than 40GbE in terms of the use of PCIe lanes.
Figure 2: 25G NIC Deployment.
Lower Cost of 25GbE Wiring
40GbE cards and switches use QSFP+ modules with relatively costly MTP/MPO cables not compatible with LC optical fibers of 10GbE. If upgrading to 40GbE based on 10GbE, most of the fiber optic cables will be abandoned and rewired, which can be a huge expense. In comparison, 25GbE cards and switches use SFP28 transceivers and are compatible with LC optical fibers of 10GbE due to a single-lane connection. If upgrading from 10GbE to 25GbE, rewiring can be avoided, which turns out to be time-saving and economical.
Distinct Benefits of 25GbE for Switch I/O
Firstly, 25G Ethernet has an excellent maximum switch I/O (Input/Output) performance and fabric capability. Web-scale and Cloud organizations can enjoy 2.5 times the network bandwidth performance of 10GbE. Delivered across a single lane, 25GbE also provides greater switch port density and network scalability. Secondly, 25GbE can reduce capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX) by significantly cutting down the required number of switches and cables, along with the facility costs related to space, power, and cooling compared to 40GbE technology. Thirdly, 25GbE using a single lane 25Gbps Ethernet link protocol leverages the existing IEEE 100GbE standard which is implemented as four 25Gbps lanes running on four fiber or copper pairs.
Future 25G Ethernet Market Forecast
In the past few years, 25G Ethernet has received more and more recognition, and 25GbE products have undergone significant developments and occupied an increased market share. 25GbE is expected to seek a broader market in 2020 and will keep thriving in the future. In the long run, 25GbE is predicted to be a future-proof trend in high-speed data center networks since 25GbE adapter can also run at 10GbE speeds, and 25GbE switches offer a more convenient way to migrate to 100G or even 400G network, bypassing the 40GbE upgrade. While the need for industry consensus building cannot be underestimated either. At present, 25GbE is mainly used for switch-to-server applications. If switch-to-switch applications can be largely promoted, 25G Ethernet may go further. In a word, the move to 25GbE is accelerating.
No matter the market research or the attitude of users, 25G Ethernet seems to be the preferred option down the road, as it costs less, requires lower power consumption and provides higher bandwidth. In view of the realistic benefits of 25G Ethernet, it is expected to go further in the future beyond question. | <urn:uuid:5d019f67-c8d0-49b5-b507-a3a5b04ecdce> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.fs.com/blog/25gbea-new-trend-for-future-ethernet-network.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030333541.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924213650-20220925003650-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.891001 | 1,781 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Bringing your own device can occur under the radar or become part of a particular corporate policy in which an organization lends its support to personal mobile devices or even provides a stipend to employees enabling them to purchase a device that could include laptops, smartphones, and tablet PCs.
History of BYOD
It was only in 2010 that BYOD became much more mainstream even though the term was initially introduced in 2009. With personal devices flooding the workplace, CIOs started to feel the pressure and it was during this time that Android was beginning to pick up steam and the first iPad was launched in the market. Thus, an increasing number of tablets and smartphones were now used in workplaces and IT was continuing to allow Bring Your Own Device without offering much support. Many businesses even started blocking personal devices from their mail servers and network. iOS 4 was launched in 2010, providing the first API's to handle mobile devices. IT and organizations now started to understand that they couldn't ignore Bring Your Own Device forever.
In 2011, BYOD programs and official support were introduced into the workplace at a much faster rate. Company executives were beginning to feel comfortable typing on touchscreen keyboards, and the enterprise mobility market was also rapidly shifting.
Even though IT's challenge was still focused on securing the device, they experienced the first real concerns around data leakage and security in 2012. Users were now greatly concerned about their privacy. Businesses were focused on clearly communicating BYOD policies to concerned users while continuing to work towards understanding the security and privacy implications. There was thus an increase in the demand for Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions.
Bring Your Own Device thus brought a change in the way organizations provided access to their computer networks. Traditionally, the IT department of a school or business would build closed networks that could be accessed only by the computers they owned. Students and employees will be able to link their own smartphones, tablets, and computers to more open networks.
The BYOD movement was triggered by the exploding popularity of tablets and smartphones together with lower costs of laptop computers. Individuals who earlier depended on organizations to issue them hardware for work can now own devices that are capable enough to do the same work.
Why BYOD Security? – Understanding Bring Your Own Device Security Risks
Malware: When employees start bringing in their own devices to their workplaces, nothing much is known about the device. These devices could get be at risk from malware and other cybersecurity risks that didn't originate within the company as the employees also use these devices for their personal needs. The risk of BYOD users bringing their malware with them is thus a major concern for IT security managers.
Data exfiltration: Besides the risk of introducing malware into a corporate environment, Bring Your Own Device can also bring about data loss or leakage. With unmanaged BYOD devices, a user that gets unfettered access to a corporate network will be able to take whatever they have access to and bring it with them outside the company. That particular device could even be stolen or lost.
Hardware: With corporate-provisioned devices, the company gets direct control over the specific phone hardware choice, and it has frequently been vetted to meet corporate compliance requirements. The phones and other devices provided by companies to their employees are typically provisioned with default configurations capable of meeting corporate policies.
How to Mitigate BYOD Risks in Businesses?
With the BYOD concept evolving into an unstoppable force across the business landscape, managing what can be a host of mobile devices is now a vital consideration for all enterprises.
With a growing fleet of mobile devices, businesses now need a platform enabling high levels of oversight and solid data protection. A MDM system has become essential for tracking mobile device usage and it also has the potential to wipe devices if they get lost or stolen.
Organizations can adopt a number of measures that help mitigate BYOD risks. Some of these measures include:
Remote wipe refers to the concept of remotely deleting data from a device. This includes overwriting stored data in order to avoid forensic recovery and returning the device to its original factory settings so that any data ever on it becomes inaccessible to anyone.
It is essential for organizations to understand their own requirements for data protection. This is particularly true in regulated environments where there may be compliance requirements, and compile a risk profile. For example, international deployment and compliance requirements are two situations in which Bring Your Own Device risk levels are specifically high.
It is important to update browsers, operating systems, and other applications frequently with the most recent security patches. Staying up-to-date guarantees that the devices of employees leaving the company are suitably wiped of corporate data. If this does not take place then there could be a breach of data well into the future.
Limiting access to enterprise data based on the nature of an employee's job role is always considered to be a good idea.
All companies should adopt a strict device tracking policy. This will help them to constantly be aware of the whereabouts of all company devices whether in use or not. It is also good to implement a surveillance system capable of monitoring all devices entering and leaving company premises. Visitors' devices should also be included in the surveillance system.
Key benefits to operating a BYOD strategy in an organization are discussed below:
People mostly tend to be familiar with their own devices. For instance, Apple fans are very familiar with Apple technology and Windows fans are good with devices running on Windows operating systems. Employees could actually get frustrated while trying to get used to a totally different device. This issue is eradicated by Bring Your Own Device, which allows employees to work using their own personalized devices, which meet all their own needs and enables employees to be perfectly competent in their jobs.
Bring Your Own Device allowing employees in an organization to use just one device prevents them from traveling with several devices in order to satisfy their work and home needs, as the one device will fulfill both. With employees having access to all of the data they need anywhere they want, they will be able to work normally from anywhere just as how they function in the office. These employees do not get disturbed by the strict rules that they have to adhere to when using company property. Bring Your Own Device thus allows greater freedom to the employees.
Companies using BYOD can actually save huge amounts of money as they don't have to purchase costly devices for their employees to be able to do eLearning, for instance. Eventually, wastage and breakages could also be reduced since the employees ensure to take better care of their own equipment than company-owned devices as any repair costs could become the employee's burden.
Increased productivity and innovation
Bring Your Own Device helps create a positive correlation between the comfort-level of employees and their productivity. By using their own devices, employees get comfortable and hence master their use. These devices are mostly available with the newest technologies, thus proving to be beneficial to the enterprise.
Allowing employees to utilize BYOD in the workplace could result in a number of security risks associated with:
Lack of antivirus or firewall software
When utilizing their own devices in the workplace, employees should always be encouraged to update firewall and antivirus software regularly. Failing to do so can actually create weak networks and holes in systems.
Accessing unsecured Wi-Fi
Employees generally use their devices outside the workplace and are hence likely to access unsecured Wi-Fi connections at coffee shops, stores, airports, or even their own home. Networks that are not secured can actually provide hackers with easy access to the company's networks or systems.
Stolen or lost devices
If devices with company data are lost, misplaced or stolen, this could help unwanted third-party individuals to obtain access to vital information of your business. This mostly takes place when devices are not secured with passcodes or passwords.
People leaving the company
Ex-employees could gain unauthorized access to systems after they abruptly leave the company. This happens because you may not have the time to wipe devices clean of company information and passwords when employees suddenly decide to quit.
All these risks pose a threat to the company's sensitive and critical data when proper precautions are not adopted. Hence, prior to implementing a BYOD policy at your business, you will have to come up with a security plan outlining regulations employees will have to follow. Educating employees about the significance of these regulations is extremely necessary in order to prevent data from getting compromised.
Insurance Implications of BYOD
It is possible for business data to become vulnerable to hackers despite the fact that the best security practices, measures, and policies are in place. This is the point where cyber liability insurance comes into play.
Insurers must develop services and products customized to meet the particular needs of data privacy pertaining to companies and their employees. To achieve this, the insurance industry will have to stay ahead of the curve in order to guarantee that products are up-to-date with Bring Your Own Device trends and new areas of exposure, such as who is responsible for resulting losses and stolen data, even if devices are compromised in places outside the workplace.
Insurers have a thorough understanding of the concerns and risks associated with Bring Your Own Device and can thus come up with specific pain points and provide the necessary protection required by commercial customers. It is also essential for insurers and companies to understand the unique risks related to BYOD in order to provide correct coverage if in case vital information gets compromised.
Securing a BYOD program can take several different forms, involving varied types of technologies and policies.
Network Access Control (NAC): Controlling access to corporate networks and resources is considered to be the most basic foundational level. In the modern threat landscape, allowing any device to connect to a corporate network, without any validation or control is, in fact, a recipe for disaster.
Mobile Device Management (MDM): Enrolling hardware devices in an MDM platform allows organizations to track and have a degree of management over devices accessing a network.
How to Establish an Effective BYOD Policy
If you have an outdated policy, or if you are in the process of developing a corporate Bring Your Own Device policy, or yet to develop a policy, then consider the tips given below in order to address IT service, application use, security, and several other components:
Specify the devices that will be permitted
Generally, people who had a blackberry used the same device for work. However, employees are now pampered with a wide variety of devices ranging from iOS-based mobiles to Android phones. It is always important to specify what exactly is meant by ‘bring your own device'. You will have to clarify what devices are acceptable by the enterprise, and what devices can be used.
Set up a firm security policy for all devices that enter the premises
Device users usually refuse to move to lock screens and passwords on their personal devices. They hurdle towards the ease of access to the content and the functions on their device. This indeed is not a very valid complaint. A lot of sensitive information can be accessed once phones and other devices are connected to the corporate servers. If employees desire to adopt the Bring Your Own Device initiative, they will have to be willing to configure their devices with strong passwords for protection. A lengthy alphabetical password needs to be placed instead of just a simple four-digit one.
Define a clear service policy for devices under BYOD criteria
When it comes to resolving problems and questions about employees' personal devices, there are indeed a number of boundaries that the management will have to set. To implement this, policy-makers will have to answer the questions like:
What will be the policies for support on personally owned applications? What support will be provided for devices that are damaged? Will you restrict Helpdesk to ticketing problems with calendaring, email, and other personal information management-type applications?
Clear communication should be given on who owns what apps and data
Questions must be asked as to whether the BYOD policy that is developed will permit the wiping of the entire device that is brought into the network. If so, employees will have to be provided with distinct guidance on how to secure their devices and also back up the information in order to restore it once the device is replaced or retrieved.
What apps will be allowed and what banned?
This rule must apply to any device that can connect to organization servers, personal or corporate. The key considerations will cover the application for replacement email applications, VPNs, and social media browsing, or other remote access software. The question that arises here is whether users will be able to download, install, and make use of applications that could cause security issues or legal risks on the device that has access to highly sensitive corporate resources.
Setting up an employee exit strategy
Finally, consider what will happen when an employee leaves the organization with a device allowed under the BYOD policy. How will management implement the removal of all access token, email accesses, data, and other proprietary information and applications? This is not simple. It is not possible for employees to just return a corporate-issued phone. A number of companies solve this issue by not allowing access to corporate emails or to synchronization access as part of an exit interview and checklists of the HR. However, heavily security-conscious ones attempt to execute a BYOD-enabled wipe as a compulsory exit strategy.
BYOD Mobile Security
The speedy proliferation of user- and corporate-owned devices in the workplace points out that organizations need to strengthen their support infrastructure now. MDM is considered to be the main software solution ideal for securing and managing your company's applications and data that are used on the mobile endpoint devices that go in and out of your organization. MDM platforms offer a main interface allowing you to interact with the data present on your company's devices and also your employee's personal devices, which are usually enrolled in the platform when they are hired.
BYOD policies have been a money saver for companies that need its employees to be mobile. In the entire process of adopting employee-owned devices, understanding Bring Your Own Device and its impact on an existing organization and infrastructure is a critical milestone as it will permit a business to make the best use of cloud computers, superphones, tablets, and smartphones.
Given below are some of the best practices when it comes to BYOD and security concerns:
Policy review: Currently prevailing policies may need tweaking, however, there should be a clear path toward applying existing policies to the mobile app and device world as well.
Evaluation of MDM: MDM software is capable of solving a number of your security issues, but will need time to be evaluated properly.
Set realistic expectations: Using a mobile device for personal purposes is extremely different from using a mobile device within an organization. Employees using BYOD will have to accept compromise and also accept the fact that their organization's security is extremely important.
Platform support: The mobile platform environment is greatly fragmented. You will have to remember that specific devices outside Apple's iPhone/iPad may support a variety of features for which your organization will have to maintain a list of supported devices.
Application policy: An application policy can be based on blacklisting or whitelisting software along with the usage of containers in order to run third-party software. You will have to be very clear as to which software is permitted, and which is not. Setting an application policy can actually consume a huge amount of resources, but it stands at the center of your security policy. Only apps that provide reporting, auditing, and centralized management should be permitted. | <urn:uuid:87e5106b-65e4-40e2-9ebf-400790d1001b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itarian.com/byod-bring-your-own-device/?track=8280 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.956823 | 3,232 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Ransomware attacks on businesses are on a steep global rise. Estimates put the total cost of this ever-present cyber threat in the $20 billion range by 2021 – nearly a 60x increase over the last 5 years (Morgan, 2019). In Q3 of 2020 the US has seen over 145 million ransomware hits, an increase of roughly 139% from the previous year (Das, 2020). These numbers show the increased prevalence of the issue and the constant threat that it poses to businesses across all industries.
The risk of ransomware attacks is here to stay. And knowing how to approach the situation if it happens to your business is critical to recovering access to stolen data and safeguard against future breaches. Still, the question remains as to whether paying up when ransomware incidents occur is a viable option or staying steadfast and working toward recovery is a better solution.
Quick Background on Ransomware
For anyone unaware of this threat, ransomware appears in the shape of malware that blocks access to sensitive data and systems through intended encryption of that data. To remove the encryption, a cybercriminal places a ransom on the compromised data and will not allow access by the affected party until a payment is made. Releasing the data, or deleting it altogether, if the ransom is not paid is a principal aspect to this threat.
These criminals can gain access to an individual computer or a shared system through email phishing schemes, security holes, or any other cyber sleuthing tactic that can easily slip under the radar and allow the perpetrator to install ransomware. It’s a digital take on a crime that has existed for ages.
Should Ransomware Payments be Made?
There are several important points that come into play when considering the proper course of action during a ransomware incident. Government and law enforcement agencies have recommended against paying these cyber ransoms for years. The main reasons for this being that payment doesn’t guarantee the release or safety of compromised data, any payments made can be used by criminal organizations to pursue continued illicit activities, and victims who pay are often targeted repeatedly.
A closer look at each of those reasons against paying ransomware threat actors is worth exploring as they all pose additional risks to a business’s data security and welfare moving forward.
Making a payment to a cybercriminal during a ransomware attack does not guarantee that the encrypted data will actually be released back to the business experiencing the threat. There are plenty of instances where a ransom is made, and more money is demanded to rid the ransomware. Even if the attacker does provide an encryption key upon payment, there is no way to tell if the data has been copied by the extortionist. Any instance of ransomware is a data and security breach and should be approached as such. Since this breach exists from the outset of the incident, paying only supports and emboldens cybercriminals.
Another reason not to pay ransomware is the fact that any of these payments can help further additional criminal activity. In fact, the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) recently released an advisory that states that any business paying a cyber ransom may violate OFAC regulations, resulting in harsh civil penalties in the shape of fines and other liabilities to a company that does pay. Not to mention ransomware payments often support nefarious crime syndicates that no business would ever want to support or justify.
Ransomware payments also increase the potential for future targeting of data breaches and other cybersecurity issues. Once a cybercriminal gains access to data through ransomware, they have infiltrated the security of a business or organization and they can use this to their benefit, regardless of whether a payment is made or not. You may think that a threat is dealt with once ransomware encryption is lifted by making a payment, only to have another data breach occur shortly thereafter or at some point down the road. Any payments made to the extortionist can be seen as a bullseye and only encourages the same criminal to attempt another attack on the same company or for others who are made aware of a willing ransom target to do the same.
Is Payment of the Ransom Demand Ever an Option?
The Federal Government and the FBI recommends against making any ransomware payments, as do many other experts and law enforcement agencies. In the digital world of today, paying a de-encryption ransom is not encouraged and can actually be illegal. Some companies do indeed fulfill the demands of cybercriminals, but this can be considered a crime (see OFAC advisory) as it supports criminal activities of many kinds.
Downtime and productivity loss are threats to any businesses inflicted with a ransomware incident. On paper, the push to make a payment is driven by the reality of needing to get back to business quickly to avoid the lost capital and profits that occur when ransomware forces things to go offline. This downtime can easily cost more than the ransom, but again payment is not recommended and can result in legal consequences.
The desire to make a ransomware payment can be strong, as it may seem like a quick and easy way to remedy the situation. The reality is that things are never quite that simple, and a business needs to consider thoroughly the consequences and risks of making such a payment. There are legal liabilities and regulations in play when data breaches involve personal information of any customer, as well.
Preparing for a Ransomware Incident
The best way to prepare and take action for a ransomware incident is not after the cyberthreat occurs, but beforehand. Critical in this preparation is regularly backing up all data so that things can be restored in the event of a ransomware breach without having to paying a ransom. This backup should be thorough and occur regularly so that a company can quickly access the needed data and avoid potential downtime.
Data breach defenses can help to thwart these attacks before they happen by implementing safeguards and educating everyone involved in your business about potential threats and how to avoid them. Having policies in place and qualified experts and attorneys available is also key to navigating issues with ransomware – before, during, and after the incident.
Being well prepared and informed prior to any cyberthreat is essential. The risks of ransomware and other potential sources of data breach are growing in both frequency and severity. Chances are, your business is going to experience a ransomware attack, if it hasn’t already happened. A defense system against these threats is crucial to keeping the security of your business and customers intact, and it is a fundamental component to navigating through data breaches when they do occur.
LibertyID is the leader in identity theft restoration, having restored the identities of tens of thousands of individuals without fail. If you retain personal information on your customers, now is the time to get data breach planning and a response program in place with our LibertyID for Small Business data breach preparation program. With LibertyID Enterprise you can now add value to existing products, services, or relationships by covering your customers, employees, or members with LibertyID’s fully managed identity theft restoration service – at a fraction of our retail price – with no enrollment and no file sharing. We have no direct communication with your group members – until they need us.
Call us now for a now obligation proposal at 844-44-LIBERTY (844) 445-4237 | <urn:uuid:4ffa1f16-65a3-4f52-a312-397f7b208860> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.libertyid.com/blog/ransomware-is-paying-a-viable-option/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335286.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928212030-20220929002030-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.949706 | 1,455 | 2.625 | 3 |
SendMail is basically a web based Mail Transfer Agent(MTA) that allows a user to send email between servers. It provides a command line support to compose and send the emails using SMTP services. The basic implementation of this email client is meant for UNIX systems. To provide support for Windows NT, a POP3 based commercial version of SendMail has been released. The user needs to write the code in PHP or PERL, which contains email information such as recipient, subject, main body of the email.
The following article will be discussing the various aspects of SendMail forensics in a simple language. It covers the various aspects that play an important role while analyzing the emails during forensic investigation.
Mechanism of SendMail Service
The email messages being sent through SendMail client undergoes many stages during email processing and transmission. A specific function is performed at each stage, which ensures the security and consistency of the message being sent. The various stages involved during the email transmission include:
1. Argument Processing & Address Passing
- – When SendMail receives an email as input, it figures out recipient’s name & creates two files.
- – The first file contains the message header and list of all recipients. The other one contains body of email.
- – The SendMail performs validations and verifies local recipient to maintain data authentication.
2. Message Collection
- -After the verification of recipients, the message is collected in two parts: message header and email body.
- -The header field may be manipulated by the email client as some additional header fields are included in the existing header.
- -The email body is kept intact and does not undergo any manipulation or formatting.
3. Message Delivery
- – The SendMail maintains a send queue for all the emails that are requested to be sent.
- – A connection is tried to be established with the destination mail server.
- – On successful establishment of the connection, SendMail forwards the specific email message to the mail server.
SendMail Message ID
Every email being sent through SendMail is associated with a unique message id, which acts as a source of identification for each email. On studying the message id, the following parameters can be determined:
- $t- It indicates UTC data and time in the yyyymmddhhmm format.
- $i- It specifies a unique queue id, which is generated by using complex algorithms.
- $j- It consist of a FQDN, which provides complete information about domain names.
Significance of Message Header
The careful examination of message header can be beneficial for performing SendMail forensics and gathering information about various parameters of the email.
The following information can be easily collected from the message header, which helps in carrying out SendMail forensics efficiently:
1. Domain Name
The domain name associated with the email can be easily tracked from the message ID. It also provides information about the local host name. So, the investigation can be started smoothly by having an idea about domain.
2. Time Stamp
Time and date play a crucial role in the forensics investigation. The time and date header fields can be analysed to cross check the accurate date and time of the email message. It also helps in checking the email consistency.
3. IP Address
The IP address is the authenticated key for every email message being sent. The investigators can easily locate the location of the sender from the time zone evaluated from the time stamp.
The in-reply-to field of the message contains the original email id of the recipient. This field can be checked in case of spoofing issue. This is because this field cannot be altered in any case. So, any mismatch in the field can help to identify spoofing.
This feature facilitates to rewrite the sender email field with the local domain name. So, the outgoing message does not contain any FQDN list as it hides away the details of the local domain.
With the increasing cases of cyber crimes or email frauds, the demand of cyber forensics is on the peak. Examining the emails also help to track the cyber terrorist or hackers. It is quite tedious for experts to analyze bulk emails manually. An email examiner software, MailXaminer can be used to analyse and examine the emails efficiently. It performs the batch Sendmail forensics within a few easy steps. | <urn:uuid:a2e9766d-9a79-4e74-af0a-d12286293742> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.mailxaminer.com/blog/sendmail-forensics-analyze-bulk-emails/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335444.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930051717-20220930081717-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.882244 | 907 | 2.796875 | 3 |
VPN has gained widespread attention since 2018. YouTubers promote them as one of the safest tools to use to browse the internet safely and anonymously. But while there are advantages to using a VPN, there are also disadvantages.
According to a Computer Weekly article, Travelex, a foreign exchange company, was recently hit by Sodiokibi ransomware, which ultimately disabled the foreign company's IT systems on New Year's Eve. The attack took place when the company accidentally forgot to cover its Pulse Secure VPN servers.
Unfortunately, it is becoming more of a common issue as VPNs are now a target of cybercriminals.
Outdated protocols lead to cyberattacks.
Back in the day, when remote access VPNs were necessary for a growing digital society, they were fantastic tools. The concept of remote access from anywhere in the world was game-changing. IT teams introduced VPN’s at a time when most apps were running in the on-prem data centre, which was skilfully secured with a few network security appliances.
However, as the digital world is growing faster, more internal apps have switched to the cloud. Remote access VPNs need servers to be exposed to the internet, and users need to be moved onto the corporate network through static tunnels that drive holes through firewalls. Moreover, the same set of technology made to protect businesses and multinational corporations is now susceptible to modern malware and ransomware attacks.
But how does it happen?
It is becoming more of a common trend of systematic cyberattacks that leave VPNs vulnerable. Most recently, Medium.com had published an article about the Sodinokibi ransomware incident and how it was implemented via a VPN. From that article, here are a few points that show the average process for how malware can be introduced to a network through a VPN vulnerability:
- Cybercriminals use a technique where they scan the internet for unpatched VPN servers
- When remote access to the network is archived (this excludes a valid password and username)
- Attacks have the advantage of viewing logs and cached passwords in plain text
- Domain admin access is gained
- Subtle lateral movements take place across the entire network
- Multifactor authentication (MFA) and endpoint security are then disabled
- Ransomware (such as Sodinokibi) gets moved to network systems
- The company is susceptible to ransomware
Negative effects of VPN
Many traditional organisations believe that remote-access VPNs are necessary. In some cases, they may very well be. But, often enough, VPNs are the gateway to opening networks to the internet, and as a result, there is an increased risk to most businesses. And here’s why:
- The patching process is often too slow or neglected - recalling and even allocating time to patch VPN server is painstakingly difficult.
- Placing users on the network - For VPNs to work, networks must be discoverable. Unfortunately, this means that exposure to the internet opens the organisation to cyber attacks.
- Lateral risk at exponential scale - once on a network, malware can grow and spread laterally, and regardless of efforts to perform network segmentation. Furthermore, this can lead to the takedown of other security technologies, for example, MFA and endpoint security.
- The business' reputation - customers, will develop a sense of trust from a company, especially regarding how an organisation manages their customers' data. The ongoing widespread news of ransomware attacks poses a threat to the organisation and has a detrimental impact on the brand’s reputation.
A newer, safer approach
Since there has been an increase in the negative impacts of VPN, it has led to new research in finding an alternative solution. It has also reported that, by the year 2023, 60% of enterprises will phase out most of their remote access virtual private networks (VPNs) in favour of zero-trust network access (ZTNA).
For businesses considering alternative methods, such as ZTNA, it is best to keep these points in mind when positioning it to your executive:
Reduce business risk - using ZTNA allows for access to specific business applications without the need for network access. Besides, there is no infrastructure ever exposed. By using ZTNA, it removes the visibility of services and apps on the internet.
Reduce costs - Aside from the fact that ZTNA can reduce business risk, it can also reduce cost. ZTNA is often depicted as a fully cloud-delivered service. It also means that there are no servers to buy, patch, or manage, and this is not limited to just a VPN server. The entirety of a VPN inbound gateway can now be smaller or wholly removed.
Deliver a better user experience - Given the increased availability of cloud ZTNA services compared to limited VPN inbound appliance gateways, remote users are given a faster and more seamless access experience regardless of application, device and even location.
If you are thinking about replacing your remote access VPN, then check out gend.co/netskope, we’d be happy to provide a full trial and demo to show you how to move from a VPN based service safely.
Want to stay ahead of the competition when it comes to security? Check out 10 Critical Security Projects and How Netskope Can Help. | <urn:uuid:457fd963-aa11-4732-bfe5-5667c4543650> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.gend.co/blog/vpns-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336674.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001132802-20221001162802-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.955993 | 1,089 | 2.828125 | 3 |
User and Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA)
What is User and Entity Behavior Analytics?
User and Entity Behavior Analytics, or UEBA, defines a cyber security process that enables IT security teams to monitor and respond to suspicious behavior across the network. The term “user behavior” encompasses the full range of activities by human and non-human entities in the cloud, on mobile or on-premise applications, and endpoints.
Rather than relying strictly on predefined rules for what kind of behaviors are acceptable, UEBA allows the IT security team to measure and determine what should be considered normal behaviors. This gives them a baseline to help spot abnormal activity when it occurs and respond accordingly. Thus, UEBA provides situational awareness for tracking user activity that deviates from the norm and assists analysts in knowing what to look for in the event of a breach.
How do UEBA security tools work?
Modern UEBA software tools use machine learning, algorithms, and statistical analysis to establish baseline behaviors that reflect the normal activity. Deviations from these behaviors are highlighted as potential security threats. UEBA can also aggregate data reports and logs and analyze file, flow, and packet information.
The concept of UEBA security is similar to monitoring spending patterns that credit card companies rely on to detect fraud. Suppose a card and user credentials are lost or stolen and a thief starts using the card to make big ticket purchases. In that case, the sudden change in purchasing behavior is a red flag triggering an alert and possibly suspending card activity.
Casting a broad net, UBEA goes beyond tracking events or devices to monitor all users on the network along with servers, applications, and devices. It has proven particularly useful for identifying insider threats from employees who may be abusing their privileges or had their credentials compromised. This includes contractors and third parties that have access to sensitive data.
What’s the difference between UEBA and UBA?
User Behavior Analytics or UBA has been used in the past to describe tracking, collecting, and assessing user data and activities. A few years ago, the analyst firm Gartner started using the term User and Entity Behavior Analytics in place of UBA though both terms signify the same capabilities. UEBA extends the definition beyond human users to include monitoring the activities of applications, servers, and devices.
Benefits of using UEBA tools
As noted, UEBA tools help you identify insider abuse and outside attacks that may have compromised the network. UEBA tools are often used in conjunction with other cyber security tools and offer a means to help demonstrate compliance with regulations.
Some of the major benefits of UEBA include:
- Automating threat detection – Machine learning and behavioral analysis helps to empower IT security teams that find themselves trying to do more with less, even as the skill shortage among IT security experts puts limits on human resources.
- Reducing risks from compromised credentials – With approximately 80 percent of breaches involving user credentials, UEBA aids in the early detection of potential threats from compromised users.
- Condensing the Mean Time to Respond – UEBA tools help reduce the MMtR when responding to cyberattacks, often allowing the IT security to keep a simple breach from spreading into a cyber security disaster.
What is the difference between UEBA and SEIM?
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technology use data and event information to identify normal activity and alert when patterns or trends deviate from the norm. It works similarly to UEBA, whereas UEBA focuses strictly on user and entity behavior information to detect anomalies.
One major difference in SIEM versus UEBA comes from the rules-based approach that SIEM tools used to thwart cyber criminal threats in real-time. UEBA solutions, by comparison, typically use risk scoring techniques as part of their advanced analysis to identify anomalies or deviant behavior over much longer periods. Many organizations use UEBA and SIEM as complimentary cyber security detection tools to improve their overall security posture. | <urn:uuid:ca1b6cce-e402-4c21-ac34-0f2e8adf9a72> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://delinea.com/what-is/user-and-entity-behavioral-analytics-ueba | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337480.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004054641-20221004084641-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.927716 | 802 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Have you ever come down with a case of “Googleitis?” This happens when you spend hours self-diagnosing health symptoms online using Google or a symptom-checker and ending up with a result like “cancer” or something worse.
Even though it can be an anxiety-inducing ordeal, most of the time you’re perfectly fine. Symptom checkers don’t have a real doctor running them, and they can’t account for biological nuances in your body, either. And in the age of COVID-19, overzealous checking can lead to dangerous health risks. Tap or click here to see how to actually tell if you have COVID-19.
It looks like the only thing that many symptom-checking apps are giving people is anxiety. A group of Australian researchers found that symptom-checker apps not only miss the mark more than half the time, they also can misinform users on their actual treatment options. Here’s why.
Symptom: light headache. Diagnosis: Brain cancer, meningitis, mad cow disease.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age that makes hypochondria all too easy. Thanks to COVID-19, people are cleaning their surroundings more than ever and paying attention to even the smallest signs of illness.
As a result, symptom-checking apps have seen an explosion in popularity. These programs existed well before the pandemic blew up, but their usage has never been higher. In the last week alone, WebMD received more than 31 million visitors, which is more than the entire population of New York City!
As convenient as symptom-checker apps are, they may actually be contributing to psychological stress in a significant way. According to new reports from the Medical Journal of Australia, several of the most popular symptom-checker apps correctly diagnose a person’s symptoms on the first try only about 36% of the time.
In other words, these apps are wrong about 64% of the time. That means whenever you fearfully lookup that pressure in your chest or sore throat, the results you’re getting might not even be accurate.
The researchers obtained their results by running several health scenarios through the apps, which included products developed by Drugs.com, the Mayo Clinic, and WebMD. The illnesses ranged from severe to mild, and more than 1,000 tests were performed for accuracy.
At the end of the study, the researchers found that apps with AI algorithms or triage features performed significantly better than their peers. They also found that expanding health condition results to the “top 3” or “top 10” would provide an accurate diagnosis more frequently, but severe results like cancer were still quite common.
Why do they always think I have cancer? What can I do for an accurate diagnosis?
Symptom-checker apps lack much of a Doctor’s nuanced understanding of medicine, and will often list exotic or deadly results out of an abundance of caution.
This blog post by Dr. David Craig illustrates the point perfectly. In his words, most symptoms are common, while bad diagnoses are rare. Add in the fact that cancer can cause nearly every symptom you can think of, and you have a recipe for paranoia.
As Dr. Craig sarcastically writes, the algorithm determines that “…blood when you wipe is either cancer or a virus that mostly affects babies.” This completely ignores mundane conditions that cause this symptom, such as hemorrhoids or constipation. To a doctor, he says, symptom-checker results are a lot like seeing this:
When you put it this way, it all looks pretty silly, doesn’t it? You can rest easy — you probably don’t have cancer, let alone COVID-19, for that matter.
Still, if you are experiencing health symptoms of any kind, a genuine doctor’s appointment is the best way to see what’s going on.
With the coronavirus still circulating, it’s worth contacting your primary care provider to see if they offer telemedicine options. That way, you can talk to a doctor without risking viral exposure. Tap or click here to see why telemedicine is the future of healthcare.
And for COVID-19 in particular, there are several online health services that provide virtual meetings where you can discuss possible symptoms and treatment options. Tap or click here to see how they work.
Symptom-checker apps can be useful for finding basic information or finding topics to discuss with your doctor, but they shouldn’t be your primary point of contact. We understand the temptation, since healthcare and doctor visits can be expensive.
But there’s no substitute for expertise. And in the world of healthcare, we need that now more than ever. Tap or click here to see the top COVID-19 myths debunked. | <urn:uuid:a48478ef-cad2-4558-9380-9c22bc3b881a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.komando.com/lifestyle/dont-always-trust-symptom-checking-apps/739182/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334871.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926113251-20220926143251-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.946065 | 1,022 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The National Industrial Security System (NISS), not to be mistaken for the national institute of statistical sciences, is a program created by the DCSA. This system was created to manage and control the release of sensitive and classified information to authorized personnel.
The National Industrial Security System (NISS) is used by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) and other government agencies to ensure that all security measures are in place for cleared contractors. However, there is more to the NISS than most people think. In this article, we will discuss the history of the National Industrial Security System (NISS), its functions, and how to register for this program.
Overview Of The NISS
The NISS is the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) ‘s information security program responsible for safeguarding classified information released to cleared contractors.
NISS was deployed on October 1st, 2018, to replace the Industrial Security Facilities Database (ISFD) and the Electronic Facilities Clearance System (e-FCL). Since then, NISS has operated as the DCSA System of Record for industrial security oversight accessible by the U.S. government, organizations, and DCSA personnel.
So far, the NISS has become an on-demand, data-driven ecosystem with automated workflows available to industry and government partners. NISS was developed and released in sections so that users could experience benefits right away. It replaced some capabilities of older systems while expanding others, like ISFD e-FCL. But it also gave security professionals more access to information about facilities and made that information easier to find.
This security program is an indirect offshoot of The National Industrial Security Program (NISP) created by Executive Order 12829, led and directed by President George Bush in 1993, to safeguard classified information held by contractors, licensees, and grantees of the United States Government in a cost-effective and efficient manner. Executive Order 12829 directed the formation of a single, integrated, coherent system for safeguarding classified information in the private sector. Consistent with the objective of standardizing security requirements for classified deals.
NISP operated on some central uniformity tenets, which included:
- Achieving uniformity in security procedures.
- Implementing the reciprocity principle in security procedures, particularly concerning facility and personnel clearances.
- Eliminating duplicative or unnecessary requirements, particularly agency inspections.
- Achieving reductions in security costs.
Today, the NISS modernized these tenets to provide an efficient and cost-effective way to manage industrial security while continuing to safeguard classified information.
Recently, the NISS software received a new update. This new update offers several major changes to the way change conditions are reported. The new FCL Change Condition Package is designed to be more user-friendly, with clarifying questions and easy-to-follow instructions. In addition, there have been enhancements made to submitting, returning, and archiving packages, including a new “Claim Ownership” feature for returned packages.
These changes were made to improve the user experience, the processing time, and also the number of resubmissions. Now, when users report changed addresses or Key Management Personnel (KMPs), they only need to submit one Change Condition Package form instead of both an Industry Profile Update Request and a Change Condition Package.
Benefits The NISS Offers
The NISS offers many benefits, including:
Increased Transparency For Industry And Government Stakeholders
NISS provides increased transparency for industry and government stakeholders. In the past, security clearances were often processed behind closed doors with little to no transparency. However, with NISS, the process is much more open and transparent.
Automatic Notifications And Alerts
The NISS platform offers users automatic notifications and alerts. This allows users to stay up-to-date on the status of their security clearance request or action. Also, the notifications come offer upcoming security vulnerability assessments (SVA) alerts that sets reminders for outstanding submissions to DCSA.
Expedited Performance Against Classified Contracts
The National Industrial Security System (NISS) also expedites performance against classified contracts. In the past, security clearances could take months or even years to process. However, with NISS, the process is much quicker and easier.
Advanced National Industrial Security Program (NISP) Reciprocity
Another benefit of NISS is that it improves National Industrial Security Program (NISP) reciprocity. NISP reciprocity is the process of sharing security clearance information between agencies. This process was often slow and inefficient. However, with NISS, the process is much quicker and easier.
Improved Processing Of Information System Approvals
Another great benefit of NISS is that it allows users to view, update, submit, track, and monitor their progress on security clearance requests and actions. This makes it easier for users to manage their facility’s security posture and compliance.
Role-Based Access To Information
NISS also offers role-based access to information. This allows users to access only the information they need when needed.
Better Reporting Capabilities
NISS also offers improved reporting capabilities. Security reports were often challenging to understand and interpret decades ago. However, with NISS, the process is much easier and more user-friendly.
Streamlined Business Processes
NISS streamlines business processes by automating workflows and tasks. This saves users time and money by reducing the need for manual processes.
Ability To Review Company Documentation With DCSA
NISS makes it easier to review a company’s documentation, results, and interactions with the DCSA. The process is much quicker than traditional methods, and this saves users time and money. Also, stakeholders can now review facility clearance information, requests, communications, and results with DCSA in one location.
Enhanced FOCI Mitigation Processing
A company’s Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence (FOCI) factors are reviewed as part of the facility clearance process and throughout the life of the facility security clearance. The National Industrial Security System (NISS) enhances FOCI mitigation processing by automating workflows and tasks. This reduces the need for manual processes.
The National Industrial Security System (NISS) has reduced costs for both industry and government.
Utilizes Single Sign-On (SSO) Capabilities (NCAISS)
NISS utilizes Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities. With single sign-on (SSO), you only need one set of login credentials to access multiple applications. This feature allows users to access NISS with their existing National Industrial Security Program (NISP) Central Access Information Security System (NCAISS) credentials.
How To Register For NISS
The NISS site provides instructions on how to register for the program, and it requires two-factor authentication (2FA) by using a CAC/PKI/ECA, etc., to log on.
Create An NCAISS Account
First, users will need to create an account on the NCAISS website. Once you have created an account, users can access the NCAISS portal. The NCAISS account is a web-based application that gives Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)-based authentication services to DCSA applications and information systems for authorized users.
Through the NCAISS Portal, authorized users can access their DCSA NCAISS Portal account through a single sign-on (SSO) capability using PKI certificates (either a Common Access Card (CAC) or DoD-approved External Certification Authority (ECA) certificate).
Request A NISS Account
Once you’re logged in to your NCAISS account, request a NISS account using the “Request/Modify Access” icon. Users will need to provide their full name, email address, and organization affiliation. After submitting the form, the user will send an email with further instructions on completing the process.
Users should also know that registering for NISS as an external government user differs slightly from an external industry user. Industry external users will go through a different process which is outlined on the NISS external portal.
The National Industrial Security System (NISS) External User Training is available in STEPP. To view this course, simply log into STEPP. Training job aids are accessible for Industry and Government users within the NISS application’s Knowledge Base. A few examples of these include: How to Submit a Sponsorship Request, How to Submit a Facility Verification Request, How to Message my ISR and Facility Profile Update Request. Please keep in mind that this is not an extensive list of training products.
Ever since the National Industrial Security System (NISS) came into existence, it has been an essential part of the U.S. Department of Defence (DoD), especially the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency (DCSA). The NISS has revolutionized the former National Industrial Security Program (NISP) by making it easier to access and update security information.
NISS also offers role-based access to information and improved reporting capabilities, which makes the process much easier and more user-friendly. In addition, NISS streamlines business processes by automating workflows and tasks, saving users time and money.
Asides from this, NISS utilizes Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities which allow users to access NISS with their existing National Industrial Security Program (NISP) Central Access Information Security System (NCAISS) credentials. If you are a government partner or contractor, we highly recommend registering for the National Industrial Security System (NISS).
Need Managed Security Services For Your Firm? Contact Global Solutions
Global Solutions offers a variety of managed security services to meet the needs of your business. We can help you assess your security needs and choose the right service for your business. If you would like to learn more about our managed security services, please get in touch with us. We would be happy to discuss your specific needs and provide a proposal outlining our services. | <urn:uuid:3da6e3af-2253-4232-8087-70fae4535969> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://globalsolinc.com/security/niss/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335058.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927194248-20220927224248-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.920945 | 2,071 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is now recommended to secure logins against phishing attacks and credential theft. This authentication method enables two-step verification for the users. The first step would be to fill in the username and password. The second verification step would be to enter a Verification Code aka OTP shared via email, or phone app thereby increasing the security of the user’s account at the time of access.
When you work in an organization, the need for two-factor authentication rises significantly, as a single compromised account can put the organization’s data security at risk. When 2FA is enabled by the admins, each time a user signs in to Docsvault on a new device, they will need to enter a password and a verification code.
What it means for you?
Signing in to your account will work in the following way:
- Enter your username and password:
Whenever you sign in to Docsvault, as usual, you will enter your username and password.
- Enter Verification Code
You can get verification code via email or use specialized authenticator apps like Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Authy, etc. Once linked to your accounts, the app displays a constantly changing set of codes to utilize whenever needed for verification.
- Keeping Sign-in Simple
You can choose to remember your second factor of authentication on your trusted devices for a specific period. From then on, that device will only ask for your password when you sign in.
You will still be covered by 2FA because when anyone else or you try to sign in to your account on another device, Two-Factor Authentication will be required.
How Two-Factor Authentication protects you?
Two-Factor authentication adds an extra layer of security while signing into Docsvault. If a hacker hacks through your password, they will still need access to your phone or verification code to get into your account. | <urn:uuid:a2c3e5b9-71d0-4a8c-b795-f2891ca630b3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.docsvault.com/features/two-factor-authentication-2fa/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335058.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927194248-20220927224248-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.896326 | 403 | 2.75 | 3 |
The 4 Axis movable Arm with remote Control and Camera
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Robotic arms are now used in a wide variety of applications, from industrial automation to automatic burger making arms. The key component of any automatic robotic arm is its ability to learn motions or the ability of arms to be programmable by the user. The ARA (Arduino Robotic Arm) is an initial project, a first phase, of one of the most popular project carried out by the Arduino community. Now You can at Home built the Robot Arm on 2WD Arduino car Kit.
A video with RobDino in action can be found here:
In this tutorial we will learn how to make an Arduino Robot Arm which can be wirelessly controlled and programmed using a custom-build Android application. But spatial orientation is also possible with a camera. Using the button in the app we can manually control the movement of each servo or axis of the robot arm. Also using the “Save” button we can record each position or step and then the robot arm can automatically run and repeat these steps.
The purpose of this intractable is to develop step by step a project for controlling and programming of a Robot Arm, simulating the basic functions of a moveable robot. It also has tutorial videos for programming and calibrating, and wrote a detailed assembly manual. In the following article we took another step and equipped Robot Arm with the Camera, initially only as an option, but soon as a finished solution.
Things used in this project
Software apps and online services
Hand tools and fabrication machines
Getting Started: Arduino Robot Arm 4DOF Mechanical Claw Kit
By using a ready chassis it is possible quickly build a working model. If you buy "Robot Smart Car Kit" and MeARM or Arduino Compatible Robotic Arm Kit, that includes a chassis, wheels, motors and other mechanical components, to build the robot, we will need possible only few additional electronics to control the motors and sensors to detect position. The whole electronic design was made based on the Arduino Uno.
• The project can be used to control robots with 4 DOF ( "Degrees of Freedom").
• The robot can be controlled in "LOCAL" and "REMOTE" modes (the last one via an Android device)
• During the program phase, user can change the control mode from "LOCAL" to "REMOTE" and vice and versa.
• Information to user will be provided thru LED
At the end we add batteries and charger to power supply the robot and it will be ready for using.
For powering the servos we need 5V, but this must come from an external power source because the Arduino is not able to handle the amount of current that all of them can draw. The power source must be able to handle at least 2A of current. So once we have connected everything together we can move on to programming the Arduino and make the Android app.
The controller uses two joysticks for collecting human inputs.
To begin with, I designed the Robot Arm.
The MeArm is among the most popular Arduino robot arms around, and for good reason. Typical Arduino robot arms — and robot arms in general — are rated in terms of degrees of freedom (DOF). This refers to the number of rotational joints contained within the design of the robot. This terminology is specific to robot arms, but also interchangeable with the more typical “axes“. For example, a 4DOF (4 Axis) robot arm will have four discrete axes of motion. Not all of these axes have to be powered, for instance the MeArm (see below) has a “self adjusting” gripper designed to always be parallel to the arm’s base.
Another factor to look out for is payload — how much an arm can lift. This is determined by the number and types of motors within the arm — usually some sort of servo or stepper motor — as well as the design of the arm.
The robotic arm comes flat packed for assembly and requires very little soldering to get up and running. Integrates 4 SG90 servos that allow 4 degrees of movement and can pick up light objects with the claw. Let's begin!
Robotic Arms can be classified according to the number of "joints" or "Degrees Of Freedom" (DOF) they have.
• The "Base", or "Waist", usually can turn the arm 180o or 360o, depending of the Servo type used (here in this project, a 180o Servo was used)
• The "Shoulder", is the responsible for "raising or lowering" the arm vertically
• The "Elbow" will make the arm "go forward or backward".
• The "Claw" or "Gripper" works by opening or closing to "grab things."
• If the servos have problems and vibrate a lot, make adjustments at the "delays" of your code.
We start assembling the robot arm from the base as shown in the picture.
By using a ready chassis it is possible quickly build a working model. If you buy "Robot Smart Car Kit" that includes a chassis, wheels, motors and other mechanical components, to build the robot, we will need only few additional electronics to control the motors and sensors to detect position.
In order to complete the assembly we just have to connect the upper and lower parts frames using some bolts and brackets, and then connect the electronic components with the control box using the provided cables.
Finally I attached the gripper mechanism onto the last servo and the Arduino robot arm was completed.
There are many descriptions of assembly hardware so it will be given more software detail.
APPS AND ONLINE SERVICES:
For the Bluetooth network, the HC-06 or HC-08 will be used. In the first version, ESP was only used for the image. Optionally, ESP32 can also be used as a control. Next, we are going to introduce the use method for HC-06 Bluetooth module.
In store there are a lot of different apps for controlling Robot Arm. It's about the same principle. However, the difference is in the graphic design. To easily use the HC-06 Bluetooth module to control the robot arm, we particularly use the APP control - shown below.
You can download the APP for Bluetooth from the link:
In the simplest App there are 10 control keys. When connect well the HC-06 Bluetooth module to Android phone using our APP, press the control key, Android phone will send and receive a corresponding value.
A slightly better version can be found on APP Store. Search “keyes arm”，but” then the code needs to be modified.
However, if ESP32 camera module is used instead of Bluetooth, then appropriate programs for ESP32 must be prepared and uploaded to Camera Module.
Learn more about remote control and video surveillance with ESP32 for miniCar and RobotArm on the page: https://www.hackster.io/Kenan-Paralija/remote-control-and-video-monitoring-with-esp32-for-robot-66332b
Main loop controls reads command from Bluetooth or Wireless module ESP32. As shown in the following listing, after each command received from the app, other subroutines for miniCar are executed. (Actions from the above table are then carried out).
The standard Arduino library "Servo.h" was developed for analog servos. It is important that the servos have time to get to a certain point before receiving a new command. In the case of the RoborArm, by changing the appropriate variables is controlled a servo.
For example if Bx1H==HIGH, then servo for "Shoulder" upper arm is moved. As can be seen in the following listing, changing variables has the same effect as touching the joystick.
The only difference is that harder touch of joystick can make faster movement of servo. This achieves precise control of movement with remote control.
For ”recording" the sets of coordinates (or steps) that the robot should play, I will use data arrays:
Note that I'm not keeping the "stored" position and at the end of the "robot" program, the index is back to zero and the robot will wait for the recording of a new sequence (the program is lost). Alternatively, you could keep these data arrays in the Arduino EEPROM, for example. Doing that, the program would be executed again or even you could have more than one stored program.
Everything else is done as is easy to find on the internet.
COMPONENTS AND SUPPLIES
Parts needed in this project:
2WD Robot Smart Car Kit
Arduino uno, if not keep in kit
MeARM or Arduino Compatible Robotic Arm Kit
BTS7960B Motor Driver (H-Bridge)
HC-06 or HC-08 bluetooth module, optional Camera ESP32
SRF05 Ultrasonic Sensor
Micro Servo x 4
Batteries: 7.4V 800mAh or 11.1V 1300 mAh
Jumper and cables
Nuts and bolts (M2, M3)
The connection between Arduino and ROS (Robot Operating System) for real applications is very interesting and opens the possibility to explore the rigorous software development in ROS. Up to this article, we have controlled the robot in the common state for teleoperation, but the real essence of robotic arm control lies in utilizing the kinematics and dynamics of the system.
„Der Ingenieur war und ist ein Geschichtsschreiber. “ (The engineer was and is a historian.) -James Kip Finch
As always, I hope this project can help others navigate the exciting world of electronics, robotics, and IoT!
Weitere Projekte finden Sie unter:
Simple Follow-Me Function for 4WD Arduino car Kit
use the GY-521 module (MPU-6050 Board) to make a 2WD robotcar drive in a straight
Schematics - circuit of the RobotArm
The drawing shows the complete circuit von RobotArm
The program enables full local and remote control over the movement of the robot arm, as well as saving the executed steps of the arm. In conjunction with the corresponding app, it is also possible to transfer images to a mobile phone.
I have worked as a qualified engineer in hardware and software since 1976. Today, as a pensioner, I use Arduino IDE for IoT projects.
This content is provided by our content partner Hackster.io, an Avnet developer community for learning, programming, and building hardware. Visit them online for more great content like this. | <urn:uuid:a4a94920-5f9a-423c-8c02-5521f72fa0ec> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.iotplaybook.com/article/4-axis-movable-arm-remote-control-and-camera | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335304.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929034214-20220929064214-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.896584 | 2,303 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Documents And Their Usability In Software Testing
- October 7, 2016
Software Testing is an important phase of SDLC and is carried out with a sole purpose of identifying the defects that may be present in a system. This activity consumes as much time as does the development and includes the execution of multiple cycles.
According to Mike Wooldridge, “The ability to test a system depends on a thorough, competent requirements document.” (Source: Mike Wooldridge – Software Engineering)
Therefore, in order to execute thorough testing for a system, the test team needs to have access to and create the following documents:
A Functional Specification or FS is a formal document which describes the requirements to be implemented including the application’s capabilities, appearance and interactions with users. The document helps the test team to learn about the overall behavior of the system.
Software Requirement Specifications:
A Software Requirements Specification or SRS is a detailed document that covers the functional and non-functional requirements of the application and also describes how the system is expected to perform. The test team uses SRS to prepare and plan for the functional and non-functional types of testing.
A Use Case is a list of actions or steps that defines the interactions between an actor (human) and the system. Use Cases document covers the interaction between the two entities and how they act and perform at different levels. These are developed after evaluating the FS and SRS documents. The test team uses these Use Cases to create Test Cases.
A Test Plan is a document created by the test team lead after evaluating the FS, SRS and Use Cases documents. It describes the scope, approach, resources and schedule of intended test activities to be carried out throughout the SDLC. It also includes the features to be tested, the testing tasks, the test environment, and the entry and exit criteria.
A Test Case is created by the test team and is a set of data including the pre and post conditions, the expected results and the steps to follow, developed to test every requirement individually and specifically. Test cases are derived from the Use Cases and one Use Case may have multiple Test Cases.
At the end of a testing cycle, testers create a formal Defect Report. The main purpose of a Defect Report is to highlight the problems identified in the application as clearly as possible so that the developers can reproduce and fix them easily.
The Project Closure Report is the last of the documents created for a project by the test team lead. The primary purpose of the report is to provide a complete picture of success and failures of the project. It is also used to identify best practices for future projects and to formally close the project.
These documents help the test team by reducing the effort they need to put in for planning and executing the software testing cycles and also maintain a record of the defects which can lead to potential threats that may arise in future. | <urn:uuid:fe65a0dc-05b5-4a4c-a728-8b5d65ac111b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.kualitatem.com/blog/documents-and-their-usability-in-software-testing | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335469.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930113830-20220930143830-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.935524 | 623 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Cloud deployment models can vary with the needs of organizations. Two fundamental cloud deployment models, private cloud and public cloud differ based on who owns and controls the cloud. Private clouds are owned and used by a single tenant, separated from the public internet and other systems using firewalls. A public cloud is open to the public Internet, where cloud service providers (CSP) can serve multiple tenants many different services.
A private cloud is a cloud deployment model where a single organization owns and administers its own cloud and the underpinning networking infrastructure to support it. This model creates central access to IT resources for departments and staff across multiple locations and potential regions. Private clouds are implemented behind the organization’s firewall which is the major distinguishing factor from other cloud deployments models. In the private cloud model, the organization that owns the private cloud is both cloud consumer and cloud service provider (CSP).
Because private clouds rely on internal resources, companies primarily choose the model so they retain security and control over their network. Recouping recurring costs from public CSPs is another major motivator for operating a private cloud. However, service level agreements (SLA) agreed to when companies use CSPs can also help keep costs down by shifting operational risk to the CSP and holding them to a particular quality of service (QoS).
Adopting a private cloud strategy demands that companies consider the worth of the network based on its business use, the necessity of private resources, and the cost of maintaining the network and supporting infrastructure, versus alternatives such as virtual private clouds (VPC), that enable private clouds in a public cloud space.
A public cloud, in contrast to a private cloud, is a pool of shared computing resources owned by a cloud service provider (CSP) and delivered to cloud consumers via the public Internet. Cloud consumers can select from numerous cloud configurations tailored to their needs and sign up for pay-as-you-go payment programs. These options give consumers tremendous technological flexibility and control over IT expenses. Because the CSP model assumes responsibility for maintaining hardware, application, and bandwidth, organizations can easily set up deployments and later extend them when demand increases without the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure.
For many types of organizations, the shared cloud resources model is an enabling technology. A small software development firm never needs to own servers, they can simply utilize a platform-as-a-service provider and begin development with little upfront IT costs. For larger content delivery enterprises, utilizing public cloud data centers is a redundancy strategy that can ensure content remains reliably accessible during peak times. CSPs match those needs, growing and shrinking resources to prevent under and overprovisioned, needlessly inflating costs.
Hybrid clouds are cloud services that use both private and public clouds for use by a single organization. These configurations are managed using software-defined networking technologies that meld disparate networks into one. Users of the hybrid cloud interact with it as if it were one seamlessly unified network.
Hybrid clouds are different from multicloud configurations by always including at least one private cloud, whereas multiclouds combine multiple public clouds, which themselves may be part of a hybrid cloud.
Hybrid clouds benefits include enabling organizations to reduce the costly inefficiencies of maintaining their own infrastructure. Additionally, hybrid clouds help companies address scaling concerns, and offer security features.
For organizations that deploy private clouds, their primary advantage is also their primary disadvantage. Private clouds grant the power of complete cloud control, but with power comes the responsibility of ownership, think maintenance, upgrades, troubleshooting, security, etc. The following are some prominent advantages and disadvantages to consider.
Private Cloud Advantages
Complete Control Over Technology Choices — Complete control over every technology choice is a powerful aspect of private clouds. For enterprise clients that may have integrated hundreds of systems and thousands of services across regions, a private cloud may be the only option for keeping these systems aligned.
Maximum Security and Privacy — Stemming from the advantage of fullcontrol comes maximum security and privacy. Private cloud owners build their clouds behind firewalls, controlling all traffic in and out, and if desired, they can be cut off from the public Internet altogether.
Near-Zero Latency — Public cloud resources simply cannot beat the latency of local resources.
Private Cloud Disadvantages
Full Responsibility — Private clouds are owned and operated by the consumer of the same cloud. That means all overhead and responsibilities for maintaining the private cloud must be assumed by the cloud owner. Unless the cloud owner hires a managed private cloud where a professional service is put in charge of maintaining all the aspects of the cloud.
Cost Disadvantage — Private clouds are expensive because costs can go up and down depending on the behavior and usage of the private cloud. Whereas, agreeing to a service level agreement (SLA) with a cloud provider guarantees that prices remain consistent and predictable. For instance, an unanticipated cyberattack that cripples a private cloud can be expensive to defend and recover from, but that is a security cost that can be included in SLAs.
Technology Obsolescence — Linked to costs in a way, when technology needs to be upgraded, private clouds rely on in-house IT staff expertise and pay in the time to upgrade. When technology becomes obsolete, the organization makes another capital expenditure for newer technology or risk falling behind. Upgrades and innovations are factored into most public cloud services. Cloud consumers don’t need to worry about falling behind, the best CSPs will seamlessly update and upgrade their infrastructures, unnoticed to the consumer.
Hybrid deployments have successfully merged both public and private cloud, in effect lessening the disadvantages while making the advantages from both deployment types available to IT teams.
The public cloud space has grown exponentially, encouraged by technology improvements in security, faster reliable Internet delivery, and changes in consumer and workplace behaviors.
Public Cloud Advantages
Reliability, Elasticity, and Scalability — The main advantage of public clouds is the fact that resources are highly reliable and virtually infinite in elasticity, the ability to expand capacity and scalability, the ability to take on workloads. Many organizations need resources to track user demand, and public cloud resources and technology do this with ease.
Cost Controls — Because tracking resources with user demand is measurable, public cloud service providers can offer “pay-as-you-grow” agreements that allow companies to control their expenses more accurately.
A marketplace of Services — Though there are some big names in the public cloud, AWS, Google Cloud, MS Azure, Alibaba Cloud, IBM are some of the biggest, many smaller companies are offering more sophisticated platforms and subject-specific SaaS solutions for consumers. This marketplace of services is self-feeding as well, as technology advances the cloud becomes a more attractive environment to operate in.
Public Cloud Disadvantages
Security — Because of the nature of traversing data over the public Internet, public clouds will never be fully secure. Given the plethora of cloud configurations and deployment types, though, security can be mitigated.
Lack of Customization — The lack of customization aspect varies too with cloud providers. Lesser providers will expect tenants to operate within their environments. Whereas more capable providers can provide greater customizations.
Vendor Lock-in — If a tenant out-grows their cloud provider, migrating to a more capable provider is possible, but depending on the current provider could be difficult. When migration is too challenging, or cost-prohibitive to perform, then the tenant has succumbed to vendor lock-in, incapable of retrieving their data to transfer to another system. Vendor lock-in is a circumstance that is changing within the industry, as many of the big providers supply tools for customers to migrate their data. But some providers may simply not offer these types of tools.
Private cloud and public cloud benefits are not exclusive in today’s cloud landscape, primarily because public cloud providers have worked diligently to offer services that rival private clouds. However, many of the benefits of the private cloud are wholly unique, such as complete control over all aspects of hardware, software, and connectivity, which appeals to organizations in need of maximum security and customization.
Private Cloud Benefits
Complete Control — Private clouds are owned and operated by the cloud consumer, giving them full domain control over all aspects of their cloud infrastructure, configuration, and access.
Maximum Customizability — Private cloud owners have maximum control over protocols, compliance, configurations, etc. For certain use cases, such as optimization of applications that do not easily translate to public cloud systems.
Security Control, Privacy, and Autonomy — No matter how secure public cloud resources can be, traffic that poses security risks will still traverse the public Internet. Private cloud dramatically improves data privacy and security.
Public Cloud Benefits
Reduced Risks — Performance, maintenance, upgrades, downtime, and reliability are all things that IT staff would no longer need to worry about on the day-to-day.
Virtually Infinite Elasticity and Scalability — Public cloud models promise a perceived infinite elasticity and scalability (since hardware disappears to consumers), so when tenant system workloads ramp up they can reliably be served to users.
Innovation — Economies of scale allow public cloud providers to offer the latest innovative technologies to their customers. Perhaps even upgrading performance features that improve even basic cloud use, such as better storage management, or security software all without concerning tenant IT staff.
Accessible through the Internet with VPN, through a direct connection, through dedicated secure access.
Zero upfront capital costs, typically on a pay-as-you-use model with discounted entry offers.
Initial infrastructure capital costs can be high. Ongoing monthly maintenance costs and occasional equipment upgrade costs.
Basic compliance models are usually included, with additional premium security and compliance services available.
Privacy regulations compliance becomes the full responsibility of the owner but allows for custom compliance models.
Less control over data governance and privacy.
No shared devices, resulting in more control over data governance and privacy.
Dependent on Cloud Service Provider, but typically limited adaptability and customization.
Responsibility for adaptability but with full control over customizations.
Push-button deployments with no long-term contracts.
Owners are fully responsible for deployments, and investments in underlying software and hardware.
Public cloud infrastructures by default include multiple tenants, though single-tenant clouds can be set up in the public cloud space.
The entire cloud infrastructure is owned and operated by a single tenant. It can be housed on-premises or on off-site data centers.
The cloud service provider maintains infrastructure taking risks and responsibilities away from tenants.
Great maintenance responsibilities. Tenants must maintain private cloud infrastructure, and commit staffing resources and time.
CSPs provide resource scaling and reliable performance.
Dedicated servers are wholly at the disposal of the private cloud owner. Scaling and performance needs must be monitored by them.
Large public cloud vendors are able to leverage economies of scale to increase reliability across all systems.
Reliability is the full responsibility of the private cloud owner who can configure their resources with cloud-bursting options to satisfy peak times.
Virtually unlimited cloud resources to scale compute and storage for a price.
Scaling is a challenge, and expensive to perform on-site.
Additional measures can be made available to enhance security options.
Private servers and isolated network environments can be utilized to provide higher levels of security within the existing infrastructure.
Business Email Address
Thank you. We will contact you shortly.
Note: Since you opted to receive updates about solutions and news from us, you will receive an email shortly where you need to confirm your data via clicking on the link. Only after positive confirmation you are registered with us.
If you are already subscribed with us you will not receive any email from us where you need to confirm your data.
"FirstName": "First Name",
"LastName": "Last Name",
"Email": "Business Email",
"Title": "Job Title",
"Company": "Company Name",
"Phone": "Business Telephone",
"LeadCommentsExtended": "Additional Information(optional)",
"LblCustomField1": "What solution area are you wanting to discuss?",
"ApplicationModern": "Application Modernization",
"InfrastructureModern": "Infrastructure Modernization",
"DataModern": "Data Modernization",
"GlobalOption": "If you select 'Yes' below, you consent to receive commercial communications by email in relation to Hitachi Vantara's products and services.",
"EmailError": "Must be valid email.",
"RequiredFieldError": "This field is required." | <urn:uuid:4cbdf2cb-1e7c-467b-8af2-3cb03e70c181> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-hk/insights/faq/what-is-the-difference-between-private-cloud-public-cloud.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336921.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001195125-20221001225125-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.929052 | 2,767 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Drones to Be Used for Rural Postal Deliveries
Unmanned aircraft could be set to become a more common sight in the skies above the United Kingdom if the Royal Mail gets its way.
Britain’s postal service has laid out plans to run a fleet of 500 autonomous drones to make mail delivery easier to some of the country’s most remote areas.
As a first step, the Royal Mail hopes to launch more than 50 drone routes supported by up to 200 UAVs (uncrewed aerial vehicles) over the next three years. In the longer term, the ambition is to deploy more than 500 drones servicing all parts of the U.K. And as part of the significant expansion plan, it has confirmed a partnership with Cornwall-based drone maker Windracers.
However, there are some hurdles to negotiate before the proposal becomes a reality. First, approval will need to be granted from the country’s Civil Aviation Authority.
And the costs also have to make sense – as the Royal Mail stressed in a statement, an “improvement in UAV economics” is required.
To date, the Royal Mail’s use of drones has been restricted to trial flights in some of the U.K.’s hardest to reach points, including the Isle of Mull in Scotland, the Isles of Scilly off the Cornish coast and between Kirkwall and North Ronaldsay, on the Orkney Islands.
The most recent test was held on the Shetland Islands in April, in partnership with Windracers, which saw mail delivered between Tingwall Airport in Lerwick to Unst – a 50-mile flight each way. Unst is Britain’s most northerly inhabited island, with a population of only 630.
The twin-engine UAV used in the trial can fly in difficult weather – a key factor when operating in the windy, rainswept islands off Britain’s coast – and has a wingspan of 32 feet, plus a high-reliability autopilot system. It can carry up to 220 pounds of mail of all shapes and sizes.
With mail currently taken to remote areas by ferries and conventional aircraft, the introduction of the UAVs would cut emissions and also improve the service’s reliability, with the drones less susceptible to extreme conditions. Final door deliveries would still be carried out by postmen, though.
“The middle mile of supply and logistics, especially to remote locations, has long been overlooked by the industry and is ripe for innovation,” said Stephen Wright, Windracers Group chairman. “We’ve spent the last five years focused on developing the most commercially viable essential logistics drones, so we’re truly delighted to be working with Royal Mail on this ambitious and pioneering deployment of autonomous aircraft.” | <urn:uuid:d94f02bb-35a6-418c-b3c1-b97ab69ead80> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.iotworldtoday.com/2022/05/19/drones-to-be-used-for-rural-postal-deliveries/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337398.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003035124-20221003065124-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.951684 | 582 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The Evolution of Cybersecurity: Part 2
Written by: Lindsay McKay
If you have not read Part 1 of this series, give it a read to learn about the first hackers, the ARPANET, the first computer worm, the anti-virus boom, and cybersecurity starting to get recognized and the rise of cybersecurity courses. In Part 2, we will be continuing our discussion on cybersecurity getting recognized by different governments, discussing different cybersecurity technologies, the rise of connected devices, and cyber-attacks on automobiles.
The United States government recognized the need for cybersecurity defence in 2001 when the newly founded Homeland Security established the National Cyber Security Division, the United States government's first official task force dedicated to cybersecurity. In Canada, it was not until 2010 that the Canadian government developed its first cybersecurity strategy under Public Safety Canada. In 2018 both the US and Canadian governments founded new cybersecurity divisions. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is a standalone United States federal agency, an operational component under the Department of Homeland Security. While in Canada, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) was developed. The CCCS consolidated the existing operational cyber-security units of several federal government organizations, including Public Safety Canada's Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre, Shared Services Canada's Security Operations Centre, and the CSE's Information Technology Security branch.
Many cybersecurity technologies have been created to help protect the everyday user, their passwords, purchases, identities, and communications. Two of the earliest ones that we still use today are two-factor authentication and firewalls.
First made official in 1986 with a key fob, two-factor authentication (2FA) is a way to provide evidence in two different ways of who you are. It became available on the internet for the general population in 2010 when Google introduced it to its users after the Chinese government was targeting email accounts looking for human rights activists. For most people, their 2FA includes their login information, a knowledge factor and then either a possession factor or an inherence factor. A possession factor is something the user has, such as an ID card, a security token, a cellphone, a mobile device or a smartphone app. An inherence factor is usually biometric such as a fingerprint or face/voice recognition. Some companies talk of using 3FA, the third evidence could be a location factor or a time factor.
Network Security: Firewalls
Network security is a subset of cybersecurity that focuses on protecting the data flowing over the network against viruses and worms. While cybersecurity ensures to protect all digital data, network security ensures to protect the transit data only. Cybersecurity professionals handle network security for large organizations, making sure they obtain and deploy the best firewalls, vulnerability scanners, malware detection software and others measures to harden the network’s defences. The first firewall was developed in the 1980s, operating mainly on the first four layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI). In 1993, application-level firewalls leaped forward, and the first open-source firewall was released. New generations of firewalls are being developed all the time. Join the industry of network security with Network+ training courses to learn about emerging technologies and the best way to managed networks for organizations.
The Rise of Connected Devices
As of 2020, it is estimated that there are roughly 6.8 internet-connected devices per person around the globe. Each device has its data, security networks, and vulnerabilities. With each year, this number will grow more and more as more smart devices are incorporated into people's lives. A connected device or Internet of Things (IoT) is any physical device that is connected to the internet that wouldn’t normally be expected to have an internet connection, collecting and sharing data. But how did this start? Earlier than you may think. The idea of adding sensors and intelligence to basic objects was discussed throughout the 1980s and 90s, one of the early projects was an internet-connected vending machine at Carnegie University. During this time, processors were too cheap and chips too big to allow objects to communicate effectively. The first IoT device is said to be a toaster that automatically lowered that bread into the toaster using a big, clunky computer connected by TCP/IP protocol; this was the first ‘thing' of the internet and was introduced at an exhibition show in 1990. In 1999, Kevin Ashton coined the term “Internet of Things” it took at least another decade for the technology to catch up to what he envisioned.
Today we have smart kitchens, doorbells, lighting, Google Home and Amazon Echo, locks, medical sensors, Amazon grocery stores that automatically charge your items to your account, security cameras, and so much the list could go on and on. All the companies that provide these devices and collect all the data must employ cybersecurity professionals with Security+ training to ensure the best security strategies are employed to mitigate and prevent attacks. A strong cybersecurity team is also typically rounded out by professionals who have A+ training or CySA+ training, so there are lots of opportunities to be had.
From Computers to Vehicles
Unless you are driving a smart car, you may not realize your vehicle is practically a rolling laptop with a wide array of vehicle control systems controlled by sophisticated onboard computers. Do you have a touchscreen in your vehicle? Then your vehicle is also wi-fi and Bluetooth capable and connected to cell networks. In 2015, we got a glimpse of what is it at stake when a team of security researchers remotely hacked into a Jeep Cherokee and were able to steer the wheel, briefly disable the breaks, and shut off the engine. The white-hat hackers (research team) are working with automakers to patch these vulnerabilities.
The evolution of cybersecurity is fascinating, become part of the future through taking cybersecurity courses to start your journey in cybersecurity.
Read our previous blog: The Evolution of Cybersecurity: Part 1 | <urn:uuid:2c71c76a-ca5f-4db2-b0e3-8e986b88cf55> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://technoedgelearning.ca/the-evolution-of-cybersecurity-part-2/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337668.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005203530-20221005233530-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.9496 | 1,211 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Bell Labs scientists are saying they have hit data transmission speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second over traditional copper telephone lines, a development that could result in service providers bringing gigabit speed to broadband networks without the high cost of having to replace copper wires with fiber inside the buildings.
In an announcement July 9, researchers at Bell Labs—the research unit of Alcatel-Lucent—said they were able to leverage the copper wiring and a prototype technology called XG-FAST to achieve 1 G-bps speeds over 70 meters on a single copper pair of lines provided by a European operator and 10G bps over 30 meters using two pairs of lines, a method called “bonding.”
For network operators, the results could mean the ability to bring high-speed broadband services to businesses and homes in a more economical fashion. Data transmission tends to be faster over fiber, particularly over longer distances, so carriers are moving to fiber in their networks. They can relatively easily bring fiber to the home or business building, but installing new fiber cables in the building itself can carry a huge expense, or simply be too expensive or intrusive to do.
The Bell Labs’ tests open up the possibility of bringing fiber up to or very close to the building, then leveraging the copper wiring already in the buildings to carry the data the rest of the way. Marcus Weldon, president of Bell Labs, said the testing is another example of the unit’s efforts to come up with technological breakthroughs that are 10 times better than what is currently possible.
“By pushing broadband technology to its limits, operators can determine how they could deliver gigabit services over their existing networks, ensuring the availability of ultra-broadband access as widely and as economically as possible,” Weldon said in a statement.
A range of factors affect broadband speeds over copper cables beyond distance, according to Bell Labs researchers. Frequency is one—the wider the frequency range, the faster the broadband speed. That said, there are diminishing returns in speed as the frequency range increases, they said.
Bell Labs’ XG-FAST is an extension of the G.fast broadband standard being finalized by the International Telecommunication Union and will be commercially available in 2015. When that happens, it will use a frequency range of 106MHz to offer broadband speeds of up to 500M bps over 100 meters. XG-FAST uses an increased frequency range of up to 500MHz, which results in higher speeds over shorter distances, researchers said.
Federico Guillén, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s Fixed Networks business, said XG-FAST will enable operators to accelerate deployments of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments by “taking fiber very close to customers without the major expense and delays associated with entering every home. By making 1G-bit symmetrical services over copper a real possibility, Bell Labs is offering the telecommunications industry a new way to ensure no customer is left behind when it comes to ultra-broadband access.”
The test results are part of a larger plan by Weldon, who’s been president at Bell Labs since November 2013, to return the institution to its original dual-prong mission: solve real-world problems while remaining alert to possible scientific discoveries that might come out of that work. Bell Labs’ history can be traced back to the 1880s, and over the decades, researchers there helped develop such fundamental technology breakthroughs as the transistor, laser, Unix operating system, the C and C++ programming languages and radio astronomy.
Weldon told eWEEK in May that in the 1980s and 1990s, Bell Labs became more of an academic research facility that was doing great science but not addressing real-world problems. Weldon said he wants the institution to not only do the great science, but also to address challenges facing the communications industry. | <urn:uuid:5f211fea-0c45-46e2-9470-65842f376e92> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.eweek.com/networking/bell-labs-broadband-test-hits-10g-bps-over-copper/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337668.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005203530-20221005233530-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.950275 | 800 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Nowadays, single sign-on (SSO) authentication is required more than ever. Many websites offer users the option to sign up with Google, Apple, or any other service. Chances are you have logged in to something via single sign-on today or at least this week. But do you know what it is, how it works, and why it's used? Take a deep dive into the world of single sign-on and all things related to it.
- What is SSO?
- How does SSO work?
- Is single sign-on secure?
- The benefits of SSO
- Top single sign-on solutions
What is SSO?
Single sign-on is a session and user authentication service that allows the user to use a single set of login credentials – namely, a username and password – to access multiple websites or applications. Put plainly, SSO allows users to sign up and access a variety of online accounts with a single username and password, thus making things a lot easier for the everyday user. SSO's primary use is as an identification system that permits websites and apps to use the data of other trusted sites to verify a user upon login or sign-up.
Essentially, SSO puts an end to the days of remembering and entering multiple passwords. An added bonus is that SSO gets users out of the vicious password reset loops.
Additionally, SSO can be great for business, as it improves productivity, security control, and management. With a single security token (a username and password), IT professionals can enable or disable a user’s access to multiple systems, which in some cases mitigates cybersecurity risks.
So, how does the magical service work?
How does SSO work?
Single sign-on is a component of a centralized electronic identity known as federated identity management (FIM). FIM, or Identity Federation, is a system that enables users to use the same verification method to access multiple applications and other resources on the web. FIM is responsible for a few essential processes:
User attributes exchange
When we talk about SSO, it is important to understand that it is primarily related to the authentication part of the FIM system. It's concerned with establishing the user's identity and then sharing that information with each platform that requires that data.
Fancy jargon aside, here are the basic operational processes of single sign-on:
You enter a website.
You click “Sign In with Apple” or any other service.
The site opens Apple's account login page.
If you're already logged in, then it gives the site your data.
You are logged in to your Apple account.
Apple's site verifies that you are authorized to access the site.
If you're authorized, the site creates a session for you and logs you in.
In technical terms, when the user first signs in via an SSO service, the service creates an authentication cookie that remembers that the user is verified. An authentication cookie is a piece of code stored in the user's browser or the SSO service's servers. Next time the user logs in to that same app or website using SSO, the service then transfers the user's authentication cookie to that platform, and the user is allowed to access it. It's important to highlight that an SSO service doesn't identify the exact user since it does not store user identities.
Is single sign-on secure?
Yes. An SSO protocol is secure when implemented and managed properly and used alongside other cybersecurity tools.
The main benefit introduced by single-sign on with regard to cybersecurity is that, because it allows using a single set of credentials for multiple services, there are fewer login details to be lost or stolen. As long as the server is secure and an organization's access control policies are established, a malicious user or an attacker will have little to no chance to do any damage.
However, this benefit could also pose a certain kind of risk. Since SSO provides instant access to multiple accounts via a single endpoint, if a hacker gains access to an authenticated SSO account, they will also gain access to all the linked applications, websites, platforms, and other online environments.
This issue can be easily mitigated by implementing an additional layer of security known as Multi-Factor Authentication. Combining SSO with MFA allows service providers to verify users' identity while giving them easy access to applications or online platforms.
The benefits of SSO
Reduced password fatigue
With SSO in place, users only have to remember one password, making life a lot easier. Password fatigue is real and dangerous. SSO encourages users to come up with a single strong password rather than using a simple one for each account separately. It also helps users escape the vicious cycle of password reset loops.
Increased employee and IT productivity
When deployed in a business setting, SSO can be a real time saver. According to a recent report, people waste 16.3 billion hours a year trying to remember, type, or reset passwords. In a business environment, every minute counts. Thanks to SSO, users don't need to hop between multiple login URLs or reset passwords and can focus on the tasks at hand.
Enhanced user experience
One of the most valuable benefits of SSO is an improved user experience. Because repeated logins are not required, users can enjoy a digital experience with less hassle. This means that users will be less hesitant to use the service. For any commercial web-based service, SSO is an essential part of their user experience.
Centralized control of user access
SSO offers organizations centralized control over who has access to their systems. In a business setting, you can use SSO to grant new employees specific levels of access to different systems. You can also provide employees with a single set of credentials (username and passwords) to access all company systems.
Top single sign-on solutions
Microsoft Azure AD
Microsoft Azure AD includes Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) as an option to support SSO. Azure AD also offers reporting, security analytics, and multi-factor authentication services. It's perfectly suited for any company that uses the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, no matter its size.
Okta Identity Cloud
Okta is well-established in the world of SSO solutions. They are open-source SSO leaders because of their flexibility and ease of use. Okta offers customizable open identity management in real time according to business needs, as well as two-factor authentication and a password reset functionality. Okta can serve the needs of multiple industries, from education and nonprofits to financial services and the government.
OneLogin Unified Access Management Platform
OneLogin is an open-source SSO provider that is often used for employee access to the company's cloud-based applications. OneLogin is suited for a variety of IT administrator needs since it is designed to enforce IT policy in real time. It can also be updated according to specific needs if any changes occur, such as an employee leaving.
Idaptive Application Services
Idaptive is primarily suited for small to medium-sized businesses. Idaptive is capable of providing support to many users at once, thanks to their new cloud architecture. The company also offers adaptive MFA, enterprise mobility management (EMM), and user behavior analytics (UBA) all in a single solution.
Ping Intelligent Identity Platform
Ping offers services to large enterprises. The solution can serve anywhere between a few hundred to a few million users. Ping provides both on-premises and cloud options for deploying their solution. Additionally, the service comes with multi-factor authentication.
Subscribe to NordPass news
Get the latest news and tips from NordPass straight to your inbox. | <urn:uuid:9f64aeda-4513-4734-b888-f3f70a44558f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://nordpass.com/blog/single-sign-on/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00192.warc.gz | en | 0.930942 | 1,597 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Companies face a rapidly evolving and growing cyber threat landscape. As cybercrime becomes more professionalized and automated attacks grow more common, organizations are targeted by a growing number of sophisticated cyber threats.
A successful cyberattack can have a significant impact on an organization’s data security, service availability, and ability to operate. Cyber protection is essential to managing the risk that companies face from cyber threats and ensuring that they are able to effectively protect their sensitive data and remain compliant with applicable regulations.
The modern company faces a wide range of cyber threats. Below, we list some of the leading threats that companies are most likely to face and that will have the greatest impact on the organization.
The cyber threat landscape has undergone multiple stages of evolution, growing more sophisticated, automated, and subtle. The latest evolution, Gen V, involves the use of automation and advanced attack tools to perform multi-vector attacks at a massive scale.
Protecting against modern cyberattacks requires Gen V cybersecurity solutions. These solutions incorporate advanced threat prevention capabilities to minimize the cost and impact that continuous, automated attacks have on business operations.
SolarWinds, Kaseya, and similar incidents have demonstrated the potential risks of supply chain attacks. Every organization is dependent on external parties, such as suppliers, partners, and software vendors. These third parties often have access to an organization’s sensitive data and IT resources.
Supply chain attacks exploit these relationships to bypass an organization’s defenses. If an attacker can gain access to a vulnerable organization in a company’s supply chain, the attacker may be able to exploit existing trust relationships to gain access to the company’s environment. For example, injecting malicious code into trusted software may allow that malware to slip through a company’s defenses.
Ransomware has emerged as one of the biggest cyber threats that organizations face. After gaining access to a target system, ransomware encrypts the files and data on that system. To regain access to encrypted data, a company must pay a ransom to the malware operator.
Ransomware groups have enjoyed significant success, and ransomware provides a means for threat actors to effectively monetize their attacks. As a result, ransomware attacks have become more common and expensive for organizations.
Phishing attacks are the most common cyberattack. Phishing messages can be used to deliver malware, steal user credentials, or exfiltrate other types of sensitive data. Phishing attacks are cheap and easy to perform, targeting the human element rather than vulnerabilities in an organization’s digital attack surface. This also makes them more difficult to protect against, requiring a combination of technical security controls and user cybersecurity awareness training.
Companies face a number of different malware threats. Ransomware is a common example, but malware can also be designed to steal information, disrupt operations, and provide an attacker with remote access to an organization’s systems.
Cyber threat actors can use various means to deliver and execute malware on an organization’s systems. Some of the most common are phishing emails, exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities, and using compromised user credentials to take advantage of remote access solutions.
Companies can take different approaches to cybersecurity and cyber protection. The two main approaches differ in where they come into play in the lifecycle of an attack: focusing on threat detection or prevention.
Most corporate cybersecurity programs take a detection-focused approach to cyber protection. Various cybersecurity solutions are deployed to identify potential threats to the organization and trigger incident response activities. Ideally, the organization will mitigate the threat before an attacker can steal sensitive data or cause damage to corporate systems.
The main limitation of detection-focused security is that it is inherently reactive — action is only taken in response to an identified threat. This means that — in the event that an attack cannot be immediately blocked — a window exists for the attacker to take action before incident response begins.
Prevention-focused security attempts to stop attacks against an organization and its systems before they happen. Many cyberattacks exploit common vulnerabilities, such as the failure to apply updates and patches or security misconfigurations in cloud infrastructure. By closing these attack vectors and preventing an attack from happening in the first place, an organization eliminates the potential cost and impact on the organization. Check Point prevents attacks thanks to its consolidated cyber security architecture Discover Infinity
Cyber protection and cybersecurity are related but distinct concepts. In general, cybersecurity focuses on protecting an organization’s systems and networks against cyber threats, such as ransomware, phishing, etc.
Cyber protection brings in an increased focus on data security, combining elements of cybersecurity and data protection. Cyber protection uses many of the same tools and techniques as cybersecurity and faces similar threats, but the focus is on protecting data and the systems that store and process it against attacks that could result in unauthorized access to and disclosure of that data.
Data is an intrinsic part of an organization’s operations, and effectively protecting data requires securing it at every stage of its lifecycle. For this reason, many different types of cyber protection exist, each targeted at a place where sensitive data may be stored, processed, or transmitted.
Network security solutions defend the corporate network and data from breaches, intrusions, and other cyber threats. Network solution solutions include data and access controls such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP), IAM (Identity Access Management), Network Access Control (NAC), and Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) application controls that enforce corporate policy and protect against web-based threats.
Companies may also require multi-layered and advanced solutions for network threat management, such as intrusion prevention systems (IPS), Next-Gen Antivirus (NGAV), Sandboxing, and Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR). In addition to these solutions, security teams also need the ability to effectively collect and manage security data via tools such as network analytics, threat hunting, and automated SOAR (Security Orchestration and Response) technologies.
As companies increasingly adopt cloud infrastructure, they need cloud security technologies, controls, services, and policies to protect their cloud-hosted data and applications from attack. Many cloud service providers — including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Azure), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offer built-in cloud security solutions and services as part of their platforms. However, achieving enterprise-grade protection of cloud workloads against various threats, such as data leaks, breaches, and targeted cloud attacks, often requires supplementary third-party solutions.
The growth of the mobile workforce makes protecting the endpoint more essential than ever. Effectively implementing a zero-trust security policy requires the ability to use microsegmentation to manage access to data wherever it is, including on corporate endpoints.
Endpoint security solutions can implement the necessary access management and protect against various threats with anti-phishing and anti-ransomware capabilities. Additionally, the integration of endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities provides invaluable support for incident response and forensic investigations.
With remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies on the rise, mobile security is a growing concern. Cyber threat actors are increasingly targeting mobile devices with malicious applications, phishing, zero-day, and instant messaging attacks.
The unique threats that mobile devices face make mobile security solutions essential for the security of corporate data and applications. Mobile security can prevent various attacks, block rooting and jailbreaking of mobile devices, and — when integrated with a mobile device management (MDM) solution — restrict access to corporate resources to those devices that are compliant with corporate security policies.
The healthcare and industrial sectors and companies across all industries are deploying Internet of Things (IoT) devices to take advantage of their various benefits. However, these devices also create significant cybersecurity threats as cyber threat actors identify and exploit well-known vulnerabilities to gain access to these devices for use in a botnet or to exploit their access to the corporate network.
IoT security solutions enable organizations to manage the risks posed by their IoT devices by supporting automated device identification, classification, and network segmentation. IoT devices can also be protected by using an IPS to virtually patch vulnerabilities and, in some cases, by deploying small agents in device firmware to provide protection at runtime.
Public-facing web applications create a significant digital attack surface for an organization. The OWASP Top Ten List details some of the most significant threats that web applications face, such as broken access control, cryptographic failures, and vulnerability to injection attacks.
Application security can help to block the exploitation of OWASP Top Ten and other common vulnerabilities. Additionally, application security solutions can block bot attacks, protect APIs, and identify and protect against novel threats via continuous learning.
Corporate IT environments are growing increasingly complex as companies move to the cloud, support a remote workforce, and deploy IoT solutions on their networks. Each device added to the corporate network creates the potential for additional vulnerabilities and attack vectors that need to be managed.
Attempting to manage all of these devices’ unique security needs and potential threats via standalone solutions creates a sprawling security infrastructure that is difficult to monitor and manage effectively. As a result, security personnel are overwhelmed with alerts, and threats are overlooked or slip through the cracks.
A consolidated security architecture makes it possible for an organization to consistently enforce security policies across its entire heterogeneous infrastructure. With centralized monitoring and management and integration across various solutions, a consolidated security infrastructure provides comprehensive visibility and the ability to coordinate responses across multiple environments.
To learn more about the cyber threat landscape, check out Check Point’s 2022 Cyber Security Report. The Mobile Security Report provides more details on the cybersecurity threats that companies face as they increasingly adopt mobile devices. Companies looking to protect their data and systems across their entire IT infrastructure need a consolidated security architecture.
Check Point offers security solutions that meet all of an organization’s cyber protection needs, including:
To learn more about what Check Point solutions can do to enhance your organization’s cyber protection strategy, sign up for a free demo. Also, feel free to try out Check Point solutions for yourself with a trial. For companies looking to streamline their cyber protection program with a consolidated security architecture, you’re welcome to inquire about Check Point’s Infinity Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) offering. | <urn:uuid:8a1d9ab3-186e-4c78-a546-9b6cddf37664> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.checkpoint.com/cyber-hub/cyber-security/what-is-cyber-protection/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334912.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926144455-20220926174455-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.935044 | 2,092 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Understanding How Outbound SMTP Affects Email Distribution
Learn how outbound smtp helps, Enterprise Email Infrastructure
Outbound SMTP authenticates the sender followed by breaking down the email to obtain the recipient domain and its DNS entry to identify the receiver SMTP server’s IP address. It also has some additional capabilities, such as handling large amounts of emails, advanced analytics, scheduling, and dedicated IP.
Mail Relay And Difference Between Inbound SMTP Relay And Outbound SMTP Relay
Email relay is the process of sending emails from one domain address to another. The mail gets received by the SMTP server of the sender’s domain which obtains the receiver SMTP server’s IP address. Outbound and inbound SMTP relays refer to specific SMTP servers dedicated for routing emails between SMTP servers. The relay has less functionality than the SMTP server, and it merely obtains the nearest SMTP server and transmits the email to it. An SMTP server has added features as it sends the email to a POP3/IMAP server and also filters emails.
An inbound SMTP relay works as a firewall for data received by the user’s servers. It identifies and filters any emails with the wrong destination domain, spam emails, and any emails containing viruses or malware.
An outbound SMTP relay, on the other hand, gathers all emails sent from the user’s server and deliver them to their correct destinations.
How Does A Professional SMTP Server Work?
The transmission of emails rests on SMTP server software. Every email sent or received undergoes the following process
- One user’s SMTP server receives the email sent by another user.
- The professional SMTP server authenticates the sender of the email.
- The email is then analyzed by the Outbound SMTP server to retrieve the receiver’s domain address.
- The server identifies the DNS server of the receiver’s domain address.
- The DNS entry undergoes a check to obtain the IP address of the receiver SMTP server.
- The receiver’s SMTP server transfers the email to the internal servers.
Factors To Consider While Choosing An Outbound SMTP Server
- High delivery rate provided by the SMTP server.
- The SMTP server should provide the user with more widespread availability to send emails.
- It should offer to scale multiple servers to manage the bulk quantity of emails successfully.
- It should offer high security against external threats to preventing any loss to property or person.
- It should offer the sophistication of analytics available to track the actions of the receiver, especially in the case of email campaigns.
SMTP Examples: Which SMTP Server To Choose, Free Or Professional Ones?
It is pertinent to understand that using standard SMTP servers used by free email providers are not ideal when the number of recipients is enormous. The standard outbound SMTP uses a non-dedicated IP that can be freely used even by spammers which can tamper with the delivery of such emails. Standard SMTP also has a meagre limit on the number of emails that they can send. In such cases, it is prudent to use a professional SMTP server.
Such servers use a controlled and dedicated IP to ensure the delivery of emails is not affected and also provides a significantly higher limit on the number of emails. Especially in cases of email blasts broadcasted to a large number of receivers, it is vital to use a professional SMTP server.
SMTP For Sale: Is Buying Cheaper Version Of SMTP Server Worth It?
An SMTP server comprises of many sophisticated features, and it accomplishes many additional tasks other than transmission and distribution of emails. Email is the most common means of communication, mainly formal communication. Therefore, SMTP servers are a requirement for all enterprises.
Before buying an SMTP server, most businesses look for a free or cheaper option. However, these more inexpensive SMTP servers may come with certain limitations, for instance, a cap on the number of emails per month, and missing analytics and delivery information. Even for startups, a premium SMTP service, which they can get it when SMTP for sale available, can help a long way in making both internal (such as between the employees or subordinates) and external communications (with clients and customers) hassle-free.
What Is The Right SMTP Server Price To Pay?
Due to the high demand, there are many SMTP service providers with different SMTP server prices and features.
Organizations having low email handling needs can go for professional, free SMTP servers. These servers are machines implemented for email delivery. However, there is generally a cap on the number of emails which enterprises can send using free SMTP servers. Dedicated SMTP servers are necessary for businesses which have an extensive database of recipients.
A professional SMTP server is indispensable to enhance the deliverability of emails. An outbound SMTP not only increases the limit of emails that can be sent but also uses a controlled IP to ensure the deliverability of bulk emails. It manages the entire path of email over the internet. Therefore it is crucial to choose the most suitable SMTP server according to the business size and needs.
Join the thousands of organizations that use DuoCircle
Find out how affordable it is for your organization today and be pleasantly surprised. | <urn:uuid:c07d501d-608c-4d95-95ca-464f77bf8ac6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.duocircle.com/content/outbound-smtp | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334912.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926144455-20220926174455-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.920126 | 1,107 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Monitoring and observability are two ways to identify the underlying cause of problems — how are they similar and different?
When something goes wrong with an application, it impacts customers and, ultimately, impacts the business. Teams need a way to find the root cause of problems and quickly resolve them. That’s where monitoring and observability come in.
Monitoring and observability are two ways to identify the underlying cause of problems. Monitoring tells you when something is wrong, while observability can tell you what’s happening, why it’s happening and how to fix it. To better understand the difference between observability and monitoring, let’s look at how each works and the roles they play today within software development.
What is observability?
Observability is the ability to understand a complex system’s internal state based on external outputs. When a system is observable, a user can identify the root cause of a performance problem by looking at the data it produces without additional testing or coding.
The term comes from control theory, an engineering concept that refers to the ability to assess internal problems from the outside. For example, car diagnostic systems offer observability for mechanics, giving them the ability to understand why your car won’t start without having to take it apart.
In IT, an observability solution analyzes output data, provides an assessment of the system’s health and offers actionable insights for addressing the problem. An observable system is one where DevOps teams can see the entire IT environment with context and understanding of interdependencies. The result? It allows teams to detect problems proactively and resolve issues faster.
What is monitoring?
Monitoring is the task of assessing the health of a system by collecting and analyzing aggregate data from IT systems based on a predefined set of metrics and logs. In DevOps, monitoring measures the health of the application, such as creating a rule that alerts when the app is nearing 100% disk usage, helping prevent downtime. Where monitoring truly shows its value is in analyzing long-term trends and alerting. It shows you not only how the app is functioning, but also how it’s being used over time.
Monitoring helps teams watch the system’s performance and detect known failures; however, monitoring has its limitations. For monitoring to work, you have to know what metrics and logs to track. If your team hasn’t predicted a problem, it can miss key production failures and other issues.
Observability vs. monitoring: How it works
When it comes to monitoring vs. observability, the difference hinges upon identifying the problems you know will happen and having a way to anticipate the problems that might happen. At its most basic, monitoring is reactive, and observability is proactive. Both use the same type of telemetry data, known as the three pillars of observability.
The three pillars of observability are as follows:
- Logs: A record of what’s happening within your software.
- Metrics: A numerical assessment of application performance and resource utilization.
- Traces: How operations move throughout a system, from one node to another.
When monitoring, teams use this telemetry data to internally define the metrics and create preconfigured dashboards and notifications. They also identify and document dependencies, which reveal how each application component is dependent on other components, applications and IT resources.
An observability platform takes monitoring a step further. DevOps, site reliability engineers (SREs), operations teams and IT staff can correlate the gathered telemetry in real-time to get a complete view of application performance. This way, they not only understand what’s in the system but how different elements relate to each other. The platform shows you the what, where and why of any event and what this could mean to application performance, guiding how DevOps teams perform application instrumentation, debugging and performance fixes.
Observability platforms also use telemetry, but in a proactive way. They automatically discover new sources of telemetry that might emerge within the system, such as a new API call to another software application. To manage and quickly gather insights from such a large volume of data, many platforms include machine learning and AIOps (artificial intelligence for operations) capabilities that can separate the real problems from unrelated issues.
The evolution of APM to observability
Observability and application performance monitoring (APM) are often used interchangeably; however, it’s more accurate to view observability as an evolution of APM.
APM includes the tools and processes designed to help IT teams determine if applications are meeting performance standards and providing a valuable user experience. APM tools typically focus on infrastructure monitoring, application dependencies, business transactions and user experience. These monitoring systems aim to quickly identify, isolate and solve performance problems.
APM was the standard practice for more than two decades, but with the increased use of agile development, DevOps, microservices, multiple programming languages, serverless and other cloud-native technologies, teams needed a faster way to monitor and assess highly-complex environments. APM tools designed for a previous generation of application infrastructure could no longer provide fast, automated, contextualized visibility into the health and availability of an entire application environment. New software is deployed so quickly today, in so many small components, that APM had trouble keeping up.
Observability builds upon APM data collection methods to better address the increasingly rapid, distributed and dynamic nature of cloud-native application deployments, making it easier to understand a system and then monitor, update, repair and, ultimately, deploy it.
Observability tools and automation
Observability and monitoring tools go deeper than monitoring internal states and troubleshooting problems. These platforms help teams solve problems faster, which in turn, optimizes pipelines and gives more time for core business operations and innovation.
Here, let’s dive deeper into some types of tools and approaches to observability and monitoring:
- Observability platforms: These platforms provide a way for teams to integrate monitoring, logging and tracing throughout the IT environment to provide a full view of the system’s state, even across distributed systems. Some platforms also include user experience and business context to provide a more robust picture of performance health. Depending on the platform, they are designed to provide visualization of both on-premises systems and complex, multicloud environments.
- Open source: Open-source data observability tools, like OpenTelemetry, help teams monitor and debug apps, collect log and metric data and perform tracing. These tools offer the ability to perform some, but not all observability functions, and they are often used in some combination.
- Automation: Observability automation is simply an extension of existing automation within the CI/CD pipeline, further freeing up DevOps to focus on core tasks. For example, IBM Instana Observability offers state-of-the-art intelligent automation capabilities that accelerate the CI/CD pipeline by automating the discovery of applications, infrastructure and services. This capability means developers don’t need to hard-code application and service links every time an update is made. With AI-assisted troubleshooting, Instana can predict incidents and automate remediation. A fully automated application performance management system monitors every service, traces every request and profiles every process.
Observability and IBM
With Instana, IBM provides a fully automated enterprise observability platform that delivers the context needed to take intelligent actions and ensure optimum application performance. For example, Instana offers the following features and benefits:
- Automation: Gain full observability in dynamic environments with auto-discovery. Be able to trace every request, record all changes and get one-second granularity metrics.
- Context: Understand all application inter-dependencies to diagnose issues and determine impact. Instana contextualizes raw data into meaningful information, providing an interactive model of relationships between all entities in real-time.
- Intelligent action: Proactively detect and remediate issues with an understanding of contributing factors. Analyze every user request from any perspective to quickly find and resolve every bottleneck. | <urn:uuid:c5e5da0d-44eb-40a8-a0a3-231d512e3557> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/observability-vs-monitoring | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927225413-20220928015413-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.922647 | 1,664 | 2.5625 | 3 |
A Digitmap, constructed based on a given dialing plan, is a set of digit matching rules that allows the BuddyTalk device to know when the user has completed dialing, and to send out the dialed number in a timely manner.
When a person attempts to make a call using a telephone set, they would normally dial a stream of digits based on the appropriate dialing plan. For example, in the U.S., a local call can be dialed with a 7-digit number whose leading digit is a number between 2 and 9, a long-distance dialing will be a 1 followed by a 3-digit area code followed by a 7-digit number. For the BuddyTalk device to send out the dialed number without delay, it matches the dialed digit string with a “Digitmap” template so that the BuddyTalk device knows when the user has completed dialing. If there is no match, the device waits for the user to enter more digits and will only send if there is a sufficient gap after the last digit – or if the user presses the send key (#) (see “Support Pound (#) Char” below) to indicate the dialing is complete.
Here is how to configure the Digitmap pattern which corresponds to the dial plan selected by the VoIP service operator or the IP-PBX. The figure below shows the web GUI where the Digitmap and the Replacement Rules are to be entered.
|Digitmap||Define patterns of dial strings that the BuddyTalk device can send to the SIP server when the pattern has been met, and not have to wait for the InterDigit Timeout or the Critical Timeout. This helps improve call completion times.|
|Digitmap Timer||Critical Timeout: Short timeout if match digitmap T pattern.
Inter Digit Timeout: Time to wait between digits being dialed before assuming no more entries are to be made. This is required to ensure a pause in dialing does not trigger an incomplete number to be sent to the SIP server.
|Digitmap Action||Early Bailout: If a dialed number does not match any digitmap pattern, call a predefined bailout number. This number may be configured as an announcement to inform the user that this is an invalid number.
BailOut Number: The outgoing number when early bailout is enabled.
Support Pound (#) Char: This feature only controls the “#” at the end of a dialed string. If this feature is enabled, pressing pound (#) after dialing numbers will cause the BT device to dial out immediately without waiting for the expiration of any associated timers, e.g., “Critical Timeout” and “Inter Digit Timeout”. If this feature is disabled, and there are associated digitmap rules ending with a “#” sign, the MTA sends out “%23”, which is equivalent to “#”.
A DigitMap, according to this syntax, is defined either by a (case insensitive) “String” or by a “list of strings” over which the SIP Device will attempt to find a shortest possible match. Each string in the list is an alternate numbering scheme. Regardless of the above syntax, a timer is only allowed if it appears in the last position in a string.
The formal syntax of the digitmap is described by the following notation:
Digit ::= “0” | “1” | “2” | “3” | “4” | “5” | “6” | “7” | “8” | “9”
- Timer ::= “T” | “t” — matches the detection of a timer
- Letter ::= Digit | Timer | “#” | “*” | “A” | “a” | “B” | “b” | “C” | “c” | “D” | “d”
- Range :: = “X” — matches any single digit
Below is a dial plan example (a typical U.S. dial plan).
|[2-9]xxxxxx||A local number. Example: 433 5589|
|[0-9*].#||Any dialed numbers followed by a “#” sign. Example: 8657#|
|*xx||Star services. Example: *76|
|1[2-9]xxxxxxxxxx||A long distance number. Example: 1 408 669 1288|
|011 + up to 15 digits||An international number. Example: 011 65 65866110| | <urn:uuid:7acd79f1-1f63-47f3-b5f2-92968171fdcd> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.innomedia.com/wiki/digitmap-settings/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.852371 | 1,034 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Each month is a consistent win for AI. And July is no different.
While the duality of Artificial Intelligence is still very much in debate, the promise of business advancement, innovation and career opportunity are validated by amassing results.
What are some of the results?
July, alone, has us looking at progress in energy consumption, ways to reduce carbon emissions, and a robot dog that learned how to walk (in 60 minutes).
Faster Computation W/ Less Energy In Programmable Resistors
Training complex neural network models isn’t a cheap task.
Pushing the boundaries of AI and machine learning requires a lot of time and resources. And so a new area of research, known as analog deep learning, promises faster computation and reduced energy usage.
A team of MIT researchers are experimenting with protonic programmable resistors that use an inorganic material in the fabrication process to allow their devices to run 1 million times faster than previously. It’s also interesting to note that it is also roughly 1 million times faster than the synapses in the human brain.
Programmable resistors are also the building block of analog deep learning.
According to Science Daily, “These ultrafast, low-energy resistors could enable analog deep learning systems that can train new and more powerful neural networks rapidly, which could then be used for novel applications in areas like self-driving cars, fraud detection, and health care.”
As such, these resistors increase the speed at which neural networks are trained, while reducing the cost and energy to perform that training.
Lead author and MIT postdoc Murat Onen adds, “Once you have an analog processor, you will no longer be training networks everyone else is working on. You will be training networks with unprecedented complexities that no one else can afford to, and therefore vastly outperform them all. In other words, this is not a faster car, this is a spacecraft,”.
New Deep Learning Tool Will Help Cut Carbon Emissions
Speaking to your voice assistant in a slow, dragged out voice can confuse your device.
Often giving you results that you didn’t ask for. Or creating hindrances for the speech impaired.
University of Virginia cognitive scientist, Per Sederberg, suggests that current AI systems are hard of hearing. Which are problematic for both the user experience and for the environment.
UVA collaborative research has found a way to convert existing AI neural networks “into technology that can truly hear us, no matter at what pace we speak.”. The deep learning tool, SITHCon, can generalise input and understand words at different speeds to what the network originally has training on.
“This new ability won’t just change the end-user’s experience; it has the potential to alter how artificial neural networks “think” — allowing them to process information more efficiently. And that could change everything in an industry constantly looking to boost processing capability, minimise data storage and reduce AI’s massive carbon footprint.”
Robot Dog Learns To Walk (In 60mins)
A group of researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart were conducting research on how animals learn to walk.
So they built a robot dog to figure it out.
By learning to walk through sent and received sensor information, using reflex loops, and adapting its motor control, the robot dog was able to learn to walk in just one hour.
“Our robot is practically ‘born’ knowing nothing about its leg anatomy or how they work… The computer produces signals that control the legs’ motors, and the robot initially walks and stumbles. Data flows back from the sensors to the virtual spinal cord where sensor and CPG data are compared. If the sensor data does not match the expected data, the learning algorithm changes the walking behaviour until the robot walks well, and without stumbling. Changing the CPG output while keeping reflexes active and monitoring the robot stumbling is a core part of the learning process.”
Looking For More Content On AI?
Do yourself a favour and check out our blog!
It’s got tech news, tips and insights to take your digital enterprise to new heights.
If you enjoy getting a brief update on AI news, or love to read all about big data, digital transformation, machine learning and so much more – then be sure to check out the rest of our content… | <urn:uuid:393c1cc3-b5b3-4d1a-9c07-b791baa45017> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.teraflow.ai/ai-news-you-probably-missed-in-july/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.928903 | 925 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Atmospheric Conditions and SATCOMS Data Transmission
There’s no doubt that in an ideal world the transmission from Ground to Satellite and vice versa would be error free, and if that were the case there would be nothing to say here. The bottom line is that they are not error free and the problems occur primarily due to atmospheric conditions. So what are these conditions? Well, it all starts with the Sun and goes down from there. We may have:
- Space Weather – Solar Flares etc – geomagnetic effects
- Ionospheric Scintillation – Irregularities in the Earth’s ionosphere which affect the amplitude and phase of radio signals
- Cloud – Water droplets absorb and reflect radio signals
- Rain – Raindrops themselves absorb and reflect radio signals
- Dust and Sand Storms
- Well that’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.
So any of these factors can produce an error in the transmission stream and the more you get, the harder they are to deal with.
Increasing Bandwidth vs Transmission Quality
Let’s talk about the physical transmission layer (OSI Layer 1) in SATCOMS and note that it might be in Bits or Symbols.
What’s a Symbol? Well SATCOMS looks at transmission at the lowest level in Hz (Hertz – cycles per second). Now we could send data one bit per cycle in the standard binary fashion, as happens in wired and optical circuits, or if conditions allowed we might try to have several different “levels” per cycle and encode 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 bits or more in a cycle. These are called Symbols.
Technically, the method of doing this is to modulate the signal. In a popular form of modulation: 64-QAM (64 Level Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) both amplitude and phase modulation are used.
The problem is, the higher the encoding levels, the better we need the transmission quality to be and all the atmospheric factors mentioned above can dash that by interfering with amplitude and phase, and more. A solution to this is to use Forward Error Correction (FEC) but this decreases net throughput – see below for more on Forward Error Correction.
A Quick Look at how Data is Transmitted in Packets
As humans we tend to think of transmitting bytes of data. We have “data plans” for so many Gigabytes per month, but data is not normally transferred in bytes between systems. Instead it is transferred in packets (blocks of bytes), aka Frames. These packets consist of a:
- Header – Information on how to deliver the packet e.g.. the destination address (and more)
- Data – the data we are actually sending
Now the data may itself contain a sort of sub-packet i.e. have a Header and Data itself, and if you think that’s uncommon – no it absolutely isn’t: in most businesses and homes IP packets are sent inside Ethernet Packets.
Why is data transmitted this way? Because a typical network operates like the “Post Office” handling network traffic on behalf of many customers. A packet is, to the network, like a letter is to the post office – it contains address information, including sender information, so that packets can be delivered to a variety of destinations and the recipient knows where they came from.
If we sent one byte at a time it would still need a header and so the amount of header information would exceed the actual data we were transmitting by huge amounts – what a waste of bandwidth that would be!
The OSI Network Layer Model (diagram below courtesy of Wikipedia), lays out how these packets, and packets-in-packets, are carried starting at the physical layer.
|OSI Layer||Protocol Data Unit||Function|
|Host Layer||7 - Application||Data||High-level APIs, including resource sharing, remote file access|
|Host Layer||6 - Presentation||Data||Translation of data between a networking service and an application; including character encoding, data compression and encryption/decryption|
|Host Layer||5 - Session||Data||Managing communication sessions, i.e., continuous exchange of information in the form of multiple back-and-forth transmissions between two nodes|
|Host Layer||4 - Transport||Segment Datagram||Reliable transmission of data segments between points on a network, including segmentation, acknowledgement and multiplexing|
|Host Layer||3 - Network||Packet||Structuring and managing a multi-node network, including addressing, routing and traffic control|
|Media Layer||2 - Data Link||Frame||Reliable transmission of data frames between two nodes connected by a physical layer|
|Media Layer||1 - Physical||Bit, Symbol||Transmission and reception of raw bit streams over a physical medium|
So in our SATCOMS example the lowest layers (closest to the physical) are:
- Satellite Physical (SATPHY), the radio (wireless) transmission as a bit or symbol stream
- Satellite Medium Access Control (SMAC) & Satellite Link Control (SLC)
- IPv4 or IPv6
From Layer 3 up the packets are the same as the ones our computers, devices, phones etc generate.
Forward Error Correction (FEC)
A standard network approach to error correction is to send data, then wait for an acknowledgement (ACK) from the receiver and if none is received then resend the data. Well at least that’s it at its most simple. This kind of system is used by the TCP part of the IP networking stack, for example.
The problem with this method is that if you have large round trip latencies of, say, 700ms (GEO orbit) then it will take over 700ms to get a retransmission of the data. This would seriously hamper transmission rates.
Enter Forward Error Correction (FEC): If we can send some redundant data with the real data that allows for the correction of one or more errored bits then we don’t need to retransmit the data – thus saving at least 700ms in the example above, at the expense of sending more data than required.
What happens when atmospheric conditions disturb transmission
- Unlike standard Ethernet at Layer 2 which has no error correction at all, many SATCOM circuits support Forward Error Correction (FEC), as explained above. When it works, not much additional delay is incurred.
- Ultimately, if there are too many errors to correct, the encoding level could be reduced making the data more likely to be successfully decoded.
- If there are more errors even than the above can fix then we have bit errors getting through at Layer 2, and for IP a checksum will fail somewhere at Layer 3 or above and the packet will be discarded, and require re-transmission.
What about Wavebands?
There is no magic formula for how wavebands perform because different SATCOMS providers may have different power outputs and therefore, better Signal to Noise ratio, but the general trends are:
Higher Frequencies implies higher throughput & higher susceptibility to attenuation by rain/cloud etc.
Here is a table we put together as a quick guide, but the more we looked into it the more complex it got as you have to take individual services into account due to power, adaptive coding and modulation (ACM), or not etc.
|Waveband||Frequency||Throughput (Bandwidth)||Rain/Cloud Resilience|
|C-Band (inc VSAT)||4-8Ghz||Cost Effective||Good|
|X-Band (inc VSAT)||9-12Ghz||Similar to C||OK|
|Ku-Band (inc VSAT)||12-18Ghz||1-12Mpbs||Susceptible|
|Ku-Band HTS Spot Beam||12-18Ghz||80Mbps-200Mbps||Susceptible|
|Ka-Band (inc VSAT)||26.5-40GHz||30-50Mpbs||Very susceptible (but modern Ka has a lot of power to compensate)|
Application perspective on Layer 1 effects
The application is, in general, going to experience a few things:
- Lowering of the available Bandwidth, where FEC repeatedly fails e.g. ACM mentioned above
- Loss of data for unacknowledged Layer 4 protocols e.g. when the transport layer (4) is UDP
- Re-transmission of data for guaranteed Layer 4 protocols e.g. when the transport layer (4) is TCP
So, if we want to test an application for these effects we need to be able to produce similar effects for Layers 2 (&3) which will have a similar impact on the transport layer (Layer 4) and above.
So again, should we care about Atmospheric Effects?
- For TCP-based applications – http, https, cifs (NetBIOS), ftp, buffered video, buffered audio etc. reduction in bandwidth and retransmission due to packet loss are significant factors
Fundamentally we will see a slowdown in transmission which may be very significant
- For UDP-based applications – VoIP, Real Time Video, Telemetary etc
Humans have trouble with breakup and quality loss in live video and voice calls and video conferencing
Telemetry may be lost
As ever, the consequence depends on the application.
How can you test your applications with Satellite Bit Error, Loss and Bandwidth Limitations (as well as Latency, Jitter etc.)?
[If you read Part 1 or Part 2 then you can skip to “The End” – the arguments are similar and you can “also” simulate Bandwidth Restriction, Bit Errors, Loss, Latency and Jitter. If you didn’t please read on… ]
You need to test!
That may not be as formal as it sounds: we could say you need to try the application in the satellite network.
However, there are issues with testing or trying using actual (real) satellite networks:
- Satellite time is expensive and the equipment not at all easy to deploy
- It will be just about impossible to mimic your or your customers’ real locations
- If you find an issue which needs attention, getting it to the developers for a solution will be difficult (and if the developers say they have sorted it out it is likely to be very difficult to retest)
- You won’t be able to try out other satellite environments e.g. MEO or LEO without purchasing them
- You won’t be able to have a rainstorm appear just when you need it during your testing
Using Satellite Network Emulators
People think of anything with the name “emulator” in it as some sort of complex mathematical device which predicts behaviours. They may be complex, but only internally. Externally, we make them very straightforward. And, they don’t predict behavior, you get to actually try out (“test”) your application using your real clients and servers just as though they were in the satellite network.
All you need to do is plug them in between a client device and the servers and set them for the satellite situation you want. You can even try out other options like LEO or MEO within seconds.
Plugging them in is easy because they have Ethernet ports, you don’t need any satellite equipment at all.
Want to know more – click here | <urn:uuid:5f858db2-b6d0-4d7c-b95c-64497c3f0b00> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://itrinegy.com/satellite-communications-blog-part-3/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337404.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003070342-20221003100342-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.907023 | 2,442 | 3.4375 | 3 |
A penetration test, or pen-test, is a planned attack on a network, hardware, or software system, intending to expose security defects that may violate systems integrity and compromise valued data. Although there are different types of penetration testing, they all aim to exploit vulnerabilities and weaknesses to test the effectiveness of the safety measure in place.
The different types of penetration testing are derived from the kind of operation that one wishes to explore on a specific system. It is vital for security testers to know precisely what they want to test or what their testing goals are in order to decide the most relevant test to use.
What is the Purpose of a Penetration Test?
Pen testers use this test to look at the weakness in an IT infrastructure closely. Pen test tools determine the effectiveness of security software, hardware, and cybersecurity policies. The tests aim at establishing whether or not a hacker can successfully evade IT security defenses.
A pen test can be performed internally or externally. Once the test reveals any weak spots or risks, the tester can choose to safely exploit the weaknesses in the system and work on them or give a detailed report to the relevant parties.
Types of Penetration Testing
There are several types of penetration testing, and not all of them are equal. The result of using each test varies according to the amount of information the tester is given. Some tests include cloud penetration testing, web application testing, external and internal network pen testing, physical pen testing, and online website pen testing.
Carrying out different tests will give you a clear view of how secure the network or systems are. This will allow you to evaluate every gateway that a hacker can use to find or access secure information.
Here are some of the types of penetration testing that you can use.
1. Social Engineering Tests
Cybersecurity systems are as strong as the weakest link. Unfortunately, employees or users can easily make mistakes that can compromise security. Social engineering is one of the common ways that internal hackers use to infiltrate a system.
These tests include remote tests, which are intended to trick an employee into compromising an organization’s data through electronic means, and physical tests, which involve direct contact with employees in a bid to get confidential information from them.
Testers can conduct remote tests using a phishing email campaign and physical tests using intimidation, eavesdropping, manipulation, dumpster diving, imitation, or other tactics. It is vital to inform the management team before conducting a social engineering test.
If employees fail a social engineering test, the management can offer cybersecurity and policies training to sensitize them of such risks and make them aware of their role in cybersecurity.
2. Network Penetration Testing
This type of penetration testing is one of the most popular pen test methods, partly because it can be carried out remotely and on-site. This test aims to discover weaknesses within a network infrastructure. Because networks have both internal and external access points, they are very vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Notably, leaving the vulnerabilities unsecured can lead to a disastrous breach. This test includes:
- FTP client/server tests
- Router testing
- SSH attacks
- Application penetration testing
- Network vulnerabilities
- Bypassing firewalls
- Proxy servers
- Open port scanning and testing
- DNS foot printing
- IPS/IDS evasion
Testers can exploit applications such as languages, oracle, java, web applications, MySQL, PHP. XML, .NET, connections, CRM systems, APIs, mobile applications, financial, and HR systems to test the effectiveness of the firewall in place. Testers identify internet-facing assets that a hacker can exploit and assess if unauthorized users can gain access to the system through external networks.
3. Wireless Network Tests
This test checks the security of all wireless devices within an organization. The test is detailed and targeted and can involve several devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The methodology involved in wireless tests are used to:
- Discover encryption weaknesses like wireless sniffing and session hijacking
- Identify all signal leakages, WI-Fi networks, and wireless fingerprinting
- Identify user profiles and the credentials used to access private networks
- Find weaknesses in wireless protocols, admin credentials, and wireless access points
- Identify ways through which hackers can use to penetrate a system using WLAN access control or wireless access
- Look for default or poorly used passwords
- Find unauthorized hotspots
- Identify Denial of Service (DoS) attacks
- Identify cross-site scripting
Testers look for these and more vulnerabilities and use the right methods of ensuring a robust security system.
4. Website Testing
Website tests are detailed, targeted, and intense types of penetration testing. They apply to areas like browsers, web applications, and their components, such as Plug-ins, ActiveX, and Applets.
Website tests examine the endpoints of web apps that users interact with frequently. Therefore, the test needs a lot of planning and time. The increase of cybersecurity and threats has also influenced the growth of website tests.
5. Physical Pen Testing
Physical security protocols can be a gateway to breaches and cyberattacks. This test helps to determine how easily a cybercriminal can access or attempt to gain access to a facility. Physical testing includes:
- Vendor or personnel impersonation
- RFID & door entry systems
- Motion Sensors
During physical penetration tests, a pen tester can manipulate or deceive an employee to gain physical access to the facility.
6. Cloud Penetration Testing
Today, public cloud services are very popular. Private users, employees, and organizations use cloud systems to store or backup all types of data in the cloud. Unfortunately, this makes cloud services a very popular target for cybercriminals.
Handling legal obstacles and cloud security is complicated. Several public cloud service providers are hands-off when it comes to data security, and this forces users or organizations to take full responsibility for the security of their data.
Before conducting a cloud pen test, it may be ideal to inform the cloud services provider of the intent to pen test the security system. The provider informs pen testers about the off-limits areas. For example, some cloud providers only permit tests on RDS, CloudFront, Lamba, EC2, or Aurora and restrict tests on small, micro, and nano EC2.
Cloud pen tests can include:
- Applications and API access
- Poorly used passwords
- Poorly used firewalls
- Computer security
- SSH and RDP remote administration
- Database and storage access
- VMs and unpatched Operating Systems
It may be good to use white box testing and have more knowledge about the environment before the testing. If the client is a Microsoft Azure customer, the tester has to comply with the Microsoft Cloud Unified Penetration Testing Rules of Engagement.
7. Client-Side Tests
These tests are used to identify security threats that occur locally. For instance, this can be a flaw in the software application that runs on the user’s workstation that a cybercriminal can easily exploit. The test can include applications and programs such as:
- Browsers like Safari, Chrome, Opera, IE, and Firefox
- Presentation and content creation packages like media players, MS PowerPoint, Photoshop, and Adobe Page Maker
- Git clients
Since the threats can be homegrown, it is vital to look for uncertified OSS that a criminal can use to extend or create a homemade application and cause severe unanticipated threats.
Performing these various types of penetration testing will help you narrow down on any weakness and help improve the cybersecurity strategies and policies in place. Therefore, it is ideal to conduct regular penetration tests to know how strong a network of systems is and adjust or make improvements, as necessary. | <urn:uuid:c7d51337-17f3-4f8f-a22d-94dcadcf5734> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.clearnetwork.com/types-penetration-testing-improve-data-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338001.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007080917-20221007110917-00392.warc.gz | en | 0.907267 | 1,619 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Employees can focus on more creative and inventive work thanks to technologies like intelligent automation (IA) and robotic process automation (RPA). They generally have to do less work reviewing and responding to irrelevant emails, reducing the need for helpdesk staff. In many cases, companies have found that IA and RPA have led to a permanent reduction in headcount.
Intelligent automation, or IA, and robotic process automation, or RPA, permit employees to focus their energy on more creative and innovative tasks.
Now let’s examine what these terms mean and how they affect your business before understanding why they are different.
What is Intelligent Automation (IA)?
Business process management (BPM), robotic process automation (RPA), and artificial intelligence (AI) are the technologies that are used to implement intelligent automation to streamline a company’s processes.
The IA process helps a company improve operational efficiency and free resources. IA connects the doing and thinking aspects of automation, unlike many other technologies. In this way, IA is used widely in many industries.
Benefits of IA
1. Enhancing employees’ productivity and reducing cost: The use of IA enables companies to scale their processes quickly without increasing risk, compromising quality, or straining their staff. Consequently, ROI and productivity are improved.
2. A positive customer experience is essential: A pleasant customer experience can be achieved by bringing high-quality products to market and promptly responding to consumer inquiries.
3. Increasing the accuracy of the process: Using AI to drive essential decision-making is one of the benefits of IA. It
4. Dealing with compliance issues: IA allows companies to leverage the task automation feature to ensure the business complies with regulatory and legal policies.
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a transparent interface technology that allows businesses to easily construct and operate robots or bots that replicate human operations using any system’s user interface. RPA robots, unlike AI, do not learn something new with each iteration. They are unable to improvise or devise a more efficient method of carrying out pre-programmed duties.
These RPA bots function as your virtual assistant, allowing you to automate mundane but time-consuming tasks.
Surprisingly, these robots can read what’s on the screen, recognize data, and perform a variety of tasks that would normally require a person.
Benefits of using RPA
1. Boosting productivity: RPA increases efficiency by automating mindless processes like copying and pasting data from one system to another, allowing staff to focus on more important duties. This has the potential to increase workplace productivity.
2. Enhancing data security: A business can reduce the number of times it must handle personal information by using RPA. Data security is automatically increased as a result.
3. Improved customer service: An employee can spend more time focusing on customer service rather than rote administrative tasks. This can result in faster resolution times and better customer service.
Major Difference Between Intelligent Automation and Robotic Process Automation
RPA performs repetitive tasks with no variation. When you log in to your bank account, for example, you use your username or login id and password. This procedure is the same regardless of how many times you use your online bank account.
RPA is the ideal instrument for these tasks. As a result, RPA is prone to scalability concerns, as when a process changes, RPA falls flat on its face.
IA, a more advanced variant of RPA, was born out of this. Every RPA quality is integrated into IA, which provides an extra layer of capacity by adding bots that can learn and react to changes in real-time. To handle exceptions and constantly learn from data patterns, IA uses AI technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing (NLP).
Various Data they can Handle
When it comes to tasks with a lot of variances, the RPA is ineffective. It can only deal with structured data. IA, on the other hand, can work with both structured and unstructured information. As a result, IA may work miracles in terms of reducing expenses and increasing production in a short period.
You may extend your capabilities and deliver insights into process improvement across the organization by using IA. This alters your working style and leads to long-term success.
Limitations of IA and RPA
RPA is frequently difficult in the long run since it requires you to create a system that carefully adheres to a set of rules. RPA, for example, is not sophisticated enough to perform a task if a customer enters inaccurate data.
This is where IA enters the picture. Companies might adopt IA when RPA is no longer delivering the desired outcomes. This enables the machine to finish the task utilizing AI reasoning and decision-making procedures. RPA is the stopgap to an eventful IA integration because of its superior function and lack of constraints.
Basic Use of IA and RPA
RPA can automate email, download invoices into a specific folder, and create invoices in the accounting software. By contrast, IA automatically reads the invoices and extracts the invoice number, product description, due dates, and amount due, among other information.
Can they work together?
RPA is the operation’s hand, while IA is the operation’s brain. RPA excels in automating routine rule-based processes and simulating human actions. RPA processes are appropriate for tasks like data entry, reading, and extraction. IA, on the other hand, is great for simplifying a process from beginning to end.
RPA and IA can both work in the sink because of their competing nature. For structured, repetitive, and monotonous work, IA can use RPA to optimize processes.
You may automate and optimize your business from a tactical and process perspective by combining IA and RPA on the same business process. | <urn:uuid:3d1be0b2-1100-4a46-96ac-8b7c54f9a701> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.aixoutlook.com/intelligent-automation-vs-robotic-process-automation-what-are-the-differences/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.920282 | 1,227 | 2.515625 | 3 |
With the rapid development of telecommunications, the demand for cable capacity is stronger more than ever. WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) will be the preferred method to meet the needs. WDM systems are divided into different wavelength patterns, conventional/coarse (CWDM) and dense (DWDM). This post aims to make a comparison between CWDM and DWDM.
Wavelength Division Multiplexing is a technology which multiplexes a number of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths of laser light. This technique enables bidirectional communications over one strand of fiber, as well as multiplication of capacity. A WDM system uses a multiplexer at the transmitter to join the signals together, and a demultiplexer at the receiver to split them apart. With the right type of fiber it is possible to have a device that does both simultaneously, and can function as an optical add-drop multiplexer.
CWDM is the technology of choice for cost efficiently transporting large amounts of data traffic in telecoms or enterprise networks.
DWDM is an optical technology used to increase bandwidth over existing fiber optic backbones.
Comparison between CWDM and DWDM will be illustrated from the following aspects:
- Channel Numbers: DWDM can fit 40-plus channels into the same frequency range which is twice of CWDM can fit. CWDM is used more often than DWDM due to the cost factor. Now that cabling and transmission has become more affordable, DWDM takes place of CWDM. CWDM is defined by wavelengths, while DWDM is defined in terms of frequencies.
- Modulated laser: Unlike DWDM deploys cooled distributed-feedback (DFB), CWDM is based on uncooled distributed-feedback (DFB) lasers and wide-band optical filters. These technologies provide several advantages to CWDM systems such as lower power dissipation, smaller size, and less cost. The commercial availability of CWDM systems offering these benefits makes the technology a viable alternative to DWDM systems for many metro and access applications.
- Transmission Distance: Another major difference between the two is that DWDM is designed for longer haul transmission, by keeping the wavelengths tightly packed. It can transmit more data over a significantly larger run of cable with less interference than a comparable CWDM system. If there is a need to transmit the data over a very long range, the DWDM will likely be the priority in terms of functionality of the data transmittal as well as the lessened interference over the longer distances that the wavelengths must travel. CWDM cannot travel long distances because the wavelengths are not amplified, and therefore CWDM is limited in its functionality over longer distances. Typically, CWDM can travel anywhere up to about 100 miles (160 km), while an amplified dense wavelength system can go much further as the signal strength is boosted periodically throughout the run. As a result of the additional cost required to provide signal amplification, the CWDM solution is best for short runs that do not have mission critical data.
From the comparison above, we can know both the benefits and drawbacks of CWDM and DWDM. If the transmission distance is short and cost is low, then CWDM may be your first choice. On the contrary, you can consider DWDM. For more information about CWDM and DWMD, you can visit Fiberstore. | <urn:uuid:51638b89-c8df-461f-9589-961b3de031f9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/tag/cwdm-multiplexer | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.949836 | 717 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have become the technology industry’s hottest topics with major companies and start-ups cashing-in on their bright promises. On the crest of the AI wave is the advent of conversational computing, or chatbots, as well as more complex virtual assistants that respond to voice commands on smartphones or tablets, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri. However, many companies experimenting in this area have yet to get it right – a stark reminder of the risks of overhyping technologies.
What many don’t realise is that AI has already been around for some time, albeit in different guises. To understand how, it’s important to define this technology. Of course, Siri and Alexa both come under this umbrella, as do self-learning robots, but AI is so much broader than you might imagine. Put simply, it refers to the process of making computers and machines capable of human-like, intelligent behaviour. By this definition, AI has been widely used for more than 35 years – evident in a number of technologies, including advanced business rules engines, data driven adaptive algorithms and machine learning analytics.
All around us, every day
The science fiction nature of what’s portrayed in the media often obscures the real pragmatic usage that organisations are getting from AI. Despite the enormous value AI has already been able to deliver, AI remains often misunderstood and underused.
Today, AI is at the heart of some fundamental processes that affect profit and loss in meaningful ways. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been using Pega’s AI in the form of predictive analytics, Machine Learning and Decision Management to figure out the ‘Next Best Conversation’ to have with any customer in real time and at any interaction point.
And it’s not just banks. Many businesses use technology in a way you might not have recognised as AI. By deploying AI software, which includes case management, industry service cases and Next Best Action capabilities, customer service has transformed. Businesses can recognise that a customer is coming back to them via another channel, continue the dialogue and provide relevant suggestions to both staff and customers. Customers really appreciate this as they jump from a call, onto the web and back into the store to sort out their phone contract. This means fewer complaints, shorter calls, lower customer churn and increased savings, with AI helping the organisation to make better, more informed decisions when speaking to customers.
While perhaps not as exciting as ‘human androids’ of the sci-fi genre, these are real examples of AI and software robotics in action today. We’re there already. The next step is thinking about how you get AI to grow with the business and not become an assortment of technologies that lack integration and scalability. Ultimately, we should be focusing not on the technology itself, but on the business value that this technology provides.
Elevating customer experience
According to a study by Pegasystems on banking customers’ attitudes towards customer service, 68% of banks think they understand their customers extremely well, but less than half of banking consumers feel the same way. This highlights a major disconnect between banks and their customers. And it’s something which AI and machine learning is able to address.
To understand this disconnect, we should remember that organisations were traditionally built from the inside-out, with customers and customer-facing employees on the ‘receiving-end’ of technology. This meant customer service agents were toggling between as many as 30 different screens, while telling the customer “the system’s a bit slow this morning”. The best-performing agents have overcome this inside-out technology that’s supposed to support them.
The need to operationalise insight has never been greater. An ‘always-on’ central brain functions across all different lines of business, channels, systems and data, ensuring that customers get the best treatment, no matter how they interact with the organisation. This “Customer Decision Hub” sits between customers and customer-facing employees, determining Next Best Actions. This system merges data, generates insights from predictive analytics and machine learning, with governance and judgement easily injected by business experts.
This need for a connected customer experience is also being addressed by AI-powered bots which provide customers and employees with smart digital assistants from any conversational interface, using natural language in voice and text. SMS, text and social media channels can be transformed into intelligent assistants that anticipate needs, make helpful suggestions, complete complex tasks, and provide exceptional experiences.
Deep learning is a great example here: a fascinating opportunity but not yet a game-changer for a bank or insurer. These commercial organisations need AI to do the hard work of growing revenue and driving down costs. The challenge is all about transforming interactions with customers – improving loyalty by adding value, whilst increasing the number of products and services they buy. This is where Decision Management offers huge potential. Pulling together several AI technologies – predictive analytics, machine learning, and traditional business rules – decision management helps companies make decisions that are driven by data analytics, something a computer is uniquely able to provide.
The benefits of AI extend far beyond improved customer service. It can also help businesses respond to changing circumstances in consumer demand, and manage resources intelligently. When, for example, an unexpected cold snap in a specific area suddenly creates increased demand for snow chains, an intelligent AI process can ensure the right action is taken by prioritising and diverting resources to where they need to be.
AI, deep learning and whatever else may come afterwards are all simply tools, and we need to work out how to best use those tools to improve our lives. For enterprise software, machine learning will always have to be governed by human judgement. Whether due to ethics or regulation, the need to govern and judge will keep humans in a position of control, essentially ‘steering’ the AI to address our business needs. Many organisations have already begun to benefit from AI in real and measurable ways. AI should be seen as something that you steer and optimise to deliver the business goals that have been set. And it doesn’t need to have passed the Turing test to add business value.
Don Schuerman, Chief Technology Officer, Pegasystems
Image Credit: PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek / Shutterstock | <urn:uuid:87437b78-76f2-4882-83a1-e47c7a220895> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/features/artificial-intelligence-science-fiction-or-a-business-reality/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.94987 | 1,316 | 2.53125 | 3 |
TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) are the most common network protocols used in network device communication today.
The connection-oriented TCP was developed first and is more common, as it guarantees delivery and accuracy of the data transmission. The protocol tracks and acknowledges all information sent between two devices, and if data is lost or corrupted during transmission, TCP automatically resends or repairs packets. Therefore, network communications use TCP when reliability is critical. File transfer, email, and web browsing applications use TCP because, for those processes, incorrect or lost information would be unacceptable. For example, when financial information is transferred between devices, the application cannot provide incorrect account balances to customers or the entire business would be compromised. The main disadvantage of TCP is that it is slower becuase of the overhead necesssary to ensure reliable and accurate information transfer.
UDP, on the other hand, is preferable when speed is critical, and some data loss or corruption is not catastrophic. UDP is connectionless and does not guarantee data accuracy or order. Applications that use UDP include VoIP, Audio and Video Streaming, Video Conferencing, and Gaming. In these applications, there is no time to retransmit errors, and a few lost packets still enable satisfactory communication. For example, if a few packets are lost during a phone conversation, the conversation is still intelligible. If TCP were used and errors retransmitted, the conversation would be garbled. UDP also allows for broadcast traffic to multiple devices, as acknowledgements from individual target end devices are not needed.
In summary, TCP is a reliable and connection-oriented transmission protocol, suitable when accuracy is critical, while UDP is a fast, simple protocol used when some data loss is okay.
|Guarantees frame delivery||Does not Guarantee frame delivery|
|No acknowledgment used||Poor|
|Used when fast transmissions are required||Excellent|
|Used by HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, Telnet||Used by DNS, DHCP, TFTP, SNMP, RIP, VOIP| | <urn:uuid:2cc6b521-a882-4f16-b7a8-decbe0dd1764> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.netally.com/general/difference-between-tcp-and-udp/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.90561 | 438 | 3.953125 | 4 |
The evolution of printing technology runs parallel with the evolution of civilization.
From woodcut printing to modern 3D printing technologies, the evolution of printing technologies has grown impressively fast. Most importantly, they have become an integral part of our everyday lives.
In this article, we take you on a journey to the most essential moments in the evolution of printing.
- Offset Printing
Offset printing uses aluminum plates. They transfer an image from the plates onto the rubber blanket. Finally, the image is directly rolled onto the printing surface.
This printing technique is called offset because the ink is not directly transferred onto the paper.
While offset printing was developed about approximately 150 years ago, it is still in use. Once it is set up, it provides greater flexibility, quality, and cost-efficiency. Since it offers accurate color reproduction and professional-looking printing, this method is the best choice when large quantities of printed material are needed.
- Screen Printing
Screen printing is often referred to as serigraphy or silkscreen printing.
This printing method was invented in China during the Song Dynasty. However, it reached Europe in the early 1910s.
This printing method uses a mesh screen to transfer ink onto a flat printing surface. Fabric and paper are the most common surfaces used in screen printing. Screen printing is particularly useful in creating bold canvases, posters, and artwork. However, with specialized inks, you can also use this technique to print images onto wood, metal, plastic, and glass.
In the evolution of printing technology, this is one of the most popular printing techniques, used in a wide range of industries.
One of the greatest benefits of screen printing is that it offers vivid colors. The ink lies in layers on the surface, improving the quality of printed material.
Most importantly, screen printing is highly efficient since it facilitates mass production. You can use the same stencil to replicate the same design and create multiple copies of it. Precisely because of that, screen printing is often used in custom clothing designs for fashion brands, sports teams, or work uniforms.
- Inkjet Printing
In the evolution of printing technology, inkjet printing gained momentum in the early 1950s. This printing concept recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates.
Inkjet printers are the most popular printer type, ranging from inexpensive customer models to professional devices.
Canon, HP, Epson, and Brother are the leading manufacturers of inkjet printers.
Ink printers provide multiple advantages. For starters, they provide individual and corporate users with the higher printing quality. They can print finer details through higher resolution. Most importantly, inkjets are highly efficient. They have almost no warm-up time and reduce the cost of printing per page. As such, they are perfect for flyer and brochure printing.
- Digital Printing
In today’s evolution of printing technology, digital printing is the latest and most commonly used printing form in the world.
It refers to the process of printing digital visuals directly onto a variety of media devices. Unlike with offset printing, there is no need for a printing plate.
Digital files, such as images or PDFs, can be sent directly to the digital printing press. They can be printed on photo paper, canvas, fabric, paper, cardstock, etc.
Digital printing has a wide range of applications, from commercial and advertising to desktop publishing and print-on-demand.
This printing form also plays a notable role in industrial printing. For example, it can be used for large format printing.
- Laser Printing
Laser printers use the electrostatic digital printing process. They produce quality text and graphics by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively charged cylinder (the drum). The drum gathers electrically charged ink and the particles are pressed onto the paper. Heat and pressure from the fuser unit permanently fix text and graphics onto the paper.
This printing technique was invented in the 1970s by Xerox PARC. Today, some of the largest manufacturers of laser printers are IBM, Apple, Xerox, and Canon.
- 3D Printing
When it comes to the current state of the evolution of printing technologies, 3D printing technologies are the future of business sustainability and efficiency. They are not a sci-fi concept anymore. Over the past few years, 3D printing tools have become our reality. They have been used in a wide range of industries, from healthcare and education to the automotive sector.
3D printing involves printing three-dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The object is made by laying down successive layers of material until the product is created.
The benefits of 3D printing are multiple, from reducing costs and minimizing waste to faster prototyping and flexible design.
Evolution of Printing Technology – Over to You
As you can see from the examples provided above, the evolution of printing technologies are constantly evolving. With the rise of modern technologies, its advancement is now faster than ever. Therefore, there is a lot more to be excited about.
What type of printing technologies and tools do you use? Please, share your thoughts and experiences with us!
The evolution of printing technologies Image by rawpixel.com | <urn:uuid:9af91966-6312-48e0-a2f5-ce11f2d1b1d1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://itchronicles.com/technology/the-evolution-of-printing-technology-top-6-things-to-know/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.933726 | 1,072 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
What is Robotic Process Automation?
Robotic Process Automation is a type of Business Process Automation that helps organizations replace repetitive manual work with automation. RPA essentially creates a non-person account—a “bot”—that mimics the activities of a user. The bot accesses the user’s computer and interacts with various systems in the same manner a person would, using specific keystrokes to engage in two-way “conversations,” share and document information, launch programs, and run processes.
Robots typically need privileged access to other computers, applications, files, a website, databases, etc. PAM best practices avoid the need to hard code credentials into scripts and give security teams visibility to accounts the robots access and privileged activities they perform. | <urn:uuid:73d02155-9373-4783-b74d-512c83c234fb> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://delinea.com/what-is/robotic-process-automation-rpa | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337415.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003101805-20221003131805-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.880009 | 173 | 2.875 | 3 |
A PDU (Power Distribution Unit, sometimes a "power strip") is a device that allows you to remotely turn on, turn off, and reboot gear running on AC and/or DC power. PDU technology is absolutely critical to minimize wasted driving out to remote sites. Instead of sending out a technician and burning time, fuel, and wages on the road, you can issue power control commands remotely via a simple LAN connection.
PDUs are used in server rooms, data centers, remote telecom sites, and anywhere else that gear may need to be toggled on or off (including remote reboot) without someone physically being on-site. PDUs are used in telecom, transportation/transit, public utilities, government, military, education, and research environments worldwide.
PDUs come in a variety of form factors, including rack PDU, wall mount, or "0 RU" rack mount.
The advantage of a rack PDU (like the one shown below, and also known as a "rack mount PDU") is that it mounts into your existing gear racks. This not only gives you a place to install the device, but it also reduces the electrical wiring distance required for connecting to your gear.
One disadvantage of the rack PDU model, however, is that it takes up space in your equipment/server racks, where space may be tight. That's where "O RU" PDUs come in. In "0 RU" PDU designs, a long and narrow power strip is attached to the side of an gear rack, which is ordinarily wasted space. This allows you to add PDU functionality to your site without using up any physical rack space.
If you do choose a rack PDU design, try to find one that is only a single rack-unit tall (referred to as "1 RU" or a "PDU 1U"). A PDU 1U in size minimizes the vertical space in your rack that must be consumed to hold the PDU.
A PDU - short for Power Distribution Unit - is a device that allows you to remotely turn on, turn off, and reboot gear running on AC or DC power. This means that a PDU is a device used to control and distribute the...
by Morgana Siggins on May 16, 2019
When you're evaluating PDUs, consider whether you have devices with a lot of redundant power supplies. If you do, look for a PDU that supports "outlet grouping" or a similarly named feature. This will let you toggle all redundant inputs at the same time, rebooting that device (typically a server) with a minimum number of click or keystrokes.
There are many different kinds of PDUs out there, so you need to make sure that you choose the right one. Your #1 concern is AC vs. DC power. Although internally they may be quite similar, an AC-powered PDU has very different connectors than a DC-powered PDU. If you don't have the right connectors, you're not going to get much use out of your PDU at all.
Also, don't skimp on build quality when you're choosing a PDU. Any gear that deserves remote power control should only be connected to quality power equipment. One good rule of thumb is to look for a powder-coated metal chassis instead of plastic. That's one of the easiest things to look for to get a quick idea of overall build quality. Also, look for a manufacturer that's been around for a while. That lets you leverage a proven design that's been providing reliable service for years.
There's plenty to like about modular PDUs. They have the same advantages of all modular equipment: flexibility in both cost and capabilities. Unfortunately, a shelf-and-card approach to PDU design is not perfect. The main problem is that, feature-for-feature, a modular PDU will typically be more expensive than a simple rack-mounted PDU. That's simply because a shelf architecture is loaded with card buses that don't exist in a non-modular design.
But there is a solution if you still want flexible PDU capacity. You simply have to choose a rack-mount PDU that can daisy-chain with extra devices if necessary. This allows you to link several PDU (1U) units together and control them as a single unit. Now you get the benefits of a modular PDU - while avoiding the price tag.
Do you provide service to thousands upon thousands of people through your telecom towers? If so, you know just how important reliability is. It doesn't matter where your towers are - in rural or in urban areas - your customers count on you to...
by Andrew Erickson on April 5, 2019
If you want your PDU to be more than an over-hyped surge protector, you need to choose one that has an integrated power management interface. A web interface is the best option for small PDU deployments, because you can access the PDU from any LAN-connected PC on your network. You'll simply type the PDU's IP address into your web browser. From there, you can toggle power on and off.
A web interface is also superior because it travels over reliable LAN transport. Older options include RS-232 serial connections, Telnet, and SSH.
Also, look for a PDU that allows you to switch on, switch off, and remotely reboot gear on a per-port basis. You shouldn't have to toggle the whole power strip all at once.
For large organizations, there's really no substitute for an SNMP-capable PDU. This kind of power controller can accept SNMP SET messages from an SNMP manager. This allows you to control power as part of your industry-standard SNMP management system. Also, an SNMP PDU can send SNMP TRAP messages back to your manager, providing confirmation that commands have executed successfully. There's nothing worse than sending a power switch command and assuming it executed, when nothing has actually happened.
If you want to know how much power each of your devices is monitoring, current monitoring on each PDU output port is ideal. You can view (ideally through the web interface) how much electricity is flowing through each port. Alternatively, you can reduce your costs by monitoring total current passing through the PDU instead of on a per-port basis. This method requires that your manufacturer only includes a single current sensor, rather than one for every PDU output port.
Simple PDUs are available from many different manufacturers, but there are a few that include more functionality than the rest. As an example, the Remote Power Controller 100 is a PDU and RTU (Remote Telemetry Unit) in one box. The PDU functionality allows you to control power, while the RTU capabilities allow you to monitor discrete and analog alarm data from your important gear.
Regardless of your industry, remote monitoring is something that's vital to safeguard your operations, so you need to get monitoring devices from somewhere. Broadly speaking, your two most common options are to...
by Morgana Siggins on May 28, 2019
Buying a remote monitoring system is a substantial investment of both your company's budget and the credibility of the individual recommending the purchasing - you. Of course, you want to have peace of mind when you...
by Andrew Erickson on April 26, 2019
An important aspect of using RTUs (remote telemetry units) for monitoring is the collecting and reporting of data from your remote sites. Your monitoring system needs a way to collect this data and report it to you via...
by Andrew Erickson on May 3, 2019
You need to see DPS gear in action. Get a live demo with our engineers.
Download our free PDU Tutorial.
An introduction to Remote Power Switches that will help increase productivity while minimizing costs.
Have a specific question? Ask our team of expert engineers and get a specific answer!
Sign up for the next DPS Factory Training!
Whether you're new to our equipment or you've used it for years, DPS factory training is the best way to get more from your monitoring.Reserve Your Seat Today | <urn:uuid:a3f9fe88-f14f-45fc-a2be-0630bc141b39> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.dpstele.com/power-distribution-unit/pdu-tutorial.php | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337415.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003101805-20221003131805-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.939118 | 1,681 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
What is artificial intelligence?
A number of definitions of artificial intelligence (AI) have surfaced over the last few decades. John McCarthy offers the following definition in this 2004 paper (PDF, 106 KB) (link resides outside IBM)): "It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable."
However, decades before this definition, the artificial intelligence conversation began with Alan Turing's 1950 work "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (PDF, 89.8 KB) (link resides outside of IBM). In this paper, Turing, often referred to as the "father of computer science", asks the following question: "Can machines think?" From there, he offers a test, now famously known as the "Turing Test", where a human interrogator would try to distinguish between a computer and human text response. While this test has undergone much scrutiny since its publication, it remains an important part of the history of AI.
One of the leading AI textbooks is Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (link resides outside IBM, [PDF, 20.9 MB]), by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. In the book, they delve into four potential goals or definitions of AI, which differentiate computer systems as follows:
- Systems that think like humans
- Systems that act like humans
- Systems that think rationally
- Systems that act rationally
Alan Turing’s definition would have fallen under the category of “systems that act like humans.”
In its simplest form, artificial intelligence is a field that combines computer science and robust datasets to enable problem-solving. Expert systems, an early successful application of AI, aimed to copy a human’s decision-making process. In the early days, it was time-consuming to extract and codify the human’s knowledge.
AI today includes the sub-fields of machine learning and deep learning, which are frequently mentioned in conjunction with artificial intelligence. These disciplines are comprised of AI algorithms that typically make predictions or classifications based on input data. Machine learning has improved the quality of some expert systems, and made it easier to create them.
Today, AI plays an often invisible role in everyday life, powering search engines, product recommendations, and speech recognition systems.
There is a lot of hype about AI development, which is to be expected of any emerging technology. As noted in Gartner’s hype cycle (link resides outside IBM), product innovations like self-driving cars and personal assistants follow “a typical progression of innovation, from overenthusiasm through a period of disillusionment to an eventual understanding of the innovation’s relevance and role in a market or domain.” As Lex Fridman notes (01:08:15) (link resides outside IBM) in his 2019 MIT lecture, we are at the peak of inflated expectations, approaching the trough of disillusionment.
As conversations continue around AI ethics, we can see the initial glimpses of the trough of disillusionment. Read more about where IBM stands on AI ethics here.
Types of artificial intelligence—weak AI vs. strong AI
Weak AI—also called Narrow AI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)—is AI trained to perform specific tasks. Weak AI drives most of the AI that surrounds us today. ‘Narrow’ might be a more accurate descriptor for this type of AI as it is anything but weak; it enables some powerful applications, such as Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, IBM Watson, and autonomous vehicles.
Strong AI is made up of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or general AI, is a theoretical form of AI where a machine would have an intelligence equal to humans; it would have a self-aware consciousness that has the ability to solve problems, learn, and plan for the future. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)—also known as superintelligence—would surpass the intelligence and ability of the human brain. While strong AI is still entirely theoretical with no practical examples in use today, AI researchers are exploring its development. In the meantime, the best examples of ASI might be from science fiction, such as HAL, the rogue computer assistant in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Deep learning vs. machine learning
Since deep learning and machine learning tend to be used interchangeably, it’s worth noting the nuances between the two. As mentioned above, both deep learning and machine learning are sub-fields of artificial intelligence, and deep learning is actually a sub-field of machine learning.
The way in which deep learning and machine learning differ is in how each algorithm learns. "Deep" machine learning can use labeled datasets, also known as supervised learning, to inform its algorithm, but it doesn’t necessarily require a labeled dataset. Deep learning can ingest unstructured data in its raw form (e.g. text, images), and it can automatically determine the set of features which distinguish different categories of data from one another. This eliminates some of the human intervention required and enables the use of larger data sets. You can think of deep learning as "scalable machine learning" as Lex Fridman notes in the same MIT lecture from above. Classical, or "non-deep", machine learning is more dependent on human intervention to learn. Human experts determine the set of features to understand the differences between data inputs, usually requiring more structured data to learn.
Deep learning (like some machine learning) uses neural networks. The “deep” in a deep learning algorithm refers to a neural network with more than three layers, including the input and output layers. This is generally represented using the following diagram:
The rise of deep learning has been one of the most significant breakthroughs in AI in recent years, because it has reduced the manual effort involved in building AI systems. Deep learning was in part enabled by big data and cloud architectures, making it possible to access huge amounts of data and processing power for training AI solutions.
Artificial intelligence applications
There are numerous, real-world applications of AI systems today. Below are some of the most common examples:
- Speech recognition: It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition, or speech-to-text, and it is a capability which uses natural language processing (NLP) to translate human speech into a written format. Many mobile devices incorporate speech recognition into their systems to conduct voice search—e.g. Siri—or improve accessibility for texting.
- Customer service: Online chatbots are replacing human agents along the customer journey, changing the way we think about customer engagement across websites and social media platforms. Chatbots answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) about topics such as shipping, or provide personalized advice, cross-selling products or suggesting sizes for users. Examples include virtual agents on e-commerce sites; messaging bots, using Slack and Facebook Messenger; and tasks usually done by virtual assistants and voice assistants.
Computer vision: This AI technology enables computers to derive meaningful information from digital images, videos, and other visual inputs, and then take the appropriate action. Powered by convolutional neural networks, computer vision has applications in photo tagging on social media, radiology imaging in healthcare, and self-driving cars within the automotive industry.
Recommendation engines: Using past consumption behavior data, AI algorithms can help to discover data trends that can be used to develop more effective cross-selling strategies. This approach is used by online retailers to make relevant product recommendations to customers during the checkout process.
Automated stock trading: Designed to optimize stock portfolios, AI-driven high-frequency trading platforms make thousands or even millions of trades per day without human intervention.
Fraud detection: Banks and other financial institutions can use machine learning to spot suspicious transactions. Supervised learning can train a model using information about known fraudulent transactions. Anomaly detection can identify transactions that look atypical and deserve further investigation.
History of artificial intelligence: Key dates and names
Since the advent of electronic computing, some important events and milestones in the evolution of artificial intelligence include the following:
- 1950: Alan Turing publishes Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In the paper, Turing—famous for helping to break the Nazis’ Enigma code during WWII—proposes to answer the question 'can machines think?' and introduces the Turing Test to determine if a computer can demonstrate the same intelligence (or the results of the same intelligence) as a human. The value of the Turing Test has been debated ever since.
- 1956: John McCarthy coins the term 'artificial intelligence' at the first-ever AI conference at Dartmouth College. (McCarthy would go on to invent the Lisp language.) Later that year, Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw, and Herbert Simon create the Logic Theorist, the first-ever running AI software program.
- 1967: Frank Rosenblatt builds the Mark 1 Perceptron, the first computer based on a neural network that 'learned' though trial and error. Just a year later, Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert publish a book titled Perceptrons, which becomes both the landmark work on neural networks and, at least for a while, an argument against future neural network research projects.
- 1973: The PROLOG programming language is launched, based on a theorem-proving technique called resolution. PROLOG enables researchers to encapsulate and logically query knowledge, and becomes popular in the AI community.
- 1980s: Neural networks, which use a backpropagation algorithm to train themselves, become widely used in AI applications.
- 1997: IBM's Deep Blue beats then world champion Garry Kasparov in a chess match (and rematch).
- 2011: IBM Watson beats champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy!
- 2015: Baidu's Minwa supercomputer uses a special kind of deep neural network called a convolutional neural network to identify and categorize images with a higher rate of accuracy than the average human.
- 2016: DeepMind's AlphaGo program, powered by a deep neural network, beats Lee Sodol, the world champion Go player, in a five-game match. The victory is significant given the huge number of possible moves as the game progresses (over 14.5 trillion after just four moves!). Google bought DeepMind for a reported USD 400 million in 2014.
The future of AI
While Artificial General Intelligence remains a long way off, more and more businesses will adopt AI in the short term to solve specific challenges. Gartner predicts (link resides outside IBM) that 50% of enterprises will have platforms to operationalize AI by 2025 (a sharp increase from 10% in 2020).
Knowledge graphs are an emerging technology within AI. They can encapsulate associations between pieces of information and drive upsell strategies, recommendation engines, and personalized medicine. Natural language processing (NLP) applications are also expected to increase in sophistication, enabling more intuitive interactions between humans and machines.
Artificial intelligence and IBM Cloud
IBM has been a leader in advancing AI-driven technologies for enterprises and has pioneered the future of machine learning systems for multiple industries. Based on decades of AI research, years of experience working with organizations of all sizes, and on learnings from over 30,000 IBM Watson engagements, IBM has developed the AI Ladder for successful artificial intelligence deployments:
- Collect: Simplifying data collection and accessibility.
- Organize: Creating a business-ready analytics foundation.
- Analyze: Building scalable and trustworthy AI-driven systems.
- Infuse: Integrating and optimizing systems across an entire business framework.
- Modernize: Bringing your AI applications and systems to the cloud.
IBM Watson gives enterprises the AI tools they need to transform their business systems and workflows, while significantly improving automation and efficiency. For more information on how IBM can help you complete your AI journey, explore the IBM portfolio of managed services and solutions
Sign up for an IBMid and create your IBM Cloud account. | <urn:uuid:cdbb394d-cb4f-4603-aa66-07d2a186e778> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/what-is-artificial-intelligence?lnk=fle | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337524.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004184523-20221004214523-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.927225 | 2,522 | 3.609375 | 4 |
A steelmaker in Sweden says it has produced the world’s first steel made with no fossil fuels of any kind.
Five years ago, SSAB teamed with state-owned energy and mining companies on the Hybrit project.
The initiative aimed to replace the coal and coal byproducts used in steel production for centuries with hydrogen fuel.
A trial effort was successful, and the company is now delivering its revolutionary steel to Swedish carmaker Volvo.
SSAB officials called the announcement an important step toward a fossil fuel-free steel supply chain.
The steel sector is a major producer of carbon emissions, and its reliance on coal could be a major problem as countries turn to other sources of energy.
The company next hopes to demonstrate the technology at an industrial scale. That could happen as early as 2026. | <urn:uuid:dd3844df-eb1b-4b97-abea-9bb31b682486> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.mbtmag.com/video/video/21615427/the-worlds-first-fossil-fuelfree-stee | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337524.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004184523-20221004214523-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.958705 | 168 | 2.859375 | 3 |
High availability means that an IT system, component, or application can operate at a high level, continuously, without intervention, for a given time period. High-availability infrastructure is configured to deliver quality performance and handle different loads and failures with minimal or zero downtime.
High-availability clusters are servers grouped together to operate as a single, unified system. Also known as failover clusters, they share the same storage but use different networks. They also share the same mission, in that they can run the same workloads of the primary system they support.
If a server in the cluster fails, another server or node can take over immediately to help ensure the application or service supported by the cluster remains operational. Using high-availability clusters helps ensure there is no single point of failure for critical IT and reduces or eliminates downtime.
High-availability clusters are tested regularly to confirm nodes are always at the ready. IT administrators will often use an open-source heartbeat program to monitor the health of the cluster. The program sends data packets to each machine in a cluster to confirm that it is functioning as intended.
High-availability software is used to operate high-availability clusters. In a high-availability IT system, there are different layers (physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, and application) that have different software needs.
At the application layer, for example, load-balancing software—which is used to distribute network traffic and application workloads across servers—is considered critical to help ensure high availability of an application.
High-availability software solutions typically provide load balancing and redirecting, automatic application failover, real-time file replication, and automatic failback capabilities.
High-availability IT systems and services are designed to be available 99.999% of the time during both planned and unplanned outages. Known as five nines reliability, the system is essentially always on.
If critical IT infrastructure fails, but is supported by high availability architecture, the backup system or component takes over. This allows users and applications to keep working without disruption and access the same data available before the failure occurred.
IT disaster recovery refers to the policies, tools, and procedures IT organizations must adopt to bring critical IT components and services back online following a catastrophe. An example of an IT disaster is the destruction of a data center due to a natural event like a major earthquake.
Think of high availability as a strategy for managing small but critical failures in IT infrastructure components that can be easily restored. IT disaster recovery is a process for overcoming major events that can sideline entire IT infrastructures.
Both high availability and disaster recovery are important for enhancing business continuity. So, too, is fault tolerance, as described later in this article. Planning for high availability includes identifying the IT systems and services deemed as essential to help ensure business continuity.
High-availability IT infrastructure features hardware redundancy, software and application redundancy, and data redundancy. Redundancy means the IT components in a high-availability cluster, like servers or databases, can perform the same tasks.
Redundancy is also essential for fault tolerance, which complements high availability and IT disaster recovery, as discussed later in this article.
Replication of data is essential to achieving high availability. Data needs to be replicated and shared with the same nodes in a cluster. The nodes must communicate with each other and share the same information, so that any one of them can step in to provide optimal service when the server or network device they are supporting fails.
Data can also be replicated between clusters to help ensure both high availability and business continuity in the event a data center fails.
A failover occurs when a process performed by the failed primary component moves to a backup component in a high-availability cluster. A best practice for high availability—and disaster recovery—is to maintain a failover system that is located off-premises.
IT administrators monitoring the health of critical primary systems can quickly switch traffic to the failover system when primary systems become overloaded or fail.
As noted earlier, high availability and disaster recovery are both important for business continuity. Together, they help organizations to build high levels of fault tolerance, which refers to a system's ability to keep operating without interruption even if multiple hardware or software components fail.
Fault tolerance aims for zero downtime, while high availability is focused on delivering minimal downtime. A high-availability system designed to provide 99.999%, or five nines, operational uptime expects to see 5.26 minutes of downtime per year.
Unlike high availability, delivering high-quality performance is not a priority for fault tolerance. The purpose of fault-tolerance design in IT infrastructure is to prevent a mission-critical application from experiencing downtime.
Fault tolerance is a more expensive approach to ensuring uptime than high availability because it can involve backing up entire hardware and software systems and power supplies. High-availability systems do not require replication of physical components.
High availability and fault tolerance complement each other in that they help to support IT disaster recovery. Most business continuity strategies include high-availability, fault-tolerance, and disaster-recovery measures. These strategies help the organization maintain essential operations and support users when facing any type of critical IT failure, small or large. | <urn:uuid:e19f2bf0-fb07-4fdc-bfe9-82f618db4154> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/hybrid-work/what-is-high-availability.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338073.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007112411-20221007142411-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.917786 | 1,065 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
An article in last month’s Wired magazine titled “The A.I. Enigma: Let’s Shine a Light into the Black Box” (not available online) described how the inscrutable nature of many artificial intelligence algorithms has frustrated people who want to know why a system made a particular recommendation. The article mentions a recent new European Union regulation that gives citizens the right to learn more about machine learning decisions that affected them, and it also described how the New York City company Clarifai and researchers at the University of Amsterdam have been exploring ways to provide such explanations.
The September issue of the science magazine Nautilus includes an article titled Is Artificial Intelligence Permanently Inscrutable? that also mentions the new EU regulation, and the article gives additional good background on the issue. This includes a chart, presented by David Gunning at a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) conference, on the relationships between currently popular machine learning techniques and each one’s explainability versus prediction accuracy. The Nautilus article then goes on to describe the work of several computer scientists in this area without explaining why DARPA held this conference (or as DARPA called it, an “Industry Day”): so that they could tell vendors and related researchers about their new Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) project. (The full set of slides, a Frequently Asked Questions list, and videos of Gunning’s presentation and his Q&A session are also available online.)
Another slide set by Gunning from a Workshop on Deep Learning for Artificial Intelligence (DLAI) has many of the same slides and also describes the Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME) algorithm proposed by researchers at the University of Washington in their paper “Why Should I Trust You?”: Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier. Most other attempts to explain a system’s machine learning decisions are specific to the models used in that system, but as you can see from LIME’s full name, it is model-agnostic. Typical explainers do so by describing input that led to a decision, such as when Netflix recommends Men in Black “because you watched” Guardians of the Galaxy. LIME, which is available in a Python implementation on github, goes further than this by “perturbing” sample input (as its authors put it in another article, “by changing components that make sense to humans (e.g., words or parts of an image)”) to make it easier to identify which specific components of the input lead to a particular decision.
In the example shown here from their paper, we want to know why Google’s inception neural network predicted that the first picture is a Labrador with an electric guitar. We see that the guitar’s fretboard contributed to the incorrect classification of “electric guitar,” which tells us that when the model evaluated electric guitar pictures in its training data, the algorithm decided that the presence of a fretboard was the distinguishing feature of an electric guitar. In addition to explaining why a certain prediction was made, this suggests one way to tune the model to prevent this mistake in the future: train the system with additional pictures of both electric and acoustic guitars so that it can learn that both types have fretboards and that the guitar’s color or shape might be better criteria for classifying between the two types. (The third image below shows that the model actually did classify the instrument as an acoustic guitar, but, as the “Why Should I Trust You” paper explains, this classification got a lower score than the “electric guitar” one.)
LIME is one example of a tool that researchers are combining with other tools to do an even better job at explaining how different models reach their decisions. Here at GA-CCRi, we are exploring additional tools as well. In the words of GA-CCRi Data Scientist Dr. Kolia Sadeghi, “Using deep neural networks with tools like LIME or with attention mechanisms gives users visibility into which parts of their inputs led the algorithm to its conclusions.”
While publications such as Wired and Nautilus appear to be unaware of the newly-funded DARPA project for XAI (they might keep in mind that the Internet itself began with DARPA funding), the project has been covered in defense industry news sites such as Nextgov, Defense Systems, and Military & Aerospace Electronics as well as more general interest news sites such as Inverse and Hacker News.
With this kind of funding and organization behind it, XAI appears poised to make many useful contributions the growing number of artificial intelligence systems out there, and at GA-CCRi we’re looking forward to taking part in that research. | <urn:uuid:bb53f31f-8b73-4882-a51d-2559c2ee222d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ga-ccri.com/explainable-artificial-intelligence-xai | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338073.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007112411-20221007142411-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.949289 | 1,001 | 2.625 | 3 |
Patient identification insights
What are duplicate medical records and overlays?
Duplicate medical records and overlays are created as a result of patient identification errors. A duplicate medical record occurs when a single patient is associated with more than one medical record. Oftentimes, duplicate medical records are partial duplicates that only capture a portion of a patient's medical history. An overlay occurs when one patient's record is overwritten with data from another patient's record, creating a combined, inaccurate record.
Why are duplicate medical records and overlays critical issues?
Patient matching problems pose significant dangers for patients because, if patients are treated based on incomplete or inaccurate knowledge about their medical history or profile, serious errors and complications can ensue. For example, a duplicate medical record may not include the correct information about a patient's blood type, allergies, or their diagnostic, medication, or family histories. Similarly, overlays include inaccurate information about patients’ medical histories because they merge information from separate individuals into a single patient record. The imprecision of these medical records can cause unnecessary and costly duplicate testing, ineffective treatments, unintended medication interactions, and inappropriate care that can harm patients. Duplicate medical records can also negatively impact communications between healthcare providers and their patients: duplicate medical records are associated with a higher risk of missing important laboratory results and a higher likelihood that patients are subjected to unnecessary testing.1
How are duplicate medical records and overlays created?
According to the ONC’s Patient Identification and Matching Final Report from 2014, patient matching errors are an inevitable byproduct of healthcare’s increasingly complicated technology environment.2 Many healthcare organizations use multiple systems for clinical, administrative, and specialty services, which increase the likelihood of patient matching errors, duplicate medical records, and overlays. In addition to the complexities of healthcare’s IT infrastructures, many duplicate medical record errors can be traced back to small errors and inconsistencies introduced in patient registration processes. A study conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital revealed that 92 percent of the errors resulting in duplicate medical records were caused by inpatient registration mistakes.3 Human error is the most common culprit and cause of these mistakes. Simple mistakes, like misspelling a patient's name, mistyping their Social Security Number, or using inconsistent acronyms or abbreviations (such as Mrs. vs. Ms., or Street vs. St.) can easily create duplicate medical records for a single patient, or merge multiple records together, resulting in impartial and inconsistent medical histories and information. Another major cause of patient matching problems is inconsistent naming practices. For example, a single patient could be recorded as Maria Garcia, Maria L. Garcia, Maria de Lopez Garcia, and Maria Garcia Williams. Pinpointing individual patients becomes even more difficult when multiple patients share the same name and other identifying information. In such cases, the risk of overlays can be particularly high.
How prevalent are patient identification problems?
Although duplicate medical records are inherently difficult to measure, the AHIMA has reported that the average duplication rate in is between 8 and 12 percent.4 Because many patient matching algorithms rely on matching multiple identifying factors (such as name, date of birth, gender, and Social Security Number) instead of a single unique patient identifier (UPI), the likelihood of false positive and false negative matches increase exponentially in larger patient information datasets, such as those used by Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) and Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). In addition to the statistical errors that IDN and HIE datasets suffer, large networks experience interoperability problems that make it even more difficult to maintain Master Patient Index (MPI) integrity across multiple interconnecting IT systems.
How can patient matching problems be addressed?
Costly and time-consuming data-cleansing processes can correct duplicate medical record and overlay errors. To avoid future patient matching problems, more hospitals and healthcare networks are opting for unique patient identification technology solutions that eliminate the need to type patient information, thus minimizing the risk of human-error related matching problems. The ONC’s 2014 Patient Identification and Matching Final Report identified emerging technologies (such as advanced biometric authentication) as promising solutions to patient matching problems. A number of key stakeholders in hospitals have identified biometric solutions’ potential to reduce healthcare organizations’ reliance on complicated, weighted statistical matching methods for demographics data sets. To address the inaccuracies of these matching methods, healthcare providers need a fully scalable positive patient identification solution that creates 1:1 link between the patient and their medical record and doesn’t rely on demographic matching techniques. Imprivata PatientSecure is that solution. Imprivata PatientSecure reduces the risks of duplicate medical records, increases patient safety, and improves patient experiences for healthcare networks of all sizes. To learn more about the solution, explore the Imprivata PatientSecure product page.
1. Joffe E, Bearden CF, Byrne MJ, Bernstam EV. Duplicate Patient Records – Implication for Missed Laboratory Results. AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings. 2012;2012:1269-1275.
2. Office of the National Coordinator, Patient Identification And Matching Final Report, 2014, http://www.healthit.gov/sites/imprivata/files/patient_identification_match...
3. Bittle MJ, Charache P, Wassilchalk DM. Registration-associated patient misidentification in an academic medical center: causes and corrections. Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety/Joint Commission Resources. 2007;33:25–33
4. AHIMA MPI Task Force. “Building an Enterprise Master Person Index.”Journal of AHIMA 75, no. 1 (Jan. 2004): 56A–D | <urn:uuid:45ceb3e0-92ee-4354-b8f1-75fbae3baf06> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.imprivata.com/duplicate-records | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930212504-20221001002504-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.87984 | 1,174 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Government and Law Enforcement
Safe Environments. Safe citizens.
The work of Law Enforcement Agencies involves using all the mechanisms within their reach that could help them in their daily endeavors. Amongst these mechanisms, technology has become a customary tool for Governments.
Government Law Enforcement agencies regularly need to instantly spot blacklisted people or suspected criminals. Facial Recognition also allows you to analyse crowds at critical areas such as crowded transportation stations, busy squares or plazas, outside government buildings or embassies, or other locations that are commonly targeted by criminal or terrorist organisations. What’s more, they often require a portable facial recognition system, like police surveillance from a car.
In a similar vein, whenever a suspect is identified by a witness, police can search pre-recorded footage up to 20x faster than real-time by using Herta’s solutions. Not only can they locate the offender, but they can also see the number of appearances of a suspect in a pool of videos, the movement route of the suspect, and can use facial recognition software to help witnesses validate the identity of the offender. All of this can be executed from an extremely large database of subjects without latency.
Create a safe environment by protecting citizens from criminals, locating missing people and identifying offenders. Because security is one of the most appreciated assets.
Video Search · Multiple camera · Multiple watch-lists · High accuracy · Monitoring
Finding missing people
Secured public events
Facial recognition with masks
Facial demographic analysis
Social distancing control | <urn:uuid:ad725c35-a550-4c63-ba93-6f8f6b250e8e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://hertasecurity.com/facial-recognition-industries/government/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337287.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002052710-20221002082710-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.937239 | 319 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Cybersecurity attacks, such as ransomware and phishing scams, have delivered crippling IT blows in the public sector for some time. And here’s the bad news—these attacks have proliferated in the days of COVID-19. A new report from Google found a 350% increase in phishing attacks since the beginning of the year.
Just as threat actors get shrewder, the network perimeter is broadening. More remote endpoints and a greater reliance on cloud infrastructure is making it harder to secure, monitor, and defend government networks. This places more pressure on already overwhelmed IT teams.
To better defend against today’s cyberattacks, state and local governments are increasingly exploring the benefits of software-defined networking (SDN). But what is SDN, how does it enhance network security, and what are some best practices to keep in mind as agencies consider transitioning from traditional networks? Let’s take a look.
What Is SDN?
SDN is a network architecture designed to make today’s complex networking environments easier to manage and more flexible and adaptable to the changing needs of the organization.
With SDN, many functions of the network infrastructure are automated, and network configuration is simplified. Instead of a single network engineer controlling hundreds of switches, SDN manages potentially thousands of network switches from a single, centralized controller. This allows IT teams to elastically scale the network infrastructure as and when it’s needed to make smarter use of existing resources and budgets.
The Security Benefits of SDN
From a cybersecurity perspective, SDN brings many benefits. Traditional, hardware-based networks are only as strong as their weakest point. Because each switch is configured manually the risk of error is high—creating vulnerabilities bad actors can exploit. With SDN, engineers can define security policies at the controller level, then deploy and consistently enforce those policies across network endpoints and VLANs. This leaves no room for misconfiguration or risk and reduces administrative overhead.
SDN also makes it easier to support network segmentation, where aspects of networks are isolated from one another. Segmentation can mitigate the threat of cyberattacks. If a bad actor compromises one part of the network, segmentation means they can’t compromise all of it. On hardware-based networks, segmentation is a costly and cumbersome process because switches must be manually configured at the individual level. With software-defined networks, however, engineers can easily program the network at scale from the console and quickly enforce segmentation to increase security.
Additionally, SDN makes it easier to collect data from across the network and use this information to detect traffic anomalies indicative of malicious activity.
New Challenges for Monitoring Solutions
SDN is still relatively new to many government agencies, and rather than rip and replace traditional networks, those who adopt it implement it only where it makes sense. But this creates new complexities for busy network managers.
One of the key requirements of a successful and secure SDN is comprehensive network visibility—and there are many challenges monitoring tools must address. Specifically, IT professionals must be able to view and monitor physical, logical, and software components from one place. Hopping from tool to tool to monitor different elements of the network infrastructure introduces unnecessary cost and risk. Running multiple monitoring tools also creates a training headache. It’s no surprise government agencies are seeking to consolidate and stop the proliferation of network management and monitoring tools in favor of centralized solutions with comprehensive visibility across their hybrid infrastructure.
They also need solutions with visibility across cloud environments. If an issue arises, network administrators need to be able to quickly conduct root cause analysis to determine where the problem exists, who owns the fix—the cloud provider or the agency—and move to reduce “mean time to innocence.”
Making the Transition to SDN
SDN’s ability to automate complex and time-consuming networking and security tasks is fast tracking its maturation. But SDN isn’t for everyone. If your organization is relatively small with only a handful of geographically distributed sites, traditional networks will serve you well. However, if your environment is highly distributed (making it cost-prohibitive to deploy costly hardware) or a hybrid infrastructure, then the benefits and economies of scale of SDN can be realized.
To ensure your state or local agency is on the right path to experiencing the automation and security benefits of SDN, take an informed approach to your transition. Plan and set clear expectations about the problems and challenges you’re trying to solve. Then set measures of success aligned with those objectives.
To support the SDN infrastructure of tomorrow, you’ll also need to prepare personnel for this transition. Visit our SDN Solutions Page and bridge the monitoring gap between the physical and virtual networks of tomorrow, today. | <urn:uuid:07873812-a11d-4a2a-a296-7693e2ba99e7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.carahsoft.com/community/solarwinds-sdn-blog-2020 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337529.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004215917-20221005005917-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.923057 | 977 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.