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The Internet of Things will allow us to share more information at faster speeds on whatever device happens to be most convenient at the time.
However, that convenience also comes with risk. When everything is connected to the internet, the security of the network is only as strong as its weakest link. Sure, your smartphone might have a fingerprint sensor, but it’s not going to help you much if a hacker can access your bank account through your refrigerator.
Biometric authentication technology offers a solution to the problem. In the first in a series of blog posts dedicated to the Internet of Things, IDEX Biometrics CFO Henrik Knudtzon explains there’s currently no way to replicate biometric identifiers like fingerprints that are unique to the user, making them much more effective than vulnerable PINs and passwords.
“The safety of the IoT relies on the safety of all its components. This means that every device connected in the grand network of the IoT must be as secure as possible,” writes Knudtzon. “Only when all vulnerabilities are protected will the IoT be completely safe.”
Right now, only a relatively small number of industries have adopted biometric authentication. Getting every tech manufacturer to adopt those standards will make the IoT safer and ensure that every financial transaction is as safe as possible.
In a previous blog series, IDEX explained how biometric authentication can make banking more inclusive, especially as it relates to biometric payment cards. The company is expecting major growth in that market in 2019.
(Originally posted on FindBiometrics) | <urn:uuid:985b06f2-6a8b-474c-8804-c37a78deeae6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://mobileidworld.com/biometric-authentication-iot-security-idex-803213/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.949667 | 324 | 2.578125 | 3 |
MySQL vs SQL
Among the most commonly used enterprise database systems are MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL). Microsoft developed its own relational database management system (RDBMS), whereas MySQL is an open-source RDBMS.
Microsoft offers a variety of versions of MSSQL Server to meet a company’s individual needs and budget. It is important for database administrators and programmers to be aware of the differences between MySQL and MSSQL before making their decision, in order to ensure that they choose the best RDBMS for their requirements.
The purpose of this post is to compare the performance, features, similarities and differences between MySQL and MSSQL — and also explain when MSSQL Server is a better choice than MySQL.
Are There Differences Between MySQL and MSSQL?
Yes, there are many differences between MySQL and MSSQL. Databases are ideally suited for SQL, one of the most popular languages for retrieving, editing, or storing data-as this is how dynamic applications and websites function.
Both MySQL and MSSQL are relational databases, meaning that each record/row contains a set of related data. These records can then be referenced in other tables to retrieve additional information about related items.
Both also use SQL syntax, so the code is largely similar when manipulating data. However, there are some differences between how variables are named for MySQL and for MSSQL.
MySQL has different advantages over MSSQL, mostly because it is free, open-source software. MySQL is easier to install and use with PHP applications. It has significantly better performance using web scripts because of its support for PHP code on the server side, whereas MSSQL does not offer this same functionality.
MySQL also offers better support for writing concurrent Java programs that access databases. Some other benefits include the ability to run multiple servers on one computer, better support for geographic information system (GIS) data and spatial queries, support for Nibble values, and faster replication of databases.
MSSQL offers superior performance when using languages such as C/C++ or .NET languages. It is also more scalable than MySQL and can be used for multiple applications.
MSSQL also offers better support for managing access to data (especially with newer versions), using maintenance plans, and deploying data by updating linked-server software. The ability to create clustered databases is another key benefit of choosing MSSQL over MySQL.
MS SQL Server
A Microsoft product.
Oracle developed the software
Besides C++, JAVA, Ruby, Visual Basic, Delphi, and R, it also supports other programming languages.
The MySQL database offers extended language support for Perl, Tcl, and Haskell
Operational storage space will be large.
There will be less operational storage space required
Stopping query execution is possible with MSSQL
The query cannot be cancelled mid-process
During data backup, the database isn’t blocked.
Backing up data blocks the database
Commercial product and is not free
It is open source and you can download it for free
Highly secure and you can't alter any files related to the database while it is running
Runtime manipulation of database files is supported
There are multiple versions of the program, including the Enterprise, Standard, Web, Workgroup, and Express
Several editions of MySQL are available including Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Cluster Grade Edition
Similarities Between MySQL and SQL Server
Let's cover some more similarities between these two products. Although many developers specialize in either database type, they share many other similarities.
The underlying architecture of MSSQL and MySQL differs quite a bit, which means that the core functions of the systems behave quite differently. In short, MySQL and MSSQL work in a different way at their core.
Both databases also use SQL language for managing data; therefore it is necessary that all developers have good SQL knowledge.
Performance and Speed
Data is stored and returned as quickly as possible through your database, which acts as a foundation of your applications. Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL provide fast data storage and retrieval.
Relationships between tables are established using primary and foreign keys on both platforms, so they are very similar in that respect.
Among web application databases, MySQL is by far the most popular choice due to the fact that it costs nothing for providers to offer it to their users.
You can usually choose between MSSQL and MySQL when you sign up for hosting, although MySQL is normally offered for free, while MSSQL normally has an additional cost associated.
How Well Do They Scale?
Scalability is a feature of both platforms. Both of these systems can handle millions of transactions a day and are suitable for both small and large projects.
Usage and Syntax differences
You can expect some small differences across CRUD statements of these two platforms, although you’ll find that the syntax is still quite similar.
There is a driver for almost any popular language available via the Internet. With this feature, it is easy to connect to both MySQL and MSSQL without having to code anything complicated.
Applications such as Microsoft Excel will allow you to connect to MySQL or MSSQL databases with a connector driver, making the process very easy.
SQL and MySQL Server Differences
The interfaces of these platforms are similar, but they do not operate the same way, even though the basic standards of relational databases are the same.
It is most often the underlying architecture that causes these differences, which means the average user usually doesn’t even notice them.
Although these differences are important for DBAs to recognize because they can affect how you decide to proceed.
Compatibility with other platforms
Originally, SQL Server was developed by Microsoft exclusively for Windows operating systems. Both Mac OS X and Linux now support Microsoft’s RDBMS.
Companies are now able to choose between three different platforms for their database systems. Despite the fact that Mac OS X and Linux can run SQL Server, certain features are not available.
SQL Server supports a variety of languages, such as C++, Visual Basic, PHP, Ruby, Python, Delphi, Java, and Go. Many developer communities use MySQL because it is flexible and versatile when used for creating applications.
The two database types (MySQL and MSSQL) are both compatible with Windows and Linux projects, but MySQL works well with PHP, while .NET utilizes MSSQL primarily.
There is no cost for MySQL, although you may need to pay for support if that is something that you require. Due to the fact that licenses are needed for the server running the software, running Microsoft SQL is more expensive.
If you are starting out with a project of your own, then MySQL could be the best choice for a database type. MSSQL is available at different price points depending on how many servers you plan on using , whereas MySQL is completely free.
When it comes to support and compatibility, Microsoft SQL Server may be the better choice because of its built-in services and easily customizable platform. However, since MySQL is
Backup and Disaster Recovery
You must extract data as SQL statements when backing up MySQL data. While backups are taking place, the RDBMS allows blocking of the database. Switching between MySQL versions minimizes the possibility of data corruption.
It is time-consuming to restore data in this way, since numerous SQL statements are needed. MSSQL doesn’t block the database when backups are in progress, which means that users can backup and restore data without affecting databases, which means that the operations of the business are not affected.
Option to Stop Query Execution
Query execution cannot be canceled once MySQL has begun. Users need to kill the MySQL process to cancel SQL query execution.
A database query can be truncated while in progress without terminating the entire process.
A transaction engine is also used by MSSQL to maintain consistency. MySQL does not have this capability.
SQL vs MySQL: Which Database Management System Should You Use?
In general, you should focus on factors that will affect your project and requirements. Additionally, when selecting a data management system for your next project you need to think about the pricing and level of support that you will require.
MySQL might be the better option for you if your data does not need to be highly transactional or verified, and if your budget won’t allow you to purchase a commercial solution such as MSSQL.
There are many RDBMS systems out there. Before choosing one for your next project, you may want to do some research and testing. Different systems have different strengths and weaknesses.
Several large projects use the open-source MySQL database management system. Microsoft developed its own RDBMS, whereas MySQL is an open-source RDBMS.
Though both are considered enterprise systems, MSSQL Server offers a variety of versions to meet your company’s individual needs and budget.
DBAs and programmers should be aware of the differences between MSSQL and SQL Server before making their decision in order to ensure they choose the best one for their requirements. | <urn:uuid:1378db89-789f-4c1c-a680-0ab0b8a2e52a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cbtnuggets.com/blog/technology/system-admin/mysql-vs-sql | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334912.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926144455-20220926174455-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.92619 | 1,956 | 2.859375 | 3 |
In recent years, many enterprises have embraced microservices, also called microservices architecture. This development approach creates applications that are comprised of a group of small independent services. Each of these independent microservices can be tested and deployed individually; they may even be written in different programming languages or use different development frameworks.
Microservices applications are very different from the monolithic applications that organizations have produced in the past. Decades ago, development teams commonly created applications as a unified whole. That worked fine for applications with a small code base, but as the code base grew larger, monolithic applications became unwieldy.
In some cases, this monolithic architecture results in throughput bottlenecks as the application scales, resulting in poor performance. In addition, if you need to make a relatively small change, you’ll need to update the entire application — and test it all again — before redeploying the application.
Microservices architecture addresses many of these problems — although it is not without challenges of its own. It is particularly appropriate for very large applications that are maintained by large groups of developers. Microservices goes hand-in-hand with many of today’s most popular technologies, like DevOps, automation and cloud computing. In addition, microservices and containers are particularly interoperable and are often used together.
Several vendors offer products that they label as a “microservices platform” or a “microservices framework,” but you do not really need any particular software or tooling to deploy microservices. It is more of a design approach and a style of architecture than a specific technology.
That said, some development tools are better than others at supporting microservices. In general, tools that support DevOps and cloud computing well are also good choices for microservices.
- What is Microservices Architecture?
- Microservices: Related Concepts
- Microservices Benefits
- Microservices Challenges
- Microservices and DevOps
- Microservices Examples
The following diagram shows the relationship among the various aspects of microservices architecture:
Microservices architecture breaks down monolithic software applications into more manageable service components. Image: courtesy Microsoft.
In this type of architecture, each of the microservices is completely separate from the others. They may each have their own separate databases, and they may also connect to remote services (usually via an API). Communication between the client and the various microservices is handled via an API gateway. The application may also have management and/or service discovery capabilities as well.
Some individuals and organizations have attempted to identify different types of microservices. For example, some people divide microservices into two types: stateless and stateful. Others say there are three types of microservices: stateless, data centric and aggregator.
The difference in opinion stems in part from the fact that there is no standards body or other organization that has created a widely accepted definition of microservices. Several groups have put out competing definitions of microservices, some of which include diagrams and descriptions of different types of microservices. As a result, confusion persists about the exact nature of microservices.
Even experienced developers and industry experts sometimes confuse microservices with related terms and technologies, such as service-oriented architecture (SOA), APIs and Web services.
Microservices vs. SOA
You can think of microservices as a successor to or a subset of SOA, but the two are not exactly the same.
Service-oriented architecture, also called service-based architecture, is a software development approach that views the independent components of an application as services — which is similar to microservices architecture. However, SOA applications traditionally try to reuse and share as much architecture as possible. For example, SOA services often share storage, are built on a common platform, and use the enterprise service bus (ESB) for communication.
By contrast, microservices are meant to be as independent and decoupled as possible. As the name suggests, microservices are also much smaller than the services in SOA, and they usually communicate via lightweight protocols rather than via the ESB.
Microservices vs. APIs
An application programming interface (API) is a defined way for the components of an application to communicate with each other. For example, applications regularly use an API to make calls to a software library, such as a Java API.
Within a microservices application, the individual microservices use APIs to communicate with each (and possibly with external services). A microservices applications requires APIs to function, but the APIs and microservices are two different things.
Microservices vs. Web services
Another set of terms that people sometimes conflate are microservices and Web services.
A Web service is a service that provides functionality to other applications via the Web. For example, Google makes Google Maps available as a Web service so that other developers can add the mapping feature to their websites or apps. So when you look up a restaurant’s website and you see an embedded Google Maps link that provides directions to the restaurant, the website is accessing the Google Maps Web service.
A microservices application can make use of Web services. And to make things even more confusing, a Web service could be based on microservices architecture. However, the two are not necessarily related in any way.
Enterprises and software vendors choose to use microservices architecture because it offers a number of benefits, including the following:
- Faster development — Breaking an application down into many small pieces means that you can assign independent teams to work on each piece, with only minimal coordination among the teams. That speeds the entire development process, both in the initial development phase and during updates.
- Easier testing — With microservices architecture, each of the microservices can be tested independently. If a particular microservice needs to be updated, only that microservice needs to be tested again before re-deployment, which, again, makes the process faster.
- Simplified deployment — Because microservices can be deployed independently, you can push out the separate components independently. If something goes wrong with one microservice, you can easily roll back just the changes to that microservice without affecting the entire application.
- Fault isolation — If something goes wrong with a microservices application in production, it should only affect one microservice. In theory, the rest of the application should continue functioning normally if just one small part contains an error.
- Greater scalability — Microservices can also scale independently. That is, you can assign more resources to just those microservices that need them without assigning more resources to the rest of your application, especially if your microservices application is cloud-based. This helps to prevent some of the bottlenecks that can occur with monolithic applications.
- More technology choice — The team developing each microservice can choose programming languages and frameworks based on their preferences and the needs of their applications. They don’t need to build a piece of an application in Java just because the rest of the application is written in Java.
While microservices offers many advantages, it also introduces some challenges, including the following:
- Complexity — Individual microservices are very simple, but an application comprised of many independent parts with many different languages, frameworks and dependences is very complicated. Governance and management of microservices applications can be very difficult.
- Network latency — Because all the microservices within an application are communicating with each other via APIs, they necessarily place a heavy load on the network. That can slow performance unless the network is designed to handle the increased load.
- Testing — While microservices can be tested independently, you will also have to test the entire application as a whole. It can be difficult to troubleshoot problems across separate teams.
- Microservices versioning — In a traditional application, teams give new numbers to each update that they roll out to users. That becomes more difficult when components are developed separately. One microservice might be on version 1.2, while another is on 3.7. This also complicates testing as a microservice might work fine with version 1.3 of a separate component, but break completely when version 1.4 is released.
- Lack of skills — Microservices architecture is a new approach, so not all developers have experience with this form of architecture. Some might also be resistant to changes in the development approaches.
If you are familiar with the DevOps approach, you will recognize that many of the advantages of microservices also overlap with the advantages of DevOps. The two technologies are a natural fit with one another.
For example, both DevOps and microservices promise faster development and deployment. When you use DevOps alongside microservices architecture, you may be able to compound the advantages of each.
In addition, many technologies and approaches used by DevOps teams are also very helpful when creating microservices applications. For example, automation, cloud computing (especially PaaS offerings and serverless computing) and containers are often associated with both DevOps and microservices. And DevOps goals like continuous deployment and continuous testing are much easier to accomplish with microservices applications than with monolithic software structures.
The list of companies that are using microservices architecture reads like a who’s who of the technology industry. Some of the most well-known examples including the following:
- Netflix was one of the earliest adopters of microservices. The streaming service began changing its architecture in 2009, and it was unusually open about documenting its transition, which included a few hiccups along the way. Today, the Netflix Web application is managed by an API gateway that handles billions of requests each day for hundreds of microservices. The new architecture has allowed the service to scale to the size it is today and has also helped to prevent outages.
- Airbnb was another early adopter of microservices. The online room booking service began its migration to microservices by first adopting DevOps. Over time, the continuous deployment demanded by DevOps became too cumbersome to handle with monolithic architecture. By moving to microservices, the company was able to scale up its continuous delivery so that it now supports more than 75,000 production deployments every year.
- Uber transitioned from monolithic to microservices architecture beginning in 2015. In its blog, the company outlined some of its tooling choices, and noted that it ran into some obstacles. It advised other organizations that are adopting microservices to budget a lot of time for the process, to start with a small service, and to devote a lot of resources to testing. | <urn:uuid:e2ad4fc5-3d63-403b-a677-1a9adc716df0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.datamation.com/cloud/what-is-microservices/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335326.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929065206-20220929095206-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.952862 | 2,156 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The best project management software tools can certainly can simplify the process of tracking projects. However, they can’t do it alone.
People following project management principles and best practices can work in tandem with the software to yield the best results.
What Are Project Management Principles Anyway?
Project management principles are rules and guidelines that teams should follow for managing a project. These principles provide a framework for setting up, managing, and completing a project.
By having these rules in mind when designing the project, teams are better able to stay on track.
Project management software will help track a project’s progress. But when the project’s setup has poor execution, the software’s ability to deliver a well-monitored project becomes compromised.
Think of it like the tried-and-true computer science concept of GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out. With a poor setup and framework from which to operate, even the most agile project management software platforms will struggle to deliver the results the team is seeking.
Ultimately, teams need to spend time selecting the right management principles for a particular project.
How Project Management Principles Work
Those building out the framework of a project can use these principles to help the project start on the right foot. Think of selecting the right project management principles as preliminary or background work for the project.
Putting these principles into practice can help set the stage for things like:
- Setting goals for the project
- Determining parameters for measuring progress
- Setting up expectations for communications
- Determining realistic deadlines
- Creating a project budget
- Creating a list of milestones to show the project is on track
- Providing a means of adjusting the project on the fly if the parameters or goals change
- Prioritizing the most important steps and tasks for the project
The project administrator can determine which project management principles to use for each particular new project. Or the administrator can put together a team or committee to provide input on the best principles to use.
Project Management Principles
No official list of all project management principles exists. Several different principles are available to use with different projects. So selecting the best principles for the needs of a team will depend on the scope of a particular project.
Some of the agreed-upon principles of project management by experts in the field include setting very clear objectives, defining the deliverables, collaboration, transparent roles and accountability, controlling the scope of a project, identifying priorities and milestones, efficient resource management, measuring progress, and adaptability.
Here are some examples of the principles of project management and how teams can put them into practice.
Example 1: Setting Clear Goals for Success
Perhaps the most critical project management principle to follow is creating a set of goals for the project. Those participating in the project need to have a clear end goal in mind while performing their tasks. Goals set the tone for the overall project.
Without an end goal in place, team members may lose focus on what they’re trying to accomplish with each task. This can lead to the project taking twists and turns that end up causing delays and wasting money.
For those who want the goal-setting process to involve collaboration, project management software has an ideal structure to collect comments and ideas. Invite those with a vested interest in the project’s success to comment on the project management software board. Developing and fleshing out ideas for the project’s goals go smoothly in this format.
Having all the ideas and comments on the project management software board is far easier than working through a long email chain.
The goal-setting process should happen first or very early on in the project. The team may determine that the project isn’t truly necessary after trying to come up with goals. More often, though, setting goals helps the team achieve a genuine focus on what it wants to accomplish.
Example 2: Creating a Commitment for Success in the Project
As a project administrator, a fundamental principle is a commitment to success. If the project manager does not have total belief in the scope and goal of the project, they will not be fully committed. This could lead to the failure of the project.
Team members may question their workload and tasks when a project manager clearly shows a lack of commitment to the project.
The project manager can show belief in the project in several ways, including:
- Developing a project plan, either alone or with a team
- Finding stakeholders to back the project
- Ensuring the project has the budget and resources it needs for success
- Selecting team members for the project who share the belief in the end goal
- Taking time to learn any skills or techniques required to understand the project fully
- Communicating the project’s parameters and goals with the entire team with transparency
Using project management software can simplify the process of making sure everyone is on the same page about the project. When team members fully understand the project, they will have a more significant commitment to seeing the project succeed.
Example 3: Setting Parameters for Transparency and Communication
One project management principle that some teams ignore during the planning phase is ensuring transparency in measuring progress. Without a clear set of rules and guidelines for sharing information about the project, some team members may feel like they’re out of the loop.
Setting parameters for transparency ahead of time gives participants a clear set of guidelines for sharing information. No one feels they don’t have the exact information they need to complete a task when all team members are transparent.
One of the greatest strengths of project management software is the ability of team members to communicate efficiently. All of the messages and information can occur inside the software. Team members can quickly refer to past conversations, making it easy to find information and maintain transparency.
Many project management software packages can closely integrate with communications software packages like Slack as well. This is ideal for teams that already use Slack.
Discussing the project via email can lead to an unclear picture for team members and missed information in long email chains. Part of the transparency principle involves forcing team members to only use the software for communications about the project.
Additionally, stakeholders may want to check in on the project’s progress occasionally. They may not be members of the day-to-day team involved in the project’s tasks. However, they still should be able to access the project management software board to see what’s happening. Guaranteeing transparency on the board allows stakeholders to gain a realistic picture of the project at any time.
Example 4: Managing Each Team Member’s Role
The project administrator must set up clearly defined roles to give team members the greatest chance at success.
When administrators don’t follow this project management principle, team members can experience frustration. They may not understand why they have specific tasks on their plate or struggle to see how they fit into the team. They may believe they’re wasting their skills on unfamiliar tasks.
However, when a project administrator takes the time to give each team member a role and explain that role, it’s easier for everyone to understand how they fit into the overall project and how their work impacts its success.
Setting roles also involves creating a hierarchy for the project. Team members should know to whom they report. They should also know which team members are available to help them with their tasks if deadlines pile up.
In addition, by creating specific roles, the project manager uses another main principle: accountability. Being transparent about each person’s tasks and responsibilities sets everyone up to be held accountable for their specific parts of the project. Accountability is another
Maintaining Focus on the Project’s Scope
For extremely complex projects, it may be necessary to give a few team members the role of keeping the project on task.
With big projects involving dozens of team members, it’s easy for tasks to expand unnecessarily. A team member may go beyond a specific task, believing they are helping by doing a little extra work. Instead, this may lead to a situation called scope creep, where tasks expand too much, moving the project off target.
Setting up specific roles and ensuring that team members stick to those roles can help a project avoid creeping.
Finally, the project manager needs to clarify that they have the ultimate say on the project. Without a clear leader at the top of the project, all of the roles underneath the project manager may become muddied and unclear, leading to problems with creep.
Example 5: Setting a Budget and Timeline for the Project
Any successful project needs to have a clear timeline and budget in place. This is an essential principle for project management, as it keeps the project relevant. If the team reaches the final goal but spends double the planned budget to get there, the project is unsuccessful.
Project budget and timeline go hand in hand. Projects that take too long and miss deadlines are far more likely to go over budget. Project management software like Airtable has budget tracking features built into it, including tracking billable hours.
As part of this principle, it’s vital for the project administrator to set realistic deadlines and an accurate budget. Take stock of other projects and deadlines the team is facing.
Understanding the relationship between tasks in the project is important when setting deadlines, too. Some tasks may depend on the completion of others before they can start. These relationships will significantly affect deadlines.
Some types of project management software, such as Wrike, can show these relationships through Gantt charts. Having a visual representation of the relationships between tasks can make it easier for the project administrator to set realistic deadlines.
Example 6: Creating a Project Plan
Our final principle example involves setting up the framework for the project.
The project administrator should take all of the information gathered as part of the other project management principles. They then can set up the overall plan.
Project management software dramatically simplifies this process. Through the project software, administrators can do the following:
- Create a Description: As part of the setup process, administrators can create a description in the software that clearly explains the project’s scope. Team members can refer to this description regularly to ensure they’re staying on track.
- Add Tasks: With project management software, administrators can create tasks that are part of the project. These are items that team members can focus on, rather than worrying about the entire project at once. When all of the tasks wrap up, the entire project will reach completion, too.
- Set Deadlines: As part of creating tasks, administrators can add a deadline. Any task deadlines should consider the overall project completion deadline and any dependency on the completion of other tasks. This gives the team members a clear understanding of which tasks to prioritize.
- Assign Tasks: Based on the roles of each team member, administrators can ensure that each task goes to the most qualified person. Team members don’t end up with randomly assigned project tasks outside their scope of expertise, leading to frustration.
Provide Permissions: Team members and stakeholders need to have access to the board.
Before finalizing the project plan, the project administrator may want to gather feedback on the framework from other team members and stakeholders. When more people have a say in the framework, they will feel more committed to and engaged in the project’s overall success.
How to Get Started With Project Management Principles
Deploying project management principles into a team’s project management software can make the overall project run smoother. Using the software to reflect the decisions made in the planning process should keep the project on track. We’ll discuss some of the ways to put these principles into practice using Asana project management software as an example.
Step 1: Defining the Project Scope
Use the project management principles to define the scope of the project. This can include setting the objectives for the project, determining the resources available, and selecting the primary stakeholders.
Team members then can use Asana to create a project board that lays out some of these items. If the team needs feedback on the objectives, creating an Asana task card to request ideas for objectives is a good starting point.
Step 2: Creating a Plan Framework
Within Asana, the project administrator can create the framework for the project using management principles. Project management software like Asana can provide significant help with the framework configuration.
The software offers templates that have a basic framework in place already, saving time. Different templates will focus on a particular type of project or plan, making it easier to have success in a short amount of time.
Teams can create a series of columns on the Asana Kanban board to show the different steps required to measure progress on the project. Move individual cards left to right along the columns to show the status of each task.
Step 3: Determining Milestones and Deadlines
When a team has spent time considering its project management principles, it should have a firm idea of how long the project will take. The principles also can help the team determine what types of milestones will be useful in measuring progress. Think of milestones as a way to show the completion of a major step on the project.
Deadlines can be part of each task card and can be part of the milestone columns within Asana. For some projects, though, milestones provide more of a snapshot in time of where the project stands. Adding deadlines to milestone markers is less important in this instance. When the team takes care of the tasks and hits deadlines, the milestones don’t really need deadlines. | <urn:uuid:ec569974-8363-43c1-883c-002e87113960> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://nira.com/project-management-principles/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.916497 | 2,770 | 2.6875 | 3 |
For decades, security experts and world leaders alike have been proposing that the battles of the future will occur partially within the digital domain. After a handful of years plagued with ransomware attacks, misinformation campaigns, espionage and sophisticated hacker gangs inflicting state-sponsored disruption, it would appear that the future has finally come in the form of Russia’s “hybrid war” effort against Ukraine.
While the threat of nuclear warfare has remained a specter for generations, the notion of cyber warfare has been steadily percolating in the background as nations all over the world leverage the internet to gather intelligence, defend against foreign espionage strategies and develop offensive online manners in which to both demoralize and logistically hinder opposing nations and organizations.
Russia’s online attacks against Ukraine have thus far not had devastating effects. However, they do highlight how a determined country can infiltrate another nation’s sovereign space without a single boot crossing the physical border. Russia’s campaign is also seen as the first actual implementation of cyber tactics during armed conflict between developed nations.
While it appears that Russia may be taking an everything-but-the-kitchen sink, experimental approach to how they wage cyber war on Ukraine, current events shed light on the ways in which we can expect such efforts to be developed and carried out in future skirmishes.
Attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and infrastructure
While Russia’s takedowns and defacements of Ukraine’s government websites are provocative and confrontational, such hacks have little bearing on day to day life and generally serve more as acts of disrespect and defiance.
Attacks that shut down, slow or otherwise disrupt the utilities and institutions that people depend on, however, could be used to drastically impact an adversary’s movement and morale.
2015 and 2016 saw attacks waged directly on Ukraine’s power grid. The 2015 hack, the first known successful shut down of a major power provider, resulted in a six hour long blackout that affected 230,000 people. 2016’s attack was a shorter but more sophisticated assault on the power supply to Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv.
Ukrainian authorities attributed the attacks to Russian hackers.
A country that suffers severe disruptions to the internet, water treatment facilities, hospital networks and the supply chain could find itself unable to share conflict-related information, treat the wounded or access food and weaponry. In a world that grows more dependent on internet connectivity and the uninterrupted flow of data with each passing day, depriving an opposing nation of both would take a devastating toll on its defensive and logistical operations.
Given reports that data-wiping software has been found on hundreds of computers in Ukraine, the threat of a widespread, pre-emptive launch of malicious code that could be remotely executed with strategic timing highlights the need for robust cybersecurity measures that not only prevent such an infiltration but also detect and isolate compromised systems.
Social engineering and disinformation
Russia is attempting to misinform Ukrainian soldiers and citizens to chip away at their confidence in the country’s ability to defend itself, as well as its current standing in the conflict.
It has been reported that Russian media sources have attempted to dampen Ukrainian morale by incorrectly stating that the president has fled the country and that large numbers of Ukrainians are surrendering to Russian forces or welcoming them as liberators.
Messaging of Russian origin has described the invasion as one of “unification” and an effort to purge Ukraine of “nazis.” Putin has also been making an effort to turn Ukrainian forces against their government, likely probing for any separatist sentiments that may be present in the country’s military. At this point in time, that particular campaign appears to have had little effect on Ukraine’s fighting spirit in the face of Russian occupation.
The strategy, however, is effective in theory.
A carefully curated disinformation campaign supplemented by fraudulent social media accounts and “fake news” can allow an adversary to weaken a country from within by encouraging citizens to doubt the validity of their institutions, their leaders, the media and the national loyalty of their own neighbors in a way that extends far beyond healthy skepticism.
By socially engineering the population via the internet, elections can be influenced, public opinion can be manipulated and unification of the citizenry can become challenging due to distrust and a loss of the objective truth.
It could be easily argued that the deep political divisions that continue to widen in the US can be attributed to social media algorithms that prioritize and spotlight inflammatory, sometimes fabricated content and the calculated cultivation of mistrust that organizations ranging from media outlets to political campaigns as well as foreign agents utilize to bend narratives to their will.
Manipulating a country into chaos using these methods, an aggressor can weaken their target without the use of physical force by eroding a population’s spirit of unity.
A deployment of ballistic weaponry will cause death and destruction, but will make the world take notice instantly and erase any possibility of denial. A slowly burning disinformation campaign initiated by a savvy, patient regime, however, can rot a nation from the inside out while also preserving deniability due to the nebulous, challenging nature of tracing cyber activity and crime.
Cyber defenses from within Ukraine
It should be noted that when it comes to cyber expertise, talent and sophistication, Ukraine is no slouch. Being Russia’s cyberwarfare guinea pig for years has given the country an acute understanding of the importance of keeping up with the latest and most effective online defense strategies.
The unending pressure on the country’s elections and operations has cultivated a population rich with IT professionals. It has also attracted international security firms and research organizations who welcome the opportunity to dive into the front lines in order to get a leg up on any potential threat actors or tactics that could crop up elsewhere.
Ukraine is second only to India when it comes to providing the world with a steady supply of outsourced IT specialists.
Putin may discover that years of relentlessly meddling in Ukraine’s cyberspace has not worn down the country’s online defenses as hoped, but rather allowed for a unique degree of inoculation by creating an environment in which people have become accustomed to continually keeping cybercrime at bay.
Additionally, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has tapped into its citizenry and asked for volunteers among the population to assist in defending the country’s online space from Russian attack. Hundreds of vetted volunteers have thus far been divided into a defensive group, tasked with keeping the country’s utilities and power grid operations safe, and an offensive group that is to focus on espionage and hacking Russian banks, fuel suppliers and more.
Cyber defenses from afar
Putin’s disregard for global stability and the rights of Russian citizens in the interest of his own wealth and power have long made Russia a pariah amongst most other developed nations. His unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has likewise given the international ethical hacking and cybersecurity communities a common enemy.
Anonymous, a self-described “anti-oppression” hacktivist collective with a long history of waging digital battles against American far right hate groups, the Islamic State, former US President Donald Trump, police departments and even the CIA has declared “cyber war against the Russian government.”
Thus far, Anonymous has claimed to have broken into the Russian Ministry of Defense database and knocked several Russian government websites offline.
Anonymous has also hacked various Russian state-run television stations, replacing the programming with information regarding the truth about the country’s actions against Ukraine, pro-Ukraine imagery and Ukrainian music. The majority of Russia’s population, fed a steady diet of state-sponsored media, remains ignorant to the real nature of the conflict with even the parents of conscripted soldiers not knowing where their children are or what they are participating in.
Space-X CEO Elon Musk has stated that the company’s Starlink internet satellites are now active in Ukraine. Thus far, internet connectivity has been “generally available,” but Space-X’s satellites will allow for continued access in the event of a shutdown attempt.
European countries, including Croatia, Poland and Estonia have pledged to provide security support for Ukraine along with Australia, New Zealand and Japan among others.
On the world stage, US President Joe Biden has been vocal about leveraging harsh sanctions to apply political and economic pressure on Putin and the Russian oligarchs who both benefit from and support his leadership.
When it comes to hacking, however, the US is characteristically and deafeningly mum.
Said to have the world’s best tools and expertise at its disposal, the US military is remarkably secretive about its cyber capabilities and campaigns. Unlike countries like China and Russia, who do little to mask or deny their cyber efforts outside of winking denial, it would appear that America prefers to leave the details of its online work almost completely classified.
Because of this, it is difficult to determine what efforts the US has been making with regard to the current conflict. However, intercepted Russian information regarding Moscow’s “false pretext” had been declassified prior to their invasion with the intention of preparing Ukraine, and the world at large, for an onslaught of misinformation orchestrated by Russia with regard to their intentions.
Early reports claim that President Biden was presented with a menu of cyberattack options to initiate against Russia, although the White House has since denied that such a meeting took place.
While it is yet to be seen how America’s cyber strategies will play out, one can assume that the US will continue to adhere to a cyber strategy that keeps its cards close to the vest. This direction has likely been adopted in order to preserve the integrity of its operations but also to avoid opening itself up to the scrutiny that would surely follow any revelations regarding gray area operations into international cybersecurity matters.
While Russia’s cyber efforts thus far appear to be chaotic, blunt force attacks, the battle in Ukraine will no doubt serve as a blueprint for other nations to follow should they wish to undertake their own hybrid assaults.
Power hungry regimes all over the world are carefully taking note of what works, what doesn’t and how Russia’s efforts could be mimicked, refined and customized to suit their needs.
We have already witnessed authoritarian strongmen in other countries utilize social media campaigns to slaughter dissidents within their own borders. We have seen longtime political enemies such as Iran and Israel take pot shots at one another with disruptive cyberattacks against public transport and even online dating sites, daring one another to make a move that could spark an outright conflict.
Even if Russia’s cyber aggression towards Ukraine proves to be mostly ineffective, it will nonetheless pave the way for future maneuvers and has delivered the world into a new era that has been a long time in the making.
Attacks that utilize malware or viruses are also likely to result in collateral damage, as they will certainly not remain contained within the borders of a targeted country. This means that the deployment of malicious code in an effort to weaken an enemy would likely result in the malware spreading globally to countries far removed from the actual conflict, opening them up to further espionage or damage.
After years of warnings and inevitability, it would appear that the Pandora’s box of cyber warfare has finally been cracked open.
- Ukraine power cut ‘was cyber-attack’ 11 Jan 2017, BBC
- The Russia-Ukraine cyberwar may have already begun. Is the United States next? By Sara Morrison, 25 Feb 2022, Vox
- Russia is using an onslaught of cyber attacks to undermine Ukraine’s defence capabilities by Mamoun Alazab, 25 Feb 2022, The Conversation
- Here’s what cyber pros are watching in the Ukraine conflict by Joseph Marks, 24 Feb 2022, The Washington Post
- US braces for Russian cyberattacks as Ukraine conflict escalates. Here’s how that might play out by Rishi Iyengar, 24 Feb 2022, CNN Business
- Ukraine Asks for Hackers’ Help by Sarah Coble, Feb 25 2022, Infosecurity
- Anonymous: the hacker collective that has declared cyberwar on Russia by Dan Milmo, 27 Feb 2022, The Guardian
- Elon Musk says SpaceX Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine is activated by Emma Tucker and Melissa Alonso, 27 Feb 2022, CNN
- Ukraine Creates IT Army of Volunteer Hackers and Orders Cyber Attacks on Russian Websites by Jody Serrano, 27 Feb 2022, Gizmodo
- Remarks by President Biden on Russia’s Unprovoked and Unjustified Attack on Ukraine 24 Feb 2022, The White House | <urn:uuid:996b21d6-e0b3-4232-8b67-3b97dc74c583> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://news.networktigers.com/all-articles/russias-cyberattacks-on-ukraine-and-the-future-of-conflict/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337516.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004152839-20221004182839-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.951353 | 2,595 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Voice-based systems offer no real safety advantage over manual texting, according to a study sponsored by the Southwest Region University Transportation Center and conducted by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
The study, reportedly the first of its kind, is based on the performance of 43 research participants driving an actual vehicle on a closed course. Driver-response times were significantly delayed no matter which texting method was used, the study found, and for many tasks, manual texting required slightly less time than voice-to-text methods.
Drivers apparently felt safer when using a voice-to-text application than when they were manually texting, suggesting it gave them a false sense of security.
“Understanding the issue of distracted driving is an evolving process as new technologies emerge, and this study is but one step in that process,” said Christine E. Yager, a TTI Associate Transportation Researcher who managed the study.
“We believe it’s a useful step, and we’re eager to see what other studies may find,” she added.
“Each driver is responsible for his or her own choices,” Yager told TechNewsWorld. “What we’re saying is that based on this particular study, manual texting and voice texting are roughly equal in terms of how they can complicate the driving task and potentially compromise safety. Ideally, these and other research findings can help drivers make those choices.”
Distraction Is Nothing New
Given the fairly low number of participants involved, it’s questionable whether this study was encompassing enough to support any conclusions.
“I take these studies with a grain of salt,” said Mark C. Boyadjis, senior analyst and manager of infotainment at IHS Automotive.
Dstractions are not entirely new to drivers, after all.
“The radio was the original distraction, and we didn’t outlaw AM radios,” Boyadjis told TechNewsWorld.
Of course, drivers today have many distractions besides the radio, and judgment comes into play. Drivers are the ones ultimately responsible for deciding whether, when and how to use devices that may distract them from properly operating their vehicles or watching the road.
“It is certainly the second point with a pinch of the first,” said Praveen Chandrasekar, Frost & Sullivan’s infotainment and telematics program manager.
“It is because of user behavior. An American adult has a smartphone and a tablet — and just five years ago, this was not the case. The proliferation of devices is on the rise, but at the same time distraction has always been there,” he told TechNewsWorld.
Distractions are even built into a car’s controls, but there has been no call to regulate, say, a driver’s adjustment of the temperature in a vehicle.
“When you are inside the car, you are distraction-free only if your eyes are on the road,” Chandraskar added. “When you are adjusting the temperature or something, you take your eyes off for only a second or two. That is still very much a distraction from driving.”
Good Distraction vs. Bad Distraction
There are also times when distractions might not be such a bad thing for drivers, especially for those putting in long miles without someone to help pass the time. The loneliness of the road and wandering thoughts also contribute to distraction.
“If you are driving down a long highway, you may want the distraction, as your attention could wander and you could fall asleep. Having a radio to keep you engaged could be helpful,” noted Roger Kay, principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.
“However, if you are in heavy traffic flow in a big city, any audio or video could be very distracting,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“These are two distinctly different situations. Those are the extremes, and there are plenty of situations in between where devices may be helpful or distracting,” Kay added
Voiced-based systems are still very much in the early stages of evolution and development. As these become more engaging and easier to use, they could turn out to be far less distracting than they are today.
“The voice is a natural interface for devices, and finally a smartphone or a car can recognize our voices,” said Boyadjis. “The reason it is so distracting now is that it is still in development. The user expects more from it than they can get. In the future, it could reach parity with what users’ want and expect.”
This circles back to what the study’s authors found about how technology is increasing the number of potential distractions.
“We went from a world where not much more than a radio and passengers entered the vehicle to a world where the driver can talk, text, and access the Internet on a mobile device while driving,” said TTI’s Yager. “Technology is advancing rapidly, and we believe it’s important to ask questions about how that technology may affect driver behavior and safety.” | <urn:uuid:a0e2a45b-814d-4f81-a502-c082174a49c0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/driving-while-texting-dilemma-voice-no-better-than-thumbs-77864.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337516.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004152839-20221004182839-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.960079 | 1,071 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Cyber attacks take many forms but social engineering is a particularly pernicious tactic which can have serious implications for your IT security.
What is social engineering?
‘Social engineering’ is a blanket term that refers to the methods malicious attackers use to manipulate people into revealing or providing confidential information. The methods of communicating the request may be in person, over the phone or a video call, or via written communication such as email.
When the method used is email, this is most commonly referred to as phishing. Here the social engineer attempts to get some form of personal information from the target, usually credit card information or login details to a site or service that the target has access to. Commonly this will take the form of an email that appears to originate from a bank or online service (such as Office 365), and will look legitimate at first glance.
This email will use one or more of the principles listed below to get the target to click on a link in the email and enter their login credentials to what appears to be the correct online portal. However, this will be a fake login page that will harvest the targets credentials for later use by the attacker.
A more specialised form of phishing is spear phishing, which targets specific individuals as opposed to the more blanket emails generally sent. These are a lot more difficult to detect, as they are specifically crafted to target the individuals.
Other forms of social engineering emails include requests for payment or bank transfers to legitimate recipients, but with bank details belonging to the attacker.
Social engineering principles
Social engineers rely on a few key principles to manipulate people into giving up the information they are after. These are:
- Authority / Intimidation – Social engineers often pose as authority figures (such as the company CEO or a police official) in order to pressure people into complying with a request.
- Consensus / Social Proof – People are more likely to do things that they think other people are doing, or things that they believe are social norms.
- Scarcity – If people believe that an offer is time-limited, or that there are only a limited number of whatever they are seeking, they will be more inclined to act quickly before giving full consideration to the offer or request.
- Urgency – If people believe they only have a certain time window to comply with a request, they are often likely to act without thinking the request through fully. This is often used in conjunction with scarcity above.
- Familiarity / Liking – People are more likely to comply with requests from people that they like (even based on first impressions), or people that are familiar to them such as someone that they have met before.
- Trust – If trust has been established with someone, they are much more likely to comply with a request without fully considering the implications.
How to spot social engineering attempts
The possible ways to spot potential attempts vary depending on the method employed by the social engineer. The primary defence against any form of social engineering is user ongoing awareness training. Educating your users about the dangers of social engineering and the ways to detect and stop these attempts is the single most effective defence.
For phone calls, one of the most effective defences is having a documented process for verifying a caller’s identity for any requests involving sensitive information (you do have an information classification policy in your organisation, don’t you?). Simply insisting on calling back the caller on a number you already have for them, if it is supposedly someone you know, will prove the caller legitimate or not. If the caller is not someone you presently know, asking for a contact number to call them back on will often dissuade all but the most confident social engineer.
For phishing emails, there are a few things to check carefully, especially those asking for sensitive information:
- Always check the reply-to email address carefully, even one incorrect or swapped letter is a different address
- Do not ever click on any links in the email. If the email is instructing you to log onto a service that you do have, rather access the login page directly from the internet or search Google for it instead of clicking on a link in the email.
- Do not open any attachments on the email without first making absolutely sure that the email is from a legitimate source. All it takes for your computer to be infected with malicious software (malware) is one click.
- Always report any suspicious emails to your IT provider for investigation
Should you fall victim to a phishing email and enter your credentials into a fake login site, always contact your IT support company straight away to get your password reset.
If you have any questions about the information security of your business, do get in touch with one of the experts at the Conosco Security Division: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:cedeb1c2-e2cb-41c1-8bbe-f342487717fc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.conosco.com/blog/social-engineering-a-people-problem/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338001.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007080917-20221007110917-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.951912 | 980 | 3.21875 | 3 |
This article is part of our series on “AI education”
Machine learning and deep learning are moving at such a fast pace that it is sometimes hard keeping up with just the names of new algorithms and architectures, let alone learn them. Take transformers, for instance. Four years ago, they were still an emerging field of research. Today, they are the primary type of neural network used in large language models and have replaced RNNs and even CNNs in many applications.
Generative models such as GANs and VAEs have undergone a similar trend. And in the past year, diffusion and CLIP neural networks have shown much promise.
With so much happening and changing in the field, writing an introductory book on machine learning and deep learning has become a real challenge. Yet Sebastian Raschka, Yuxi Liu, and Vahid Mirjalili have managed to pull a very difficult feat in their latest book, Machine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn.
The book, which is the PyTorch edition of the acclaimed Python Machine Learning, provides a balanced mix of theory, math, coding, and references to give you a broad overview of the ML and DL landscape and help you trace a roadmap for your future career in artificial intelligence.
A great intro to machine learning with Python
Writing a self-study book on machine learning with Python poses a dual challenge. On the one hand, machine learning—and especially deep learning—involves complex mathematical and computational concepts that can be daunting without the help of an instructor. Therefore, filling out pages with complex formulas like college textbooks will make it difficult and boring for many readers who are trying to learn machine learning on their own.
On the other hand, there are many Python libraries that make it easy to create and train machine learning code with a shallow understanding of the underlying mathematics and computation. But without understanding the math and logic behind the algorithms, your machine learning coding skills will have limited use when it comes to writing real applications and making important decisions.
Fortunately, the authors of Machine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn have managed to strike the right balance of theory and practice. The authors teach many important machine learning concepts by providing an overview of the logic, gradually introducing the formulas and explaining them step by step, and showing how to implement them in Python.
Throughout the chapters, you build your knowledge of different machine learning algorithms, activation functions, loss functions, optimizers, hyperparameter optimization, ensembles, etc., and use this knowledge base to later learn more complicated concepts. At the same time, the authors take you through the basics of creating a machine learning pipeline by gathering and preparing data and regularly reviewing your models for decay and drift.
In some cases, such as artificial neurons, you get to implement ML models from scratch before later getting familiar with Python libraries that give full and optimized functionality.
The book provides very good coverage of Scikit-Learn, Python’s main machine learning library, as well as Numpy and Pandas. (I strongly recommend reading Python for Data Analysis by Wes Mckinney for a more comprehensive guide on Numpy and Pandas. They are two of the central libraries in data science, machine learning, and deep learning, so learning them from the creator of Pandas will be an indispensable skill.)
However, you should have a solid knowledge of Python basics and object-oriented programming before picking up this book. It won’t hold your hand on list comprehensions, function pointers, lambda functions, class inheritance, and other topics that make Python coding more efficient. You’ll also need to brush up on some of the environment configuration skills such as setting up Python environments and running Jupyter Notebook servers (alternatively, you can opt to use an ML-as-a-Service platform such as Google Colab or Microsoft Azure Machine Learning).
As a bonus, the book’s sidebars provide references to many academic papers that delve deeper into the science and math of machine learning concepts. I found this to be a very great feature of the book for several reasons.
First, literally thousands of machine learning and deep learning papers are published every year, and it can be very difficult to navigate the landscape. Second, the book references some of the milestone papers that sometimes date back to the late 1990s or early 2000s and have been lost in time with all the exciting research that has happened in recent years. And third, the book gradually introduces you to papers that are on par with the skills and knowledge that you’ve learned up to that point in the book—reading academic papers can be discouraging if you don’t have the background knowledge.
Of course, there’s a lot more to classic machine learning than can be fitted in the first 350 pages of the book. While deep learning makes more sensational news stories, many classic machine learning algorithms introduced in this book, such as decision trees and support vector machines (SVM), are still more useful in real-world applications because of their compute and data efficiency, explainability, and other factors. (For more in-depth coverage of some of these algorithms, I recommend Machine Learning Algorithms by Giuseppe Bonaccorso. Read my review of the book here.)
A tour de force of deep learning
Half of Machine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn is allocated to deep learning. Here too, the authors have done a marvelous job of gradually introducing concepts, math, coding, and tying it all together by implementing from scratch and then showing how to do it with standard Python libraries.
Like other introductory books on deep learning, Machine Learning with PyTorch takes you through the basics of neural networks and the manual implementation of a multilayer perceptron.
The rest of the deep learning chapters use PyTorch instead of TensorFlow, which I think is one of the advantages of the book. While TensorFlow is a very powerful library, I think its learning curve is steeper than PyTorch. The authors delve deep into many important features of PyTorch, including using the object-oriented features of the library to create your own custom layers, networks, data loaders, and loss functions.
The book has very good chapters on convolutional neural networks (CNN) and recurrent neural networks (RNN). But where it really shines is its introduction of more advanced deep learning architectures, including transformer networks, generative models, and graph neural networks (GNN). The authors have done a really great job of simplifying very complicated concepts and showing how they work in practice.
While each of these topics is worthy of a separate book, the authors have managed to explain them in simple terms and prepare you to pick up more advanced books or read academic papers. In particular, the chapters on attention mechanisms and transformers are among the best I’ve read on the topic (and I’ve read many).
There are a few things that were not entirely satisfactory. The chapter on reinforcement learning was a bit shallow. Understandably, RL is a very complicated topic that requires its own 800-page book. But I felt that the chapter tried to cover too much (including deep reinforcement learning) and ended up not having the depth that the other sections of the book have.
I would have also liked to see the book cover more real-world examples that span across several chapters and gradually build a real application. In this regard, a great book is Aurélien Géron’s Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow (read my review here).
Finally—and this is something that most introductory ML books are missing—I think the book’s readers could have benefitted from an introduction to MLOps and cloud ML platforms. Understandably, not everyone will want to create scalable ML models, but the MLaaS landscape has evolved so much in recent years that I think all students and self-learners can benefit from them.
But all in all, this is an excellent book. Whether it’s your first experience learning Python machine learning or if you already have a bit of experience, you’re sure to enjoy Machine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn and learn much from it. | <urn:uuid:4cbe9e56-450a-438a-9279-5d6fcaba8366> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://bdtechtalks.com/2022/09/14/machine-learning-pytorch-sklearn/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.943428 | 1,705 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Traffic Tracking & Analysis for Safer Cities
How to reduce pedestrian risk as urban populations increase
Experts at the World Health Organization report that as of 2015, 54% of the world’s population lived in cities, and that 60% of people worldwide will live in urban areas by 2050. Theoretically, that will lead to an increase in vehicles and pedestrians, which could increase the possibility of accidents between vehicles, and between vehicles and pedestrians. To make their streets and sidewalks safer for pedestrians, some cities are already deploying various Smart solutions, such as LED Smart Crossings in London, Smart Pedestrian Crossing Signals in Dubai, and Smart Street Lights in San Diego.
Another sensor that is taking on a more prominent role is the CCTV surveillance network: Smart Cities are increasingly equipped with surveillance networks, which are most often used to monitor for accidents or crime and facilitate post-incident investigations. However, some Smart Cities have realized that the video footage captured by those cameras contains valuable data that can help them do much more than just prevent incidents and solve crimes. The problem is that city agencies do not have enough manpower or time to manually review the high volume of footage that is collected by the cameras, nor can human observation accurately comprehend and analyze the millions of objects and interactions that are captured in video footage. To further drive efficiency, Smart Cities use complementary video analytics software that identifies, processes and indexes objects and behaviors found in video footage.
Powered by Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), video content analytics software is able to identify and classify objects, such as vehicle types, from bicycles to motorcycles and trucks, as well as men, women, children, and animals. This enables video analytics operators to conduct sophisticated searches for objects, in real-time camera views as well as archived footage. Video intelligence software also aggregates data, which is useful not only to uncover the patterns and trends that are buried in surveillance data, but also to help operators define normal thresholds or benchmark conditions. Operators can then use those benchmarks to configure rule-based alerts that are triggered when those predefined thresholds are exceeded. This notifies operators so they can be attentive to situations as they are evolving, in real-time.
This combination of aggregated trend data and real-time alerts offers city planners and first responders a way to collect quantitative data and attain situational awareness. City agencies from urban planning to law enforcement already apply video intelligence in numerous ways, but this blog post will focus on how it helps those agencies improve pedestrian safety.
Identifying crowding and bottleneck hotspots
Obviously, pedestrian-vehicle accidents can result in serious injury or death. To better protect pedestrians, urban planners and law enforcement agencies need to identify both pedestrian and vehicle hotspots, and optimize the flow of traffic. Knowing where and when traffic congestion occurs is the key to helping law enforcement agencies mitigate collisions or congestion. To resolve immediate traffic congestion problems in real-time, some video content analysis solutions offer object and people-counting capabilities, to alert officers in real-time when an area becomes too crowded with people or congested with vehicles.
To help city planners discover ineffective traffic patterns, signage, or roadways, video analysis can be leveraged to provide quantitative data about bicycle, vehicle, and pedestrian traffic at particular intersections, sidewalks, bike paths, and roadways, across multiple locations and cameras. Planners can make better, more informed decisions about required roadways, signage and public transit for driving future efficiency.
However, it’s not sufficient to have only quantitative data about the volume of cars, bicyclists and pedestrians; a comprehensive video intelligence solution should render data in the form of heatmaps for indicating highly trafficked vehicle or pedestrian paths . Heatmaps are also helpful for benchmarking normal activity, so that the system alerting can be configured to detect when traffic violations occur, such as vehicles moving against the flow of traffic or making illegal turns.
Line-crossing alerts can prevent vehicle-pedestrian collisions
Some cities have pedestrian-only and no-pedestrian zones. To help enforce behavior in these zones, video analysis software may detect line-crossing: i.e., when cars cross into defined pedestrian-only areas of a road, or conversely a pedestrian crosses into a vehicles-only space such as a bridge, highway or tunnel. By sending a real-time alert to a surveillance operator, a video analysis system can trigger action from the appropriate forces, whether dispatching officers to the scene or more closely and actively monitoring an area through video surveillance.
Gathering Big Data to analyze vehicle and pedestrian traffic
With so many video cameras constantly recording video, there is a glut of Big Data. City agencies need video content analysis that can merge Big Data points and render them into meaningful data visualizations. For example, it’s good to know the quantity or types of vehicles that use a particular road, but it’s even better to know a variety of data points, such as the number of vehicles, the types of vehicles, and types of accidents on variety of particular roads. By presenting data in easy-to-understand, interactive dashboard reports, video analytics arms planners to make better decisions about traffic management and public safety, such as whether and where to install new crosswalks or traffic lights.
To optimize pedestrian safety, it is crucial for city agencies to be able to respond to problems in real-time and gather trend data about common traffic problems and violations so they can plan urban improvements based on actionable data. The easiest way to accomplish these goals is to leverage existing video surveillance infrastructure, by complementing that with video content analytics technology.
Signup to receive a monthly blog digest. | <urn:uuid:ca30fe17-8477-4ff1-b4c2-75efa8b2a1cd> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.briefcam.com/resources/blog/traffic-tracking-analysis-for-safer-cities/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.93503 | 1,154 | 2.984375 | 3 |
If there’s one technology that promises to change the world more than any other over the next several decades, it’s (arguably) machine learning.
By enabling computers to learn certain things more efficiently than humans, and discover certain things that humans cannot, machine learning promises to bring increasing intelligence to software everywhere and enable computers to develop new capabilities –- from driving cars to diagnosing disease –- that were previously thought to be impossible.
Old Ideas with New Power
While most of the core algorithms that drive machine learning have been around for decades, what has magnified its promise so dramatically in recent years is the extraordinary growth of the two fuels that power these algorithms – data and computing power. Both continue to grow at exponential rates, suggesting that machine learning is at the beginning of a very long and productive run. As revolutionary as machine learning will be, its impact will be highly asymmetric. While most machine learning algorithms, libraries and tools are in the public domain and computing power is a widely available commodity, data ownership is highly concentrated.
The Barbell Effect on Technology
This means that machine learning will likely have a barbell effect on the technology landscape. On one hand, it will democratize basic intelligence through the commoditization and diffusion of services such as image recognition and translation into software broadly. On the other, it will concentrate higher-order intelligence in the hands of a relatively small number of incumbents that control the lion’s share of their industry’s data. For startups seeking to take advantage of the machine learning revolution, this barbell effect is a helpful lens to look for the biggest business opportunities. While there will be many new kinds of startups that machine learning will enable, the most promising will likely cluster around the incumbent end of the barbell. | <urn:uuid:d6a49247-c01b-46e0-a821-d169aec5ac02> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://swisscognitive.ch/2017/05/30/the-barbell-effect-of-machine-learning/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.941213 | 362 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Machine Learning Gone Wrong with Janelle Shane
A.I. Humorist Janelle Shane joined us at redefINE last week and gave an intriguing talk focused on artificial intelligence and the many ways machine learning algorithms can get things wrong.
She kicked things off by sharing examples of computer programs attempting to generate information traditionally created by humans such as recipes, cat names, and candy heart messages, which yielded hilarious results. After seeing these outcomes, she attempted to train a neural network to name pies by providing a list of 2,000 existing pie names. The results included Cherry Pie with Cheese Fashions, Mothy Mincemeat Cheese, Cranberry Yaas, and other less-than-appetizing but humorous names.
This led her to a discussion as to whether or not she believes A.I. is actually smart. From her perspective, today’s A.I. capabilities are very narrow and the applications tend to be the most successful when the requests are equally as narrow. She said, “If you think about the A.I. software that’s widespread and useful, this is software that tends to do one specific thing at a time.” According to Shane, the most frequent occurrence of A.I. problems take place when people attempt to be too broad with their requests. An example she provided was Facebook M, which was a virtual assistant application.
The intended purpose of Facebook M was to provide users with an A.I. digital assistant to answer common questions or to complete simple tasks, such as arranging flower deliveries or reserving tables at restaurants. In the event a request was too complex, paid contractors were on standby to jump in and assist with completing a request. While simple requests were made, many users chose to make incredibly specific, and often ludicrous, requests requiring paid contractors to be used more heavily than anticipated, resulting in a serious expense for Facebook, and a project that never fully took off.
Shane continued her talk by discussing the narrow view today’s A.I. has of the real world, which is due in part to the data it is provided during training. She says A.I. applications often take shortcuts to ensure an outcome is achieved instead of having the ability to logically consider ways to work through a problem. “You know from experience that its performance is not flawless, so when you start to use it on problems that are just a bit broad you already have to tolerate mistakes,” she said.
For example, an A.I. application was trained to review medical records and identify cases where patients had medical maladies. Surprisingly, the A.I. application successfully identified a majority of the cases where patients required treatment however, after analyzing the process and results, it was found the program made its determination solely based on the length of the case being reviewed. During its training, the A.I. learned longer medical records were those most often containing medical problems, which was the basis it used for its determinations.
Other real-world examples she provided were instances of self-driving cars being involved in accidents many would have thought to be avoidable. In one instance, a car was randomly braking on its own due to an image of a stop sign appearing on a billboard which was identified by the vehicle as a real stop sign.
In another, a vehicle hit a pedestrian crossing the street because it had only been trained to identify people walking in crosswalks and no other areas. Shane used these situations to emphasize her point of narrow world-views causing many A.I. applications to still depend on human intervention. “Effectively using A.I. relies on a lot of human help, so you have to have smart humans to constrain the problem that’s narrow enough for today’s A.I. to solve,” she said.
Because of this, Shane says if a problem is broad and the consequences of getting it wrong are serious, even if they are only serious for a select number of people, it is not a good application for A.I. From her research and years of experience, she says today’s A.I. is not in a place where it can fully understand what we’re asking for, forcing us to be smart about how we use it.
Her talk was followed by a Q&A session with the audience where she was asked what some of her biggest lessons learned were, how close she thinks we are from the A.I. seen in movies, whether we should worry that our reliance is getting ahead of technology’s current capabilities, and much more.
If you’d like to watch the recorded session with Janelle Shane, you can do so here. | <urn:uuid:ca4e6e58-95fa-4c7c-9e1d-abec07cf7b5c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ine.com/blog/machine-learning-gone-wrong-with-janelle-shane | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335350.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929100506-20220929130506-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.978663 | 964 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Almost a decade has gone by since I performed my first risk analysis of a nuclear plant and discovered a completely new world. Since then, security professionals will have heard a lot more about the current state OT security (or lack thereof). Operational Technology designates systems specially designed to monitor or make changes to physical processes; these systems are often called Industrial Control Systems (ICS).
It doesn’t matter if we’re referring to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems or Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), the fact is security was never considered during the design of OT or ICS systems and the protocols they implement. These systems were not built to be interconnected with traditional IT networks. Their security relies on physical “air gaps” and physical access control to the plants or locations where these systems are implemented.
It’s clear that the risks impacting OT systems have grown exponentially during the last 10-15 years. Additionally, we’ve seen an increase in the attack surface and potential impact of an outage or catastrophic system failure. Risks in this area continue to grow as businesses require interconnectivity between IT and OT networks to enable organizations to provide remote access for engineering, operation, support or monitoring activities.
OT networks often leverage standard commercial off the shelf (COTS) technologies such as Microsoft Windows, SQL Servers, and TCP/IP based networks along with customized ICS/OT hardware. Using these COTS solutions often makes the critical systems vulnerable to the same security risks and issues that IT systems face. In fact, the situation is arguably worse, because often patching is not possible due several operational constraints and availability requirements. These constraints often include the potential of losing vendor support if the underlying COTS software or systems are upgraded or the reality that many of these systems cannot be taken offline or rebooted in order to apply patches because they must keep running 24x7x365.
Another reason it’s not possible and often dangerous to run standard vulnerability scanning products is due to the inherent fragility of those systems and the problems that unexpected traffic can cause to them. To complicate matters further, the non-TCP/IP protocols used within these OT networks are often proprietary protocols where authentication or encryption are not present.
In short, these are technologies built with out-of-date operating systems with dozens (or hundreds) of well-known vulnerabilities, built using an insecure network and communications protocols. These technologies must now be interconnected to the corporate IT systems due to business requirements but the systems cannot be scanned, patched, or secured using traditional security solutions and methodologies. OT/SCADA systems are currently used to monitor and operate everything from factory production chains to the critical infrastructure required to deliver electricity to the masses. What could possibly go wrong here?
The risks highlighted above are not just theoretical, in the past few years we have seen a significant increase in the number of attacks specially designed to target ICS/SCADA systems such as:
- 2010 Stuxnet was uncovered. Stuxnet is worm-like malware that targets PLCs designed to enrich uranium. Stuxnet looked for specific Siemens PLCs connected to very specific hardware and if found modified the configuration causing centrifuges to spin too fast. Stuxnet was a targeted attack addressing the Iranian nuclear program that famously became the first nation-state backed cyberattack design to cause physical damage to industrial control systems.
- December 2015, a Ukrainian regional electricity distribution company reported service outages affecting 225,000 customers and lasted for several hours. The outages were discovered to be part of an attack on the power generation systems. Attackers were able to remotely access and control the ICS to cause the outage and delay the restoration efforts.
- June 2017 Crashoverride was uncovered. This malware specifically targets ICS electric grid components. When Crashoverride infects Windows machines, it automatically maps out the controls systems, records network logs (to later be replayed by operators). Crashoverride is an advanced modular malware framework that can adapt to many protocols and is designed to be stealthy, disruptive, and automatic.
- December 2017 Triton was discovered. Triton is a new malware strain designed to target ICS systems. Triton was discovered after causing a shutdown of critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. This malware targets Schneider Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) controllers. By modifying these SIS controllers, the attackers are able to increase the likelihood of system failures resulting in physical damage to the ICS.
In addition to all these security challenges, we also need to be looking towards the future and prepare for the evolution of ICS and now “IOT” systems. I’m confident that, as we have seen in other industries like finance or telco in the past, ICS and SCADA vendors will move towards providing cloud-based offerings for some of their systems. I really think that in the near future we will be talking about Historian-, HMI-, PLC- or even Control-as-a-Service approaches.
With this risk landscape and the associated challenges, we can easily understand that CISOs are having a tough time being responsible for their organization’s ICS security programs. CISOs will face challenges not only because OT security is an entirely new world for most security professionals, but also because historically priorities and concerns for IT and OT teams have been quite different. The stringent operational and availability requirements placed on OT systems often create difficulties when traditional security teams need to work closely with OT engineers.
Furthermore, when we talk about risks and incidents in ICS we need to keep in mind that the potential damage is going beyond financial losses or reputational damage. Attacks in this space could very likely result in physical losses, severe damage to the environment or even the tragic cost of human lives.
Fortunately, it’s not all bad news since the industry is working diligently to design solutions to help mitigate these risks. New best practices and guidelines have been published such as the ISA/IEC-62443 (Formerly ISA-99), a series of standards and guides on how to implement secure ICS.
Additionally, vendors have recently built technologies to identify anomalies or potential intrusions through passively monitoring traffic that then monitors OT networks? It’s important to note that machine learning approaches will struggle to become operational and effective in traditional IT networks, though they work perfectly well on OT networks.
Machine learning works well in OT environments because the traffic and the communications are very consistent and predictable. These tools are not only useful for security professionals to receive easily understandable alerts on potential threats but are also helping OT teams to gain a new level of visibility within their operational technology network and assets that they’ve never had before. They have clear operational advantages. This allows organizations to both improve their detection capabilities while also providing the OT engineering staff tangible benefits. I believe that working closely with the OT teams to show them the operational capabilities of these OT security solutions will lead to better communication and cooperation between OT and IT teams.
All in all, while protecting and hardening ICS networks is an incredibly difficult challenge for any CISO, there are still paths for the success to be followed. I think the efforts should be put on identifying the potential risks, focus heavily on network segmentation including limiting the potential paths of connectivity between OT and IT networks using one-way data diodes. Finally, building a smart security monitoring approach that not only enables the identification of security threats but also provides visibility and added value to the operational team will be a key factor to success.
Do you want to learn more? Click here to read our new Operational Technology whitepaper. | <urn:uuid:e3e70fac-6c33-4e77-beeb-bdcddec4d37b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://modernciso.com/2018/05/16/a-lack-of-industrial-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335350.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929100506-20220929130506-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.956741 | 1,570 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Organizations worldwide are making the move to the cloud, and that means more of their data lives there than ever before. Yet, many of these businesses pursue the cloud with misconceptions around their data protection needs. Let’s look at some of those myths:
Many organizations believe that the cloud is inherently safe and as a result there is no need to implement effective data backup and recovery. But, cloud data security is a shared responsibility between the cloud provider and the customer. The responsibility of the cloud provider is to safeguard the infrastructure, ensure access, and configure physical hosts, storage and other resources. In short: to ensure the underlying infrastructure is available.
The responsibilities of the customer are to manage users and their access privileges, safeguard cloud accounts from unauthorized access, encryption and protection of cloud-based data assets, and managing compliance1.
As a result, it is up to the customer to ensure an effective backup and recovery solution is in place to ensure the data itself is available. Otherwise, cloud data can be subject to malicious threats as well as unintentional deletions, impacting key workloads across the IT environment.
1. “Shared Responsibility Model Explained.” Cloud Security Alliance, 26 Aug. 2020, https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/blog/2020/08/26/shared-responsibility-model-explained.
Cloud providers have developed native tools for basic retention or backup functions. However, adoption of and reliance upon these solutions can create several challenges. First of all, these often have default retention periods (e.g. 30 days for M365) that fall far short of enterprise requirements. They also can be
complex to use when modifying defaults—and typical recovery times may fall short of SLA requirements, particularly at scale. These native services are also siloed—in the sense that they are not designed to also protect data sources beyond those they host, i.e. those running on-premises or in other clouds. As a result, organizations often end up with multiple systems to manage when using such tools, which drives up complexity and costs, creates a broader attack surface for security risks and breaches and poses challenges in meeting business SLAs and compliance requirements.
Many believe that recovery of cloud data is quick and seamless. Yet, what many have come to realize is that both backup and recovery speed in the cloud is highly network dependent. As a result, there is no guarantee that there won’t be any lags or latency in data recovery, which can have a significant impact for businesses with tight Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs). This is why a hybrid solution that can be managed from one place and that provides both self-managed and SaaS options is paramount. This way, you can choose where cloud backup data resides in order to meet SLA expectations properly when it comes to restores. Having that solution also be optimized for network performance, transmitting only delta change blocks across the WAN is also important.
Backup remains critical to business operations, and organizations need to be aware of their responsibilities when storing data in the cloud. To solve for many of these challenges, Cohesity offers a choice of consumption models for data backup and recovery. With Cohesity DataProtect organizations can take advantage of an on-premises backup solution which is self-managed and as Backup as a Service (BaaS) which can extend to cloud-native and SaaS workloads. With Cohesity DataProtect delivered as a service, organizations can simplify backup with a service that’s optimized for a true hybrid experience from datacenter to cloud to edge environments, all while using a simple, unified UI and capacity-based pricing. As you can see, we’ve got you covered when it comes to protecting your cloud data sources. | <urn:uuid:2a4d768e-a553-4d2c-8656-a560f0f3ac72> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cohesity.com/dm/tip-sheets/top-3-myths-about-backing-up-cloud-native-and-saas-data/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335350.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929100506-20220929130506-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.948609 | 773 | 2.6875 | 3 |
CISA has released six (6) Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories containing information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploitsRead more
The remote learning necessitated by the pandemic led to an explosion in the amount of educational technology. But results of a new survey conducted by the EdWeek Research Center and commissioned by ManagedMethods, a cloud application security and student safety monitoring platform, suggests that districtlevel ed-tech decision makers may lack...Read more
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) helps parents protect their children’s privacy by giving them specific rights. COPPA requires websites to get parental consent before collecting or sharing information from children under 13. The law covers sites designed for kids under 13 and general audience sites that know certain users are under 13. COPPA protects information that websites collect upfront and information that kids give out or post later.
Inappropriate conduct: The online world can feel anonymous. Kids sometimes forget that they are still accountable for their actions.
Inappropriate contact: Some people online have bad intentions, including bullies, predators, hackers, and scammers.
Inappropriate content: You may be concerned that your kids could find pornography, violence, or hate speech online.
Cyberstalking involves the use of information and communications technology (ICT) to perpetrate more than one incident intended to repeatedly harass, annoy, attack, threaten, frighten, and/or verbally abuse individuals.
Perpetrators can engage in cyberstalking directly by emailing, instant messaging, calling, texting, or utilizing other forms of electronic communications to communicate obscene, vulgar, and/or defamatory comments and/or threats to the victim and/or the victim's family, partner, and friends, and use technologies to monitor, survey and follow the victim's movements.
Perpetrators can also engage in cyberstalking indirectly by causing damage to the victim's digital device (by, for example, infecting the victim's computer with malware and using this malware to surreptitiously monitor the victim and/or steal information about the victim) or by posting false, malicious, and offensive information about the victim online or setting up a fake account in the victim's name to post material online (social media, chat rooms, discussion forums, websites, etc.).
Child grooming (a.k.a. enticement of children or solicitation of children for sexual purposes) "can be described as a practice by means of which an adult 'befriends' a child (often online, but offline grooming also exists and should not be neglected) with the intention of sexually abusing her/him".
You’ve taken all the security measures to hide your WordPress login and admin screens from hackers. You’ve also changed your default usernames and removed them from your theme. You still think that you are fine! Now, there’s no way a hacker can find your login usernames. Well think twice! You...Read more | <urn:uuid:177734ef-7338-4eb6-b863-8cada7d5206e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybermaterial.com/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.918368 | 612 | 2.65625 | 3 |
OPTEX reveals how real time occupancy level solutions for today are helping to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
People counting is currently back in the headlines. What was once the sole reserve of the retail industry to measure footfall and monitor customer behaviours has steadily evolved into a tool that can now help control social distancing.
More than this, some systems are now so sophisticated that they can integrate with Building Management Systems to monitor occupancy levels virtually in real time. They can determine how many are in the building and where. This data can subsequently be analysed to determine future environmental strategies and not wasting energy by lighting rooms when nobody’s there, or heating offices when everyone’s gone home.
The evolution of people counting has been steady rather than spectacular and the concept has been slow to get off the ground. Its adoption has perhaps not been helped by a certain amount of confusion as regards the technologies available. There are at least half a dozen different methods currently being deployed, of different capabilities and performance and with specialist providers in every category.
At one end of the scale, for example, are infrared people counters – usually beams – which work well up to a point but vary significantly in their performance and have limited use from any analytical standpoint. They are the technological equivalent of a man with a ‘clicker’, counting each time the beam is broken. However, when people enter simultaneously, they will be seen as one count. They were among the first people counting technologies to be tried and adopted and in certain scenarios, where advanced accuracy is not required, they can still fulfil a useful role.
At the other end are thermal people counters which, as the name suggests, use thermal imaging technology to record the difference between the body temperature of an individual and the environment around them. Heat sensing cameras (not dissimilar to those being trialled to detect potential COVID-19 carriers at airports) detect when a person has entered a room/building with a good degree of accuracy and reliability, even when the traffic volume is high. Unlike standard cameras they do not rely on light (even IR light) to be able to ‘see’ and so they are well suited to environments where lighting is an issue, or people are likely to visit after dark.
Then there are stereo and mono people counters, both using similar techniques but with varying degrees of accuracy based on the number of camera lenses deployed and the analytics and algorithms they use. In both cases the devices are usually fixed in the ceiling directly above the area to be monitored. Counting ‘heads’ rather than counting ‘bodies’ generally affords greater accuracy and the chances of ‘missing’ a body are greatly reduced. The entry/exit of individuals can be captured in real time (or as real time as possible). Well suited for indoor environments where the lighting is good, some mono or stereo sensors can consistently achieve accuracy of 98% and more.
Time of Flight and CCTV cameras
‘Time of Flight’ is another phrase that has recently entered the security professional’s vocabulary and again offer a performance not dissimilar to a stereo counter or the best mono counters. Time of Flight sensors are installed directly above the scene to be monitored and work by sending a signal to the object below and recording the reflection of infrared which bounces back to the sensor. The advantage to these systems is that it allows a greater depth of vision and movement to be captured than, for example, thermal solutions and can also operate in poor light or even total darkness. Integration, however, tends to be a challenge.
Time of Flight systems are certainly a firm favourite with many but are often expensive. Some automatic door manufacturers offer this technology and embed the footfall software directly into the door sensor, to count each time a person goes through the door.
Although never designed with people counting in mind, it is not surprising that various camera manufacturers have recently jumped on the bandwagon to position CCTV technology as a viable proposition. And to an extent, their claim is valid.
Ceiling-mounted cameras are more ‘traditionally’ installed for security purposes and given that they already exist in virtually every retail store or commercial premises, there is a strong argument to extend their remit to other uses, rather than invest in additional technology beyond a simple software upgrade. Cameras, however, still struggle in low lighting environments and what might look like a good idea on paper, may not transcend into a good idea in practice. Detecting people at an angle, rather than from above, also presents issues in terms of delivering an accurate count and consistency is a constant challenge.
In the current pandemic situation, it is crucial to provide live monitoring of people flow. This requires not only a real time counting system but also a real time data count transmission to the software. The IoT-proven QTT protocol (Message Queuing Telemetry Protocol) enables this immediate update.
Thanks to the option of being able to embed MQTT protocol into OPTEX’s Akribos VC-1020 people counting system, new social distancing solutions have been developed. Easy Count from Vaelsys and Xenoview from Xenometric are tailored to manage the flow of people inside retail outlets as they steadily re-open, managing people flow for shops. The occupancy threshold will be entered in the system and the people counter will constantly update the status, counting people entering and leaving the premises. A simple and efficient traffic light dashboard indicates when and how many people can enter and when they should wait.
Both solutions, when using the Akribos sensor, can achieve an accuracy of above 98%. They can also manage I/O modules which can operate a physical traffic light, an audio system to issue a warning if the premises are getting too full and can even operate doors if it is deemed necessary to close the entrance door when the threshold has been reached.
Beside retailers, many employers have to comply with local governmental rules and create a safe environment for employees to return to work. Technology is available that can restrict the number of employees in common areas such as waiting rooms, meeting rooms, office lobbies, restrooms etc to help facilitate stricter cleaning procedures. The Social Distancing Room Management solution by IAconnects, for example, constantly monitors the common areas described above and displays the appropriate instruction. It might, for example, state ‘do not enter’, ‘cleaning required,’ or ‘free to go,’ or any other such status that the customer defines. The solution uses the OPTEX VC-1020 people counting sensor that can communicate with any Building Management System (BMS) and is capable of accurately monitoring occupancy levels.
Occupancy level for efficient building and business management
While monitoring occupancy levels provides an immediate benefit to help businesses reopening safely, it also provides a long-term operational benefit.
Retailers with accurate footfall information have much clearer visibility on the flow of visitors, enabling them to plan their staff numbers accordingly and improve their productivity. Any investment in an occupancy level monitoring system today will help retailers rebuild their business, in an efficient way, for the future.
As for other companies and organisations, they have a key responsibility to reduce their carbon footprint. An occupancy level monitoring solution integrated with the Building Management System is a good way to achieve this goal. By managing the air conditioning, heating, electricity and appliances according to the number of people present in the building, companies can realise greater energy savings. A technology investment to help create a safe environment today can lead to a more sustainable building management tomorrow.
Making the right choice
So what should the customer/installer consider when choosing a people counting system?
Accuracy is, of course, one of the key drivers. In certain scenarios, counting 95 out of every 100 people who enter a building or indoor arena may be sufficient; for others, the thought of five people being missed when access is being strictly controlled – for example in a museum housing a priceless treasure – may be an anathema and potentially a safety issue. Remember, however, that no system is ever 100% reliable and even with the most sophisticated technologies, some bodies will be missed and certain +/- tolerances will need to be factored in.
Identification is another driver. The problem with CCTV-based systems is the risk of falling foul of various local privacy laws. Systems that ‘look’ from the top down, however, tend to be more accurate – but do not run into the same difficulties in terms of identification.
Integration is another consideration, especially given the current challenges around social distancing. The ability for a system to integrate seamlessly with an audio or traffic light system, for example, to indicate when an individual can enter/leave is extremely useful. So too is the ability to integrate with access control technologies to close a door once an individual has left, or to prevent tailgating, is also of significant benefit.
Cost is also a factor. Often it is a trade-off between one device doing many things (as in a camera system) or a single dedicated device for a single purpose. Then it all comes down to choice.
Two further considerations are installation and aesthetics. Most of the people counting technologies are comparatively easy to install, but when systems are being used for dual purposes (especially cameras), then the installer is in something of a quandary: either the purpose is security or it is people counting, but it is very difficult to site a camera so that it can do both. A compromise has to be reached, but few businesses are comfortable with compromising on security. Aesthetics is also a challenge. Beams, cameras etc are clear and visible devices, but may not be desirable in certain environments. Sometimes a more covert device may be preferred.
This article was published in the July 2020 edition of International Security Journal. Pick up your FREE digital copy on the link here | <urn:uuid:2145fb12-9a4d-46f1-adce-05abb3488a81> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://internationalsecurityjournal.com/exclusive-the-rise-of-occupancy-management/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.952061 | 2,030 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Public safety is an increasingly challenging profession. Police, fire, and EMS personnel strive to keep our communities safe and secure, especially during crises such as COVID-19.
Today, public safety personnel benefit from modern computer-driven devices purpose-built for their challenging work environments. These devices provide first responders with an unprecedented degree of communication, coordination, and efficiency.
However, it takes the right technology. Consumer-grade equipment is not up to the task.
Computers In the Field
One of the most significant advancements in public safety computing is the advent of rugged tablets and notebook computers. These devices are built to endure the harshest handling and unexpected shocks/vibrations that can happen in the field, along with temperature extremes, rain, and wind-driven dust.
Adding to their utility is the availability of LTE-Advanced networks for fast, anytime, anywhere wireless connectivity. Rugged devices come equipped with priority network access for first responders. These networks allow first responders to connect directly to their dispatch centers to enable real-time data sharing, voice, and video.
First responders and their command centers enjoy many advantages from public safety broadband connections. They include enhanced situational awareness, access to the latest information, and the ability to monitor team member positions, among others. First responders can also use their dedicated broadband connections to access medical records, maps of buildings, personnel locations, and real-time video and traffic updates.
Thanks to more effective and focused operations, the latest technology provides first responders and their respective departments with increased data accuracy and reduced operating costs. The ability to accomplish more missions effectively leads to increased team satisfaction.
Tough Enough for Public Safety
First responders need ruggedized tablets and notebooks. These devices are tough enough to endure the harshness of police, fire, and EMS field environments.
Getac devices make the grade, even when it’s military standard. For instance, Getac’s B360 (PC Mag’s Editor’s Choice award winner for rugged laptops) is a Windows 10 device. This rugged laptop offers a 13” display that is built to the US Defense MIL-STD-810G standard for resistance to shocks and impacts, including repeated drops from a height of six feet. The B360 has also been certified to operate in extreme hot and cold temperatures, rain, humidity, and harsh sunlight. What’s more, this laptop meets the MIL-STD-461G standard for resistance to electromagnetic interference. Similarly, it also has the IP66 standard for resistance to dust and water penetrations.
The Getac S410 notebook computer is also purpose-built for public safety work in less demanding environments. This semi-rugged Windows 10 device offers a 14” display and splash-resistant keyboard in a case that has been MIL-STD-810H-certified for toughness and weather resistance (operating temperature range: -20°F to 145°F) and IP53 certified for dust/water resistance.
The enhanced security options of both devices protect against unauthorized access. Security features include Getac’s wide selection of multifactor authentication options. These include built-in fingerprint readers (FPR), radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers, smart card readers, and infrared (IR) webcams for facial recognition. In addition, users can utilize barcode readers (BCRs) to scan drivers’ licenses.
Documenting What Happens
Growing public demand for increased police accountability drives first responders’ adoption of body-worn cameras. This includes the deployment of HD cameras, monitors, and digital video recorders (DVRs) in their vehicles. All these devices must be rugged and reliable in day-to-day operations. As first responders face such tremendous pressure to succeed, equipment failure is not an option.
Getac addresses these needs through its Getac Video Solution products. Getac’s compact yet rugged (MIL-STD 810G) BC-03 body-worn camera captures a wide-angle 165° diagonal view of what’s happening in 1080p full HD resolution. Likewise, the device also has High Dynamic Range (HDR) color even at night in very low-light conditions. The BC-03 can transmit this footage live to a dispatcher using 4G LTE wireless broadband. An onboard second battery supports up to 16 hours of operation at a time.
For public safety vehicles, Getac’s compact ZeroDark HD camera (available in single and dual-lens versions, plus an infrared ZeroDark for backseat use) provides HD video quality even in the lowest of light conditions. This device ensures viewable footage no matter what time of day or night first responders shoots a video.
For clear in-vehicle viewing 24/7, Getac offers a 5-inch HD display. This device provides 2.5 times more picture resolution than its nearest competitor. Meanwhile, Getac’s VR-X20 DVR serves as a multi-camera recording unit for vehicles and body-worn camera feeds. As a result, this ensures reliable storage and seamless downloads from the Getac Enterprise evidence management platform.
Enhanced Public Safety
Advanced technology enhances public safety performance and extends the effectiveness of government personnel. This is why more public safety agencies plan to implement rugged mobile devices in the field along with cloud computing, analytics, machine learning, and device management systems within the next five years.
Now is a critical time to make plans for the long term. Getac can help to map out a future for your organization. | <urn:uuid:47c8b16f-4e04-4b32-9cee-876a38cee2c6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.getac.com/us/blog/how-technology-makes-public-safety-safer-and-more-efficient/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.921124 | 1,130 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Adding sound to quantum simulations
(ScienceDaily) A new device developed at Stanford University that promises to bring an audio dimension to previously silent quantum science experiments.
In particular, it could bring sound to a common quantum science setup known as an optical lattice, which uses a crisscrossing mesh of laser beams to arrange atoms in an orderly manner resembling a crystal. This tool is commonly used to study the fundamental characteristics of solids and other phases of matter that have repeating geometries. A shortcoming of these lattices, however, is that they are silent.
“Without sound or vibration, we miss a crucial degree of freedom that exists in real materials,” said Benjamin Lev, associate professor of applied physics and of physics, who set his sights on this issue when he first came to Stanford in 2011. “It’s like making soup and forgetting the salt; it really takes the flavor out of the quantum ‘soup.'” After a decade of engineering and benchmarking, Lev and collaborators from Pennsylvania State University and the University of St. Andrews have produced the first optical lattice of atoms that incorporates sound.
The research was published Nov. 11 in Nature. By designing a very precise cavity that held the lattice between two highly reflective mirrors, the researchers made it so the atoms could “see” themselves repeated thousands of times via particles of light, or photons, that bounce back and forth between the mirrors. This feedback causes the photons to behave like phonons — the building blocks of sound.
“If it were possible to put your ear to the optical lattice of atoms, you would hear their vibration at around 1 kHz,” said Lev.
There are many directions that Lev hopes his lab — and perhaps others — will take this invention, including studying the physics of exotic superconductors and the creation of quantum neural networks — which is why the team is already working to create a second version of their device.
“Open up a canonical textbook of solid-state physics, and you see a large portion has to do with phonons,” said Lev. “And, up until now, we couldn’t study anything built upon that with quantum simulators employing atoms and photons because we couldn’t emulate this basic form of sound.” | <urn:uuid:84b25fee-5e14-4b88-bbfd-ecc46d437310> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.insidequantumtechnology.com/news-archive/adding-sound-to-quantum-simulations/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.956296 | 474 | 3.640625 | 4 |
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How Micro Services Impact Your App Security
An IBM survey of IT executives, developer executives, and developers found that 87% of microservices users agreed that microservices adoption is worthwhile. Microservices are popular with both technology leaders and developers, making them a highly effective tool for businesses of all sizes.
Microservices have many uses, and security is one area where micro services can both help — and harm. Learn how micro services provide flexibility, scalability, and both security advantages and disadvantages to app developers and their end-users.
What are micro services?
Microservices, sometimes called micro services architecture, are an approach to building an app in which many independently deployable, cloud-based components or services are brought together. The idea behind micro service architecture is that the sum is greater than its parts. Micro services enable a developer to layer best-in-class components to create a unified experience for the end-user that exceeds an app experience built from scratch.
Micro services “are built around business capabilities and independently deployable by fully automated deployment machinery. There is a bare minimum of centralized management of these services, which may be written in different programming languages and use different data storage technologies,” describes Martin Fowler.
Each microservice deployed by a developer is responsible for a discrete task and communicates with other services through simple APIs. Here’s why this structure works — and how it benefits app development.
Microservices offer a number of advantages to software developers and end-users alike. Microservice advantages are technical and practical — here are just a few main benefits.
Microservices can be deployed independently. Because these services are small (micro), software developers can easily go in and change a line of code or add a new feature without disrupting the entire application. In micro service architecture, even though all components work together to create the app experience, not every component is dependent on the others. That means when you need to make updates, you can do so flexibly and with agility.
Select the best components for the job. The traditional approach to building apps, with a common stack supported by a large database, has some serious drawbacks.
As IBM explained, “[E]very component of an application must share a common stack, data model and database even if there is a clear, better tool for the job for certain elements. It makes for bad architecture, and it’s frustrating for developers who are constantly aware that a better, more efficient way to build these components is available.” Micro services allow developers to build faster, better-optimized apps.
Find and fix problems faster. Micro services make it easy for developers to isolate faults when something goes wrong. The polylithic nature of micro services means that if one stops functioning, the entire application won’t collapse. Instead, the error can be quickly identified, remedied and re-deployed without interrupting service completely. If there’s a security problem, developers can isolate the bug and patch it quickly.
Microservices are scalable. When you need to develop new app features or account for new users, micro service architecture provides the flexibility to scale up or down. “As the workload grows with more and faster data, additional microservices can be deployed to run in mirror to spread the load across further hardware resources. In contrast, refactoring a monolithic application to handle more load—which will require significant changes—potentially creates greater risk for introducing errors,” wrote the experts at DevOps.
Microservices can play an integral role in app security, allowing developers to implement a layered defense that avoids downtime, makes patching easier, and covers all bases when it comes to threat management.
Micro services security risks
These microservices provide a way for app developers to holistically secure the valuable information of their end-users. However, there are some disadvantages to using microservices that could put your app — and user information — at risk.
Microservices architecture is more complex than traditional architecture. Microservice-oriented architecture has increased the complexities of development by using codebases that tend to be large and decentralized. In addition, an app may draw from projects that might have multiple codebases with similar or redundant code. Ultimately, using microservices in your app increases the likelihood of secrets sprawl and PII exposure.
This is where a tool like Nightfall can help. Nightfall’s data loss protection AI ensures confidential or sensitive information isn’t shared outside of a SaaS platform by scanning for content within messages and files that break predefined policies. In our next guide to microservices, we’ll discuss how to secure your microservices architecture to maintain best-in-class service and avoid attacks by online criminals.
Learn more about cloud DLP and setting up your organization for secure remote work in our complete 2021 Security Playbook for Remote-first Organizations. And, learn more about Nightfall by scheduling a demo at the link below.
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Schedule a Demo
Select a time that works for you below for 30 minutes. Once confirmed, you’ll receive a calendar invite with a Zoom link. If you don’t see a suitable time, please reach out to us via email at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:2dacd0e9-91a9-497b-882a-60d2e97b154e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://nightfall.ai/how-micro-services-impact-your-app-security | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337415.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003101805-20221003131805-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.923913 | 1,218 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Exasol, a high-performance analytics database company, today launched its new study’s findings into the attitudes and understanding that young people – “digitial natives” – currently in higher education or just entering the world of work have towards data.
The study of 3,000 16- to 21-year-olds (coined D/NATIVES by Exasol because of their everyday digital skills) finds that despite over half of respondents believing that their ability to understand data will be as vital to their future as their ability to read and write – only 43% actually consider themselves to be data literate. Interestingly, a higher proportion (55%) said they could read, work with, analyze and argue with statistics, which are the required data literacy skills according to MIT’s definition.
The issue is that D/NATIVES don’t fully realize that their everyday online activities involve a lot of data consumption and analysis—from fitness trackers to entertainment recommendation engines to product reviews and scores. Given this gap in understanding, it is not surprising that D/NATIVES don’t feel equipped to apply their subconscious and habitual data literacy skills to the real world.
Adah Parris, futurist, cultural strategist, and contributor to the report, comments: “Data literacy is about more than number crunching; it’s about being a storyteller. A narrator. As we create data, the data creates us. It is a non-linear process of inter and intra-connected storytelling. Data isn’t this complex, scary thing for technical people. Data is about facts, and data literacy is the ability to recognize and interpret the patterns that those facts reveal. On that basis, D/NATIVES might actually be more data literate than they think.”
Exasol’s study also raises questions about the role education plays in preparing young people to enter an increasingly data-driven workplace. The survey reveals that D/NATIVES don’t feel their schooling goes far enough in teaching them the data skills necessary for the workplace – 49% believe that working with data will play a major role in their future career. Not surprisingly, over half (55%) believe learning data skills should be more prominent in their education.
“Maybe the role of the educator of the future is not to merely pass on facts (data) and figures but to help D/NATIVES to recognize the interconnectedness and transferability of skills within and across every aspect of their lives,” added Parris.
Moving beyond the education system and into the workplace, today’s business leaders want employees to interpret data so they can make better-informed decisions. However, Exasol’s findings suggest that D/NATIVES may fall short of their future employers’ expectations.
“Regardless of job descriptions, the ability to work with data is becoming increasingly crucial in the workplace. In theory, D/NATIVES should have developed the data literacy skills necessary for effective data analysis, storytelling, and visualizations. Their untapped potential could spur a revolution in the way we use data to transform business and improve our daily lives,” said Helena Schwenk, Technology Evangelist at Exasol. “But our survey highlights two issues: a genuine skills shortage when it comes to the more complex data skills gained through the education system and a clear miscommunication between the language D/NATIVES use and the business jargon used by employers. There is work for educators, business leaders, and the young people themselves to do to bridge the data literacy gap—to create not just a productive workforce but also a richer society.”
Exasol’s report: “D/NATIVES: The future of your business,” aims to help educators and business leaders understand how they can bridge the data literacy gap and unlock the potential of today’s D/NATIVES as they enter an increasingly data-led economy. #ImADataDreamer is designed by modern data professionals for the modern data professional – uncovering stories of the real people behind data. It’s packed with regular new content and insights from credible voices within the industry – from data visualization experts to data scientists and Chief Data Officers – as they tell stories about how data is changing lives and share their own experiences working with data. | <urn:uuid:2a1c138e-d318-4ac9-ac05-13d162610909> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://dataconomy.com/2021/03/new-research-young-digital-natives-lack-data-literacy/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338073.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007112411-20221007142411-00524.warc.gz | en | 0.945229 | 892 | 2.78125 | 3 |
An increasing body of experience with industrial control system (ICS) security, as well as the emerging Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are driving a new consensus as to the difference between information technology (IT) and operations technology (OT) / ICS security programs.
NIST, ANSSI, the ARC, the Gartner Group and others all recognize that preventing mis-operation of industrial systems in order to preserve safe and reliable operations is a fundamental priority for industrial sites, while the top priority on IT networks is one variation or another of data protection.
Defining ICS cybersecurity
IT cybersecurity has long been defined as a set of measures intended to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data. ICS cybersecurity is increasingly defined as a set of measures intended to protect the safe and reliable operation of physical industrial processes and the computers that control those processes, rather than measures to protect data. For example:
- NIST 800-82r2 advises that “ICS cybersecurity is essential to the safe and reliable operation of modern industrial processes.”
- The ARC Advisory Group points out that “Safe and reliable operation is an imperative for industrial processes. […] This distinguishes industrial cybersecurity deliberations from those used for IT cybersecurity programs.”
- Gartner observes that “From a security planning and operations perspective, OT environments are designed for safety and reliability first. This contrasts with IT, which emphasizes confidentiality, integrity and availability of data as primary goals.”
This difference in priorities drives important differences between IT and OT security programs. IT risk assessment methodologies are inadequate when applied to reliability-critical or safety-critical networks. IT security programs are equally inadequate.
For example, the Gartner’s 2017 paper “Demystify Seven Cybersecurity Myths of Operational Technology and the Industrial Internet of Things” concludes that it is a mistake to use IT risk assessment methodologies to assess OT risks and that “an organization cannot expect that [a security] architecture and design originally meant to protect information can address requirements specific to physical systems.”
ICS security is different
When designing industrial security programs, intrusion prevention is seen as a much higher priority than security incident detection, response and recovery. Essential elements of a preventative OT-centric approach to security include:
Perimeter security – important industrial sites always have strong physical and network perimeter protection. No such site allows members of the public to walk up to sensitive physical equipment and start smacking it with a hammer. No such site allows packets from all over the Internet to test their systems for zero-day vulnerabilities.
Capabilities-based design – well-protected industrial sites design their security programs to defeat reliably all widely-available attack capabilities, rather than try to intuit motives of the moment that might attributable to specific threat actors.
The reason for the emphasis on prevention in ICS is that, as the Gartner report says, “Many OT security failures have direct consequences on physical environments, potentially resulting in death, injury, environmental damage or large-scale disruptions of critical services. While serious and business-threatening, IT security failures are seldom life- or property threatening.” Detection, response and recovery are still important on ICS networks, but the first focus must be on prevention – human lives, environmental disasters and damaged physical equipment cannot after all be “restored from backups.”
Unidirectional gateway technology
A wide variety of experts, standards and guidance are going on the record regarding firewalled connectivity in ICS networks, recommending that unidirectional security gateways and related technology be used instead of firewalls in many industrial contexts. The ANSSI standards for industrial cybersecurity for example permit firewalls on IT networks, strongly recommend unidirectional gateways for the IT/OT interface, and forbid firewalls entirely for interfaces to the most sensitive industrial networks.
Unidirectional gateways are also seen as important enablers for IIoT deployments. Unlike firewalls, unidirectional gateways can connect industrial networks directly to IT, Internet and cloud systems without risk of attacks leaking back into protected industrial networks.
For a more information, see the whitepaper “Emerging Consensus for an ICS Security Approach.” | <urn:uuid:31a4c034-8569-4324-93cb-ea27af00496c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/08/27/ics-security-approach/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335355.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929131813-20220929161813-00724.warc.gz | en | 0.928497 | 877 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Middleware first gained popularity in the 1980s. Deploying middleware then allowed new applications and services to access older legacy back-end systems. This allowed developers to ensure that new interfaces are capable of receiving data from older back-end technology.
Sometimes referred to as “software glue”, middleware continues to be used today, as software that mediates between two separate pieces of software. It underpins the architecture philosophy on the backend and allows an operating system to communicate with applications.
Today’s middleware is less about connecting to legacy systems and more about overall access and communication. Let’s take a look.
What is middleware?
Middleware is software that acts as an intermediate between the backend and the front end. It is a runner between the two platforms that allow users to access otherwise inaccessible functionality. For example:
- Middleware may run between a Windows machine and a Linux back-end.
- Middleware could be the piece that allows enterprise employees to use remote applications.
Middleware can be easily understood as the “to” in phrases like peer-to-peer—it is middleware software that enables the data to travel.
Middleware is also important for application development and delivery. By understand the operating systems that a company uses to underpin its operations, a software developer can account for the way in which an application will be distributed.
How middleware works
Allowing applications to communicate through middleware means greater longevity of the operating system architecture, thanks to integration middleware aiding with communication.
Various types of middleware are necessary for performing the functions we expect of the applications that we use in business and personal settings. In fact, they are far more common than most people realize.
For example, Android users rely on middleware every time they use any phone application. The Android operating system is built on a modified Linux kernel, so developers need to build the application with the need to communicate with Linux in mind.
Linux needs to communicate with an app, but it needs to use the Android OS as middleware in order to successfully do so. As you can see, the request from the application needs to communicate with the back end. In order to do that, the Android operating system will:
- Send the request back.
- Receive the data in response.
- Transform the data for the application.
Where is middleware useful?
Everywhere! Middleware is useful absolutely everywhere, but especially in enterprise settings.
Middleware and middleware developers support application development by allowing back-ends to become front-end agnostic, in some cases. Middleware enables operating systems of all kinds to be linked up to all kinds of front-end applications, including everything from web servers to database middleware.
Types of middleware
Middleware is not one type of software. Middleware comes in many forms and each type has a different use case which is useful to improving productivity and accessibility to apps.
In fact, there are many broad types of middleware that each serve different purposes. Depending on a business’s needs, they may only need a type of middleware that will lock the client machine when it is accessing remote programs. Other enterprises might need to concurrently use both local and remote functionality, meaning that they need a different type.
Here are some examples of middleware, including examples you will have encountered in your day-to-day life.
Application programming interface (API)
An API is middleware software that communicates information between a front end and a back end. Technically, APIs aren’t middleware, but they serve a similar purpose.
A common area that people will find APIs is in headless platforms—the back-end only communicates with the APIs, which then run the data to the front-end. This allows web services to be completely customizable, instead of being locked into a rigid, monolithic provision.
(Learn how to build API portals devs will love.)
Remote procedure call (RPC)
When working with distributed computing setups, an enterprise application might rely on a specific kind of middleware called Remote Procedure Call (RPC).
When a computer program starts a procedure on a remote machine, it is beginning a client-to-server process. In order to do this, the local computer starts to use middleware to allow the server to perform the procedure.
This allows an end-user to perform remote produce as if it was local and to make the most of distributed systems and any enterprise application that the user needs. Without RPC, it would be difficult to run thin-client machines.
Message-oriented middleware (MOM)
MOM is similar to RPC in that it allows users to take advantage of distributed systems. Intended for applications that span multiple operating systems, it takes the messages that are outputted by software components such as applications and allows for platform-agnostic communication.
Whereas RPC needs the called procedure to be returned in order for the client to begin working again, MOM allows for loose coupling of components. A message broker (or the middleware) provides translation services back to the end-user without the need to lock the systems together. Through messaging, the middleware platform translates information back to the end-user.
Middleware is necessary
Whether you are working in cloud computing or in another area that requires distributed applications, middleware software provides a range of tools to developers for creating application servers and other tools that are useful in an enterprise environment.
Applications can work together with a range of back-end technology to ensure that having a diverse computer environment does not hold back an organization’s ability to access enterprise applications.
In fact, middleware provides a wide range of uses to any business. | <urn:uuid:b5260a47-11e1-4edf-a2ae-9e8cdf60fc30> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.bmc.com/blogs/middleware/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930212504-20221001002504-00724.warc.gz | en | 0.930512 | 1,177 | 3.6875 | 4 |
If cybercrime were a country, it would have the 13th highest GDP in the world.
Worldwide, cybercriminals rake in at least $1.5 trillion every year — an amount equal to Russia's gross domestic product (GDP), according to research by Dr. Michael McGuire, senior lecturer in criminology at Surrey University and commissioned by security firm Bromium. In fact, if cybercrime were a country, it would have the 13th highest GDP in the world. McGuire's revenue figure includes estimated earnings of $860 billion from illicit or illegal online markets, $500 billion from intellectual property theft, $160 billion from data trading, $1.6 billion from crimeware-as-a-service, and $1 billion from ransomware. The research presents evidence that cybercrime revenues often exceed those of legitimate small to midrange companies.
In fact, the global crime economy has become a self-perpetuating organism — an interlinked web of profit where the boundary between the legitimate and illegitimate is often unclear. The McGuire report notes the emergence of platform criminality, which is similar to the business model used by companies like Uber and Amazon and whose stock in trade is data. The report also red-flags new modes of criminality that these platforms enable, and they allow illicit monies to be directed to more widespread criminal activities such as human trafficking, drug production and distribution, and even terrorism.
The World Goes Digital, and so Does Crime
Cybercrime is now a profitable underground economy. The fabled "darknet" provides the platform for transactions, the place where demand meets supply. The evolving cybercrime-as-a-service model offers everything from distributed denial-of-service attacks and malware to shiploads of stolen data sets on demand. Today, engaging in cybercrime is as simple as legitimate e-commerce.
Meanwhile, and making matters worse, the dependency on the availability and performance of IT infrastructure among legitimate enterprises is increasing heavily, which makes them more vulnerable to breaches that can wreak havoc on business. A few errant clicks by a clueless or malicious employee can take an organization offline or flood it with malware.
For those who know how, it is relatively simple to access the tools, services, and expertise of the cybercriminal. As a result, it's certain that both enterprises and governments will see more sophisticated, costly, and disruptive attacks — and that the problem won't be solved with old thinking or legacy technology. It will require fresh, more intelligent, and nimble approaches.
Platform Criminality Is Emerging
Interestingly, McGuire's report describes a growing interconnectedness and interdependence between the illegitimate and legitimate economies, something he calls the "Web of Profit." He contends that "companies and nation states now make money from this Web of Profit. They also acquire data and competitive advantages from it, and use it as a tool for strategy, global advancement and social control."
He continues: "There is a range of ways in which many leading and respectable online platforms are now implicated in enabling or supporting crime, albeit unwittingly, in most cases."
The emergence of platform criminality — which mimics the platform capitalism typified by companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Uber — offers fertile ground for hackers to further increase their ill-gotten gains. The report raises concerns that platform criminality is funding broader criminal activities such as human trafficking, drug production and distribution, and even terrorism.
According to the report, whether it's through hacking companies to steal users or personal data, distribute malware, flog illegal goods and services, establish fake shopfronts to launder money, or simply connect buyers and sellers, cybercriminals are clearly adept at leveraging existing platforms for commercial gain.
"This is creating a kind of 'monstrous double' of the legitimate information economy — where data is king," writes McGuire. "The Web of Profit is not just feeding off the way wealth is generated there, it is reproducing and, in some cases, outperforming it."
Post-Crime Reality and Terrorism
"We can clearly link cybercrime to the spread of new psychoactive substances with over 620 new synthetic drug types on the market since 2005," adds McGuire. "Many substances of this kind are manufactured in China or India, purchased via online markets, then shipped in bulk to Europe. But there is also evidence that groups who acquire revenues from cybercrime are involved in the active production of drugs."
The report shows that cybercriminal platform owners are likely to receive the biggest benefits from this new wave of cybercrime, and that they will probably distance themselves from the actual crimes. In fact, individual hackers may only earn a paltry $30,000 a year. In contrast, a trader can earn up to $2 million if they have just 50 stolen card details at their disposal.
Originally appeared in DARKReading | <urn:uuid:5f771a95-7c62-4999-9e76-781270fe0d3e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://resources.experfy.com/iot/cybercrime-is-skyrocketing-as-the-world-goes-digital/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337287.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002052710-20221002082710-00724.warc.gz | en | 0.948755 | 987 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Modern agriculture depends on bees. In fact, our entire ecosystem, including the food we eat and the air we breathe, counts on pollinators. But the pollinator population is declining according to Sabiha Rumani Malik, the founder and executive president of The World Bee Project. But, in an intriguing collaboration with Oracle and by putting artificial intelligence, internet of things and big data to work on the problem, they hope to reverse the trend.
Why is the global bee population in decline?
According to an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report, pollinators are in danger. There are many reasons pollinators are being driven to extinction, including habitat destruction, urbanisation, use of pesticides, pollution, fragmentation of natural flowering habitats, predators and parasites, and changing climate. However, until recently, with The World Bee Project’s work, there hasn’t been a global initiative to study bee populations or to research and attack the issue from a global perspective.
Why is it important to save the bees?
Did you know that bees, along with other pollinators, such as butterflies, are the reason plants can produce seeds and reproduce? According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 35 percent of food crops and three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants depend on bees and pollinators. In fact, in order to ensure the almond crop gets pollinated in California each year, most of the beehives in the United States are shipped to California to ensure it. In fact, bees help to pollinate 90% of the leading global crop types, including fruit trees, coffee, vanilla, and cotton plants. And, of course, healthy plants are critical in replenishing our oxygen supply thanks to photosynthesis.
If the pollinators aren’t alive or healthy enough to do their job, our global crop production, food security, biodiversity, and clean air is in peril. Honeybees are the world’s most important pollinators. As much as 40 percent of the global nutrient supply for humans depends on pollinators. Presently there are approximately 2 billion people who suffer deficiencies of micronutrients.
“Our lives are intrinsically connected to the bees,” Malik said.
Partnership to monitor global honeybee population
The World Bee Project is the first private globally coordinated organisation to launch and be devoted to monitoring the global honey bee population. Since 2014, the organisation has brought together scientists to study the global problem of bee decline to provide insight about the issue to farmers, governments, beekeepers, and other vested organisations.
In 2018, Oracle Cloud technology was brought into the work to better understand the worldwide decline in bee populations, and The World Bee Project Hive Network began.
How technology can save the bees
How could technology be used to save the bees? Technology can be leveraged to help save the bees in a similar way that it is applied to other innovative projects. First, by using internet-of-things sensors, including microphones and cameras that can see invasive predators and collect data from the bees and hives. Human ingenuity and innovations such as wireless technologies, robotics, and computer vision help deliver new insights and solutions to the issue. One of the key metrics of a hive’s health is the sounds it produces. Critical to the data-gathering efforts is to “listen” to the hives to determine colony health, strength, and behaviour as well as collect temperature, humidity, apiary weather conditions, and hive weight.
The sound and vision sensors can also detect hornets, which can be a threat to bee populations.
The data is then fed to the Oracle Cloud, where artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms get to work to analyse the data. The algorithms will look for patterns and try to predict behaviours of the hive, such as if it’s preparing to swarm. The insights are then shared with beekeepers and conservationists so they can step in to try to protect the hives. Since it’s a globally connected network, the algorithms can also learn more about differences in bee colonies in different areas of the world. Students, researchers, and even interested citizens can also interact with the data, work with it through the hive network’s open API, and discuss it via chatbot.
For example, the sound and vision sensors can detect hornets, which can be a threat to bee populations. The sound from the wing flab or a hornet is different from those of bees, and the AI can pick this up automatically and alert beekeepers to the hornet threat.
Technology is making it easier for The World Bee Project to share real-time information and gather resources to help save the world’s bee population. In fact, Malik shared, “Our partnership with Oracle Cloud is an extraordinary marriage between nature and technology.” Technology is helping to multiply the impact of The World Bee Project Hive Network across the world and makes action to save the bees quicker and more effective.
Here you can see a short video showing the connected beehive in augmented reality during my interview with Sabiha Rumani Malik – pretty cool: | <urn:uuid:88be47aa-12bb-4dc5-aaac-4aacbc4d085c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://bernardmarr.com/how-artificial-intelligence-iot-and-big-data-can-save-the-bees/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337529.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004215917-20221005005917-00724.warc.gz | en | 0.923671 | 1,061 | 3.53125 | 4 |
In this Cisco CCNA training tutorial, you’ll learn about the IP address classes. We’re going to cover Classes A, B, and C which are used for allocating addresses to our hosts, and then Classes D and E. Scroll down for the video and text tutorials.
IP Adress Classes Video Tutorial
The first thing to talk about is the line that designates where the network portion and the host portion of the address. If a subnet mask is a /8 for example, we’re going to have 8 bits for the network portion and 24 bits for the host portion.
Comparing that with a /24, we’re going to have 24 bits for the network portion and 8 bits for the host portion. With /8, we’re going to have few networks, but a lot of hosts per network. With /24 we’d have a lot of networks, but few hosts per network.
How Internet Addressing Was Meant to Work
Let’s talk about how Internet addressing was originally supposed to work. When IPv4 was first conceived, the designers didn’t realize that there would be a huge explosion of IP address usage. Everybody would be using and would require an IP address.
IP addressing was designed for what was right at that time. As we go through this tutorial, you need to think about the Internet about how it was then to understand why IPv4 was designed the way that it is.
There are a few issues with IPv4 that you’ll learn about and those issues came about because the designers didn’t realize what was going to happen in the future. So as long as you think about it from that point of view, then everything should make sense.
The original way that IPv4 addressing was meant to work is that when a company wanted to communicate on the Internet, they would apply for a range of IP addresses. The global assignment of IP addresses is handled by IANA, which stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
From a global point of view, IANA is at the top level and they assign large blocks of addresses to the local authorities in different regions. Companies would apply to their local authority to get a range of public IP addresses.
If a company has 6000 hosts, for example, they would ask for a range of IP addresses big enough to cover that, plus some room for growth in the future as well. That company would then allocate those addresses to their hosts in their different offices.
Unfortunately, when IPv4 was created, the designers didn’t realize how big the Internet was going to get, so they didn’t create a big address space. IPv4 addresses are not enough for every host that needs an address that’s going to be communicating on the Internet. So, IPv4 ran out of addresses.
The longterm solution for the problem is IPv6, which has got a much bigger address space.
- IPv4 – 32-bit address
- IPv6 – 128-bit address
As a workaround, Private IP addresses with Network Address Translation (NAT) are currently deployed in the majority of enterprise networks. IPv6 is a longterm solution, but nowadays, private address with NAT is more commonly deployed.
The Internet authorities split the global IPv4 address space into separate classes. Class A addresses are assigned to networks with a very large number of hosts. Class A was going to be a small network portion with a large host portion.
The high-order bit, which is the first bit in a Class A address, is always set to zero. In the figure below, you will see on the left side in the first octet, the first bit was highlighted and it’s always going to be a zero in a Class A address.
With Class A addresses, the default subnet mask is a /8, which is 255.0.0.0 in the dotted decimal notation. The network address range from 188.8.131.52 to 184.108.40.206/8. The usable host address ranges from 220.127.116.11 to 18.104.22.168. It allows for 126 networks and with the host bits 24 to the power of two, adds up to 16,777,214 hosts per network.
Reserved Class A Addresses
You maybe noticed that if you set the first bit to zero, we would have all zeros 0.0.0.0/8, and we could go up to 127.0.0.0/8. However, all zeros and 127.0.0.0/8 are not included in the valid address range. We can’t assign them to our hosts because they are reserved addresses. 0.0.0.0/8 is reserved and it signifies this network, also, it is used by some protocols.
The range 0.0.0.1 to 0.255.255.255 are not valid addresses that you can assign to hosts. Same with 127.0.0.0/8 which is reserved and used as the loopback address. It is used for testing the IP stack on the local computer. Therefore, the range 127.0.0.1 to 127.255.255.255 are not valid host addresses.
In the figure below, you can see that they just wiped out over 33 million addresses that could’ve been used for addressing actual hosts on the public Internet. If you think about it, they could’ve just used a single address to signify ‘this network’ rather than using 16 million addresses.
Same for the loopback, they didn’t need 16 million addresses to be used for loopback testing. You might be thinking, “Well, there’s this huge shortage of addresses on the Internet, why would they do something crazy like that?”
The reason is that, when IPv4 was designed, they didn’t realize that they were going to run out of addresses, so they thought, “Hey, it’s no problem, we can assign 16 million addresses for testing, it doesn’t matter, because we don’t have a shortage of addresses.”
Let me give you a demo of using the loopback. Let’s open the command prompt and enter the command ipconfig. You’ll see that the IP address 127.0.0.1 is not assigned to any network card, it’s built-in IP.
So, I can ping 127.0.0.1, which is the loopback address, and you’ll see it getting replies which means it’s up. The reason you do this loopback test is to test that the TCP/IP is working on the local machine.
Let’s say that you’re in New York and you want to check that you’ve got connectivity to a server in Boston. You could ping that server but there’s not much point in pinging a server in Boston if you can’t get to your local default gateway router in New York, so you would ping that first.
Also, there’s not much point in pinging the local router, if TCP/IP isn’t even working on your laptop. So the way that you verify that TCP/IP is up and running on your computer is by pinging the loopback address.
It’s the entire Class A range beginning with 127 that is reserved for testing loopback. I don’t have to ping 127.0.0.1, I could ping 127.100.200.50 as well. I can ping anything beginning with 127 and it’s going to check the local TCP/IP stack. It’s good to have that address for testing, but not so good that they took out an entire Class A network for it.
A company that had a Class A address, would not put all 16 million hosts into a single logical network, that would be terrible for performance and security. They would split that big /8 range up into smaller subnetworks and assign those to their different departments in their different offices.
For example, if they received a Class A address 22.214.171.124 /8, they could allocate the subnet 126.96.36.199 /24 to sales computers in New York, 188.8.131.52 /24 to accounting, and 184.108.40.206 /24 to sales computers in Boston.
They would have that huge network that was assigned by the Internet authorities and they would split it into smaller subnets, this process is called subnetting. In this manner, they could assign them to their different types of hosts in different offices.
Class B addresses were originally assigned to medium to large-sized networks. With Class B, the first two bits in the address are always going to be set to 1 and 0.
Class B subnet mask default is /16, which is the first two octets. The network addresses range from 220.127.116.11 to 18.104.22.168 and it allows for 16,384 networks and 65,534 hosts on each of those networks.
Again, you would never have a flat subnet with up to 65,000 hosts in there. If you were given a Class B network in the real world, you would subnet it into smaller subnetworks.
The last one that can be used to assign addresses to hosts is Class C and this is used for small networks. Class C has the default subnet mask of /24 which is up to the end of the third octet. With Class C, it’s the first three bits that are important so they’re always set to binary 1, 1, and 0.
The network addresses range from 192.0.0.0 to 22.214.171.124. That allows for a little over two million networks and 254 hosts per network.
Class C is small enough that it could be allocated as-is for real-world deployment. But, we could subnet it into smaller networks as well.
A Quick Note on Private Addresses
I gave you all the addresses that were available in our Class A, B, and C networks. We spoke about the reserved addresses for our loopbacks and the addresses beginning with zero as well.
There’s also a range of reserved private addresses in each class. Those are valid to be assigned to hosts, unlike the other reserved addresses, but the difference is that these are not routable on the public Internet. These were originally designed for hosts in a closed private network but they should have no Internet connectivity.
For example, in a high school, you’ve got students that need to work on PCs. However, you don’t want them to be able to browse the Internet, so you would put them on private addresses.
The benefits that you get from that are:
- They can’t get hacked because we’re not connected to the Internet.
- It doesn’t cost you anything. Unlike public IP addresses, private IP addresses are free.
The different ranges that are used for our private addresses are:
- Class A – 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
- Class B – 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
- Class C – 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255
We discussed earlier that Classes A, B, and C include all the addresses that are valid to be assigned to our and hosts. Those address went up from 126.96.36.199 in the first octet, up to 188.8.131.52.
You may be thinking, “What about 184.108.40.206 to 255.255.255.255,” because you know that the maximum value in each of our octets is 255, but we only went up to 223.
With Class D, the four high-order bits or the first four bits in the first octet are always set to the binary value of 1, 1, 1, and 0 as shown in the figure below.
If we add these up, 128 plus 64 plus 32 is equal to 224. So, the lowest address is going to be 224, then the remaining bits over to the right are 8, 4, 2, and 1 which adds up to 15. 224 plus 15 adds up to 239.
That’s where we get the range of 220.127.116.11 to 18.104.22.168 from. These Class D addresses are not allocated to hosts and there’s no default subnet mask. Class D addresses are used for multicast traffic.
To see how multicast works, let’s do a quick review of unicast first. In the example below, I’ve got my sender over on the left, which has a source IP address of 10.10.10.10. It is going to send traffic to destinations at 10.10.10.15 and 10.10.20.15.
The sender sends traffic to 10.10.10.15 and if you look into the packet’s Layer 3 IP header, you would see that the source IP address is 10.10.10.10 and the destination is 10.10.10.15.
If we’re using a /24 subnet mask, they would be both in the same subnet. Therefore, the traffic can go directly between the hosts without having to go via a router.
Then, the sender sends traffic to the other host up on the top right, 10.10.20.15. Let’s say that this is a video stream that we’re sending. We’ve unicast it to 10.10.10.15, so next, we unicast it to 10.10.20.15 as well.
If you look in the IP header again, the source address is 10.10.10.10, the destination address is 10.10.20.15. We were using the /24 subnet mask, so they’re on different networks. The traffic needs to pass through via a router.
This was video streaming we were doing here, thus, it is two completely separate pieces of traffic. It is going to use 2 MB if it was 1 MB per stream. Now, we can improve this by using multicast traffic.
With multicast traffic, we’re going to send one copy of the traffic from 10.10.10.10, and that one copy is going to be sent to 10.10.10.15 and 10.10.20.15. We’re going to run an application on the sender which is going to send as multicast traffic. In our example, we’re going to send it to our destination multicast address of 22.214.171.124.
It still comes from the same source address of 10.10.10.10 and the destinations still have their normal unicast addresses there as well. The difference is that we’re going to send it to this special multicast address. The traffic will then go to all of the hosts that are interested in getting the said traffic.
A good analogy of this is, you can think of it like tuning into a radio station. The hosts, 10.10.10.15 and 10.10.20.15, run an application that said that they wanted to receive the stream for 126.96.36.199. Now, as long as you’ve configured support for this on your routers, the traffic will get forwarded to all of the hosts that are interested in receiving it.
The benefit you get is, in our example, we’re only sending 1 MB worth of bandwidth rather than 2 MB. If there were 50 interested hosts, it would still just be 1 MB worth of bandwidth rather than 50 MB. You would save a lot on the bandwidth, making things a lot more efficient.
Class E addresses are experimental and reserved for future use. The first bits in Class E are always set to 1, 1, 1, and 1. If we count it up, that’s going to give us possible values of 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255.
Just like our Class D multicast addresses, these addresses do not have a default subnet mask. There is one special address that is used in Class E, which is the broadcast address of 255.255.255.255. That is the broadcast address for ‘this network’. Meaning, whatever network the source is on, it’s a broadcast address for that network.
Using our previous example, I’ll explain further why multicast is different and can be more efficient than broadcast traffic.
Notice in the example that on the local subnet, the hosts that are attached to the switch, it only went to the top host at 10.10.10.15, the traffic did not get sent down to the host below that at the bottom.
With broadcast traffic, it would be sent to all hosts on that subnet, not just the ones that wanted it. Multicast is more targeted and it’s more efficient. Another difference is that as long as you’ve configured your routers to support it, routers will forward multicast traffic.
That’s how we were able to get it to the host up in the top right. Broadcast traffic does not go outside its own local subnet and it does not get forwarded by routers by default.
Class E reserved addresses are never really used. You need to know what they are, particularly for the CCNA exam. In the real world, you’ll never come across Class E addresses because they’re not used in production environments. Class D addresses are used if you’re using multicast.
IP Address Class Summary
Let’s just have a look at a summary of the different classes:
Classes assigned to hosts:
- Class A – 1 to 162 /8
- Class B – 128 to 191 /16
- Class C – 192 to 223 /24
- Class D – 224 to 239 for Multicast
- Class E – 240 to 255 for Experiments
You want to have these classes committed to memory, not just for the CCNA exam where they’re completely essential. They’re completely essential for real-world networking as well.
IP Addressing and Subnetting for New Users: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/routing-information-protocol-rip/13788-3.html
Chapter: Configuring IPv4 Addresses: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/ipaddr_ipv4/configuration/xe-3s/ipv4-xe-3s-book/configuring_ipv4_addresses.html
IT Explained: IP address: https://www.paessler.com/it-explained/ip-address | <urn:uuid:d7f9961f-dcc7-4e5a-9add-0b615d3b02bc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.flackbox.com/ip-address-classes | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337731.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006061224-20221006091224-00724.warc.gz | en | 0.954753 | 4,095 | 3.71875 | 4 |
What is a potentially unwanted program (PUP)?
The abbreviation PUP stands for the potentially unwanted program. From a technical point of view, it is not malware. A PUP is not intended to cause damage to the computer or steal identities and data but usually pursues marketing purposes by displaying advertisements or changing browser settings, such as the start page or the default search. Potentially unwanted programs are often referred to as adware or spyware.
Unlike a malicious program, the software does not get onto a computer through security vulnerabilities or hacker attacks. Usually, the installation is done with the user’s consent. PUPs can take a toll on a computer or severely interfere with its work due to changes in settings and the display of windows.
While some PUPs include features that users actually use, a majority of potentially unwanted programs do not generate any added value for the user. The programs try to generate revenue for the software’s manufacturer by showing advertisements or exploiting user data such as search behavior. Most PUPs are legal and their installation is not prevented by antivirus programs. However, some unwanted programs operate in a legal gray area.
How potentially unwanted programs get onto a computer
Most commonly, potentially unwanted applications enter a computer along with the installation of other free programs. Popular freeware serves as a kind of bait. During the installation, the user, through carelessness, accepts options that allow the installation of other programs. Thus, the user usually actively agrees to the installation of the unwanted program.
Also, when updating certain software on a computer, some vendors try to foist PUPs on users through additional options. Once a PUP is installed on a computer, it may act as a kind of pyramid scheme and prompt the installation of additional unwanted programs.
How to protect yourself from a potentially unwanted program
The best protection against potentially unwanted programs is to be mindful when installing or updating applications. Users should carefully read the individual installation dialogs and uncheck any unwanted checkboxes or options that may have been selected in advance. It may be necessary to select the custom rather than the quick or typical installation routine for some installations.
Another protective measure is not to download the software from freeware and download portals, but directly from the original manufacturer. You should also be wary of free utilities that promise to significantly speed up the system or Internet access, for example. Before installing new software, carefully consider whether it is actually needed. If there is any uncertainty about the function and benefit of the application, a search on the Internet can provide clarity. | <urn:uuid:56a53c6b-e0d0-4c5f-ac29-0f019202c243> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://informationsecurityasia.com/what-is-a-potentially-unwanted-program-pup/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338213.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007143842-20221007173842-00724.warc.gz | en | 0.926998 | 523 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Nikolai Sorokin - stock.adobe.co
Norway is the perfect place to develop autonomous ships. Norwegians love boats, they love technology, and they love to cooperate. On top of that, autonomous ships have practical applications that could affect the lives of many in Norway.
Mary Ann Lundteigen manages SFI AutoShip, an eight-year programme funded by the Research Council on Autonomous Ships and Operations and 22 partners. She is a professor at the department of engineering cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where the centre is hosted.
“Even though some people think fully autonomous ships exist, as far as I know, all first commercial ships with autonomy will start at degree 2,” says Lundteigen. “Degree 2 means the ship is remotely controlled but has at least one seafarer on board.
“Reaching degree 3 – remote control and with no crew on board – is a bigger challenge, so a test period at degree 2 is a good way to gain experience. And then there’s degree 4, which is fully autonomous – where the ship can operate fully on its own and with no seafarers on board. Degree 4 is out of the question for now – at least commercially. But it is an area of active research here in Norway.”
More research is focused on developing small autonomous vessels that operate in restricted areas. This simplifies the work – and, it turns out, it may provide a solution to a problem many Norwegians face every day.
“A part of our daily lives in Norway is crossing fjords to get to work,” says Frode Halverson, cluster manager for Ocean Autonomy Cluster. “Bridges and tunnels are expensive. Ferries are a better option in many situations.”
Operating several small ferries would be less expensive and more environmentally friendly than operating one big ferry. With smaller ferries, though, the cost of the crew is proportionally higher than for big ferries, so reducing the crew size has a bigger payback. Autonomous ship technology is one way of making ferries smaller and smarter.
A lab to design shore control centres
NTNU is currently working with partners to test a prototype of an autonomous passenger ferry, and a control room to intervene remotely as needed. Unlike self-driving cars, autonomous boats can be run by a remote operator in a cost-effective manner. But when the person controlling the vessel is not on board, a new set of challenges arise, including the fact that the captain may not be the one who goes down with the ship.
“We are making shore-based control rooms to monitor and potentially take over control of autonomous ships,” says Ole Andreas Alsos, head of NTNU Shore Control Lab, which is part of SFI AutoShip. “Our lab does not serve as a control room for a specific purpose. Instead, it’s a shore control lab where we do research on different control room designs. We want to learn how to build the best control rooms for different applications: urban ferries, maritime autonomous surface ships, big deep-sea shipping, short sea shipping, car ferries, and so on.”
The physical design consists of a lot of screens and monitors and a very powerful computer using one of the best graphics cards built for gaming applications – the RTX 3090. Currently, operators inside the control room only get visual and audio information from the ferry. But NTNU is looking at ways of replicating the feel of the ship inside the lab. In the future, this might include haptic feedback, so operators can feel the wind and waves, and if a docking is hard, they will feel it.
Studying operators’ reactions
“Our control room has extra features that help us study how operators behave,” says Alsos. “We have cameras, of course, to see what is happening in the control room. But operators also wear wrist bands so we can measure their heart rate variability and their skin conductance, which indicates their stress levels.
“We use glasses with eye-tracking so we can see where they are looking. That is a good indication of where they have their attention. We also measure their pupil dilation. From the size of their pupils, we can get a good impression of their cognitive loads – a large pupil means high cognitive load; a small pupil means lower cognitive load,” he explains.
Video feeds and sensor data from the control room and operator are sent to another lab, where researchers can speak through a microphone to give operators instructions on what to do. The researchers can also observe control room operators’ behaviours, communication styles and stress levels.
Ole Andreas Alsos, NTNU Shore Control Lab
There is also a large meeting room where video feeds from the experiments or usability tests are displayed. This allows developers, product managers, project leaders and other stakeholders to follow along. This feedback system helps stakeholders assess different control room designs.
“To explore different situations, we built a ferry simulator, which is like a digital twin,” says Alsos. “It behaves exactly like a real ferry, but it has at least one advantage – we can create situations that rarely happen in real life or are too dangerous to test. We can simulate kayakers coming towards the vessel, or people falling into the water. We can simulate fires on board and see how operators react and how much time it takes them to take over the control of the ferry.”
One area of concern is cognitive underload. During long, monotonous trips, the captain on board a ship tends to get bored and may no longer be able to react quickly when needed. The same effect will be even more significant for control room operators, who won’t even be on the vessel. To address this problem, NTNU is exploring ways to keep operators thinking just the right amount. If they do too little, they get bored; if they do too much, they get stressed.
“We might have one person operating one ship,” says Alsos. “If the situation is very complex, we could have several people operating one ship. At the other end of this scale, we could have one person operate several ships, or a team of people operating a whole fleet of ships. The scenario we are currently testing is having two people operate up to 20 small passenger ferries. We are trying to find the best user interface for this specific case.
“There are some international standards on traditional control room design,” he adds. “But autonomous shipping is very new, so we are the ones paving the way. To do this, we collaborate closely with the coastal authorities, who are very proactive and flexible. They are prepared to change some of the regulations to make this happen. They know that ships will gradually become more and more autonomous – not tomorrow or next year, but at some point in the future.”
Artificial intelligence versus rules-based decision engines
“One obvious difference between self-driving cars and autonomous ships is that cars travel much faster,” says Lundteigen. “In a dangerous situation, a car has to intervene very quickly. A ship is larger and slower – and there are, of course, fewer of them. A ship needs much more predictive capability to understand what might happen further into the future to be able to prepare for the situation well in advance. Cars can be brought very quickly to a halt, but large ships take a long time to stop.”
A challenge for autonomous ships is to get them to communicate their state and their intention – not only to the operator, but to other vessels to avoid deadlocks and accidents. To make matters worse, sometimes autonomous ships move in a funny way because they don’t behave like humans. This makes it difficult for human pilots and seafarers to trust an autonomous ship.
“This is an example of ‘explainable AI’ or ‘automation transparency’,” says Alsos. “Complex AI systems and robots and autonomous ships need to communicate their state and future intention to us so that we can trust them and make good decisions based on what they communicate. That black AI box needs to be transparent to us.”
Even though trials have been run with ships using artificial intelligence (AI), it’s still not certain that’s how they will operate when they are commercialised.
Ørnulf Jan Rødseth, Sintef Ocean
Ørnulf Jan Rødseth, senior scientist at Sintef Ocean, believes it will be rules-based or directly programmed. “It’s very difficult to test deep learning because you never know what percentage of the cases you’ve covered with your testing. You train the system on the data you have, from the situations you know. But in real life, variations of those situations usually arise,” he says.
“What I expect is that you will use more rule-based decision-making for anti-collision, and I think a very important element is that the system understands when a situation is not quite predictable. In that case, the system should ask for remote control,” adds Jan Rødseth.
“The main problem in developing an anti-collision system is in trying to guess what a manned ship is going to do,” he says. “Some people say that autonomous systems behave in ways that are difficult for humans to interpret, but the reverse is also true. Autonomous systems have trouble predicting people, especially in complex situations. If all ships were autonomous and they all cooperated, it would be quite straightforward.”
“The system that is supposed to steer and navigate a vessel through dense fairways, interacting with conventional vessels, needs to act in accordance with the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972 (COLREGs). Data models are needed for systems to recognise situations and react to surrounding traffic.”
Beyond small ferries
“The autonomous small ferry is not the only use case we are considering for autonomous ship technology,” says Alsos. “We are also working on big car ferries that will be partially autonomous. The ferry will plot a course to the destination and follow the route automatically. The ferry will also regulate speed.
“We are looking at auto docking too, where the ferry docks without human intervention. For the time being, we are aiming for partial autonomy. The crew still needs to be present to monitor the systems and look out for other ships.”
Autonomous crossing is expected to save a lot of fuel. Very few people can run the ferry more efficiently than an autonomous system. The other advantage is safety. The captain doesn’t have to control the handles, which frees up his or her attention. All the captain has to do is monitor the systems and look out for other ships.
Thanks to what Norway is doing now, some time in the future, ships will operate without crews. A day-shift captain will be able to go into work in the morning, operate one or more ships from a control room, and be home in time for dinner. When this becomes a reality, the captain will never again have to go down with the ship – and nor will anybody else.
Read more about autonomous ships
- Norway is a pioneer in the autonomisation of shipping, which conveys environmental benefits as well as efficiency gains – but human mariners are likely to stay on board for a while yet.
- The Port of Rotterdam is creating an environment where autonomous ships will become the norm, through the internet of things and IBM Watson.
- Swedish ferry operator plans to cut costs and become more environmentally friendly by operating autonomous ships. | <urn:uuid:00d9e92a-3eb7-45bf-8211-284b282aa8e0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/What-Norwegians-are-learning-as-they-pioneer-autonomous-ships | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334987.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927033539-20220927063539-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.960606 | 2,471 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Tomorrow Water says the US could develop between 900 and 1,500 data centers at waste water treatment plants by 2032.
The water treatment company, a subsidiary of BKT of Korea, says data centers can be built cost-effectively at water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) with a capacity of over 10 million gallons per day, by replacing large traditional treatment tanks with smaller biofiltration system, freeing space to build a data center, which can benefit from the cooling potential of the treatment process. There will be some 900 of these in the US by the year 2032, according to a survey by the US EPA, Tomorrow Water says.
Tomorrow Water has launched the Co-Flow Initiative, a campaign to place data centers at US treatment plants, and has filed for a patent for the idea.
BKT has a flagship water resource recovery facility (WRRF) in Jungnang, Seoul, South Korea, which uses Tomorrow's BBF Proteus biofiltration system instead of sedimentation tanks. At Jungnang, the recovered land is used for a museum and a park, but the Tomorrow Water subsidiary wants to focus on data centers - and sees a need for them in urban land cleared by downsizing sewage plants.
Tomorrow Water's CEO, E.F. Kim said: "If the WRRF is retrofitted with BBF Proteus, a significant amount of physical space can be freed up for other beneficial uses. We believe that the ideal approach should be to focus initially on replacing the WRRF's enormous primary clarifiers to generate space for a data center. Over 90 percent of the world's wastewater treatment plants have traditional primary clarifiers that gravity settle the influent within two to three hours. By contrast, the BBF Proteus advanced primary treatment systems do the same job in less than 30 minutes, hence the smaller footprint."
The biofiltration system can actually use waste heat from the data center making the process more efficient, says Tomorrow Water. The WRRF generates biogas from the decomposition of waste, which can generate electricity on-site.
"As our society moves toward digital transformation, data processing demand becomes crucial in all aspects, requiring more data centers near highly populated urban areas," said Kim. "These data centers will typically consume more fossil energy, which would aggravate the already worsening global warming situation. By having the data center in the WRRF, cooling will become easier, saving energy. Furthermore, BBF Proteus will divert more wastewater primary solids to biogas production, producing more renewable energy while reducing the aeration energy consumption in the wastewater secondary treatment step."
As well as Jungnang, BBF Proteus has now been deployed at the Seonam Wastewater Treatment Center, Seoul - the largest WRRF in Asia - reclaiming valuable space in Seoul's city center. | <urn:uuid:916a609c-84d9-47d4-ac44-5f0d739422b8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://direct.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/tomorrow-water-says-us-could-build-up-to-1500-data-centers-at-sewage-plants/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.92803 | 586 | 2.8125 | 3 |
7 Tips to Ensure Your Child is Safer on the Internet
There is a whole world out there for your child to discover, and the Internet is a big part of that world. While the Internet can be an incredible source of learning and growing for kids, in the absence of proper guidance it can easily turn into a risky affair with bad outcomes. Whether it’s online bullying, malware and phishing threats, dangerous online games, or age-inappropriate content, there are many Internet related threats that children need to be properly educated about. Since it’s next to impossible to keep your child untouched by the Internet, the best possible thing to do is take measures that protect your child as they set out on their journey of exploring the online world. Follow the tips below to ensure a safer Internet browsing experience for your child:
Start The Internet Surfing Experience Together
When you think the time is right for your child to be exposed to the Internet, make a plan to embark on this new experience together. This is the time that you should take to teach them about the good uses of the Internet. For example, you can pick a school subject that your child finds interesting. Together with your child, you could then dig up interesting, educational information online on the subject. Whether it’s related videos on YouTube or images on Google, look up any form of content that would appeal your child. Don’t limit yourself to just the educational stuff either. You could play safe and kid-friendly online games together too. You want to train your child’s mind to think of the Internet as a place where they can learn and enjoy.
Put Some Basic Ground Rules In Place
Have some basic rules in place governing your child’s Internet use, from how much time they can spend daily on the Internet to what websites they can visit. Discuss these rules with them, letting them know not only what these rules are, but also why these rules are important. It’s important for the child to know that these rules are for their own good, that will make it much more likely for them to follow the rules.
Take Help of Software Tools for Protection
What if your young child wants to use the Internet alone? If you don’t want this to happen at all, you could lock the device with a password. This will keep the device and, thus the Internet, out of the child’s reach. But if you think your child is old enough to start using the Internet alone, then it’s time for you to let them have the freedom in a safe and controlled way. To ensure that they don’t view or access something that they shouldn’t, you could take help of good parental control software and other Internet security software. Using such applications, you can keep a track of their Internet usage, block certain types of content and websites, define time limit for use, among many other things.
Warn Them About the Online Security Threats
You should use good Internet security software for protection against online threats like malware, viruses, phishing emails, spyware, etc. But what’s even more important is that you teach your kid the reason for using such a software in the first place, which means making them aware of the common online security threats. Explain to them what a suspicious pop-up, ad, or email looks like, and why clicking on any of them can be dangerous. Warn them about the dangers of divulging personal information that such pop-ups, ads, and emails may ask for. If you let your child know what they should be watching out for, they’ll be able to make much better decisions when surfing the Internet.
Encourage Safe and Healthy Social Networking Practices
Soon, your child would want to join the glitzy world of social media. As and when they do, you should have a conversation with them regarding safe and constructive use of social media. Advise them to befriend only those people online whom they know in real life too. Tell them what kind of personal information, pictures, and videos should and shouldn’t be shared online. Teach them what cyber bullying is and encourage them to come talk to you if they ever feel harassed online. Make them aware of the risks of responding to messages from unknown people and of meeting in person with a stranger they met on social media.
Teach Them Safe Ways to Shop Online
Shopping online is mostly a convenience. But, it can turn into a trap too if kids aren’t taught the safe ways to do it. Talk to your kids about using only trusted shopping websites and mobile apps, that ensure apt protection of the payment details, for purchasing items online. Recommend shopping from HTTPS websites, that offer secure transactions through encryption. Tell them about the kind of personal details usually required for an online shopping transaction and to avoid any e-commerce website or app that asks for strangely unusual information. Because shopping online is so easy and convenient, it can get pretty addictive too. That is another subject you should talk to your child about, keeping the shopping in check.
Communicate Often About Their Use of Internet
As your child grows up and becomes more independent, your direct involvement in their Internet use will become less and less. Eventually, it will be out of your hands to closely monitor what they are doing online. It’s best to accept this natural course of things. With some effort, you can still remain in touch with your child’s Internet use. Maintain a regular, friendly dialogue with your child about their online activities. You’re not trying to press them for information, you’re just trying to make talking about Internet a friendly topic in the house. That way, if they ever run into any trouble during their Internet use, they’ll know that they can turn to you. | <urn:uuid:c74fd010-0074-4930-8d67-a5293aa662ce> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ctgmanagedit.com/ensure-child-safety-on-internet/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.937695 | 1,212 | 3.015625 | 3 |
What is Cloud Security?
Over the past decade, cloud adoption has seen explosive growth at both consumer and enterprise level, and it is easy to see why. Cloud-based applications have significantly changed the way we work and share information more efficiently. Cloud-based computing has transformed IT infrastructures making them more flexible, scalable, and cost effective. According to Gartner, cloud-first strategies are a way for organizations to ‘transform, differentiate, and gain competitive advantage’ and many are progressing on their digital transformation journeys.
When moving to the cloud, organizations have several deployment options including:
- Public Cloud – where all infrastructure is owned and managed by a cloud service provider such as AWS or Microsoft Azure.
- Private Cloud – where a cloud computing network is used exclusively by one organization, either located at on-site data center, or hosted by a third-party.
- Hybrid Cloud – where data and applications move between both public and private clouds, allowing organizations to reap the benefits from both environments.
Whichever option an organization chooses, they all have implications for security and when migrating to the cloud, a key consideration is ensuring that data, systems, and applications are fully protected from cyber threats and unauthorized access. An organization needs to ensure it can apply its security policies to the cloud and that they are consistent with those applied to any of its on-premise infrastructures. To achieve this, organizations use cloud security solutions and services, which protect data in the cloud and keep the organization compliant with data privacy laws and industry regulations.
Threats and Challenges to Cloud Security
Any IT infrastructure is susceptible to cyber-attacks and the cloud is no exception. Organizations use cloud-based applications daily, whether it’s Office 365, Google Drive, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Salesforce or one of the many sanctioned (and unsanctioned) Shadow IT applications used on an ad-hoc basis.
Adding cloud-based email or web services exposes the organization to potential threats such as data breaches, DDOS (denial-of-service) attacks, or account hijacking. Data breaches are caused by unauthorized individuals accessing or exfiltrating confidential or sensitive data stored in the cloud, this could be by a malicious insider or by a well-meaning, but careless employee. Regardless of how it happens, the implications of data breach are the same – a potential fine for non-compliance and a damaging loss of reputation.
Another challenge is availability of services in the cloud. Organizations need their products, services, and tools always available to employees or customers from any location. Any downtime can cause disruption for organizations, especially if it impacts essentials services such as those offered in Office 365.
The first step towards a cloud-based security strategy is understanding how the cloud is used and being aware of the challenges that usage presents. This will help organizations identify the cloud security solutions needed to minimize the risks and allow them to accelerate their cloud adoption strategies with confidence.
Best Practices for Achieving Security in the Cloud
According to IDG’s 2020 Cloud Computing Study, 81% of organizations now have at least one application or a portion of their infrastructure in the cloud, up from 73% in 2018. Cloud environments are different from traditional networks and continually change, which means any approach to cloud-based security must be adaptable.
As organizations move to the cloud, incorporating a ‘Zero Trust’ security model is considered best practice. The model works on the premise that no user or device is trusted until verified by multi-factor authentication (MFA) and closely controls and limits who has access to the data. While not 100% effective, the approach minimizes data breaches perpetrated by bad actors both inside and outside the organization.
The ‘Zero Trust’ approach to cybersecurity in the cloud is also effective for compliance with data privacy laws. Cloud-storage can be segmented into small perimeters, each with its own strict authentication measures which means that if someone does gain entry, they can’t roam undetected or freely access any sensitive data.
Another best practice consideration is reviewing the native capabilities offered within the online versions of popular services, such as email in Office 365, to establish if they are sufficient to provide enough security, protection, and availability.
Email remains a business-critical function and any continuity issues could cause a major problem. Additionally, when it comes to cloud email security many organizations take a zero-compromise approach on threat protection and data loss prevention (DLP), and elect to enhance the basic controls with complementary third-party solutions – a best practice approach recommended by security analysts at Gartner.
Using Clearswift’s Secure Email Gateway alongside Office 365 allows organizations to embrace the cloud without sacrificing security or compliance.
How to Enhance the Security of Email in Office 365
To secure cloud-based email, organizations need to wrap an unprecedented layer of email security and sanitization around Office 365 to prevent targeted phishing attacks, embedded malware and the loss of confidential data that can evade Microsoft’s basic security controls.
Clearswift’s cybersecurity solutions offer a more comprehensive level of security than Microsoft alone provides. Our Secure Email Gateway can be deployed alongside Office 365 as an essential component in cloud-centric infrastructures. In doing so, organizations benefit from:
Improved risk mitigation against ransomware, APTs, and targeted spear phishing attacks
Critical information protection with flexible DLP control
Full track and trace reporting for compliance
Deep content scanning to detect and sanitize threats and automatically remove sensitive information, even in images
Better visibility of policy violations and message flow
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality extracts sensitive text from image-based files
For more benefits and to find out how the two solutions integrate to enable advanced threat and data protection for email in the cloud, read our guide.
Securing your Remote Workforce
Now that remote working is a permanent reality for many organizations, cloud-based collaboration tools and information sharing apps have really come into their own. The ability to safely send and receive information online was crucial during the Coronavirus pandemic and IT teams across the world invested in cloud-based software to ensure their remote workforces could collaborate securely. In a HelpSystems study, secure file transfer was cited as a key investment priority for two-thirds (64%) of CISO/CIOs.
By proactively providing an enterprise-wide managed file transfer (MFT) solution, employees are less likely to cut corners and share information over applications such as Dropbox or unsecured email. Centralizing file transfers through a secure channel enables organizations to monitor, audit, and report on the data being sent and received and ensures compliance with industry regulations.
To further minimize the data security risk of content flowing through MFT solutions, organizations can integrate the Clearswift Secure ICAP Gateway. Together the solutions provide a secure document sharing platform that monitors, blocks, redacts, or sanitizes content depending on the organizational policy, ensuring that content is appropriate for the recipient and free from cyber-threats.
Upgrade to the Cloud with Clearswift
When moving on-premise infrastructures to the cloud, organizations can also benefit from cloud-based services that manage and improve the availability of applications, leaving organizations free to focus on the operational aspects of the software.
Clearswift offers two affordable options to support organizations moving email to the cloud. Both services reduce day-to-day management overheads, provide a 99.999% uptime SLA, and enable the highest level of email protection against data loss, cyber threats, and spam.
For organizations who want to host their email application in the cloud but maintain operational control. Clearswift takes care of the installation and, if required, can help move policies from on-premise instances to the cloud deployment.
Best-of-Breed Security Solutions for the Cloud
Through working with best-of-breed technology partners, Clearswift can supplement the basic security controls provided within Microsoft Office 365 by offering better data governance and compliance features such as Data Classification, Email Archiving and Continuity and Portal-based Email Encryption. | <urn:uuid:e2923c0a-db65-403d-83a6-c872a61ce38e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.clearswift.com/solutions/cloud-security | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335530.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001035148-20221001065148-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.930436 | 1,680 | 2.53125 | 3 |
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Lithium-Ion UPS vs. Lead-Acid: Reduce Cost and Improve Performance
For years, uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) have primarily used valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) batteries. Lead-acid batteries offered a good mix of price, performance, and safety for data center environments.
Now, however, a newer technology is challenging the dominance of VRLA batteries in UPSs. Lithium-ion batteries are far more efficient and better suited to the demands placed on UPSs in the data center. Although they cost more, lithium-ion batteries represent a smarter choice for data center UPS applications. In a previous article, we dove into the differences between lead-acid vs. lithium batteries. In this blog, we’ll explore the implications of the differences in battery technology as they relate to uninterruptible power supplies below.
Benefits of Lithium-Ion UPSs vs. Lead-Acid
Lithium-ion batteries have a very high energy density compared to other battery technologies. A 1kg lithium-ion battery can store 150 watt-hours of electricity — six times as much as a 1kg VRLA battery. Because of the lighter-weight battery, lithium-ion UPSs have a significantly smaller footprint than their VRLA counterparts. That’s extremely valuable where space is at a premium.
“Cyclic life” refers to the number of charge/discharge cycles in a battery’s useful life. While cyclic life depends upon the depth of discharge, lithium-ion batteries can handle hundreds of charge/discharge cycles. Moreover, they have no memory effect, so they do not have to be fully discharged before recharging. A longer lifecycle means that UPS batteries don’t have to be replaced as frequently.
Battery recharge times are a key consideration in data center applications where availability is critical. Lithium-ion UPS batteries can be fully charged in about two hours. By contrast, lead-acid UPS batteries require up to 24 hours to recharge.
Greater Depth of Discharge
A battery’s “depth of discharge” is the percentage of the overall capacity drained in a particular cycle. Many manufacturers will specify the maximum recommended depth of discharge for optimal battery performance. Lithium-ion batteries have a depth of discharge of 85 percent or more, which means that the uninterruptible power supply has additional energy available per cycle.
Higher Operating Temperature
The operating temperature of a battery affects its lifespan. Lithium-ion UPSs can operate at up to 105 degrees, while lead-acid UPSs have a recommended operating temperature of 68 to 77 degrees. Lead-acid UPSs must be cooled in the same way as IT equipment, increasing the operational costs of the data center.
“Efficiency” is the ratio of energy retrieved from a battery to the energy supplied to the battery. Most lithium-ion batteries have 95 percent or greater efficiency. A lithium-ion UPS operating at peak capacity can reduce energy losses in the data center compared to older technologies.
Lithium-ion UPSs require very little maintenance — typically, just an annual torque check. Additionally, IT staff won’t have to change the batteries very frequently. In fact, lithium-ion batteries last up to 10 years, or about as long as the uninterruptible power supply itself. VRLA UPS batteries, in contrast, have to be replaced every three to five years.
Lower Long-Term Costs
The purchase price of the uninterruptible power supply is just one factor in the total cost of ownership. Installation, power and cooling, maintenance, and replacement batteries must also be considered. Over the long term, lithium-ion UPSs are more cost-efficient than lead-acid UPSs.
Empowers Edge Data Centers
Space is often limited in edge data centers, and conditions are less than ideal for IT equipment. There’s typically no onsite IT staff, so the equipment needs to be monitored and managed remotely. When architecting the edge data center infrastructure, organizations must focus on efficiency. That’s why a lithium-ion UPS is the best backup power choice for the edge.
Explore our UPS buying guide for more information on selecting the perfect UPS for your IT environment.
The Enconnex AC6000 Lithium-Ion UPS
Enconnex has developed a 6kW uninterruptible power supply (UPS) that delivers all the benefits of lithium-ion technology. The AC6000 Li-ion UPS is 60 percent lighter than comparable VRLA UPSs and consumes just 2U of rack space. It offers six minutes of battery runtime at full load and 12 minutes of runtime at half load. It also provides seven to 10 years of battery life, compared to three to five years for traditional VRLA batteries, and delivers almost 100 percent efficiency.
Ready to take advantage of lithium-ion UPS technology? Contact Enconnex to discuss how the AC6000 can save time, money, and headaches while reducing the risk of downtime.
Posted by Jerod Green on September 29, 2022
Jerod has been in the data center industry for 10 years and has a passion for manufacturing fiber-optic and copper cabling solutions. As Director of Sales for Enconnex, he helps customers select the right solutions and is involved in the design and installation of enterprise-class network infrastructure. | <urn:uuid:d26d5e2f-8640-4d6e-88c0-801357876396> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.enconnex.com/lithium-ion-ups-vs-lead-acid-vrla-ups | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337322.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002115028-20221002145028-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.914529 | 1,156 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Chatbots are a new channel opening up for customers (and potentially employees) to interact with companies and/or government organizations. Since only text is available for interacting with the user, the quality of the conversation is key. As discussed in the last blog titled: How can Chatbots meet expectations? Introducing the Bot Maturity Model , Artificial Intelligence & Language Processing capabilities are crucial in the conversation with the customer.
In this blog, we will discuss the Intelligence area and what can be expected from intelligence when related to maturity levels.
What does intelligence mean in context to Chatbots?
We want the Chatbot to:
- Recognize the intent of a sentence, ‘My bike is stolen’ relates to the intent ‘Bicycle stolen’;
- Identify and allow for typographical errors ‘Byke’ is ‘Bike’ and even cope with language variants (the difference between US and UK English for example);
- Detect the mood of the customer and provide related answers. “I DO NOT AGREE” is different than “I do not agree ;-)”; – Understand the line in the context of a conversation E.g. following the answer to a previous question such as “how do I do that?”
- Realize that there is a difference between names and nouns – Jack London is a proper noun / name and does not imply ‘Jack based out of London;
- If possible relate to previous conversations with me as an end-user or related customers
Intelligence for Chatbots is supported by different capabilities such as:
- A Chatbot response machine is the central engine where all information is brought together,
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) for understanding the intent of a sentence, mood recognition, entity recognition (identifying the key nouns and verbs);
- Context recognition of a conversation (with a state machine for predictive handling) to put a single line into a larger perspective e.g. the context is my HR record. Recognition has several degrees of complexity here. In the simplest form it is a classification problem, but in the hardest form it a more conventional NLP problem, grasping the semantics of something, including the meaning of verbs, nouns and parts-of-speech (POS);
- History analytics to provide context from previous conversations (with the same user or other users). This contains both conversations with the same user as well as pattern recognition based on previous conversations with all other users regarding the same topic – here is where most people associate AI;
- CRM, and specifically all previous interactions with the customer, such as interactions via call centers, email, acquired products and complaints. Knowing the customer will definitely help in understanding the conversation and delivering right answers;
- Event handling, events that are related to a conversation can intervene in the conversation. This can be a single event or multiple events combined together by Complex Event Processing for example a location update from the device the user using to conduct the chat, or correlating chat content across concurrent conversations for people in one area;
- The training model delivers the input for a supervised model, based on which the NLP is able to determine the intent (or meaning) of the sentence the customer delivers in the Chatbots.
- Statistics, this is the most important capability used in the response machine, NLP and the historical analysis.
A key to the processing is what is the likelihood that an intent relates to a sentence, what previous conversations are similar to this conversation, how well do we know the customer, etc. The statistics part takes the chat beyond a Google search. When you ask Google a question, you receive a million possible results. In a Chatbot you are part of a conversation where a second chance for delivering the right information exists. With Chatbots the advantage over a ‘simple’ Google search is that you can ask the additional question ‘Do you mean ….?’
A roadmap towards Intelligence
The above functionality is an ideal situation for the future. When looking at the levels shown in the maturity model, what types of intelligence capabilities can be delivered with the different levels? Every level comes with a degree of complexity in order to deliver the required intelligence. In the below description of the Intelligence Maturity Levels the complexity is elaborated.
Chatbots with Level 1 intelligence support a low level of intelligence aimed at supporting basic conversations. Often, these type of Chatbots are used in demos and can be used as wireframes for mimicking intelligence features. Similar to User Interface wireframes the implementation of the response system is based upon ‘hard wired’ logic. The system can only understand predefined sentences that can be provided to the end-user as menu entries. With the lowest level of complexity this level can be achieved in a short timeframe.
By including line-based and context intelligence level 2 in intelligence maturity is reached. This enables the end-user to communicate via their own language. The response system tries to understand the intent of the lines and can relate the intent to the entire conversation that takes place with the end-user. The line based intelligence is supported by text analytical tooling. This delivers a model that allows several NLP-related techniques to relate a sentence to an intent. Sentences that cannot be related to an intent, could be used as new input for both training the model as well as making human adjustment to the model itself. As such, enriching the language capabilities of the system by usage:
The complexity in a level 2 solution is threefold:
- Find the right NLP tool or combination of tools. Different Open Source packages are available for NLP, such as Stanford NLP and Apache Open NLP, all with their specific capabilities.
- Secondly train the model to understand the conversation in the best way. These training models can be industry specific, so building upon an already available industry specific training model will definitely improve the quality of the conversation.
- Determine the context, what state model can support the conversation and what information should be stored during the conversation.
Making choices on these topics is not a one-off and decided at the start, but should be continuously evaluated and adjusted. Learn and improve by doing is the credo that should be used here.
In order to reach level 3 intelligence, the response system needs to be enriched with information about the end-user included in the conversation (CRM) and historical analysis based upon previous conversations with the end-user, but also previous conversations with different users. This historical analysis can be divided into two categories, manual analysis and Machine Learning. Analytics data can be manually analyzed and fed into the training model. Or a machine learning module which continuously enhance and extend the training model.
The response system is fed with information from NLP, Content, History and CRM and determines, with growing confidence, the best answer towards the end-user. The Context part in this solution is extended to store all relevant information coming from disparate sources.
The complex part in this solution is the way the Chatbot response system combines all information from NLP, Context, Training models, CRM and History analytics is combined and processes this information into an answer with the highest likelihood. The choice for a statistical model, supporting the Chatbot response system, is crucial.
The Chatbot response system, responsible for determining the best answer related to the question the end-user entered, is dependent on multiple information sources and a high quality statistical model supported by data mining algorithms. Open Source tooling, industry models and statistical models are available but it is the choice for the right combination that makes a difference in the response quality. The Intelligence maturity model helps to manage the expectations of what can be expected from the Chatbot.
Thanks to Phil Wilkins and Boy van Dijk for good discussions! | <urn:uuid:3d115f0f-cea6-4ef8-87c4-f71563487d4d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.capgemini.com/au-en/2017/05/chatting-with-the-chatbots-how-intelligence-makes-the-conversation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.925224 | 1,606 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Data Center UPS: Deployments & Buying Guide
Why is Data Center UPS Important?
A data center UPS (uninterruptible power supply), normally an Online Double-Conversion UPS, is a very important device to deliver a dependable supply voltage using a power source (generally battery) for a momentary period. Any power failure can have a devastating impact on mission-critical computers, communications and data, resulting in costly downtime. A UPS facilitates hardware protection, protects data from losing and corruption and offers continuity of service.
How to Deploy Data Center UPS?
In order to meet the high uptime requirements for data centers, UPS systems are often deployed with redundancy. There are three main UPS redundancy architectures, N+1, 2N and 2(N+1). N is the full UPS capacity required to handle the total load. In other words, N is the same as non-redundant.
N+1 UPS Redundancy
N+1 UPS deployment provides minimal reliability by adding a component to support a single failure or requirement of that component. Here is an example to understand N+1 UPS deployment better. Imagine you need to buy 35 bananas for 35 school children in one class and want to buy an extra one in case of unexpected shortage. The “N” would represent the exact number of bananas you need (35) and the extra one banana is the “+1”. Similarly, in an N+1 UPS redundancy system, if the total data center load is 1,000 kW and each UPS platform can handle 500 kW, three data center UPS of 500 kW are needed (N=1,000 kW; N+1=1,500 kW).
2N UPS Redundancy
2N UPS redundancy equates to fully redundant data center architecture separated in two sides (side A and side B), or mirrored systems. If two UPS(s) are required, there would be completely diverse and independent two UPS(s) for resiliency. In a 2N UPS redundancy, each side would be able to handle 100% load capacity.
2(N+1) UPS Redundancy
2(N+1) UPS redundancy offers the highest reliability among the three in data centers. It is actually the double amount capacity needed plus an extra capacity or a redundant N+1 system. This level of redundancy can tolerate multiple component failures or can maintain N+1 redundancy with an entire system down. Since it is the highest level of UPS redundancy among N+1, 2N and 2(N+1), 2(N+1) architecture always costs more no matter in initial component costs or operating costs.
Factors to Consider When Buying Data Center UPS
Listed below are ten main factors one should take into consideration when buying a data center UPS.
UPS size: UPS systems come in a variety of sizes and form factors such as desktop models, tower models and rack-mount models. Desktop models are compact to fit on a desk. Tower models stand upright on the ground or on a desk/shelf. Rack-mount models are typically used in server and networking applications. For more details, refer to different types of UPS.
UPS capacity: Measured in “watts”, the UPS capacity is how much power a UPS system can provide. The higher the capacity, the more electronic equipment or devices it can support. One should calculate the load (combined amount of power of multiple devices) and then choose a proper UPS. Normally, one should choose a UPS with an output watt capacity 20-25% higher than the total wattage of the devices needed to connect, which helps the UPS deal with fluctuations in power demand, leave margin for other equipment, and reduce the chance of overload. For more details, refer to How to Figure Out the Required UPS Capacity?
Backup runtime: Runtime is how long a UPS system can support the attached devices with electricity during a blackout. A UPS which accepts external battery packs can be used to extend runtime during a blackout. The smaller the wattage load connected, the longer the batteries will work. The larger the wattage load, the shorter the runtime will be.
Power source voltage: Be sure that the UPS input plug/connector matches the receptacles of the input power source. For example, in North America, the voltage used to power servers and networking equipment is typically 120 V or 208/240 V. Europe and Asia typically provide 230V power.
Number of receptacles: Make sure there are more outlets/receptacles than the number needed at present to ensure room for future growth.
Data line surge protection: Select UPS models with RJ11 jacks, RJ45 jacks or coaxial connectors to protect equipment against surges on connected phone, network or coaxial lines.
Pure sine wave output: Utility power supplies electricity in the form of sine wave alternating current. When the UPS is in normal mode, it passes the same electrical sine wave to your connected devices. If the UPS switches to operate in battery mode, it either produces sine wave or simulated sine wave electricity to power your electronics. Pure sine wave power is required by some devices, such as computers with active Power Factor Correction (PFC) power supplies. Determine whether to buy an UPS with pure sine wave output or not according to real needs.
LCD control panel: Normally, UPS with LCD interface is recommended. It can display helpful information like voltage, frequency, backup time and so on, offering an intuitive view of the UPS status and making it easier for system management.
Fault indicator: The LED indicators inform users of potentially dangerous wiring problems in wall circuits.
Intelligent slot/SmartSlot: An intelligent slot can customize UPS capabilities with network management cards. The optional network card allows comprehensive management via SNMP, Web, SSH, or telnet. To remotely monitor energy usage and reboot unresponsive equipment from anywhere, an intelligent slot is important for UPS in data centers. | <urn:uuid:d3a19f6d-f342-4243-8057-717fe39c0dc5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.fs.com/blog/data-center-ups-deployments-and-buying-guide.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337836.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006124156-20221006154156-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.904384 | 1,246 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Surveillance systems have a critical weakness today: cybersecurity. All too often, physical security systems are forgotten in cybersecurity measures. However, these devices can pose a major threat and a major vulnerability. Luckily, securing surveillance systems is possible. There are a few key tips that can help and some primary threats everyone should be aware of.
Why Surveillance Systems Need Cybersecurity
Surveillance systems can often slip through the cracks when it comes to cybersecurity. After all, surveillance devices are security equipment themselves. However, these devices are not operating in a vacuum.
More and more surveillance equipment today is IP-connected, hooked up to the internet, or part of IoT device networks. Connected surveillance devices can be efficient and offer some helpful benefits for users, but they also pose cybersecurity risks by being connected to the internet and other devices.
It is worth noting that smart home surveillance equipment can also be in danger. Smart home devices use IoT technology to connect a whole home through the internet. This offers some great benefits, but it also means home security systems are at risk of being hacked.
Surveillance System Hacks
Surveillance systems can be hacked in a variety of ways. They can sometimes be used as weapons in larger attacks. One of the most infamous examples of this is the 2016 Mirai botnet attack that used DDoS to lock down major websites like Amazon and Twitter for almost an entire day.
The primary weapon used in the attack was IoT CCTV cameras and routers. The hackers hijacked these devices and roped them into the botnet, which carried out their DDoS attack. Shockingly, the attackers released the Mirai botnet source code on the internet after their successful attack.
If surveillance systems can be hijacked to run a malicious botnet like this, there’s no telling what else hackers could do. For instance, a hacker could hijack a camera feed to make it loop a segment of normal footage to cover somebody breaking into a physical location. Protecting surveillance systems is critical for physical and digital security.
Tips for Resilient Surveillance Cybersecurity
All of this can sound pretty grim, but there are some concrete steps anyone can take to strengthen their surveillance system cybersecurity.
1. Remember Camera Passwords
Security cameras themselves need dedicated protection, especially IP-connected cameras and IoT cameras. When using these types of connected surveillance cameras, make sure to choose one with an encrypted signal. This way, footage getting relayed by the camera has a layer of protection over it.
Additionally, it is important to use device-level encryption on cameras. Make sure to use complex, unique passwords for this, as well. One of the vulnerabilities the Mirai botnet attack exploited was the use of 60 of the most common passwords. To avoid falling victim to strategies like this, cameras need complex passwords and encryption, protecting the firmware on the device.
2. Install an Emergency Power Supply
A power outage can leave surveillance systems critically vulnerable to physical and digital attacks.
Installing a backup power supply specifically for the surveillance system is the best way to protect security gear from power outage weak spots. This prevents communication and security protocols on the surveillance equipment from being interrupted, potentially opening a window for hackers to gain physical or digital access.
3. Protect Footage Data Storage
In addition to securing individual surveillance devices, remember cybersecurity measures for the footage coming off those devices. Hackers could potentially tamper with it or steal it for ransom if this footage is not protected effectively.
Whether the footage is stored in the cloud or a physical server, ensure the storage resources have limited access. That is, retain access to security footage data to only those personnel who absolutely need it and ensure their accounts and login credentials are secure. This will minimize the risk of compromised credentials, allowing hackers access to security footage data.
4. Practice Zero-Trust Security
Zero-trust cybersecurity is the way to go in today’s threat landscape. This approach to cybersecurity assumes a network is always at risk and minimizes that risk by strictly limiting access to various parts of the network. With a surveillance system, this could mean running the surveillance equipment on a separate network from the one local PCs and other devices use.
Similarly, create a separate login identity for streaming the surveillance video footage. Administrator login credentials should only be used for system maintenance on surveillance devices. Most of the time, keeping the devices on a lower-level login identity limits the risk that a hacker could use that device to get into a higher-level login identity.
Network segmentation works with smaller-scale surveillance systems, such as smart home security systems. In this case, a smart video doorbell or smart security system could be connected to an isolated, highly secure Wi-Fi network that isn’t used for anything else in the house.
5. Raise Staff and Team Member Awareness
Lastly, remember the people working and living with the surveillance system daily. People can be either a great strength or a crippling weakness in cybersecurity. All too often, hackers initially gain access to systems by tricking people into giving away credentials using phishing tactics.
Educating everyone on recognizing and defending against these traps is one of the best ways to keep hackers out of security systems altogether. Experts have identified cybersecurity training as one of the top security trends today. This applies to smart homes, as well. Some topics to cover in any cybersecurity awareness training include secure password creation, signs of a phishing email, antivirus software, and ground rules for giving out the Wi-Fi login info.
Protecting Video Surveillance Systems
Protecting video surveillance systems requires vigilance, but these tips can make it easier to manage. Remember – physical security equipment is not immune to cyberattacks. Defending against device hijacking and botnet attacks is a matter of simply layering security. Protect the devices that protect the building and its network security. | <urn:uuid:6737828f-4b9f-4b52-a216-d50e1e866bc3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cyberexperts.com/5-tips-for-surveillance-system-cybersecurity/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030331677.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924151538-20220924181538-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.928043 | 1,189 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Data curation is a term that has recently become a common part of data management vocabulary. Data curation is important in today’s world of data sharing and self-service analytics, but I think it is a frequently misused term. When speaking and consulting, I often hear people refer to data in their data lakes and data warehouses as curated data, believing that it is curated because it is stored as shareable data. Curating data involves much more than storing data in a shared database.
What Is Curation?
Let’s set data aside for a moment and consider the meaning and the activities of curating. The traditional use of the word is associated with collections of artifacts in a museum and works of art in a gallery. More recently we’ve started to use the term to describe managed collections of many kinds such as curated content at a website, curated music and videos available through streaming services, and curated apps through download services. Wired.com has described Apple’s App Store as “curated computing.”
Curation is the work of organizing and managing a collection of things to meet the needs and interests of a specific group of people. Collecting things is only the beginning. Organizing and managing are the critical elements of curation—making things easy to find, understand, and access.
What Is Data Curation?
If curated describes collections of things that are selected and managed to meet the needs of a specific group, then curated data is a collection of datasets that is selected and managed to meet the needs and interests of a specific group of people. Note that the focus here is datasets – files, tables, etc. – that can be accessed and analyzed. The distinction between “collections of data” and “collections of datasets” is subtle but significant.
Data curation, then, is the work of organizing and managing a collection of datasets to meet the needs and interests of a specific groups of people. Collecting datasets is only the beginning. That is what we do when we store data in data warehouses or data lakes. But organizing and managing are the essence of data curation. Making datasets easy to find, understand, and access is the purpose of data curation—a purpose that demands well-described datasets. Data curation is a metadata management activity and data catalogs are essential data curation technology. Data catalogs are rapidly becoming the new “gold standard” for metadata management, making metadata accessible and informative for non-technical data consumers.
Who Are the Data Curators?
A typical organization has many people doing data curation work with varying degrees of responsibility and corresponding time commitment. Everyone who works with data has the opportunity to curate by sharing their knowledge and experiences. Crowdsourcing of tribal knowledge is an important part of curation practice. Collaborative data management is a necessity in the self-service world and knowledge sharing is the first step in creating collaborative culture. Curation collaborators will be large in number with a modest level of responsibility and time commitment.
Domain curators have subject expertise in specific data domains such as customer, product, finance, etc. Domain curators record and share data domain knowledge that helps data analysts to understand the nature of data that they work with. The number of domain curators is substantially smaller than the number of collaborative curators, with greater level of responsibility and time commitment.
Most organizations will have one or very few lead curators who are responsible for moderating data catalog content much as wiki moderators manage content. Lead curators have a high level of responsibility for metadata and catalog quality – responsibilities that require substantial time commitment.
What about Data Stewards?
I frequently am asked about the differences between data curators and data stewards: Are they two names for the same role? Can data stewards be your data curators? Why do we need both stewards and curators? These are good questions that are important when considering how to fit data curation into your organization. It is practical for the same individual to have both curation and stewardship responsibilities, especially at the level of domain curators. It is important, however, to recognize curation and stew
The roles of data steward and data curator are related and somewhat overlapping. Stewards and curators working together is a combination that maximizes the value of data across all use cases from enterprise reporting to analytics and data science. Stewardship and curation are both metadata management activities and data governance roles. Data curation and data cataloging are important elements of modern data governance. They are complementary disciplines that are both essential in the age of self-service analytics.
Data curation is a metadata management activity and data cataloging is metadata management technology. But both approach metadata very differently from metatdata management practices of the past. In my next blog I’ll address the question: Where Do Data Catalogs Fit in Metadata Management? | <urn:uuid:b20d5f00-c057-4c1f-8cd2-ec2ef031bebe> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.alation.com/blog/what-is-data-curation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334620.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925225000-20220926015000-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.951394 | 1,008 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Increased Data Usage = Increased RiskWith the increasing popularity of smart phones, conducting online transactions, and social media, the amount of data that gets collected and stored each day is truly astounding. It is estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created each day as of 2018 – a number that is tough to fathom and only predicted to increase. While hackers are seizing on the opportunity to exploit this influx of data, data security is struggling to keep up. Personal data, company data, and even government and infrastructure data are all vulnerable to breaches.Cost of Insecure DataThe most recent estimate from whitehouse.gov puts the cost of malicious cyber activity on the U.S. economy between $57 billion and $109 billion in 2016. In 2017 alone, the Identity Theft Research Center reported 1,339 cases of data breaches in which consumers’ personal data was jeopardized. Some high-profile cases from the past decade include:Yahoo in the largest (reported) breach of all-time, jeopardized contact information and the answers to security questions and passwords for 3 billion users. Yahoo faced additional public scrutiny for allegedly being aware of the vulnerability for several years. This breach impacted Yahoo’s deal to be acquired by Verizon, ultimately taking $350 million off the sale price.An application vulnerability on an Equifax website compromised personal information for 148 million consumers who are potentially vulnerable to future credit and identify thefts.Due to a data breach Target jeopardized the credit card numbers of an estimated 110 million customers at an estimated cost of $162 million.In the largest data breach in healthcare history, Anthem had nearly 80 million of their customers’ personal data stolen.The Republican and Democratic National Committees and the Pentagon have all been subject to data breaches.Aside from a hit to the stock price and reputation of these entities, Wall Street has certainly taken notice. The main cybersecurity ETF (HACK) has increased by nearly 40% since its inception in 2015. The Business Insider Intelligence estimates $655 billion will be spent on cybersecurity between 2018 and 2020. With so many affected people and companies, governments are now beginning to take action on data security as well.General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)GDPR is the European Union’s answer to data privacy regulation. Enacted in May 2018, the aim of GDPR is to protect EU citizens from data breaches. GDPR hopes to succeed by enacting the following key components:Increased Territorial Scope: Applies the same GDPR regulations to companies that handle data of EU citizens regardless of where the transaction occurred or nationality of the company.Penalties: Up to 4% annual revenue or €20 Million for non-compliant companies.Consent: Processing personal data is generally prohibited unless consent is given. The form in which consent is given must be presented in a clear and legible fashion.Breach Notification: If there is a data breach of personal data customers are required to be notified within 72 hours. It took Equifax several months.Right to be Forgotten: Gives customers the ability to have their personal data deleted if they no longer want to be known by a company.Privacy by Design: This calls for data security measures to be built in from the beginning of a system development (instead of adding on at the end) and requires the company controlling the data to hold and process only the data absolutely necessary for the completion of its duties. This one will likely have to play out in the courts but the intent is clear, make data security a priority and minimize amount of personal data when possible.If the US took data security this seriously years ago, a lot of the major hacks previously discussed (and others) could have been limited or prevented entirely. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has recently come under fire for data security, said, “I think the GDPR in general is going to be a very positive step for the internet.” GDPR compliance may cause some short-term headaches for CIOs and their IT departments, but it is generally viewed as a positive step forward for privacy and data security.Data Security in the U.S.The U.S. does not currently have plans to implement similar regulations. Outside of some financial and health care regulations, data security is in large part left up to individual companies. Many companies meet bare minimum security requirements and apply band-aides after the fact in the event of a security breach. Customers in the U.S. still expect their data to be protected, so companies should make data security a top priority before, during, and after the implementation of any system or procedure.Data Security Best PracticesTo prevent data breaches entirely is very difficult, but following these practices will help minimize risk and vulnerabilities:Create an adequate budget: Identify the value of the company’s data, the current state of cybersecurity and potential threats, and the total potential cost if the data is jeopardized. This will help to justify an adequate budget for data security.Create a formal organizational-wide data security policy and conduct training: Every member of a company (and subcontractors) should be trained and understand the same security practices.In the Anthem hack, all it took was one employee from a subsidiary to open a phishing email that granted hackers access to the entire data warehouse. Proper training on how to spot phishing emails could have potentially prevented this. Data access restrictions: Limit employee access to critical data whenever possible.Backup and update: Data backups are potentially useful while conducting upgrades, and they provide a failsafe in the case of ransomware attacks. Malware typically exploits older versions of software, so upgrading to new versions buys you time from potential threats.Strict authentication methods: Two factor authentication and password policies regarding length, characters, automatic resets, and never sharing via email are all recommended methods. While perhaps obvious, changing all default system passwords is important.More training: Employee error, whether caused by laziness or negligence, is the number one cause of data breaches. All new employees should be trained on the company’s security policy, and company-wide training should be re-conducted annually. The ultimate key to protecting data lies with individual employees. Employees should understand the risk involved with handling of data, and no company should tolerate shortcuts around security.Staying Dedicated is KeyThe never-ending fight to keep data safe can feel like an arms race against hackers. A new security patch is created, and then new Malware is created to exploit it. There is no easy answer to solve this battle, but implementing the procedures highlighted in this post will greatly reduce the potential for data breaches. Data security ultimately falls on the shoulders of individual employees, and it is up to all of us to be educated and proactive in the fight for privacy. | <urn:uuid:5cb0ed4d-bf51-4a8b-9748-4291e571f5d2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.analytics8.com/blog/prioritize-data-and-info-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334992.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927064738-20220927094738-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.942699 | 1,363 | 2.625 | 3 |
"The more people switch to 64-bit platforms, the more 64-bit malware appears," blogs Kaspersky Lab researcher Dmitry Tarakanov. "We have been following this process for several years now."
It's a new twist for ZeuS, to be sure, but also a confusing one because 64-bit browsers are not widely used by the public.
"ZeuS is mostly intended to intercept data passing through browsers and modify that data, allowing the operator to steal information related to online banking, to wire transactions, or to cover his tracks," Tarakanov writes. "But nowadays people still use 32-bit browsers -- even on 64-bit operating systems. So 32-bit versions of ZeuS have been sufficient to keep the thieves satisfied with their earnings."
Fortinet's Richard Henderson agreed, calling 64-bit malware "very uncommon." The real question, however, is how long it will be until it is not the exception, but the norm.
"Typically, malware is written in order to cast as wide of a net as possible, and that means sticking with what has the greatest chance of capturing the largest number of infections," says Henderson, security strategist for Fortinet's FortiGuard Threat Research and Response Labs. "Win32 64-bit Windows still run 32-bit applications, and as the analysis mentioned, the vast majority of 64-bit Windows users are still running 32-bit Internet browsers. It’s also the main reason why we don’t see a lot of Mac malware in the wild -- the number of computers out there running 32-bit Windows or 64-bit Windows with the ability to run 32-bit software is orders of magnitude larger."
The 64-bit version of the malware has been in the wild for at least six months. According to Kaspersky Lab, the 64-bit version was actually found inside a 32-bit ZeuS sample that injected malicious code into target processes and injected the 64-bit version into the process as if it belonged to a 64-bit application. If the process belongs to a 32-bit application, then the malware pushes the 32-bit version.
The 64-bit version behaves like any other variant of ZeuS, installing files into folders with randomly generated names placed inside of the %APPDATA% directory.
"Interestingly, the configuration file for this version of ZeuS includes a long list of programs that the malware can function on if they are found on the infected system," Tarakanov blogs. "There are different types of programs, but all of them contain valuable private information that cybercriminals would love to steal -- login credentials, certificates and so on. Don’t forget that ZeuS is capable of intercepting key strokes and data before encryption/after decryption that is sent/received on a network with the use of some typical system API functions. So, when operating inside these programs ZeuS is able to intercept and forward a lot of valuable information to the botnet operator."
In addition to the 64-bit component, this version of ZeuS maintains a tor.exe utility from the 0.2.3.25 version inside its body, he adds.
"Tor.exe is launched indirectly -- ZeuS starts the system svchost.exe application in suspended mode, then injects the tor.exe code into this suspended svchost.exe process, tunes the code to run properly and resumes execution of the suspended svchost," Tarakanov explains. "As a result, instead of the system svchost.exe, the process actually starts executing tor.exe. The Tor utility under the cover of the svchost.exe process creates an HTTP proxy server listening to the TCP port 9050."
ZeuS variants using Tor, however, is nothing new; in actuality, Kaspersky Lab has tracked samples with signs of Tor communications as far back as 2012. Step-by-step instructions are even on the Internet on how to use tor.exe to pass ZeuS or SpyEye traffic via the Tor network, as well as how to create onion domain hosting for command-and-control for these banking Trojans.
"But these earlier samples mostly had CnC [command and control] domains specified in their bodies as localhost or 127.0.0.1 meaning that samples of ZeuS or Spyeye themselves were not tied too strictly with Tor communications, whereas the version of ZeuS described [here]…has CnC onion domain egzh3ktnywjwabxb.onion defined in its internal block of settings," the Kaspersky researcher notes. "And tor.exe is included directly in its body and is run by ZeuS itself. So Tor communications and the 64-bit version are inseparable parts of this ZeuS sample, with the functionality included at the very development stage."
Have a comment on this story? Please click "Add Your Comment" below. If you'd like to contact Dark Reading's editors directly, send us a message. | <urn:uuid:4d2a8423-1b5b-422a-ae80-9ac86681d3c6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/new-zeus-banking-trojan-targets-64-bit-systems-leverages-tor | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334992.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927064738-20220927094738-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.934305 | 1,048 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The concept that data may be subject to the laws of more than one country - and the fact that those laws are ever-changing - presents mounting responsibilities and challenges for organizations.
Rapid advancements in digital and mobile technology, increasing global connectivity, and the proliferation of cloud services have made the global economy a seamless ecosystem.
Within this ecosystem is the ability of organizations to collect, manipulate and monetize unprecedented amounts of personal and confidential data, which is heightening concerns about citizens’ privacy and cyber security.
In this frenetic landscape, in which huge amounts of data are harvested, stored and analyzed 24 hours a day, governments have moved with uncommon swiftness to provide statutory instruments that seek to regulate the flow of information.
This has included the assertion of ‘data sovereignty,’ in which governments enforce their own privacy laws on data stored within their jurisdictions. It is a rebuff of sorts to the global economy, a reimposition of sovereign interest.
For businesses, this has created a raft of compliance obligations and strategic imperatives, as well as the need for informed decisions about where their data is stored, how that data is managed and protected when shared across borders, and how IT systems are set up.
Data sovereignty vs residency and localization: Key points
- Data sovereignty is frequently used interchangeably - and incorrectly - with ‘data residency’ and ‘data localization.’
- Data residency is when an organization specifies that its data will be stored in a geographical location of their choice.
- Data localization comes with legal obligations. It requires that data created within a country’s borders remain in situ.
What does data sovereignty mean for businesses?
The rapid take-up of cloud-based data storage exposes companies to issues of data sovereignty. With the rising popularity of cloud computing, data sovereignty issues have become a greater focus for companies concerned about threats to the integrity and security of their data.
Data sovereignty becomes an issue when a company’s data servers are located outside the country in which the business is domiciled, and governments insist that this data is subject to the laws of the country in which it is collected or processed.
Mitigating data sovereignty risks
Businesses need to have a robust and comprehensive data security strategy and vigorous internal procedures to protect and secure data. The onus is on businesses to understand how their data is stored, who owns it and how it moves.
Businesses also need to:
- Ensure that their cloud service provider will not replicate data onto servers in other countries
- Ensure that the data stored overseas is done so according to local laws.
- ‘De-identify’ data before storing it in the cloud. (De-identification is removing people’s identity from the data.)
- Ensure that their cloud service provider has insurance to cover data breaches.
- Back up their data before moving it offshore, as a loss of data can be catastrophic for the business.
Data gravity, data sovereignty and the cloud
‘Data gravity’ is a metaphor introduced into the IT lexicon by San Francisco software engineer Dave McCrory in 2010. The idea is that data and applications are attracted to each other, similar to the attraction between objects that is explained by the law of gravity. As data sets grow larger and larger they become more difficult to move. So, the data stays put and applications and processing power moves to where the data resides.
Analytics in the cloud: even higher barriers
Barriers become even more challenging if you want to run analytics in the cloud on data stored in the enterprise, or vice-versa. These new realities for a world of ever-growing data sets suggests the need to design enterprise IT architectures in a manner that reflects the reality of data gravity. Alternatively, companies could consolidate their data in a cloud platform where the analytics capabilities reside (and which includes data sovereignty guarantees).
The legal framework
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The European Union’s GDPR covers data protection for EU citizens. The GDPR also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and European Economic Area (EEA). It supersedes the Data Protection Directive.
With the advent of the GDPR, organizations have reviewed their data sovereignty requirements and capabilities.
Brexit: in or out?
All countries in the EU benefit from what might be called the ‘free movement of data’. This currently applies to the UK in the same way that it does to the other 27 members.
However, when the UK leaves the EU, it may or may not still be included in this ‘free market’ in data. Current EU data protection legislation states that “special precautions need to be taken when personal data is transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area that do not provide EU-standard data protection”.
If data sovereignty isn’t included in any finalized Brexit deal, or if the “no deal” scenario eventuates, then UK businesses could be directly affected. Post-Brexit, the UK would no longer be covered by data agreements between the EU and other countries, such as the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.
If the EU does not grant “equivalency” to the UK post-Brexit, the safest thing to do when it comes to data sovereignty issues is to make sure that data is migrated to UK-based data centers.
In the digital economy, organizations are information-rich. They have never possessed such extensive reserves of personal data nor have they been closer to their customers as a result. Digital consumers have benefited from customized product and service offerings, enhanced customer experiences and the ability to intimately engage with their favorite brands across multiple platforms.
But with the ability of organizations to collect unprecedented amounts of data across multiple technology platforms comes great responsibility, and challenges - not least compliance obligations and strategic imperatives, as well as the need for informed decisions about where their data is stored, how that data is managed and protected, and how vendors are chosen.
How well organizations deal with the risks posed by data sovereignty is the latest challenge in the digital transformation of the economy.
Read more in Hurley Palmer Flatt's White Paper | <urn:uuid:15c0332e-69fb-4cbc-9e9c-926bd472a981> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://direct.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/data-sovereignty-imperative-action/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.937651 | 1,269 | 2.75 | 3 |
After completing this chapter, you will be able to perform the following tasks:
Understand network security
Understand VPN technologies
Use the Cisco Security Wheel
Understand the basics of the IPSec protocol framework
This opening chapter provides an overview of network security and looks at the Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data (AVVID) and the SAFE blueprint. It also covers the IP Security (IPSec) framework and identifies the main encryption and algorithm protocols. Then it looks at how IPSec works before finishing with the five steps of IPSec operation. These five steps are very important to remember and also are very useful for implementing and troubleshooting any IPSec-based virtual private network (VPN), whether firewall-, router-, or VPN Concentrator-based.
Network Security Overview
Network security is essential because the Internet is a network of interconnected networks without a boundary. Because of this fact, the organizational network becomes accessible from and vulnerable to any other computer in the world. As companies become Internet businesses, new threats arise because people no longer require physical access to a company's computer assets: They can access everything over the public network.
In a recent survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute (CSI, http://www.gocsi.com), 70 percent of the organizations polled stated that their network security defenses had been breached and that 60 percent of the incidents came from within the organizations themselves.
Network security faces four primary threats:
Unstructured threats consist of mostly inexperienced individuals using easily available hacking tools from the Internet. Some of the people in this category are motivated by malicious intent, but most are motivated by the intellectual challenge and are commonly called script kiddies. They are not the most talented or experienced hackers, but they have the motivation, which is all that matters.
Structured threats come from hackers who are more highly motivated and technically competent. They usually understand network system designs and vulnerabilities, and they can understand as well as create hacking scripts to penetrate those network systems.
External threats are individuals or organizations working outside your company who do not have authorized access to your computer systems or network. They work their way into a network mainly from the Internet or dialup access servers.
Internal threats occur when someone has authorized access to the network with either an account on a server or physical access to the wire. They are typically disgruntled former or current employees or contractors.
The three types of network attacks are
Denial of service (DoS) attacks
Reconnaissance is the unauthorized discovery and mapping of systems, services, or vulnerabilities. It is also called information gathering. In most cases, it precedes an actual access or DoS attack. The malicious intruder typically ping-sweeps the target network first to determine what IP addresses are alive. After this is accomplished, the intruder determines what services or ports are active on the live IP addresses. From this information, the intruder queries the ports to determine the application type and version as well as the type and version of the operating system running on the target host.
Reconnaissance is somewhat analogous to a thief scoping out a neighborhood for vulnerable homes he can break into, such as an unoccupied residence, an easy-to-open door or window, and so on. In many cases, an intruder goes as far as "rattling the door handle"not to go in immediately if it is open, but to discover vulnerable services he can exploit later when there is less likelihood that anyone is looking.
Access is an all-encompassing term that refers to unauthorized data manipulation, system access, or privilege escalation. Unauthorized data retrieval is simply reading, writing, copying, or moving files that are not intended to be accessible to the intruder. Sometimes this is as easy as finding shared folders in Windows 9x or NT, or NFS exported directories in UNIX systems with read or read-write access to everyone. The intruder has no problem getting to the files. More often than not, the easily accessible information is highly confidential and completely unprotected from prying eyes, especially if the attacker is already an internal user.
System access is an intruder's ability to gain access to a machine that he is not allowed access to (such as when the intruder does not have an account or password). Entering or accessing systems that you don't have access to usually involves running a hack, script, or tool that exploits a known vulnerability of the system or application being attacked.
Another form of access attacks involves privilege escalation. This is done by legitimate users who have a lower level of access privileges or intruders who have gained lower-privileged access. The intent is to get information or execute procedures that are unauthorized at the user's current level of access. In many cases this involves gaining root access in a UNIX system to install a sniffer to record network traffic, such as usernames and passwords, that can be used to access another target.
In some cases, intruders only want to gain access, not steal informationespecially when the motive is intellectual challenge, curiosity, or ignorance.
DoS is when an attacker disables or corrupts networks, systems, or services with the intent to deny the service to intended users. It usually involves either crashing the system or slowing it down to the point where it is unusable. But DoS can also be as simple as wiping out or corrupting information necessary for business. In most cases, performing the attack simply involves running a hack, script, or tool. The attacker does not need prior access to the target, because usually all that is required is a way to get to it. For these reasons and because of the great damaging potential, DoS attacks are the most fearedespecially by e-commerce website operators. | <urn:uuid:ac0779ae-e39a-4abf-903f-aaf71404fd22> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=341484&seqNum=10 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.940181 | 1,210 | 3.25 | 3 |
Russian Trolls 'Spread Vaccine Misinformation' OnlineBots and Trolls Account for Majority of Vaccine Tweets, Researchers Find
Public health alert: Russian trolls have been spreading "polarized and anti-vaccine" misinformation via social media in a manner that appears designed to undercut trust in vaccines. Such information could lead to lower vaccination rates and further contribute to a rise in mass outbreaks of measles, mumps and rubella among children, among other viral infections.
So warn eight researchers in "Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate," a peer-reviewed research report published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, based on a review of vaccine debate tweets collected from 2014 to 2017.
"Recent resurgences of measles, mumps, and pertussis and increased mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases such as influenza and viral pneumonia underscore the importance of combating online misinformation about vaccines," warn the George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University researchers.
How do anti-vaccine messages spread online? From 2014-2017, Twitter bots & Russian trolls disseminated anti-#vaccine messages in an attempt to erode public consensus on #vaccination in the US https://t.co/oR0FOze1A2 #antivaxxers pic.twitter.com/8Jsn7wY176— AJPH (@AMJPublicHealth) August 24, 2018
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that as of Aug. 11, it has counted 124 cases of measles across 22 states and the District of Columbia this year. That's already more than the 118 cases counted in the U.S. during all of 2017, which was up from the 2016 count of 86.
Low vaccination rates are to blame for recent measles outbreaks, health experts say. The CDC says the majority of those who contract measles, which is highly contagious, have not been vaccinated.
Discredited research published 20 years ago linked the MMR vaccine to autism. While there is no link between the MMR vaccine - which does reduce cases of measles, mumps and rubella - and autism, suggestions of such a link have led to some parents opting to not vaccinate their children.
Public Health Risk: Online Misinformation
The threat from online misinformation is that even fewer parents will vaccinate their children against measles, mumps and rubella.
"Vaccine-hesitant parents are more likely to turn to the internet for information and less likely to trust healthcare providers and public health experts on the subject," the researchers write. "Exposure to the vaccine debate may suggest that there is no scientific consensus, shaking confidence in vaccination."
The problem is not limited to the United States. In Europe, there's been a "dramatic increase" in measles infections, the World Health Organization warns, saying it's counted 41,000 new cases this year, leading to 37 deaths, the BBC reports.
The majority of those infections occurred in Ukraine, with Serbia reporting slightly less. Other countries with high rates of measles included Georgia, Greece, Romania, Italy, France, Slovakia, Russia and the U.K.
WHO says there were 23,927 cases of measles in Europe last year and 5,273 the year before.
Vaccine Debates: Trolls and Bots Abound
The researchers' review of anti-vaccine messaging on Twitter found that there appears to be a steady stream of vaccine discussion being undertaken by bots - automated accounts - as well as trolls, referring to individuals who often disguise their identity and seek to sow discord.
The researchers tied "content polluters," referring to accounts that are built to disseminate malware and other unwanted content, to high levels of anti-vaccine content.
In the case of Russian trolls, however, their "messages were more political and divisive" and included both pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine content. To identify which accounts were run by Russian trolls, the researchers used previously published information on Twitter accounts that social media platforms and intelligence agencies have tied to Russian government disinformation campaigns.
"One commonly used online disinformation strategy, amplification, seeks to create impressions of false equivalence or consensus through the use of bots and trolls," the researchers note.
The prevalence of bots, trolls and cyborgs - accounts that appear to be sometimes operated by a human, and which sometimes act like a bot - in online discourse about vaccines threatens to skew discussions, researchers warn. "This is vital knowledge for risk communicators, especially considering that neither members of the public nor algorithmic approaches may be able to easily identify bots, trolls, or cyborgs."
The trolls, bots and cyborgs identified by the researchers promote both anti-vaccine messaging as well as rabid pro-vaccine messaging. The intention, they say, apparently is to create open-ended discussions designed to amplify online debates and disagreements.
Kremlin's 4D Campaigns
Having social media bots and human operators seeking to amplify debates over vaccines appears to be in accord with what former U.S. Ambassador to Germany John B. Emerson has described as the Kremlin's 4D campaigns - for dismiss, distort, distract and dismay. In a 2015 speech, Emerson warned that the Russian government was becoming more expert at running these types of propaganda campaigns.
Intelligence experts in the U.S. and Europe have warned that these Kremlin campaigns continue. In February, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned the Senate Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community expected Russia to attempt to amplify existing divisions in U.S. society to spread chaos for strategic effect (see Russia Will Meddle in US Midterm Elections, Spy Chief Warns).
"At a minimum, we expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States," said Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana who President Donald Trump appointed last year to serve in the administration's top intelligence job.
Bots or Not?
To date, there has been scant research into the degree to which trolls or bots may influence online discussions about vaccines.
In 2015, DARPA - the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - ran a contest in which it asked researchers to classify whether a stream of tweets it had harvested about vaccines in 2014 were bots.
Researchers were given a data set with more than 4 million messages harvested from 7,000 accounts, of which 39 were bots. The winner, data science and social analytics firm SentiMetrix, correctly identified all of the bots, with only one false positive.
None of the contestants were able to completely automate their ability to identify which accounts were bots, MIT Technology Review reported.
But SentiMetrix was able to use an algorithm that it had built and honed during the 2014 elections in India, which looked for "linguistic cues," such as tweets that used bad grammar or resembled the output from chatbots such as Eliza; profile pictures that used stock photography images; numbers of tweets posted over time and unusual posting patterns; and other inconsistencies, such as a female username sporting a profile photo of a bearded man.
That round of research led to SentiMetrix identifying 25 bots, which enabled it to train a machine learning algorithm to identify 10 more.
Despite such work, "the public health community largely overlooked the implications of these findings," the Johns Hopkins and George Washington researchers say.
Measles: 18 States Allow Opt-Outs
The impact of bots on vaccine debates is not an abstract concern. In the U.S., 18 states currently allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their schoolchildren for nonmedical reasons. All but two of those states - Louisiana or Minnesota - also allow religious exemptions.
Of those 18 states, 12 have seen an increase in such exemptions since 2009, according to a research report published in June in the journal PLOS Medicine.
The researchers behind that study into "philosophical-belief" vaccine nonmedical exemptions - NMEs - and found that there were multiple "hotspot" metropolitan areas, as well as counties, "at high risk for vaccine-preventable pediatric infection epidemics."
Areas with high exemption rates included:
- Northwest: Seattle as well as Spokane, Washington, and Portland, Oregon.
- Southwest: Austin, Fort Worth, Houston and Plano in Texas; Salt Lake City and Provo in Utah; and Phoenix.
- Midwest: Detroit, Troy and Warren in Michigan; and Kansas City, Missouri.
"Additional smaller counties - especially in Idaho, Wisconsin and Utah - also stand out for their high exemption rates," the researchers warned.
"We were able to identify some scary trends that were happening," Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine and one of the study authors, told the Washington Post.
Hotez said that all of the hotspot areas had low measles, mumps and rubella rates that mirrored areas in California and Minnesota where there have been recent measles outbreaks, and which he said have also been the focus of intense campaigning by anti-vaccine groups.
The researchers' efforts are proving prescient. In January, Ellis County, Texas, reported that six children who had not been vaccinated had contracted measles. And on Thursday, a high school in Plano, Texas, confirmed a case of measles.
CDC Alert: Measles
The measles virus may subject victims to severe complications, including permanent hearing loss, pneumonia, encephalitis, liver infection and febrile convulsions, the CDC warns.
The first sign that someone may have been infected with measles is often a rash that may take up to three weeks to manifest after the initial infection, health experts say.
I cannot believe I'm having to post this, but after hearing about a confirmed case of measles in a Dallas high school I'm afraid it's inevitable. Here are the signs and symptoms of measles. By the time the rash shows up, that individuals has likely infected 100s. #vaccineswork pic.twitter.com/egkJ2kjouH— Diana Schulz, MD (@PediDocSchulz) August 24, 2018
"By the time the rash shows up, that individual has likely infected 100s [of others]," Dr. Diana Schulz, a Houston-based pediatrician, warns via Twitter. | <urn:uuid:5f4ac854-2398-4c7d-b6a5-afdfa16c3f3c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.inforisktoday.com/russian-trolls-spread-vaccine-misinformation-online-a-11421 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.953158 | 2,151 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Last week, the National Security Agency provided guidance on the dangers of wildcard TLS certificates and ALPACA tactics (Application Layer Protocols Allowing Cross-Protocol Attacks).
The new advisory, titled Avoid Dangers of Wildcard TLS Certificates and the ALPACA Technique, encourages network administrators to verify that the usage of wildcard certificates does not expose enterprise environments to undesirable risks and that they are not subject to ALPACA assaults.
When establishing a trusted, secure TLS connection with a web browser, web servers employ digital certificates to identify themselves so that sensitive information can be exchanged.
Wildcard certificates are commonly used to validate server identities when running numerous public-facing servers because they can represent any server with a similar name or any subdomain under a specific base domain name.
“Wildcard certificates are commonly used to authenticate various servers in order to simplify the management of an organization’s credentials, which saves time and money.” A proxy that represents numerous servers is a common application. The use of wildcard certificates to authenticate unrelated servers across an enterprise, on the other hand, poses a risk, according to the NSA.
If one server that employs a wildcard certificate is hacked, all other servers that the certificate represents are at risk. Furthermore, according to the agency, an attacker who gains access to a certificate’s private key can spoof any of the sites it represents.
In the case of ALPACA, the technique could allow threat actors to carry out arbitrary operations and get access to sensitive data; nevertheless, the prerequisites for successful exploitation are rare.
“Administrators should examine their environment to verify that their certificate usage, particularly the use of wildcard certificates, does not generate unchecked risks,” according to the NSA. “In particular, their businesses’ web servers should not be vulnerable to ALPACA tactics.”
Enterprises can take steps to mitigate the risks of poorly implemented certificates, as well as those associated with ALPACA, by limiting the scope of certificates, using an application gateway or WAF, using encrypted DNS, enabling Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN), and ensuring that browsers are kept up to date, according to the newly issued guidance. | <urn:uuid:bbb9f3d3-7007-47fe-a44e-dae9a37ef544> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybersguards.com/nsa-warns-of-risks-associated-with-wildcard-tls-certificates-and-alpaca-techniques/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335396.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929225326-20220930015326-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.89992 | 452 | 2.546875 | 3 |
What is DSL?
DSL stands for “Digital Subscriber Line”, which is the type of broadband connection you’ll find in most UK homes in 2022.
It uses your existing phone wall jack to deliver the connection via your existing copper infrastructure (that you use to make regular phone calls).
Unlike dial-up internet, which would prevent you from using your telephone while accessing the internet, DSL Internet will not stop your phone from working as it transmits at a different frequency.
How DSL Works
DSL works in a very similar way to the old dial up connections, only it’s a lot faster and doesn’t stop your telephone working.
The internet connection is made using your existing telephone network’s copper wires, making it highly available in the United Kingdom.
For the average family, DSL internet connections will provide all the speed and bandwidth you need for recreational internet use, such as watching streaming services, replying to emails, VoIP calls and more.
However, DSL is not really suitable for business use, especially businesses who rely on an internet connection to function, as it can be quite unreliable and has some very limiting qualities.
Other Common Types of DSL
There are many types of DSL lines, here are the most common ones available in the UK:
ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. It allows you to use both the internet and your telephone line at the same time, giving you rough speeds of around 8Mbps down and 400Kbps up.
This is a slightly faster version of the above connection that uses the same wiring as the standard ADSL above, with different protocols and software to give you fasted speeds. You can often achieve speeds of around 19Mbps down and 800Kbps up.
SDSL stands for Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line. This type of DSL connection gives you equal upload and download speeds of around 1.5Mbps
VDSL stands for Very-High-Bit-Rate Digital Subscriber Line. This is a much faster type of a DSL connection which can give you around 50Mbps down and 2Mbps up.
This is a slightly faster version of the above connection. Rough speeds VDSL2 can achieve are 200Mbps down and 100Mbps up.
Please note: All speed estimates should be taken as a very rough guide. Actual speeds will vary based on copper length and a variety of other factors. Always contact the DSL provider before signing up to any agreement for their actual estimated speeds.
The average family should have no major issues with the reliability of a DSL internet connection unless there are people working from home or using a lot of data. In that instance, a more reliable connection should be considered.
Is DSL Suitable For Business?
Whether your business can run on a Digital Subscriber Line will depend on the size of your business and your requirements of the internet.
Businesses who heavily depend on internet connectivity will find DSL doesn’t have the bandwidth, speed or reliability to allow them to fully function and grow. And so choosing an alternative would be advised.
Alternatives To DSL For Business Owners
Businesses that need something more powerful than a standard DSL line have two main options. These are:
- Microwave Internet
A super-fast wireless connection delivered via point to point technology
- Leased Line
A super-fast wired connection delivered via underground fibre cables.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, your premises will need a phone line if you’re looking to get a DSL internet connection installed
DSL is good for regular gaming, however if you’re looking at more competitive gaming activities a more reliable connection should be considered. | <urn:uuid:2664d1e2-8ad5-4488-80b1-a163a2774168> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.apcsolutionsuk.com/what-is-dsl/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335573.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001070422-20221001100422-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.919408 | 791 | 2.515625 | 3 |
There is no question that quantum computing is coming. However, organizations need to question themselves as to whether they will be vulnerable to threats it will present once it arrives. Best practices always dictate that it is better to act proactively instead of reactively; therefore, the time is now to prepare for the advent of post-quantum computing. NIST guidelines state that in order to prepare for the era of quantum computing, it is imperative to maintain crypto-agility.
Threat of What is to Come with PQC
No single method of encryption is unbreakable. Recent vulnerabilities discovered in major algorithms show that organizations must be ready to transition between standards quickly. NIST recommends that organizations immediately adopt crypto-agility because there is a potential for quantum computers to break all current public-key cryptosystems. This was demonstrated way back in 1994 by Peter W. Shor of Bell Laboratories when he demonstrated that quantum computers could potentially speed up the process of factoring primes and break the RSA algorithm.
According to McKinsey & Company’s recent report “The Next Tech Revolution: Quantum Computing,” quantum computing is still in its infancy. However, it is anticipated that industries, such as finance could begin to benefit from its use by 2025 and other industries will soon follow as it becomes more accessible on its own or in the cloud. A more realistic estimate of time before quantum computing is adopted is about 10 years. It is expected that there could be between 2,000 to 5,000 quantum computers around the world by 2030.
In a perfect world, quantum computers would be used for good. However, there is too great a potential for them to be used for nefarious purposes. Eventually, quantum computers will be able to factor prime numbers, which are the basis of current data security systems that use public-key cryptography, thus requiring a need for organizations to upgrade their cryptographic systems. While there are no quantum computers currently capable of managing the massive number of qubits required to perform the factoring needed to crack current cryptography, this is likely to change in 10 to 20 years from now. Hence, the reason why there are efforts to develop quantum cryptography to address the threats to come in the PQC world.
What Does Crypto-Agility Mean?
Modern information systems, payment systems, and the global communications infrastructure rely on public-key encryption, digital signatures, and key exchange. Crypto-agility is the capacity for an information security system to adopt an alternative to its original encryption method or cryptographic primitive without notable change to system infrastructure. Organizations will need to be crypto-agile to face the threats facing them in a post-quantum world.
The surge of cyberattacks, including ransomware during the past few years serve as evidence of the need to immediately adopt new frameworks and technologies to rapidly and proactively respond to risks as they occur. In order to achieve crypto-agility, organizations need the ability to quickly update their cryptographic methods without needing to make significant changes to their information systems in order to mitigate security risks and retain their regulatory compliance.
Organizational Agility in the Age of Post-Quantum Computing
Being crypto agile enables proactive changes to cybersecurity policies (such as preparing for PQC) and rapid reactive response times as soon as new vulnerabilities or risks are discovered. Gartner, Inc., one of the world’s top technology experts, recommends that organizational change be facilitated through a collaboration of security and incident response leadership. This also includes the following three-part framework to transition to crypto-agility:
- Enhance the existing application development and procurement workflows to reflect crypto-agility
- Perform a comprehensive inventory of information systems that use cryptography and identify and evaluate currently used algorithms
- Include cryptographic alternatives and methods for updating existing methods of encryption to current incident response plans
Technology Agility Relies on Strong Cryptography
In the past, response methods to discovering cryptographic vulnerabilities required time-consuming:
- Algorithm replacement
- Updates to code bases
- Application rebuilding
The main problem with the traditional method of making hard code changes to encryption policies or algorithms is that it can be very time consuming (i.e. it's very slow) and complex to get right.
Technological ability is best achieved by adopting new development frameworks and service software for applications that rely on strong cryptography.
Crypto-agility development methods can include adopting object-oriented frameworks, such as, NET and Java Development Kit (JDK). These frameworks do allow algorithms to be represented as classes derived from abstract classes. This allows the loading of new algorithms from a database or configuration file post-implementation.
Yes, adopting new development frameworks could protect future applications. However, it is not pragmatic to conduct a complete overhaul of legacy IT systems for intrinsic crypto-agility.
Cryptomathic’s approach to crypto-agility is facilitated by adopting a service software layer or gateway application between hardware security modules and applications.
Adopting such a solution for cryptography as a middleware service enables agility in:
- Algorithm updates
- Key management
- Policy enforcement
- Monitoring [details]
Being Post-Quantum-Prepared and Standardized
NIST has already begun its process of soliciting, evaluating, and standardizing potential quantum-resistant, public-key algorithms. Current FIPS 186-4 Digital Signature Standard public-key cryptographic algorithms are not expected to withstand attacks from large-scale quantum computers. The new standards need to be capable of protecting sensitive government information in the PQC world. These standards will specify one or more unclassified public-key encryption, publicly disclosed digital signature, and key-establishment algorithms to be made globally available.
It is best for organizations to become post-quantum-prepared now instead of waiting until NIST issues its standard. The best place to start is to determine what data is most attractive to cybercriminals. Remember, because quantum computers are expected to be expensive to initially maintain and operate, they should be relegated to protecting the organization’s most vital information and any additional vulnerable data.
Remaining mindful of the quantity of data to be protected, a strategy should be developed that addresses the organization’s priorities for using quantum-resistant encryption. Priorities need to be developed for the quantum-resistant encryption while setting a plan to upgrade the organization’s infrastructure for the next several years. The plan should ensure that the:
- PQCryptography candidate provides an enhanced level of post quantum robustness.
- Compliant algorithm will assure legal compliance and assertion.
It is understood that typical investments in the banking sector have a 10-year investment horizon. This is during the period that PQC is expected to arrive and changes in standards and algorithms, based on gained additional knowledge and reformulated standards, as well as triggers from zero-day leaks will impose an architecture that will need to embrace modifications as quickly as possible, hence the need for being crypto-agile.
Adopting new methods of application development can facilitate crypto-agility. However, the complete re-engineering of existing information systems is unrealistic in terms of time, resources and money for many organizations. Solutions, such as Cryptomathic’s Crypto-Service-Gateway, facilitate crypto-agility for both legacy and new IT systems automatically. It gives organizations the ability to rapidly replace algorithms and policies without the need for code updates within the applications.
- Selected articles about Crypto-Agility (2014-today), by Duncan Jones, Jasmine Henry, Rob Stubbs, and more.
- NISTIR: Report on Post-Quantum Cryptography (April 2016), by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Algorithms for quantum computation: discrete logarithms and factoring (1994), by Peter W. Shor, Bell Labs
- The next tech revolution: quantum computing (2020), by McKinsey & Company
- Crypto Service Gateway - Business Benefits (retrieved February 2022), by Cryptomathic
- The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code Breaking (1999), by Simon Singh
- Draft NIST Special Publication 800-131A Revision 2: Transitioning the Use of Cryptographic Algorithms and Key Lengths (July 2018), by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
- The Return of Coppersmith’s Attack: Practical Factorization of Widely Used RSA Moduli (October 2017), by Matus Nemec, Marek Sys, Petr Svenda, Dusan Klinec, and Vashek Matyas,
- Better Safe than Sorry: Preparing for Crypto Agility (April 2018), by Mark Horvath and David Anthony Mahdi
- Cryptographic Agility by Bryan Sullivan, July 2010
- Cryptomathic Answers Compliance-Driven Call for Crypto-Agility by Cryptomathic, May 2018 | <urn:uuid:49c07407-a3f1-4de2-bee3-412012f352a9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cryptomathic.com/news-events/blog/crypto-agility-in-the-advent-of-post-quantum-computing | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335573.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001070422-20221001100422-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.928168 | 1,827 | 2.875 | 3 |
Introduction to Tree and Forest
An Activity Directory is a product of Microsoft that runs on Server of Windows. It allows managing, accessing, and permissions for the network resources. The data is stored as an object in this directory and the object can be anyone such as user, files, shared folders, device, groups or an application. The categorization of these objects is done either by name or attribute.
An active directory can be found in most of the windows server operating system in the form of services and processes. The beginning of this directory was started with windows server 2001 and later on they became a part of various other directory-based identity-related services.
In the active directory, there is a domain which is the core unit in logical structure. All the objects that are named under common directory database, security policies and trust relationships with other domain are known as Domains. Each domain stores information only about the objects that belong to that domain.
All security polices and settings, such as administrative rights, security policies, and Access Control Lists (ACLs), do not cross from one domain to another. Thus, a domain administrator has full rights to set policies only within domain they belong to. Domains provide administrative boundaries for objects and manage security for shared resources and a replication unit for objects.
Thus, the active directory organizes all the information. Moreover, it allows the domain controller to perform authorization and authentication for users to access resources. An object is a physical entity of a network and there can be multiple objects in active directory. Tree and Forest are two such objects.
The tree can be defined as the collection of one or more domains that allow the sharing of resources globally. It comprises of single domain or multiple domain in the contiguous namespaces. Whenever we add the domain in the tree it becomes the offspring of the tree root domain and the domain it is attached with becomes the parent domain. Parent domain name is utilized by the child domain and further gets the unique Domain Name System (DNS).
As an example, if abc.com is the root domain, users can create one or more Child domains to abc.com such as south.abc.com and or north.abc.com. Further, these “child” domains may also have sub-child domains that can be created under them, such as profit.south.abc.com.
The domains created in a tree has two way of relationship named as Kerberos transitive trust relationships. A Kerberos transitive trust simply means that if Domain 1 trusts Domain 2 and Domain 2 trusts Domain 3, then Domain 1 trusts Domain 3. Therefore, it implies that a domain joining a tree immediately has trust relationships established with every domain in the tree.
A Forest can be explained as a collection of multiple trees which is shared by the common global catalogue, logical structure, directory schema, and directory configuration. It comprises of in built two ways transitive trust relationships. The very first domain created in the forest is called the forest root domain.
If there are different naming schemes than the forest allows each organisation to group their divisions and it may need to operate independently. But being as an organisation, they want to communicate with the entire organization via transitive trusts and share the same schema and configuration container.
Difference between the Tree and Forest:
The main difference between Tree and Forest in Active Directory is that Tree is a collection of domains while forest is a set of trees in active directory. In brief, a tree is a collection of domains whereas a forest is a collection of trees. | <urn:uuid:cc785487-2a9c-4e93-a303-cd9770439591> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://networkinterview.com/difference-between-the-tree-and-forest/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.93393 | 733 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Introduction to Cryptography
Cryptography is crypto + graphy, where “crypto” means “hidden” or “secret” and “graphy” means “to write”.
Cryptography is a technique through which the information/data is communicated securely/secretly. This technique is irreplaceably essential in the present world of cyber-attackers and hackers. The Cryptographic technique uses a code/algorithm to transform the data/information into an encrypted form (i.e. Ciphered Text). This encrypted data reaches the destination in a hidden/encrypted form thereby preventing any threats of attackers/hackers.
The algorithm is made up of a large number of keys and combinations, thus making it hard to decode by the attackers. The information can only be read after decryption at the destination end through the encrypted key code.
Thus, the data/information remains completely hidden and integral throughout its transmission, and cannot be misused by any unauthorized bodies.
Techniques Used In Cryptography:
The two major techniques that are used in cryptography are:
Encryption: It is the process through which the information is encoded. Thus, it converts plain text into ciphered text.
Decryption: It is the process through which the encoded information is decoded. Thus, it converts ciphered text back to the plain text.
Types of Cryptography
The three main types of cryptographic techniques are:
1) Secret Key Cryptography (SKC)/ Symmetric Key Cryptography:
In this type, only one secret key is used for both the encryption and decryption, thus it is also called Symmetric Key Cryptography.
Benefit: It is simple and fast for encrypting large amounts of data.
Drawback: The key distribution between the sender and receiver is the critical part. As the key distribution should be done in highly secured manner.
2) Public Key Cryptography (PKC)/ Asymmetric Key Cryptography:
In this type two different keys are used, a public key is used for encryption and a private key is used for decryption, thus it is also called Asymmetric Key Cryptography. The public key can be accessed by anyone. And the private key can only be accessed by the owner. So, the information is encrypted by the sender using the receiver’s public key and the decryption of the message is done by the receiver using his/her private key. As the person doesn’t have access to the private key, the information remains confidential.
Benefit: Non-Repudiation can be achieved by using Asymmetric cryptography.
Drawback: It is much slower as compared to symmetric cryptography. It can only encrypt smaller pieces of data i.e. 2048 bits or smaller.
3) Hash Functions:
It is different from symmetric/asymmetric type of cryptography as it does not use any key. Moreover, unlike the first two types Hash functions is one-way encryption. A hash value of fixed length is assigned to the text. It is irreversible as the plain text is not recoverable from the hashed text.
Benefit: Hash functions are used to encrypt passwords by many operating systems.
Benefits of Cryptography
The main benefits of Cryptographic technique are:
- Confidentiality of Information: This technique provides a complete confidentiality of Information, as the information cannot be accessed by any unauthorized body.
- Integrity of Data: This also ensures the integrity of data during transmission, as no changes can be made to the data.
- Authentication: The cryptographic technique protects against any forgery/spoofing as only authenticated senders and users can access the data.
- Non-Repudiation: This technique also ensures non-repudiation service as there is no chance of denial once the digital signature is done.
Drawbacks of Cryptography
Apart from the various benefits of this technique, there are some drawbacks related to effective usage:
- Difficulty of Access: Sometimes a strongly encrypted may become difficult to access even for a legitimate user.
- Selective access control: Realization of selective access control is also not possible through cryptography.
- High- Cost: The cost of infrastructural set up of cryptography is quite high.
- Not Full-proof: Cryptography cannot provide full proof security against vulnerabilities like poor design, protocol or procedures. So, a defensive infrastructure set up is required. | <urn:uuid:07a86ab2-eecf-4fa3-9720-279f47336268> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://networkinterview.com/what-is-cryptography-detailed-explanation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.924383 | 930 | 3.9375 | 4 |
What is VoIP?
Let’s unpack the meaning of “VoIP.” It stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. In basic terms, instead of transmitting through analog phone lines, VoIP technology transforms phone calls into information parcels that are sent via the internet. In other words, this technology uses the internet to make a phone call instead of a phone line that is connected to the wall.
What are the key advantages that VoIP offers? First, let’s review how it helps small businesses:
The number one benefit of a VoIP phone system is its lower cost. By using VoIP, you will probably see significant savings because VoIP systems do not require individual phone lines. As a result, there will be no more expensive phone bills where you have to pay separate fees for each line, and VoIP already includes many popular features like voicemail, auto-attendants, and call forwarding. Unfortunately, these features add up and end up costing much more than using an internet-based system.
2. Audio Quality
VoIP phone systems allow users to make or receive calls wherever an Internet connection exists. Using a traditional analog phone system requires a physical phone line that is located in a specific location. With a VoIP system, a phone line is simply a number assigned to a user. Some old-school legacy phone proponents may tell you that VoIP quality isn’t as good as a regular phone line, but this simply isn’t true. Although VoIP service requires a certain amount of bandwidth to work properly, you already have sufficient bandwidth if you’re using the Internet for anything in your business. Furthermore, with a strong Internet connection and appropriate bandwidth, the audio quality of VoIP calls often exceeds that of traditional phone systems.
VoIP systems exist in a cyber environment which makes them highly flexible. For example, if you need to resize your company, it’s as easy as increasing or decreasing your service package, adding more or less users, and changing the size of your bandwidth. If your company is growing, adding users can be arranged either by your call center personnel or IT team, which means that there’s also no need to create a ticket or spend time with on-site service calls.
For over a year, since the start of the pandemic lockdown, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of staff working remotely. Wherever that user may be –at home, the office, or the library – if there’s Internet, the VoIP phone works. The access that your employees have has just become much greater! Often, small businesses could not benefit from this increased connectivity due to the high cost of purchasing additional devices for home offices and increased connectivity costs. VoIP makes this all super convenient by facilitating mobile communication and bridging previously disconnected sources from mobile phone to tablet to laptop.
VoIP technology has been around for close to twenty years, and it’s become a trusted form of communication. Many VoIP providers offer various levels of connectivity and support. When you’ve decided to upgrade from a traditional phone system to VoIP technology, choose a provider who will accommodate your business’s specific needs and budget.
For more information about the benefits of Kustura VOIP phone systems for your business, contact: https://www.kustura.com/voip-phone-service-in-jacksonville-fl/ | <urn:uuid:71ec1883-46db-48d4-8773-439971824a29> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.kustura.com/5-advantages-of-voip-vs-traditional-phones-for-your-business/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.935195 | 724 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Ebola is Infecting Computers; How to Protect Yours
No, your computer can’t catch the actual Ebola virus… its not even airborn yet. However, we are finding that criminals are taking advantage of the hype and scare and curiosity over Ebola to infect people’s computers more easily.
This is commonly being done via email. There are four prevalent types of email going around now that are meant to infect your computer:
- A fake report on the Ebola virus — when you click the link to read more, your Windows machine is infected with a virus that can collect and steal your personal information.
- A fake email from telecommunications provider that contains an important “Ebola Presentation” for your to download and view. If you do it, you install malware that can allow others to remotely control your computer, access your web cam, log what you type, etc.
- Fake emails talking about an “Ebola Cure” which contains a malware attachment and which asks you to forward the news on to your friends. The malware records your keystrokes and downloads additional malware on to your computer
- Fake emails about Ebola news and lists of “precautions”.
There are many other types of attacks and attack vectors that are being and can be exploited. We will go over many of these, below, and how to protect yourself from them. You should be very wary of any email received about Ebola, even if it appears to be from a friend. You should be especially wary of opening any attachments sent through email, unless you have good confidence that they are malware-free.
Common Email Attack Vectors
Criminals capitalizing on the Ebola epidemic and and those trying to use email, in general, to attack the unwary use a wide range of tactics to induce you to infect your computers. Beyond being completely paranoid and “not trusting anyone or any attachment” and “never clicking on links”, there are things you can do to protect yourself so that you can use email safely and effectively.
These all come back to having very effective spam and virus filtering on your inbound email. Preferably, filtering that happens server-side, automatically, before the messages ever arrive to your computer.
Here are some of the attack vectors used, and the kinds of filtering that can block them. We recommend that you review your spam and virus filtering service and make sure that in protects you from all of these vectors. If it does not, you may want to consider improving your level of protection.
By far the most common vector for malware is to attach it to the email message and to somehow induce you to open it via the text of the message. Making you want to open it or by making you trust that the sender is someone you know and thus it is “Ok”
Every virus filtering software will scan email attachments and block ones deemed malicious.
You should make sure that your system updates its “definitions” in near real time. If you only get updates the definitions of what new “bad files” look like once a day or once a week, then you are more and more vulnerable to the latest attacks.
Zipped File attachments
Because all virus scanners are known to scan attachments, many criminals send the malware attached as a “zip file” or other compressed file.
This allows their virus-laden messages to get past scanners that cannot open and scan compressed attachments. Make sure that your virus scanner looks inside compressed attachments
Encrypted ZIP File attachments
No virus scanner can scan inside of an encrypted ZIP file attachment; but then, most people don’t send these on a normal basis. If you don’t, you should have your virus scanner automatically block them as they can be easy vehicles for malware…. ones that you can’t check until the file is opened on your computer….
Common Phishing Attacks
Email messages that are forged and appear to be from a reputable company but which seek to get you to do something that will put you at risk are called “Phishing” attacks. These are incredibly common and sent out in bulk like spam. They are detected early on and rules can be made to block these kinds of malicious email messages.
Be sure that your spam and virus filter can block phishing email messages.
Messages that do not include attachments often try to induce you to click on a link that can result in an infection of your computer.
Your spam and virus filter can (and should):
- Allow you to block links in email messages (course and annoying), or better:
- Scan the pages that the links go to and block ones that go to malicious pages, or best:
- Scan the pages that the links go to when you click them and block the page if it is malicious at that time.
Option #3 is best … as the most advanced criminals send the messages with links that point to normal benign pages. Then, after the messages have been successfully scanned and delivered, they update those pages to include malware. If your AV scanner can check the page when you actually click on the link, you are under the best level of protection (beyond not clicking).
DKIM and SPF
As the majority of malicious email uses forged email addresses as the senders (e.g. pretending to come from your friend or co-worker), your spam filter must support using these technologies to help detect if a message is fraudulent or not.
Does your current spam and virus solution protect you on all of these fronts? Is it updated in near-real time? Does it filter messages before they arrive on your computer?
If the answer is no to any of these questions, it may be time to re-evaluate your filtering solution and get a better one. | <urn:uuid:c428489a-9d12-4b6a-87da-2b3baf9914ec> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://luxsci.com/blog/ebola-is-infecting-computers-how-to-protect-yours.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337595.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005073953-20221005103953-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.938154 | 1,353 | 2.859375 | 3 |
With so much data being created every moment, on top of what already exists, it’s beyond a human’s ability to sort through and gain insights from all of the data made by even a single organization.
“Companies employ people to generate, disseminate, and use data,” stated Bill Tolson, Vice President of Global Compliance & eDiscovery for Archive360, during ARMA 2020, “for whatever the business’s goal is.”
I agree with Bill, and I’d go one step further to say that data and information by itself is (to put it bluntly) useless to people.
Most leaders agree that the value of information is only as good as the insights that you can glean from it to guide your decision-making.
According to most of the clients I talk to, the biggest struggle they have is understanding what information they have to work with, never mind what use it is.
Gartner predicted that as much as 80% of content will be unstructured this year. This means that these records, whether physical or digital, are sitting in a box or server somewhere and people haven’t the faintest idea what’s in it or what to do with it.
Enter the robots (or more accurately, Artificial Intelligence).
This post will cover an overview of AI, its current application in the world of intelligent information management, and what the future might hold.
Before we get started, let’s define some of our key terms so we’re all on the same page.
When someone says AI, we all immediately think of HAL 3000 from 2001 a Space Odyssey or Skynet from the Terminator films. But what does it mean in the real world?
AI as we understand it today was driven by the work of the brilliant mathematician, Alan Turing, and was eventually coined by John McCarthy who defined Artificial Intelligence as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines”.
There are myriad types of artificial intelligence in information systems research. The main two are “strong” and “weak” AI. What it comes down to is how well it follows the rules: A weak AI won’t break the rules no matter what, while a strong AI adjusts the rules as it sees fit. To put it another way a “weak” AI is a very complex algorithm that can’t step outside its bounds while a “strong” AI is closer to human cognition.
Machine Learning can be considered the younger sibling of artificial intelligence. Machine Learning allows an algorithm to “learn” and adjust based on past data.
The two major types of machine learning are supervised and unsupervised.
The difference is easily explained through a story I heard recently that essentially said, if you ask a Machine Learning algorithm, “if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?”, an unsupervised Machine Learning system would likely say ‘yes’. It makes decisions based on prior decisions and actions and nothing else.
With supervised machine learning, someone (hopefully) would be able to step in to say, “bridge jumping is a poor life decision”.
Right now, supervised is what’s working and where we’re at. Unsupervised is what’s next.
Intelligent information management (IIM) takes the knowledge and best practices of records and information management professionals and empowers them with the computing power of artificial intelligence.
What does that look like though? Let’s run through what a perfect future state of IIM would look like in a three-step process best described by GCN:
That’s the ideal, Garden-of-Eden-type world but are we there yet?
Not quite, but that’s not to say it’s impossible and all hope is lost. There have been major strides in this arena even in the last few years.
There’s one question that always comes up whenever I talk about using AI to power a records and information management program:
“Does this mean records managers will be obsolete?” In a word, “no”.
In a few more words, “AI has the capacity to make records managers even better at their jobs”.
According to Tech Jury, the current estimate of data created per day stands at 1.145 trillion MB. To hold that much data, it would take 795 TRILLION floppy disks (remember those?). Then, if you had the free time, you could lay them end to end from Earth to Mars with tens of thousands of kilometers to spare.
This is all to say that the only way to solve the inherent Big Data problem is to use bigger and smarter Artificial Intelligence as time goes on to power your information management program.
Synthesizing data from multiple systems of record is another huge benefit of IIM. Instead of relying on a human to make a square peg fit into a round hole, a technology-enabled information management program would do all the heavy lifting and analyzing of the data while pointing out what is important so the humans involved can then decide if and how to act on that information.
Not too long ago, an entity undergoing the discovery process during legal proceedings would hire a team of contract attorneys to dig through all the information they had, understand which were actual records and which weren’t, and what was relevant to the proceedings and what wasn’t. The problem is obvious: it’s slow, costly, inaccurate, and inconsistent.
The solution is leveraging AI and machine learning (ML) for predictive coding on discovery.
Even today, ML algorithms have a provable accuracy rate and have been shown to be able to quickly sort through identifying a record versus garbage.
ML and AI have been buzzwords in information management for decades. What has changed is the pandemic’s effect on it. Like most other digital transformation trends, the pandemic has accelerated changes that were already underway.
Here are a few specifics in how artificial intelligence is affecting intelligent information management today:
The one area used the most is in classification – sorting through massive amounts of data. Today, AI and ML are already being used to sort and categorize digital records quicker and more accurately than humans ever could. Coupled with the improvements in Optical Character Recognition (OCR), physical records are also able to be sorted much quicker, although there is still room for improvement.
While the word “record” brings to mind “text”, let us not forget the other visual types of records like photographs and images. “The recognition and classification of images is what enables many of the most impressive accomplishments of artificial intelligence,” writes Daniel Nelson. This is one area that has seen a massive improvement over the last few decades. When it comes to facial recognition technology (FRT), according to RecFaces, “the leading FRT algorithms nowadays have almost reached perfection in human identification with an error rate of 0.45%,” though most don’t reach nearly this high of a standard and need human assistance.
Similar to images, audio is another area where AI has made big strides. Think of any time you ask Google, Alexa or Cortana to do a search for you. It is, in effect, turning your speech into text and searching the internet for a match. Whether through automated closed captioning for the hearing impaired or the creation of a transcript of a court case without the need for a court reporter, AI and ML are making a big impact in the transmediation of audio.
In the end, we need to leverage technology like AI and ML to make us smarter and better equipped to do what we’re asked or required to do in the course of being information management professionals.
While there are great solutions available now, we’re not yet at the point where we can ask Alexa to index and classify a pack of HR files from 1984.
But, at least she will play The Weeknd any time I want.
So that’s something.
To learn more about technology innovation and how to start your digital transformation journey, visit our website. | <urn:uuid:05261d93-6b47-4e8b-ab2c-773c1d2138a8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.accesscorp.com/en-tt/blog/the-state-of-ai-in-information-management/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337595.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005073953-20221005103953-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.945988 | 1,709 | 2.609375 | 3 |
What is an attack surface?
In an IT environment, an attack surface is referred to as the sum of all potential points or attack vectors from which an unauthorized user/attacker can gain unauthorized access to a system and extract data from within.
In other words, an attack surface consists of all endpoints and vulnerabilities an attacker could exploit to carry out a security breach. As such, it is a security best practice to keep the attack surface as small as possible to reduce the risk of unauthorized access or data theft.
What is the difference between attack surface and attack vector?
As previously mentioned, an attack surface represents all the touchpoints on your network through which a perpetrator can attempt to gain unauthorized access to your software, hardware, network and cloud components.
On the other hand, an attack vector is the actual method the perpetrator employs to infiltrate or breach a system or network. Some common examples of attack vectors include compromised credentials, ransomware, malicious insiders, man-in-the-middle attacks, and poor or missing encryption.
What is an example of an attack surface?
Now that you know what an attack surface is, let’s take a look at some common examples. Common examples of attack surfaces include software, web applications, operating systems, data centers, mobile and IoT devices, web servers and even physical controls such as locks.
Types of attack surfaces
Attack surfaces may be categorized as digital and physical. Both digital and physical attack surfaces should be restricted in size to protect the surfaces from anonymous, unauthorized public access.
What is a digital attack surface?
As the name suggests, a digital attack surface represents any digital touchpoints that might act as an entry point for unauthorized access to your systems and network. These include codes, servers, applications, ports, websites and unauthorized system access points. Any vulnerabilities arising from weak passwords, exposed application programming interfaces, ill-maintained software or poor coding are part of the digital attack surface.
Anything that lives outside the firewall and is accessible through the internet is part of a digital attack surface. Cybercriminals often find it easier to gain unauthorized access to your systems by exploiting weak cybersecurity as compared to physical attack surfaces.
Digital attack surfaces may include three different types of assets:
Unknown assets – Often termed as orphaned IT or shadow IT, these assets lie outside the purview of your IT security team and include anything from employee-installed software to marketing sites and forgotten websites.
Known assets – These include managed and inventoried assets such as corporate servers, websites and the dependencies that run on them.
Rogue assets – Any malicious infrastructure created by threat actors, such as a typo-squatted domain, mobile app or website that impersonates your company or is malware, falls under the category of rogue digital assets.
What is a physical attack surface?
In contrast to a digital attack surface, a physical attack surface represents all hardware and physical endpoint devices such as desktops, tablets, notebooks, printers, switches, routers, surveillance cameras, USB ports and mobile phones. In other words, a physical attack surface is a security vulnerability within a system that is physically accessible to an attacker to launch a security attack and gain access to your systems and networks.
As opposed to a digital attack surface, a physical attack surface can be leveraged even when a device is not connected to the internet. Physical attack surfaces are usually exploited by insider threats with easy access, such as intruders posing as service workers, BYOD or untrustworthy devices on secure networks, social engineering ploys or rogue employees.
Attack surface management
Attack surface management (ASM) is defined as the process that enables continuous discovery, classification, inventory, security monitoring and prioritization of all external digital assets within your IT environment that contains, processes and transmits sensitive data. Attack surface management covers everything outside the firewall that cybercriminals can/will discover and exploit to launch an attack.
Important things to consider while implementing attack surface management include:
• The complexity, breadth and scope of your attack surface
• Your asset inventory
• Your attack vectors and potential exposures
• Ways to protect your network from cyberattacks and breaches
Why is attack surface management important?
Given the fast-paced evolution of cyberattacks, it is becoming increasingly easy for hackers to launch comprehensive, automated reconnaissance to analyze the target attack surface inside out. Attack surface management is an effective strategy to defend your digital and physical attack surfaces against potential cyberattacks through continuous visibility into your security vulnerabilities and quick remediation before they can be exploited by the attacker.
Attack surface management helps mitigate the risk of potential cyberattacks stemming from unknown open-source software, outdated and vulnerable software, human errors, vendor-managed assets, IoT, legacy and shadow IT assets, intellectual property infringement and more. Attack surface management is imperative for the following:
Detection of misconfigurations
Attack surface management is required to detect misconfigurations in the operating system, website settings or firewall. It is also useful for discovering viruses, outdated software/hardware, weak passwords and ransomware that might act as entry points for perpetrators.
Protecting intellectual property and sensitive data
Attack surface management helps secure intellectual property and sensitive data and mitigates risks associated with shadow IT assets. It helps detect and deny any efforts to gain unauthorized access.
How do you manage an attack surface?
The steps or stages of attack surface management are cyclical and ongoing. They may vary from organization to organization. However, the basic steps that are usually standard across all organizations are:
- Discovery: Discovery is the first step of any attack surface management solution. In this step, you discover or gain comprehensive visibility to all internet-facing digital assets that process or contain your business-critical data such as trade secrets, PHI and PII.
- Inventory: Discovery is typically followed by digital asset inventory or IT asset inventory that involves labeling and dispatching assets based on their business criticality, technical properties and characteristics, type, owner or compliance requirements.
- Classification: Classification is the process of categorizing/aggregating assets and vulnerabilities based on their level of priority.
- Monitoring: One of the most important steps of attack management, monitoring enables you to keep track of your assets 24/7 for any newly discovered compliance issues, misconfiguration, weaknesses and security vulnerabilities.
Attack surface reduction
Attack surface reduction is one of the fundamental goals of all IT professionals. Attack surface reduction entails regular assessment of vulnerabilities, monitoring anomalies and securing weak points.
Why is attack surface reduction important?
Minimizing your attack surface can help you significantly reduce the potential entry points for cybercriminals to launch an attack. While attack surface management is imperative for identifying any current and future risks, attack surface reduction is crucial for minimizing the number of entry points and reducing the security gaps that a cybercriminal might leverage to launch an attack.
What are attack surface reduction best practices?
Let’s take a look at some of the most important best practices that will help you implement efficient attack surface reduction.
Embrace zero trust
Zero trust implies that no user should be permitted access to critical business resources until their identity and the security of their device has been proven. This reduces the number of entry points by ensuring that only authorized users have access to business systems and networks.
Minimize complexity around your IT environment by disabling unnecessary/unused devices and software, and reducing the number of endpoints to simplify your network.
Running regular network scans is an effective way to quickly identify potential vulnerabilities and security gaps. Full attack surface visibility is crucial to prevent issues with on-prem and cloud networks and to also make sure they can be accessed only by approved users.
People move in and out of organizations. It is imperative to remove all access to the network as soon as a user parts with the organization.
Harden authentication protocols
Security-hardening your authentication policies is a critical component of attack surface reduction. In addition to using a strong authentication layering on top of access protocols, you must also leverage role-based or attribute-based access controls to make sure that the data is accessible only to authorized users.
Segment your network
Another effective attack surface reduction best practice is to segment your network by building more firewalls and making it tougher for hackers to gain entry to your systems quickly. With the right segmenting, you can successfully drive security controls down to a single user or machine.
Manage and reduce attack surfaces with Kaseya
With Kaseya’s comprehensive range of solutions, you can security-harden your IT infrastructure by reducing and managing your attack surfaces. Kaseya’s robust endpoint management tool, VSA, enables you to monitor, manage and secure all your on- and off-network devices from a single pane of glass, thus reducing your attack surfaces and bridging any security gaps in your IT environment. Want to know how? Request a free demo today! | <urn:uuid:4b18c339-fe5a-4c4f-8e31-0a6170e410b5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.kaseya.com/blog/2022/01/31/attack-surface-definition-management-reduction/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337853.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006155805-20221006185805-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.924086 | 1,826 | 3.640625 | 4 |
The storing and processing of data sets that contain personally identifiable information (PII) is increasingly regulated and is subject to onerous notification requirements when data breaches occur. Such data includes health information, financial data and legal records. When your business stores or processes this information and when it can be linked to a particular person, you are automatically subject to the applicable regulations.
Almost all companies and other organizations keep sensitive PII, whether it is in customer records, employee details or marketing profiles. As data breaches become more common (list of about 2000 major US health data breaches since 2009), the possibility that your business will expose private PII becomes more likely and the financial and reputational risks increase greatly. Data anonymization or de-identification is a method of reducing these risks and adding an extra layer of protection for your data.
How Data Anonymization Works
To prevent sensitive data from being linked to a particular person you have to prevent people from reading the identifying parts of the data. For example, a list of names of patients and their medical test results become just a list of test results when the names are illegible. The data is still useful and can be processed to calculate result averages and medical statistics but the results can no longer be linked to particular patients.
To render data anonymous, the data that includes PII can be encrypted. When IT security fails, the sensitive data cannot be read and linked to a particular individual. Under such a breach, the data in encrypted databases remains protected, and in almost all jurisdictions, regulations requiring data breach notifications do not apply.
As a result, the anonymization of data can allow organizations to avoid high notification costs. When PII records are encrypted, the remaining data can’t be linked to an individual. Even if the data is accessed by unauthorized persons, individual privacy is not compromised. Encryption is a tool that organizations can use to satisfy privacy regulations and prevent the application of notification requirements to their activities, even when hacked.
How to Anonymize Data
De-identification or anonymization of data involves the removal, encryption or masking of identifiers. The United States Department of Health and Human Services defines a list of such identifiers valid for health care data in the United States. Other jurisdictions may have different requirements. The challenge is to mask the identifiers relevant for the jurisdiction where the data is located.
Those identifiers have to be removed, encrypted or masked in relation to the individual concerned and in relation to relatives, employers and household members. The idea is to hide all identifying information so that the remaining, viewable data is truly anonymous.
Organizations are responsible for the anonymizing process and there may be additional references to identity not immediately obvious. For example, an employment profile that includes “former CEO” of a company would almost certainly identify the person. If you are aware that data contains additional information that could allow identification of an individual, you have to remove that information as well.
Using Data Masking to Anonymize Data in Process
Data masking is a form of encryption that renders data illegible without changing the type of data or its format. Instead, the individual characters of the data are replaced by other similar characters. For example, a masked name remains a text string and a masked credit card number remains a number.
This means fields that are programmed to accept certain types of data will remain functional with the masked data. Masking only the data fields that can be used to identify individuals lets you continue to work with the anonymized data. You can process, search and sort the data even while the PII fields are encrypted by masking. When you need to see an encrypted part of the data, you can unmask the data and work with complete records.
Data masking is especially advantageous when remote or mobile team members have to access data on servers in the cloud. With encrypted database files they have to download the whole file to find a record or they have to decrypt the file in the cloud, opening up a security gap. With data masking, they can execute searches and download what they need, unmasking the records on their own device if they have the corresponding authorization.
How CloudMask Anonymizes Data
CloudMask uses high security data masking to protect sensitive data. For databases containing PII, the fields allowing identification of individuals can be masked, fulfilling the requirements for anonymization. The application masks the sensitive data as you create it while leaving anonymous data in clear text. When you store or email the database file, the data remains anonymous and you retain the keys to decrypt the masked fields. Only when you authorize someone to read the masked part of the records can they see the PII and identify the people involved. You have seamless control of your data and your data remains protected at all times.
With CloudMask, only your authorized parties can decrypt and see your data. Not hackers with your valid password, Not Cloud Providers, Not Government Agencies, and Not even CloudMask can see your protected data. Twenty-six government cybersecurity agencies around the world back these claims.
Watch our video and demo at www.vimeo.com/cloudmask
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SOURCE CODE REVIEW SERVICES
Source Code Review: Overview
Source Code Review (SCR) is a systematic & Security examination of the Source Code of Application and Software. It looks for Security Loop Holes, Bugs that may have been planted and overlooked during Application and software development.
Sometimes, certain Applications and Software may contain vulnerabilities that can aid attackers to extract vital information and may lead to loss of intellectual property & Secure Data. Reviewing Source Code helps to verify the implementation of key security controls. It also looks for design flaws and discovers hidden vulnerabilities in any application and software.
Source code analysis not only distinguishes which proclamation on which line of code is helpless but at the same time can recognize the polluted variable that represents the vulnerability. Along these lines, it represents the spread from the underlying driver, to the final product. This furnishes application developers with a conclusion-to-end outline of each example of vulnerability, enabling them to rapidly comprehend the idea of the issue. Also, check the source code analysis tool.
Source Code Review Methodology
More about Source Code Review
Source Code review discovers hidden vulnerabilities, design flaws, and verifies if key security controls are implemented. Many a time software and applications contain bugs and vulnerabilities, which creates the possibility that the product might face potential attacks from attackers trying to take advantage of such flaws. This can give attackers an inside view of important information (data Leakage) and assets.
Many a time the development and deployment phase of an application is hurried upon for swift completion of the project. In such situations, there remains the high possibility that the product might not be put through proper security tests. As a result, clients using those products are more likely to fall victim to attackers. Such applications should be passed through a rigorous review process (Vulnerability Assessment) to detect the vulnerabilities, present in them
Source Code Review: Approach
The following steps are identified with the procedure involved:
- Source Code Review starts with a review of the software and the coding process that went into making the software. The process includes discussion pertaining to the software, with the development team. The developers are required to respond to an extensive list of questions related to security for the purpose of identifying security design issues.
- The second step involves the preparation of a code review plan.
- The third step involves identifying composing data placed within the code. Another important task is to find bad coding techniques which make it easier for attackers to gain access to the software. Upon completion of the analysis, the next step involves the verification of existing flaws. Every possible security vulnerability is listed and remedial steps are introduced to improve the development process that software goes through.
The exhaustive process of finding bugs through Source Code review helps to detect the vulnerable line of code. Upon doing so, it exposes the root of the problem. This gives the Application Developers a complete general idea of each occurrence of susceptibility, allowing them to swiftly comprehend the temperament of the hitch.
After completion of the code review, we’ll provide you with complete details of cyber security vulnerabilities as well as suggestions to improve the overall development process.
Source Code Review – Challenges
Since applications contain bugs; there is a chance that an attacker may have the capacity to abuse some of them to affect or access your information resources and abilities. Web applications specifically are more be influenced by these vulnerabilities, as they are much of the time created and sent rapidly underway in brief terms without adequate time spent in security testing. We have a thorough system for auditing web application code. Our survey procedure is particularly custom fitted to discover vulnerabilities that ordinarily happen in applications. We utilize a blend of both computerized and manual strategies to lead a source code survey. Using tools, for example, Checkmarx and Fortify, we can get vulnerabilities crosswise over expansive code-bases, and then limited our concentration onto security-particular modules of code, (for example, those actualizing encryption or approval) and additionally check for business rationale issues.
eSec Forte Technologies: Source Code Review Company
Applications and software should be put through Source Code Reviews even as early as during the initial phase of project development. Experts at eSecForte stress the importance of performing such Reviews right from the early stages of project development. It is because the expenses conjured during the development stage of software is less as compared to the deployment or implementation phase of the product. Source Code Reviews can be done both on-site and remotely, according to the convenience of the client. We are among the top-rated Code Review Companies in India.
eSec Forte Technologies is a CMMi Level 3 | ISO 9001:2008 | ISO 27001-2013 certified Cyber Security Audit Company and IT Services Company with service offerings in Information Security like VAPT Services, Penetration Testing Services, Vulnerability Assessment Services, Amongst our clients we proudly count Government Organizations, Fortune 1000 Companies, and several emerging companies.
We are headquartered in Gurugram, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore – India & Singapore. Contact our sales team @ +91 124-4264666 you can also Drop us an email at [email protected] for Source Code Review Services. | <urn:uuid:a203a165-a3ed-4ab1-a6b9-92ce4befb297> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.esecforte.com/services/source-code-review/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335004.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927100008-20220927130008-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.914833 | 1,045 | 2.78125 | 3 |
If someone from the future—two decades or two centuries from now—traveled back in time to today, they’d probably chuckle at our use of hard drives and USB sticks, the way we now wonder how we ever survived with floppy disks and Zip drives. Want a peek at the kinds of storage devices we’ll be using in the future? From helium hard drives to DNA digital storage, here’s what the future of data storage technology might look like.
Inventors and researchers continue to push the envelope when it comes to capacity, performance, and the physical size of our storage media. Today, Backblaze stores 150 petabytes of customer data in its data centers, but in the future, they’ll likely be able to store an almost incomprehensible amount data—zettabytes if not domegemegrottebytes. (Nice names, right? A petabyte is equivalent to one million gigabytes, a zettabyte equals one million petabytes, and a domegemegrottebyte equals 1,000 zettabytes.) With the human race creating and saving an exponential amount of data, this is a great thing and the future of data storage is pretty exciting. Here are a few of the emerging storage technologies that may be signs of what’s on the horizon.
Helium-filled hard drives have lately been pushing the capacity boundaries of hard drives, which are typically filled with air. Last September, Western Digital announced the world’s first 10TB hard drive, just a few weeks after Seagate announced its 8TB air-filled hard drive (the largest hard drive at the time). By using helium instead of air, helium-filled drives use less power to spin the disks (which spin more easily thanks to less resistance compared to air), they run cooler, and they can pack in more disks. This summer, Backblaze created a 360TB Storage Pod with 45 HGST 8TB drives and found these to be tops for data load tests. At $0.068 per GB for the 8TB HGST helium drive (About $550 on Amazon. Seagate helium drives have a lower cost per GB, however.), the technology is still expensive. Still, these high performance drives will likely only get cheaper and even more expansive—perhaps affordable enough even for consumer use.
Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR)
SMR is a new hard drive recording technology. As with helium-filled drives, SMR technology allows for higher capacity on hard drives than traditional storage methods. As Seagate explains it:
SMR achieves higher areal densities by squeezing tracks closer together. Tracks overlap one another, like shingles on a roof, allowing more data to be written to the same space. As new data is written, the drive tracks are trimmed, or shingled. Because the reader element on the drive head is smaller than the writer, all data can still be read off the trimmed track without compromise to data integrity or reliability. In addition, traditional reader and writer elements can be used for SMR. This does not require significant new production capital to be used in a product, and will enable SMR-enabled HDDs to help keep costs low.
In 2014, Seagate introduced the first SMR hard drive, which improved hard drive density by 25%. At $260 for 8TB (three cents per GB), it’s a cost-effective drive for backups and archiving—though not necessarily performance, since the drive only has a 5,900 rpm spindle speed.
DNA takes a long time to read and write to and, as you might imagine, the technology is still too expensive to be usable now. According to New Scientist, in one recent study the cost to encode 83 kilobytes was £1000 (about $1,500 U.S. dollars). Still, scientists are encoding information into artificial DNA and adding it to bacteria. It’s like a sci-fi novel that’s currently being written and lived. DNA could be the ultimate eternal drive one day.
Other Futuristic Storage Technologies
Not all innovative storage technologies end up becoming mainstream or widely used beyond just research, of course.
Scientists and tech companies have been working on holographic data storage for at least a decade. In 2011, GE demonstrated its holographic discs storage: DVD-sized disks that could store 500GB thanks to cramming the data onto layers of tiny holograms (unlike Blu-Ray discs, which store data just on the surface). These discs also had a relatively long lifespan prediction of 30 or more years. Not much has been said about the Holographic Virtual Disc (HVD) lately, though, and one of the biggest developers of the holographic drives, InPhase Technologies, went bankrupt in 2010. That’s not to say the technology won’t be a prominent storage technology in the future (What says “future” more than “holographic” anyway?).
Well, maybe quantum storage. Scientists are currently investigating ways to store data using quantum physics—e.g., a bit of data attached to the spin of an electron. Right now this technology can only store tiny amounts of data for a very short amount of time (not even a day yet), but if it works and takes off, we could see instant data syncing between two points anywhere, thanks to quantum entanglement.
Wonder what they’ll come up with next. | <urn:uuid:d0d9e932-1145-4ec0-b5c2-5bd1bc9b9f2c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.backblaze.com/blog/data-storage-technologies-of-the-future/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337339.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002181356-20221002211356-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.927304 | 1,315 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Robotic process automation (RPA) is an application of technology, governed by business logic and structured inputs, aimed at automating business processes. Using RPA tools, an organization can configure software commonly known as a ‘robot’ to capture and interpret existing IT applications to enable transaction process, data manipulation, and communication across multiple IT systems.
Robotic Process Automation is best suited for processes with repeatable, predictable interactions with IT applications. The robots perform routine business processes by mimicking the way people interact with applications through a user interface and following simple rules to make decisions.
Learn More: 5 Ways to Maximize your RPA Investment
Process automation is by no means a new thing in the IT world. Traditional automation has led to increased efficiency, reduced risks, compliance maintenance, and enhanced profitability. But because the benefits of traditional automation and Robotic Process Automation tend to get mixed up, it’s important to determine the distinct difference between the two.
First off, Robotic Process Automation is an emerging automation technology - its full potential still goes unrealized by many organizations as they are likely to be in the early stages of their transformation. However, RPA has several distinguishing features that make it stand out from traditional automation:
Traditional automation is the automation of any repeated task. It combines application integration at a database or infrastructure level and is usually found in product workflows. It can take months to implement and relies on the developers understanding of the target system.
When it comes to deciding whether a traditional automation system or RPA is the right choice for your organization, the answer may simply be that Robotic Process Automation is a precursor to a full-fledged automation program. Here are some of the main differences between the two:
In traditional automation, programming takes the center stage and makes use of APIs and other methods to integrate several systems on one platform. In order to develop these programs, a developer needs to have a thorough understanding of the target system.
For Robotic Process Automation, the actions are always at the user level, meaning that the bots can make quick decisions with a higher degree of effectiveness than their human counterparts. In addition, because the robot is focused on only comprehending the actions of a user and following those steps, the complexity of the technology and its application tends to take a back seat.
There are several limitations of traditional automation because:
Trying to make amendments or upgrades to a legacy system is incredibly difficult as it requires a thorough understanding of business goals, customer expectations, and technology architecture. For organizations that are looking to have their automation cross multiple departmental boundaries and have them interact with multiple systems, RPA may be a better alternative.
Because traditional automation demands complex programming and quality tests it tends to take longer than RPA. However, Robotic Process Automation should not be implemented without the support and buy-in from the IT department. To ensure your RPA project takes less time than traditional automation it’s important the IT team is working alongside the business team to implement safely and effectively.
As mentioned, because traditional automation is naturally a heavier solution and is significantly more rigid than RPA, traditional automation is difficult to customize. RPA can be tailored easily to meet the needs of the user and can integrate with various applications like ERP or CRM.
While both aim to improve productivity, increase efficiency, reduce cost, and make managing compliance easier because traditional automation requires a strong involvement from developers, the main users of the program - business teams - won’t start receiving benefits until much later. With RPA, technical business users can get involved immediately and start producing bots that will help the organization realize the benefits of automation faster.
Robotic Process Automation has helped organizations run smarter and work more efficiently, but choosing the wrong processes for the initial pilot can be detrimental to the entire initiative. In fact, 38% of all implementation failures are a result of choosing the wrong processes for the RPA pilot.
Robotic Process Automation is best suited to highly manual and repetitive activities and typical tasks can include data entry, reconciliation, data transfer, report generation, data processing, archiving, and data mapping. To determine which processes are most suitable for Robotic Process Automation, there are four key criteria that should be considered:
Robotic Process Automation has gained tons of traction over its promise of improving efficiency, making employees more productive, and increasing customer satisfaction. However, there are still some business leaders who are on the fence whether or not RPA is worth their time and effort.
Without a doubt RPA has an innate ability to help the business because it removes the mundane and repetitive tasks so that the business can:
Now if that didn’t convince you, here are a few more benefits of deploying Robotic Process Automation:
Optimize Resource Use
When workers are tasked with repetitive and mundane tasks the risk of error is incredibly high and therefore your ability to achieve high efficiency is diminished. RPA can be used in these cases to replace human workers and instead assign them tasks that are worthy of their time and effort, and bring greater value to the company. By leveraging bots to help employees move up to focus on more complete tasks, companies are able to complete activities faster, with fewer errors, and with significantly less resistance from employees.
Ensure Compliance Across Processes
The processes involved in managing and maintaining compliance are typically stable, rules-based, require structured inputs, manual, and are repetitive in nature - perfect for RPA. Leveraging RPA to manage compliance can lead to a more efficient and effective process, refocus employees on higher-value activities like testing and quality assurance, and improve the overall auditability of your organization. Because bots save their actions in an activity log, companies are prepared with an accurate trail depicting which processes were executed and how, when exceptions were generated, and the ways in which employees intervened to deal with the issues.
Improved Customer Experiences
Robotic Process Automation virtually eliminates costly mistakes which lead to false analytics, poor decision making, and unhappy customers. Robotic Process Automation helps businesses become more precise in their operations and makes processes error-free, which results in improved and more consistent customer experiences throughout the organization. In addition, because processes are automated, employees are able to serve customers faster and with significantly less friction than before.
Since employees are human there is natural room for error, especially when the work being done is highly repetitive and manual. As we already know, one of the main benefits of Robotic Process Automation is how it significantly reduces process errors. As a result of fewer errors, the company can expect to save costs related to rework and maintenance, making it easier to realize the full ROI of Robotic Process Automation.
Improved Decision Making
Robotic Process Automation technologies allow organizations to gather data about task execution that can be used for analytical purposes which ultimately helps team leaders make informed decisions. Work volume patterns, cycle times, errors, and expectations are just a few of the analytics your RPA tool can provide for you. The data gathered from these tools can help make decisions at both the micro and the macro level - meaning you can really drill down into the activities of your bots but also determine how it’s activities are impacting the organization as a whole and what the value of those activities are. In addition, this gives the company the necessary visibility into processes to determine where there are gaps and how to properly optimize them to enhance the effectiveness and accuracy of bots. | <urn:uuid:e7df0cc6-bdf9-4612-9aed-d8dc6bc251e2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.blueprintsys.com/content/rpa/what-is-robotic-process-automation | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030333541.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924213650-20220925003650-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.946408 | 1,551 | 2.78125 | 3 |
A variety of fiber optic connectors are used, depending on the cable type and the Ethernet media system. The most commonly used fiber optic connectors as of this writing are the SC and LC connectors. You will aslo find ST connectors used on some older Ethernet equipment, and in older fiber optic cabling systems.
The SC connector is used on a variety of Ethernet transceivers. When higher density is needed to allow more ports within a given space, then the more compact LC connector is a popular choice. The Ethernet systems that operate at 40 and 100 Gb/s require multiple strands of fiber for their short reach media segments. The multiple strand fiber cables, also known as “ribbon trunks,” are terminated in multifiber push-on(MPO) connectors. An MPO connector can provide 12 or 24 fibers, depending on whether you are connecting to a 40 or 100 Gb/s short reach Ethernet inferface. The fiber optic patch cable with SC connector, we often see in the market, it is multimode SC fiber cable. The SC fiber optic cable is used to send multiple light signals at a time throughout gigabit networks. They are usually used in shorter cable runs, and have inner core diameter of 62.5 micron. The 62.5um cables support distances to 275 meters.
The ST (straight tip) connector, was developed by AT&T as a variation on a design used with copper coaxial cables. This connector has a metal connector cap that must be twisted to lock into place. The ST is considered a legacy connector, as it has been around for quite some time and can still be found in mandy installations today.
LC Connectors was developed by Lucent, hence the name (“Lucent connector”). An LC connector uses a retaining tab mechanism, similar to an RJ45 connector, while the connector body has a square shape similar to the SC connector but smaller in size. LC connectors are usually held together in a duplex configuration with a plastic clip. The ferrule of an LC connector is 1.25 mm.
The LC connector provides two fiber optic connections in smaller space. Because the LC connector takes up about half the space required by an SC connector, this allows vendors to provide more ports on a switch front panel or chassis module. Here we can introduce you the LC/LC fiber optic patch cables in applications, 10G LC to LC fiber cable provides 10 gigabit data transfer speeds in high bandwidth applications 5 times faster than standard 50um fiber cable. Works with both VCSEL laser and LED sources. LC/LC fiber optic cables connect two components with fiber optic connectors. A light signal is transmitted so there is no outside electrical interference.
As its name implies, the multifiber push-on (MPO) connector provides multiple fibers in a connctor that is both “push to connect” and “push to disconnect.” This connector is defined by IEC-61754-7, “Fiber optic interconnecting devices and passive components,” and TIA-604-5-D, “Fiber Optic Connector Intermateability Standard, Type MPO”. Both standards specify 12 and 24 fiber versions of the MPO connector.
You will also see the term MTP used for this connector type, which is a registered trademark of US Conec for a connector that is compliant with the MPO standards (meaning that the MTP connector is MPO connector). However, the MTP connector has been enhanced by US Conec to provide several product features, including the aility to change gender or to repolish in the field, a floating ferrule for improved optical performance, and elliptical guide pins to provide for tighter tlerance in alignment. Some of these features are covered under patents.
High quality fiber optic patch cable and assemblies are essential for any high performance optical technologies. Fiberstore ensures its range of fiber optic cables and assemblies are manufactured to the industry’s highest standards for network cabling using the highest quality optical fiber, sheathing and connectors available. Available in 62.5/125, 50/125 and 9/125 fiber types and color coded for convenience. Built to meet the needs of even the most demanding data communications, voice, and video networks, all of our ST to ST, SC to SC and LC to LC fiber optic patch cables are individually tested to ensure reliable performance. | <urn:uuid:826c9094-efab-42f7-b842-ab86fa3e34f2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.fiber-optic-components.com/some-basic-types-of-fiber-optic-connector.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.924761 | 923 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Over the past 30 years, fiber optic technology has spanned its commitment constantly with the even more endeavors nowadays to meet the ever-increasing networking bandwidth for high-quality Internet applications. In these applications, fiber optic connectors, serving as mousetraps, are used to couple the source, receiver and other components to the fiber optic cable. Fiber optic connectors generally use either physical contact (PC) or expanded beam technology. This article mainly discusses PC connectors from single-channel and multi-channel aspects.
It’s necessary to figure out what PC connections are first.
A PC connection is accomplished by terminating the optical fiber into a precise ceramic ferrule. The tip of the ceramic ferrule is polished in a precise manner to ensure that light enters and exits at a known trajectory with little scattering or optical loss. In achieving PC connection, there are two requirements for a cleaved fiber endface for PC connection. One is that the fiber endface inclination is less than 0.6°, and the other is that there is no mist on the endface.
There are countless single-channel and multi-channel fiber optic PC connector types available for telecommunication and data-communication industries.
PC connectors are characteristic of directly mating and polishing fibers by utilizing tight tolerance ferrules and alignment sleeves and/or mating pins. This ceramic-ferruled technology permits reliable optical performance, with several designs becoming widely used as industry standards. Typically, these connectors are single fiber solutions with plastic shells. FC and ST connectors are becoming less popular but are still used in instrumentation. LC and SC connectors are commonly used in the telecommunication industry.
As a push-pull connector, LC connector, licensed by Lucent Technologies, provides a pull-proof design and small size perfect for high-density applications. It’s available in simplex or duplex versions, widely used in 10Gigabit, 40Gigabit and 100Gigabit applications. Like Cisco QSFP-40GE-LR4 transceiver, QSFP-40GE-LR4 listed on Fiberstore establishes 40Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) links with this duplex LC connector for 10km maximum link length over single-mode fiber (SMF).
SC connector, developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), is recommended in the TIA/EIA-568-A Standard for structured cabling. It’s also available in simplex or duplex versions, typically used in Analog CATV (Cable Television) and other telecoms applications including point to point and passive optical networking.
Multi-channel connectors house multiple fiber optic termini in a precision insertion. The termini can be configured as a pin/socket combination or genderless. MTP/MPO connectors belong to PC multi-channel connector.
The US CONEC MTP is a MPO compatible connector that exhibits quick and reliable connections for up to 12 fibers in a very small form factor. Just like LC connector, 40G links are likely to deploy this kind of MPO-12 connector for high performance. Take Cisco QSFP-40G-CSR4 for example, this QSFP-40G-CSR4 transceiver sets up 40G links in 850nm multi-mode fiber (MMF), with MPO-12 as its connector.
Both single-channel and multi-channel PC connectors have optical performance characterized by return loss. The return loss of the connector is a measurement of how much light is reflected back at the connector interface. It’s affected by alignment, contamination and polishing. For example, if the mating faces of the two fibers are not parallel, some energy reflects back to the source. Additionally, contamination at the mating interface causes reflection and scattering of light. What’s more, a poor polish may create an end-gap separation or an end-angle.
Featuring by the tightest tolerance ceramic ferrules and alignment sleeves, coupled with the highest quality termination and polishing procedures, PC connections are able to deliver unrivaled optical performance.
Fiber optic connectors make quick fiber connection and efficient light transmission possible, gaining more and more popularity among their users. Fiberstore offers hundreds of fiber optic connectors, such as FC, D4, DIN, MU, the MTP/MPO ST, SC and LC, as well as their related optic modules (eg. QSFP-40GE-LR4 and QSFP-40G-CSR4 mentioned above). You can visit Fiberstore for more information about fiber optic connectors. | <urn:uuid:6474fc1e-5b58-4485-93ab-cbf58fe04df3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.fiber-optic-components.com/tag/mpo-12 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.912925 | 950 | 2.625 | 3 |
The digital revolution has paved the way for exciting advancements and creative ways to solve problems— from the rise of the gig economy to the ability to work remotely — that continue to change how people work. One of the most innovative technologies to come out of this ongoing revolution is cognitive computing, which has the potential to transform organizations, regardless of their size, all over the world.
There is no single, agreed-upon definition of what cognitive systems are. This new technology is still being developed, its limits tested, and its capabilities discovered. It is also a broad term that describes many different types of artificial learning systems and cognitive science, which can make it difficult to pinpoint where a cognitive system ends and another system begins.
Simply put, cognitive systems are technology platforms that are capable of learning and modifying their behavior based on their own experiences and interactions with humans. Instead of dictating the parameters in which they can learn and operate, cognitive systems resemble natural human intelligence and simulate human thought processes, making them one of the most promising pieces of enterprise technology of the 21st century.
How Does Cognitive Computing Work?
The way cognitive computing works differs greatly from other, related forms of technology and computational sciences. Typically, other types of systems are deterministic or prescriptive; humans program these systems to learn and behave in a certain way. Cognitive systems, on the other hand, are designed to learn, reason, and behave as humans do. They are adaptive and able to respond to new information; interact with data, other systems, and humans; and understand contextual elements and clues to make hypotheses, recommendations, and decisions.
However, because these systems are so different and complex, developers face unique challenges in creating and refining cognitive systems. Researchers have identified several major hurdles in deploying cognitive computing, particularly when it comes to integrating software-based cognitive systems with the appropriate computer hardware and cultivating the connection between feeling, knowing, and thinking within systems. As cognitive systems become more prevalent and assimilated in peoples’ lives and work, researchers will have to determine how to overcome these hurdles and explore new facets of what these systems can do.
Pros and Cons of Cognitive Computing
Although research is still underway, researchers have already identified the myriad benefits of cognitive computing, particularly for enterprise organizations. Some of the biggest advantages of cognitive computing include:
- Data Analysis: Many organizations produce an almost overwhelming amount of data. This data can be used for a number of reasons, such as gaining insights into business performance or assisting in a digital transformation strategy. Cognitive computing can analyze this data more quickly and accurately, allowing businesses to harness it in ways that benefit their organization and goals.
- Business Efficiency: Similarly, businesses can almost always benefit from being more efficient and productive. With so much information available and new challenges constantly arising, business leaders may have trouble determining the best ways to become more efficient and get the most from their employees. Cognitive systems can assist with strategic planning, decision making, and unexpected solutions that improve efficiency across many aspects of an organization.
- Customer Interaction: Serving and satisfying customers is one of the top priorities of any business. It can be difficult to meet all customers’ requests, let alone anticipate their needs, and exceed their expectations. Cognitive computing can be used to learn from customers’ previous experiences and help them find the solutions they need. It can even be used to help businesses realize which customers or clients are ultimately a drain on their resources and when it may be time to end that professional relationship.
These are just a few ways that cognitive systems are already advantageous for businesses, and as time goes on, researchers will likely find other uses and benefits.
Of course, there are limitations to what cognitive systems can do. Even the most sophisticated cognitive computing systems may never be able to match the human brain. Though cognitive systems are intelligent enough to handle certain tasks, they cannot take care of or maintain themselves.
Businesses will still need the help of IT professionals and managed service providers alike to keep these systems running. Further, as businesses become more reliant on technology, they will also become more reliant on the IT department to keep it in good working order.
Other drawbacks of cognitive computing include:
- Security: Maintaining cybersecurity is crucial for organizations of any size, especially small businesses. Cognitive systems may handle or touch-sensitive information from all over an organization, which means businesses have to do their best to ensure that information is properly protected. With a growing number of cybersecurity threats, safeguarding that information and fortifying cognitive systems becomes increasingly difficult.
- Adoption: Employers have to choose to adopt cognitive computing systems in their organizations. Despite the benefits, some organizations may not want to make this shift, whether because cognitive computing is still in development or simply because organizational change can be a hassle.
- Change Management: In a similar vein, businesses may find it difficult to implement this change across their organizations. Employees may resist cognitive computing, due to fears or misconceptions of computers taking their jobs or rising up against humankind altogether. While it certainly isn’t impossible to quell these fears, employers may have trouble trying to convince all of their employees about the benefits of and need for cognitive systems.
Depending on how the development of cognitive computing unfolds, these limitations may no longer be a concern — or researchers may discover that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.
Types of Cognitive Systems
There are several different types of artificial learning systems that fall under the larger umbrella of cognitive computing. Many of these systems are similar to each other, and they often overlap in terms of their function and purpose. The most common types of cognitive systems include:
Deep Learning Systems
Deep learning systems mimic the human brain’s ability to learn by finding patterns and looking at previous examples. It can perform human-like tasks, such as identifying an image or recognizing speech. Deep learning systems can learn in an unsupervised manner from unlabeled, unstructured data. It is already used in driverless cars and voice control technology in smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices.
Machine Learning Systems
Machine learning is the process of teaching a system to learn without (or with minimal) human intervention. These systems do need to be trained against an initial data set but can learn beyond it. They are capable of classification, prediction, and decision-making. Machine learning systems already see myriad uses in a variety of industries, like healthcare, retail, and manufacturing.
Inspired by biological networks found in the human brain, an artificial neural network is a computing system that interprets data to categorize, find patterns, and identify relationships. They can group unlabeled data based on similar characteristics, making neural networks highly useful for organizing massive amounts of data. They are already being widely used in a number of different ways, from filtering emails to diagnosing cancer.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence is difficult to define, as it encompasses a variety of different concepts, processes, and practices. In essence, it is a computer system that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Research areas have focused on tasks like natural language processing and automated reasoning. People have discovered uses for artificial intelligence in seemingly every field, including transportation, education, agriculture, government, and media.
Applications of Cognitive Computing
Though it is relatively new, cognitive computing already has many applications in all sorts of industries. Its most noteworthy uses include:
- Chatbots: These programs can simulate human conversations and communicate through text with users in real-time. They can answer questions and are commonly used on e-commerce websites to assist customers.
- Face Detection: Cognitive computing can learn to distinguish images of peoples’ faces from each other and then identify them. This can be useful in security systems, such as to unlock a mobile phone.
- Fraud Identification: Cognitive computing has a promising future in finances and banking when it comes to detecting strange and fraudulent transactions. This can help prevent fraudsters from taking money that isn’t theirs and protect consumers who are taken advantage of.
- Healthcare: Physicians can use cognitive systems to comb through medical records and patient data to find treatment options. Depending on the system, they may even be able to interact with it or ask questions about patient care.
- Health and Wellness: Wearable items like smartwatches and fitness apps often make use of cognitive computing to organize and analyze a user’s health data. These pieces of health technology can then make recommendations about diet, exercise, and sleep to help users improve their health.
- Travel: Cognitive systems can be used on travel websites and apps to help customers find better arrangements based on their budget and preferences. It can aggregate information, like flight times and hotel room availability, scan that information, and match it up with customers’ specifications to make the planning process easier and more satisfying.
However, these are just a few of the many ways that cognitive systems can be used to the advantage of businesses and consumers alike. The cognitive computing market is expected to be worth $77.5 billion by the year 2025, indicating massive, imminent growth — and many unexpected new uses for this technology. Cognitive computing could undergo a revolution in and of itself, transforming businesses, their operations, and their performance for years to come. | <urn:uuid:3e12ea9a-f15f-43e2-939e-dfc9e6e86a43> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.atera.com/blog/cognitive-systems-teaching-technology-to-learn/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335034.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927131111-20220927161111-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.948916 | 1,878 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Series: Db2 - Database Management System Series
Db2 – Introduction to RDBMSs and Db2 v12
The Introduction to RDBMSs and Db2 course describes from a Database Administrator's (DBA) viewpoint how Db2 is used and the types of Db2-related tasks that the DBA performs. The course also looks at Db2's system configuration requirements and how it is implemented in a z/OS environment.
Db2 – Manage Data Definitions with Db2 v12
The Manage Data Definitions with Db2 course describes how SQL is used to define a Db2 database and its associated objects. It looks at SQL statement syntax and the methods used to invoke SQL statements.
Db2 – Db2 SQL Fundamentals V12
The Db2 SQL Fundamentals course looks at some of the more common SQL statements used by programmers when starting out. It addresses the code used to obtain Db2 table data, sort it, as well as methods used for inserting, deleting, updating and merging table data.
Db2 – Advanced Db2 SQL V12
The Advanced Db2 SQL course discusses some of the more advanced SQL code used to manipulate table data. Various methods used for joining tables is presented, along with examples of SQL statements and subqueries used to filter data results.
Db2 – Create and Maintain Db2 Programs v12
The Create and Maintain Db2 Programs course describes how SQL is invoked from an application program and the interaction that can occur between the application program and Db2. This course also discusses how a Db2 COBOL Program is created.
Db2 – Db2 Stored Procedures v12
The Db2 Stored Procedures course describes how stored procedures are used and the platforms on which they can be implemented. The benefits derived from using stored procedures are discussed as well as security implications associated with them.
Db2 – Optimize Db2 Application Performance v12
The Optimize Db2 Application Performance course describes the methods used by Db2 when processing application programs containing SQL, and provides details of the tools and utilities that can be used to measure and analyse their effectiveness. | <urn:uuid:a9d93455-7a6b-489a-9283-2d964108c100> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://interskill.com/series/db2-database-management-system-series/?noredirect=en-US | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335286.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928212030-20220929002030-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.87891 | 459 | 2.84375 | 3 |
The impact of cybercrime for a small business is staggering and can leave an organization in financial ruin if it falls victim to such a calamity. Unfortunately, there is no fool proof way to fully prevent a cyber attack or data breach these days since cybercriminals are always improving the way that they get away with their crimes. Here are a few facts about cybercrime that will put this crime into perspective for you as a small business owner.
The only way someone would involve themselves in this “cybercrime industry” is if it were of financial benefit to them. Well, in 2018, a cybercrime report was released where it is estimated that in the year of 2018 alone, cybercriminals made over $1.5 trillion, and the company that performed the analysis, Bromium and McGuire, claims that is a very conservative number. If cybercrime were a country, based on GDP, they would rank thirteenth in the world, just above Australia.
Criminals will use any means necessary to get the information they are looking for. When it comes to attacking small businesses, the most common type of infiltration technique is a phishing attack. Over 85% of organizations have reported that they have experienced phishing or social engineering attacks in 2019. Accenture reports in its “The Cost of Cybercrime” report that the number of phishing and social engineering attacks has increased 16% from last year.
Although phishing attacks are the most common type of attack, the most costly type of attack on an organization is a malware attack. According to “The Cost of Cybercrime”, the average cost of a malware attack on an organization is $2,613,952 which is an 11% increase from the year before, and the cost with only continue to go up.
It’s clear that many companies are moving their data from traditional storage to cloud-based storage. Due to this data storage migration, it is estimated that the amount of data stored on the cloud will increase by one-hundred times by the year 2021. Because of this, there is more of a threat to companies both large and small of a data breach, and the fact is that when a company has handed over its information, that data is no longer under the company’s control. It’s scary to think about a data breach of just one single cloud server and how much personal information could be leaked.
With that increase of cloud-based storage, it is also predicted that data breaches will increase by nearly seventy percent by the year 2024. That will increase the costs of data breaches from $3 trillion to over $5 trillion in four years. Cybercrime is one of the fastest growing industries, and businesses need to take the steps now to limit their exposure as the threat is ever increasing.
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 it 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 no obligation proposal at 844-411-LIBERTY (844-411-5423). | <urn:uuid:2bd8b75c-2e34-441b-93ac-0ccdaa2e6590> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.libertyid.com/blog/shocking-cybercrime-statistics-of-2019-and-predictions-for-the-future/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335286.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928212030-20220929002030-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.963318 | 731 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Read books, not just websites.
Read for self-improvement, not just for the latest project.
Read about improving your trade, not just about the latest technology.
Some of the books listed here would be a good start: The most influential programming books of all time
2. Work With People Smarter Than Yourself
Working with smarter and/or more experienced developers will teach you a great deal.
3. Become a Polymath (or 'Jack-of-all-Trades')
Decide to be a 'Jack-of-all-Trades', allowing you to avoid becoming 'pigeon-holed' into one specialty, which can stagnate your programming skills, as well as hurt your future employment prospects.
4. Read and Document Other People's Code
Writing code is significantly easier than reading someone else's code and figuring out what it does.
5. Get Programming Experience on a Real Project
There is nothing like getting in and coding, especially under pressure - work on a real project, with real fickle customers, with real, ever-changing requirements and with real engineering problems.
6. Teach Others About Programming
This will force you to understand something at a completely different level, since you have to explain it to someone else.
7. Learn One New Programming Language Every Year
One year gives you enough time to get past the basics - it pushes you towards understanding what's beneficial in that language, and to be able to program in a style native to that language.
8. Complete One New Pet Project Every Year
Start a "pet" project and follow it to completion and delivery; a good pet project will push your boundaries and keep you interested.
9. Learn Assembly Language
Learning a low level language like assembly gives you insight into the way computers 'think' without any high-level abstractions; the elegance at this level is surprising.
10. See Your Application From the End User's Perspective
Interact with the end-user to see, through their eyes, how they use the software; end users are typically not technical, and they often see software as a magical piece of work, while you see software as a logical set of steps.
11. Start a Physical Exercise Program
You work a whole lot better when you're in good physical shape - problems become easier and less overwhelming, wasting time is much less of a temptation, you can think clearer, and working through things step by step doesn't seem an arduous task.
12. Learn Touch Typing
Learning to touch type is a quick and effective way to give your productivity a boost as a programmer.
Cross posted from: Dodgy Coder - How To Become a Better Programmer
Subscribe to posts via RSS | <urn:uuid:117ec2e5-0eff-46bc-a012-7ba36c40760e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.internetsecuritydb.com/2011/10/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336674.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001132802-20221001162802-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.91779 | 571 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Are artificial intelligence systems secure? How do I know if I can trust them?
In this Cyber Security Inside What That Means video, Camille chats with Farinaz Koushanfar, N. Asokan, and Ahmad Sadeghi, all professors doing work with artificial intelligence and security.
Farinaz Koushanfar is a Professor and Henry Booker Faculty Scholar at ECE University of California, San Diego, USA. N. Asokan is the David R. Cheriton Chair and Executive Director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, University of Waterloo, Canada. Ahmad Sadeghi is a Professor at Technical University Darmstadt, Germany.
- Where we are at with artificial intelligence security and how trustworthiness plays a role.
- Why it is difficult to secure AI algorithms, and what goes into making a secure system.
- How artificial intelligence is built and why security and privacy has to be looked at differently because of it.
- Why it is important to keep hardware in mind when designing AI security.
- And more!
Check it out. For more information, previous podcasts, and full versions, visit our homepage at https://cybersecurityinside.com.
To read more about cybersecurity topics, visit our blog at https://cybersecurityinside.com/blog/.
#artificialintelligence #machinelearning #cybersecurity
The views and opinions expressed are those of the guests and author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Intel Corporation.
If you are interested in emerging threats, new technologies, or best tips and practices in cybersecurity, please follow the Cyber Security Inside podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.
Follow our hosts Tom Garrison and Camille Morhardt:
Learn more about Intel Cybersecurity:
Intel Compute Life Cycle (CLA): | <urn:uuid:f9efdbfc-66b6-4a4f-b0db-61c8a26525fe> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybersecurityinside.com/video/ai-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337631.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005140739-20221005170739-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.884797 | 396 | 2.703125 | 3 |
October 14, 2020What is Self-Service BI?
Data streaming is a strategy employed when the source of information generates data on a continuous basis and near real-time updates are required to allow analysts a more recent view of data (usually aggregated) by which they make decisions. In the most extreme cases, the consumer of the data is no longer a human (where milliseconds are moot), rather it is processes driven by other code that uses the streamed data to control flow.
Streaming isn’t new, and streaming isn’t particularly exotic. Only a very small number of use cases require millisecond level streaming support, where the bulk (70%) of data freshness requirements are ok with hours of delay.
Data Streaming vs Batch Data Movement
Data exists everywhere, and when that data is captured from its native source there is a challenge that emerges to get the data into an appropriate technology for analysis. The process of moving that data can be classified into two high-level concepts: Batch & Streaming.
Batch data movement refers to when data is allowed to accumulate for a given time interval before being moved in bulk to the new system. If analysis requirements are for more real-time analysis, streaming systems are employed to route the arriving data to potentially multiple different data stores at the same time during ingress.
What are the benefits of data streaming?
Aggregating and analyzing data in real-time allows for more agility and potentially higher quality decisions based on the most recently available data. For instance, if you are spending money on a pay-per-click program, every minute that goes by where you aren’t optimizing for the right search phrases costs you real money. The old axiom “time is money” defines the reason for using a streaming solution. If delays cause you to make less optimal decisions that cost or lose money, streaming could be the answer.
When is data streaming used?
Data streaming is used when real-time analysis is required, in scenarios such as:
- Retail – Customer Experience, beacons based on location, and dynamic 1:1 engagement tactics require the current state of the customer experience to maximize value.
- Manufacturing – Machinery monitoring where downtime means money is being lost.
- Connected Car – These new vehicle capabilities require immediate Interaction with their environment.
- Cyber Security – Data breaches must be reported and corrected almost immediately to mitigate the amount of damage done by criminals.
- Weather – Weather safety requires immediate streaming data notification for highly dynamic systems such as tornadoes.
- Healthcare – Monitoring patients in real time during operations or post operation can mean the difference between life and death.
Data Streaming Technologies
Apache-based open source projects Spark, Kafka, Flume, and Flink are among the most popular streaming data frameworks and commercial entities such as Confluent exist to support and augment those frameworks. Talend, Informatica, and Oracle are leaders in the commercial/enterprise space.
Successful implementation of data warehouse streaming requires a sophisticated streaming architecture and Big Data solution. Typically these architectures should be able to process and execute more than 100,000 transactions per second to support Big Data analytics and data lake initiatives.
Some Challenges with Data Streaming
Downstream/derived tables need to be kept up to date. Streaming information potentially invalidates derived or pre-aggregated tables. Data arriving at different intervals can create consistency issues at query time. This may not affect the validity of the answers you are getting, however, you need to understand this in the context of your use case.
Updates to data can be difficult. Streaming is generally an append-only scenario, however in some cases late arriving data, or changes to data must be taken into account.
Using streaming tech can cause new stresses on both source and destination systems resulting in performance being adversely impacted. Due to the bespoke requirements around streaming, often custom development is required both to satisfy functional requirements as well as scaling efficiently to support a large number of data sources.
What’s the alternative
For small amounts of data, re-aggregating on each query is an option, however, we’re in the BIG DATA ERA and that is not possible at large scale.
Incremental update is an alternative that is much more straight forward to implement and can give 80-90% of the benefit of streaming at a much lower cost. AtScale enables Incremental update which is a configurable batch operation that operates on an interval that approximates streaming without the complexity and bespoke code required to get the minute refreshes down to seconds. | <urn:uuid:e0a541ab-6eff-4dbf-bbf0-57c61090eca1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.atscale.com/blog/what-is-data-streaming/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337631.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005140739-20221005170739-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.918945 | 938 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Good data is more than just a matter of volume. It’s a vehicle to understand your business, and find answers that were beyond your reach! Just having a lot of data is never enough. So what makes big data useful? What properties should you look for to feel confident you have the right data?
Big data comes from three primary sources:
1) Social data – from messages, tweets, retweets, likes, shared pictures and other files, and comments from various social media platforms.
2) Machine data – the data generated by devices such as phones, cash registers, IoT sensors, and servers, including not only the applications they run but their monitoring data, such as CPU and memory allocation, error logs, and crash reports. (Medical imaging accounts for a growing share of machine data; a single CT scan can be 20 GB or more.)
3) Transactional data – This data is generated from all the transactions that happen every day, such as banking, finance, retail, and supply chain processes, a source that is continually increasing.
To derive value from the data, it needs to be looked at from different perspectives. This is where the Four Vs of Big Data come to help: Volume, velocity, variety, and veracity.
Volume, as the name implies, describes the quantity of the data. Volume is important because we need enough data to derive insights that are statistically reliable. And for use cases that are time-sensitive, the data also needs to cover a long enough span.
Consider a use case of deriving trends and patterns in CPU utilization. Accurate daily, weekly, or monthly patterns can be detected only when there are sufficient data points across many days, weeks, or months! Similarly, comprehensive detection of anomalies relies on accurately modeling normal behavior. Insufficient data points or duration will very likely lead to large numbers of false positives or false negatives.
Velocity refers to the speed at which data is generated and consumed. Velocity helps assess how long a data point retains value. This varies depending on the use case. For example, stock market data could be very short-lived, losing relevance in milliseconds; procurement data could stay valid for weeks. In the IT world, applications and infrastructures frequently go through tech refresh or get decommissioned, making many of the older observations about their performance, capacity, and availability lose their relevance for the enterprise architects.
To measure the impact of velocity, you can use factors such as persistence and recency. Persistence provides an indication of how long a value has been measured, thereby ensuring that it is not a temporary, transient observation. Recency provides an indication of how recently this data point was captured, thereby ensuring that it is not stale and obsolete. These factors can then be used to assess the relevance of the observations derived from the data.
One of the everyday uses of velocity is in making online recommendations to customers based on their purchase history. A customer’s most recent and consistent purchases carry more weight in guiding recommendations for similar or complementary items.
Variety refers to different formats of data, such as CSVs, relational databases, videos, audio, or event and error logs. It also refers to different sources from which the data is collected. Having a sufficient variety of data formats lets us create a holistic understanding of the problem at hand.
For example, a cab service provider wants to use data analysis to optimize its operations. It can collect data about traffic conditions, cab demands, weather, travel patterns, crime rates, accidents, and other parameters. And this data can come in various forms: maps, videos, and live feeds, among others. As you can imagine, a higher variety of data will lead to better understanding, better insights, and better decision-making!
High-variety data shows up more with the increasing penetration of IoT in our everyday lives. Today, an urban consumer uses many connected devices in the household, such as a mobile phone, smart watch, smart TV, or digital voice assistant. All types of data can combine to create a rich user profile!
One more aspect of variety is the content of the data. Consider an example of events data collected from an enterprise IT system that captures various errors, anomalies, and abnormal conditions. Events data coming from different layers of technology might have the same format, but the content varies. We would need to understand the range of events that are captured as part of this data, such as availability problems, performance levels, or IT policy non-compliance.
Furthermore, we’d want to know which part of the technology stack is capturing these events: applications, servers, storage devices, network devices, or others. A wide variety of content ensures holistic, comprehensive analysis.
Veracity refers to the completeness, consistency, and trustworthiness of the data. This aspect becomes all the more important as data comes from a wider range of sources and drives more outcomes. The technology research firm Gartner found in 2021 that poor-quality data and the errors it causes cost the average U.S. business $12.9 million a year. Factors such as bias, abnormalities, inconsistencies, and data gaps can affect the overall quality of data. Identifying and removing all of these helps in improving the data’s value. It also improves the accuracy of the results derived from analyzing it.
Lack of veracity can cause many kinds of problems. Let’s say we want to analyze vehicle pictures taken by automated traffic cameras. This data often contains lots of blurs, images that don’t contain a license plate number, and other gaps or inconsistencies. Poor image quality can get in the way of automatically and efficiently detecting traffic violations.
Or consider incidents in enterprise IT. These incidents are analyzed to mine patterns, correlations, and problem signatures so that IT teams can predict and quickly fix or even prevent problems from occurring. However, incident data often contains time gaps when data was not collected due to glitches in monitoring or collection. Or attributes in the data, such as OS versions, host name, and host location, are stale or inconsistent with the infrastructure repository.
So you can see that if the underlying data isn’t complete or trustworthy, the insights derived from it aren’t very useful.
Selecting the right data set is the most vital step to ensure the utility and trustworthiness of insights derived from it. Analyzing big data that is incomplete, stale, or insufficient leads to a lot of wasted effort. Worse, it carries the risk of misleading the user with incorrect insights and recommendations. Looking at the Four Vs of volume, velocity, variety, and veracity can help find limitations of your data set much earlier in the process.
Despite the advancements in artificial intelligence, many organizations still don’t trust these AI-driven insights to make business decisions. An early data quality assessment can play a vital role in deriving meaningful insights and actionable recommendations, and thereby help in increasing the adoption of AI solutions in the industry.
Big data is one of the factors enabling the rise of AI. To learn more about how AI can power up your business, check out this entertaining and informative primer on basic AI and machine learning concepts. | <urn:uuid:9071eb14-2e4a-4646-b8eb-7d377d915691> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://digitate.com/blog/unraveling-the-ai-mystery-learning-the-four-vs-of-big-data-can-lead-to-a-fifth-value/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337889.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006222634-20221007012634-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.929535 | 1,481 | 2.546875 | 3 |
For years now, a concept called “zero trust” has been used a cybersecurity catchphrase. It’s caught on so much that a notoriously dilatory federal IT apparatus is using the term. But one of the biggest barriers to adopting this next-generation security model is the amount of confusion these term brings.
What does it actually mean?
With cyberattacks like business email compromise, phishing, and ransomware attacks on the rise, something needs to be done and soon.
The Old Ways
To understand what zero trust is, it’s important to know the core concept. At the core of it, zero trust relates to a shift in how organizations conceive their networks and their IT infrastructure. Under the old model that businesses use, computers, servers, and all the other devices are physically inside of a physical office building. All of them are on the same network and are trusted amongst each other.
The computer you have a work can easily be connected to the print on the floor you’re on or could get a team document from a shared server.
For security measures, firewalls and antivirus were set up for them to see anything outside of the organization as a bad thing and block it. These measures would never look inside of a network and scrutinize any piece of internal information.
From this model alone, you can see how those can be problems. Especially with the explosion of mobile devices, cloud services, and even remote work on the rise. Organizations now can’t physically control every single device employees use.
And even if they could, the old model wasn’t the best model to have.
You have scenarios where if an attacker ever slipped by the defenses – either remotely or physically – the network would immediately grant them trust and freedom to do whatever. When it comes to security it’s not simple as “outside is bad, and inside is good.”
The New Way
What this new model brings is that instead of trusting particular devices or connections, zero trust demands that people prove that they should be given access. What it means in practice is that you’ll be logging into a corporate account with biometrics or a hardware security key on top of your typical username and passwords.
All these measures are in place to make it harder for attackers to impersonate users.
And even once that’s all done, you only get access on a need-to-know or need-to-access basis. If you’re not invoicing contractors as part of your job, the account you log into shouldn’t give you access to the billing platform at all.
Delving deeper, advocates of this program start to sound a bit like a religious experience when explaining it. They consistently emphasize how zero trust systems aren’t just a single piece of software that you just install or is a box you tick on a menu screen.
Instead, they see it as a philosophy, concepts, a mantra, or a mindset. They talk about it in this fashion in an attempt to reclaim it from marketing doublespeak or promotional T-shirts that have used zero trust as some magic bullet.
Implementation is Difficult Though
Because there is so much confusion around the real meaning and purpose of this, it’s harder for people to implement these ideas into practice. That being said, people are in agreement with the overall goals and purpose behind the use of the phrase. However executives or IT administrators can easily be led astray with the concept and implement protections that only reinforce old methods rather than bring in anything new.
Cloud providers do have an easier time though since they’ve baked zero-trust concepts into their platforms. However, with everyone using zero trust to describe any security feature, it can be difficult to understand what it all means.
Yet the biggest blockade to implementation is that a lot of our existing infrastructure is designed under the older models. It’s very difficult to implement new systems since both methods are fundamentally different.
There are very high risks of nothing getting done from projects where zero trust ideas are working to implement into legacy systems let alone rearchitect those systems.
We can also see this in the USA federal government implementation. They use a hodgepodge of vendors and legacy systems that will require time investment and money to overhaul those systems.
Zero Trust Will Take a Lot of Time
Despite all of the hurdles that zero trust is facing, it doesn’t mean it will never be implemented. Security professionals who are paid to hack organizations and discover digital weaknesses – known as red teams – have started studying what it takes to break into these zero-trust networks.
It’s going to take time for many organizations to fully grasp the benefits of this approach over the systems we’ve relied on for decades. However, the abstract nature of this concept does have its benefits. This abstract nature would be able to become more flexible and could even last for a long time while specific software tools will eventually die out. All in all, it does look promising and is part of the future. | <urn:uuid:233ca861-0df3-4d52-bd33-7d482bed27f5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://davidpapp.com/2022/02/07/what-is-zero-trust/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335469.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930113830-20220930143830-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.954925 | 1,043 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The ethernet cables are usually preferred by gamers or people who don’t want signal interferences. This is because the ethernet cables promise unhindered signals, and the signals haven’t interfered. However, people often wonder, “does a longer ethernet cable slow internet speed?” So, let’s find out how true is it!
Does A Longer Ethernet Cable Slow Internet Speed?
For the most part, the long ethernet cables can lead to slow internet connection since it increases the latency. In addition, it increases the distance that the signal has to travel to reach the end-user. On the contrary, it’s essential to note down that ethernet signals tend to travel at 2/3rd the light speed. Therefore, the users might not notice the difference in internet speed, be it the short cable or longer.
Generally, it’s safe to say that the ethernet cable’s length will not matter when it concerns the length. Still, there is a limit to which the single cable’s length can be increased.
Suitable Length Of The Ethernet Cable
Truth be told, there is no particular limit for the length of ethernet cable for a single run. However, the length of the ethernet cable directly influences the latency. For instance, if the length of the ethernet cable is increased, it will consequently increase the latency. This is because the internet signals will need to travel farther away. So, the farther the signal has to travel, the more the chances of interferences. There are still limited chances that internet speed will be influenced (especially with the shorter cables).
For instance, if you switch from a 10m ethernet cable to a 20m ethernet cable, the users won’t be able to tell the difference in the internet speed. Although the length of the ethernet cable is increased twice, the users wouldn’t be able to outline differences in the internet speed. There will be a slight loss of signals with longer lengths of cable, but it’s still not drastic. This is because the minor changes in length will not result in connection issues.
However, the users might feel drastic internet speed issues if the cable length exceeds 100m. The single ethernet cable run is designed to work optimally up to 328ft (or 100m approximately). When the length surpasses this count, the internet signals start weakening and will reduce the internet passed. In addition, it will impact the reliability of the internet connection. For the people using old ethernet cables (CAT5), the internet speed up to 100Mbps will be optimal for up to 100m.
So, if the ethernet cable length is increased beyond it, the speed will reduce to 10Mbps. To be honest, the ethernet cable above 100m will work, but the connectivity issues will increase. This is the prime reason that manufacturers don’t suggest going beyond this length while using the ethernet connection. To summarize, the internet speed will be optimal and reliable if the ethernet cable run doesn’t exceed the 100m length (minor latency issues might incur).
Transmission Speed Of Ethernet Signals
It’s pretty evident that users don’t have to worry about the ethernet cable speed with 20m cable (if they were using 10m ethernet cable previously). The internet or ethernet signals travel at 2/3rd the speed of light, which makes it around 200km/millisecond. With this being said, there will be no issues with the internet connection as long as you don’t exceed the ethernet cable length. All in all, the minor increase in ethernet cable won’t impact the internet connection.
Suitable Length Of Ethernet Cable
To be honest, the length of the ethernet cable doesn’t impact the internet speed drastically as long as the single run doesn’t exceed 100m length. If the length of the ethernet cable is increased by this count, there is a potential for signal loss because the signals will have to travel a long distance. In addition, when you are installing the ethernet cable, make sure the installation is tight.
Upgrading The Ethernet Cable Length
For the people who need to transfer files and data, upgrading the ethernet cable will be better. However, the internet connection will be directly influenced by the quality of the ethernet cable. Usually, people opt for Cat-5e cables, but the Cat-6 cables have better quality. Also, the Cat-7 cables are top-notch but can be pretty expensive. | <urn:uuid:159b9445-e682-467e-b4f1-cb239891d579> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://internet-access-guide.com/does-a-longer-ethernet-cable-slow-internet-speed/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337398.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003035124-20221003065124-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.895288 | 950 | 2.90625 | 3 |
HTTP TRACE flood is a layer 7 DDoS attack that targets web servers and applications.
Layer 7 is the application layer of the OSI model. The HTTP protocol – is an Internet protocol which is the basis of browser-based Internet requests, and is commonly used to send form contents over the Internet or to load web pages.
HTTP TRACE floods are designed to overwhelm web servers’ resources by continuously requesting single or multiple URL’s from many sources attacking machines, which simulate an HTTP client, such as web browsers (Though the attack analyzed here, does not use browser emulation).
An HTTP TRACE Flood consists of TRACE requests. Unlike other HTTP floods that may include other request methods such as POST, PUT, GET, etc.
When the server’s limits of concurrent connections are reached, the server can no longer respond to legitimate requests from other clients attempting to TRACE, causing a denial of service.
HTTP TRACE flood attacks use standard URL requests, hence it may be quite challenging to differentiate from valid traffic. Traditional rate-based volumetric detection is ineffective in detecting HTTP TRACE flood attacks since traffic volume in HTTP TRACE floods is often under detection thresholds. However, HTTP TRACE flood uses the less common TRACE method. As such, it may be beneficial to review network traffic carefully when witnessing many such incoming requests.
To send an HTTP TRACE request client establishes a TCP connection. Before sending an HTTP TRACE request a TCP connection between a client and a server is established, using 3-Way Handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK), seen in packets 114,151,152 in Image 1. The HTTP request will be in a PSH, ACK packet.
Image 1 – Example of TCP connection
An attacker (IP 10.0.0.2) sends HTTP/1.1 TRACE requests, while the target responds with HTTP/1.1 405 Not Allowed as seen in Image 2.
While in this flow we see an HTTP/1.1 405 Not Allowed response, that might change depending on the web server settings.
Image 2 – Example of HTTP packets exchange between an attacker and a target:
The capture analyzed is around 3.8 seconds long while it contains an average of 81 PPS (packets per second), with an average traffic rate of 0.07 Mbps (considered low, the attack you are analyzing could be significantly higher).
Image 3 – HTTP Flood stats
Analysis of HTTP TRACE Flood in WireShark – Filters
“http” filter – Will show all http related packets.
“http.request.method == TRACE” – Will show HTTP TRACE requests.
It will be important to review the user agent and other HTTP header structures as well as the timing of each request to understand the attack underway.
Download example PCAP of HTTP TRACE Flood attack
*Note: IP’s have been randomized to ensure privacy.Download | <urn:uuid:5d48607c-f3ef-4251-a521-2bba1367647e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://kb.mazebolt.com/knowledgebase/http-trace-flood/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337398.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003035124-20221003065124-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.893326 | 617 | 2.890625 | 3 |
This type of Inspector helps you to author HTML commands to create customized content for the BigFix Console and Web Reports. They allow construction of HTML snippets that can be used to display BigFix data elements in a browser.
When generating HTML, you will be working with the html type. This type can be thought of as a string that carries around an indication that its content is to be treated as HTML. This automatically keeps track of normal string characters that have special meaning in HTML (such as < , > , and &), and escapes them.
An HTML inspector automatically converts:
- The reserved characters to the appropriate HTML entities.
- The results of evaluated relevance instructions to HTML before inserting them into the presentation HTML. This means that you can write Relevance expressions just as you would expect and simply use the html Inspector to convert them, for example:
html of "AT&T"
Or you can cast a string as an html type explicitly to achieve the same results (but without the bracketing
<html> tags), for example:
"<h1>Heading</h1>" as html
If you actually want HTML code to be output, you can use an indexed HTML command such as:
As an alternative to HTML-formatted retrieved properties, consider reporting the results in plain text and doing the formatting from within the presentation.
If you concatenate html with strings, it will automatically escape any reserved characters:
html "<h1>" & "PG&E" & html"</h1>"
concatenation of (html<h1>"; "R&D" as html; html "</h1>")
Note that for concatenation, the items in the list must all have the same type, so the following will not work:
concatenation of (html<h1>"; "R&D"; html "</h1>")
Returns the error: Incompatible types (html and string).
HTML tag Inspectors
Although it is possible to use the "html" indexed property (as shown above), the HTML tag Inspectors are recommended instead:
html tag "h1" of "Johnson & Johnson"
<h1>Johnson & Johnson</h1>
The "html tag" takes as an index parameter the name of the HTML element with which to surround the direct object text. The direct object (the object after the "of") can be either a string or html. If it is a string, it will be HTML-escaped. The index parameter can also include attributes, separated from the element name by whitespace:
html tag "h1 id='Ben & Jerry'" of "Ben & Jerry"
<h1 id='Ben & Jerry'>Ben & Jerry</h1>
Nesting tags is straightforward:
html tag "div id='header'" of html tag "h1" of "AT&T"
Most common HTML elements have a shorthand tag property:
h1 of "P&G"
Like the generic html tag Inspector each shorthand tag property accepts either strings or html as a direct object. Each also accepts HTML attributes as an index parameter:
h1 "id='P&G' class='header'" of "P&G"
<h1 id='P&G' class='header'>P&G</h1>
The following tags are supported:
Because "a" is ignored by the relevance evaluator, the "a" shorthand property is replaced by "anchor".
anchor "href='https://www.hcltechsw.com/'" of "HCL"
Finally, there are a few special purpose aggregating properties:
- ordered list
- unordered list
- definition list
These produce HTML lists (of the respective types) of their plural string or html direct object:
ordered list of ("<"; ">"; "&")
unordered list of ("<"; ">"; "&")
The definition list command alternates between dt and dd elements. Use it where you have a natural set of name/value pairs:
definition list of (name of it; free space of it as string) of drives whose (exists free space of it)
var myArray = new Array();myArray = "a";myArray = "b";myArray = "c";. | <urn:uuid:1c2fc021-4005-4939-b728-4da39194877c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://developer.bigfix.com/relevance/guide/session/htmlinspectors.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337668.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005203530-20221005233530-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.698432 | 1,372 | 2.984375 | 3 |
In November 1979, Microsoft's frequent partner Seattle Computer Products released a standalone Intel 8086 motherboard for hardcore hobbyists and computer manufacturers looking to experiment with this new and very powerful CPU. The 8086 was closely related to the 8088 that IBM chose for the PC; the latter was a cost-reduced version of the former, an 8-bit/16-bit hybrid chip rather than a pure 16-bit like the 8086.
IBM opted for the less powerful 8088 partly to control costs, but also to allow the use of certain hardware that required the 8-bit external data bus found on the 8088. But perhaps the biggest consideration stemmed, as happens so often, from the marketing department rather than engineering. The 8086 was such a powerful chip that an IBM PC so equipped might convince some customers to choose it in lieu of IBM's own larger systems; IBM wanted to take business from other PC manufacturers, not from their own other divisions.
The important thing to understand for our purposes, though, is that both chips shared the same instruction set, and thus could run the same software. Everyone wanted to run CP/M on the SCP boards, but CP/M existed only for the Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80. Thus, SCP had the same problem that Jack Sams and IBM would face months later. Digital Research repeatedly promised an 8086/8088 version of CP/M, but failed to deliver. So, in April of 1980 Tim Paterson of SCP decided to write his own 8086/8088 operating system. He called it QDOS—the "Quick and Dirty Operating System."
The ethicality or lack thereof of what Paterson did has been debated for years. Gary Kildall stridently claimed many times that he ripped off the actual CP/M source code, but this is a very problematic assertion. There is no evidence that he even had access to the source, which Digital, like most companies then and now, guarded carefully.
On the other hand, Paterson freely admits that he pulled out his CP/M reference manual and duplicated each of its API calls one by one. On the other other hand, and while it may not have reflected much originality or creative thinking, what he did was pretty clearly legal even by the standards of today. Courts have ruled again and again that APIs cannot be copyrighted, only specific implementations thereof, and that reverse engineering is therefore allowed. (Well, there is patent law, but that's a swamp we're going to stay well away from...)
Food for thought for open source advocates and Microsoft haters: if QDOS was ethically wrong, then Linux—largely a reimplementation of the Unix standards—must be equally wrong. Paterson claims that he had a good reason to copy CP/M so closely: he wanted to make it as easy as possible for programmers to move existing CP/M software over to QDOS. He also claims that beneath the surface, where he could get away with it, he substantially improved upon his model, notably in disk- and file-handling.
In the meantime Bill Gates was wondering how the hell he was going to come up with an operating system for IBM in the time frame they wanted. Then one day Paterson called Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to tell him about QDOS, just in case Microsoft was interested in writing some software for it or using it in-house. Gates, just the man to recognise an out-of-the-blue saviour when he saw one, called Sams, asking, "Do you want to get [it], or do you want me to?" Sams' answer to that question would cost IBM billions and billions over the decades to come. "By all means, you get it," he said.
Recognising that PC software was far from his realm of expertise, Sams had already pretty much thrown all of his systems-software problems into Microsoft's lap, and he saw no reason to change course now. "We wanted this to be their problem," he later said. Microsoft's "problem" would in a few years become a big, big problem for IBM.
Let there be light!
On September 30, Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Bob O'Rear—Microsoft’s seventh employee—flew down to Florida to make their final proposal to IBM. For Sams, who wanted to essentially foist the software problem on someone else, their plan sounded ideal. Microsoft would take responsibility for providing an operating system, four programming languages (BASIC, COBOL, Fortran, Pascal), and a range of other software to be available at launch (including our old friend Microsoft Adventure).
One point Gates carefully stipulated: Microsoft would licence all of this to IBM, not outright sell it to them, and would expect to be paid on a per-copy royalty basis. IBM, feeling there was opportunity enough for everyone to do well out of this and that it couldn't hurt to have Microsoft's own fate tied so closely to that of the IBM PC, agreed. This huge company, legendarily risk-averse and conservative, elected to place the fate of one of its biggest projects ever in the hands of a 24-year-old. If Microsoft failed to come through, the IBM PC itself would be stillborn.
On November 6, Microsoft and IBM officially signed the contract, which immediately paid Microsoft $700,000 to begin porting all of this disparate software to the new architecture. Ironically, IBM’s Lowe and Sams, who had played such prominent roles in everything that came before, had been transferred to other divisions. Project Chess may have been an Independent Business Unit, but it obviously wasn't entirely immune to the fickle ways of the IBM bureaucracy. Don Estridge took over leadership of the project.
While the software deal was being finalised, Project Chess had not been idle. That same November Microsoft received its first two prototype machines. IBM, desperately concerned about secrecy, demanded they keep them in a windowless vault secured with locks they themselves provided. Microsoft and IBM's Project Chess, just about as physically far apart as two organisations can be and still be in the United States, nevertheless developed a working relationship that seems similar to those of today, when geography matters far less. They communicated constantly through telephone and (especially) a special e-mail system they set up, shuttled packages back and forth via an overnight service, and visited one another frequently—and sometimes without warning. (This became a particular concern for Microsoft; IBM had a habit of dropping in unannounced to see if all of their byzantine security procedures were being practiced.)
The IBM team of course had plenty to keep them busy, but Microsoft were truly up against it. Thanks to all of the negotiations, they were, according to Gates, already "three months behind schedule" the day the contract was finalised. Everyone worked months of seven-day weeks. Most didn't even take Christmas off.
The first goal had to be to get the machine running in its two modes of operation: BASIC and the disk-based operating system. Microsoft could handle the former on their own, but the latter left them dependent on Seattle Computer Products. Even as Microsoft had been finalising their deal with IBM and starting to work, Paterson and SCP had been continuing their own work, refining QDOS from a "quick and dirty" hack into an operating system they could sell. Along the way they renamed it, for obvious reasons, to 86-DOS. As 1980 drew to a close, they at last had a version they felt was suitable for the outside world. | <urn:uuid:e0c6c48b-1e67-4f18-9cf5-795a6fa5d3a1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/ibm-pc-history-part-2/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.979251 | 1,563 | 2.9375 | 3 |
It’s an interesting time in the life of the humble Internet Protocol (IP). While the internet seemed to be collectively crying wolf over the state of IPv4 exhaustion during the last two years, it seems that the panic is slowly but surely dying down. Considering the fact that 2016 started with four of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) having completely run out of IPv4 address blocks, and the increasingly real presence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices demanding IPv6 connectivity, if there was ever a time for panic, it would be now.
But that isn’t to say there’s no light at the end of the tunnel: as we mentioned in the infographic we published at the beginning of the year, IPv6 adoption rates are increasing all the time, and, while 2016 might not be “the year of IPv6”, it’s certainly shaping up to be a turning point in the IPv4/v6 struggle.
The history of the Internet Protocol says a lot about its future.
IPv4 has been with us for a long time. Its limitations with respect to today’s internet are well-documented all around the web, but check out our previous blog on the topic for more information. What’s more interesting, though, is IPv4’s resilience over the past thirty-seven years. Even though IPv4 is hopelessly inadequate in many ways, like security and addressing space, that hasn’t stopped it from remaining the internet’s most widely used protocol since its inception – notwithstanding the fact that the number of internet users worldwide grew from 16 million in 1995 to 3.3 billion by the end of 2015.
This wouldn’t be possible without additional technologies like Network Address Translation and dual-stack Internet Protocol services, but the fact remains that IPv4 still serves as the web’s backbone protocol. So, what does that mean for the future of IPv4 and IPv6?
IPv4 and IPv6 are bound to coexist for the foreseeable future.
Even though IPv6 is being rolled out across many networks and devices are being assigned IPv6 addresses, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be able to access the full extent of the IPv6 internet. If the ISP or enterprise network that the device connects to doesn’t support IPv6, it will still be impossible to reach the address. Solutions to this problem are available, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF) ‘Happy Eyeballs’ algorithm, which detects both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and uses whichever option performs best. This doesn’t solve the problem in the long term, but it’s a stopgap that might make IPv6 adoption smoother.
If IPv4’s history is anything to go by, though, this could also disincentivise ISPs and enterprise networks from making the shift outright.
Where to from here?
Given the history of IPv4 and the nearly 20-year lag in IPv6 adoption, it wouldn’t be wise to make any hard and fast predictions about the future of the Internet Protocol. However, there’s currently a major incentive for networks to shift to IPv6 – the imminent explosion of the Internet of Things and the ongoing mobile device revolution. Gartner predicts a total of over 20 billion devices online by 2020, which will render IPv4 and dual-stack technologies inadequate to service the internet of the near-future’s needs. Even if IPv4 remains in use for the foreseeable future, its days as the internet’s backbone are limited.
Image Credit: thexyzserver.com | <urn:uuid:3443907f-5994-454e-aa75-f6ce45369362> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://irisns.com/2016/03/04/the-history-of-the-internet-protocol-looking-back-at-ipv4/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.921484 | 762 | 2.875 | 3 |
Masten Space Systems has completed an environmental monitoring experiment that carried multiple technologies onboard a company-built reusable rocket.
NASA said Thursday Masten Space Systems’ Xodiac rocket contained an electromagnetic field measurement experiment, called JANUS, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
The company is one of six firms that provide suborbital reusable launch vehicle flight and payload integration services to NASA under a $45 million contract awarded last year.
The agency said JANUS’ flight test was part of a push to foster routine integration and flight testing of future experiments and technology demonstrations.
NASA supports testing of such technology through the Flight Opportunities program that seeks to demonstrate combined flights in low-to-no microgravity environments.
“This initial flight is JHU APL's first step into a new era of exploiting commercial suborbital low-cost access to space for scientific research and technology development,” said D. H. Todd Smith, JHUAPL senior scientist and JANUS principle investigator.
Joe Hernandez, campaign manager of NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, said collaborating with commercial flight providers and university researcher institutions can help the space agency advance new technology platforms. | <urn:uuid:1191336c-4a1b-4a9e-a862-b6217cfc0ba2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.executivebiz.com/2017/02/masten-space-systems-built-rocket-flies-with-jhuapls-environmental-monitoring-experiment/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925070216-20220925100216-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.901521 | 247 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The building blocks of quantum technology are quantum bits - qubits. These are the smallest units of information and are the quantum version of the classical binary bit. For more, check out our in-depth technical article on qubits, specifically photonic qubits, with some real-world examples here.
We wanted to re-visit this topic and look at the various kinds of qubits and the practicality of some types of qubits that are being used and experimented with.
All qubits have special properties that are integral to quantum technology. The properties of qubits that quantum technology takes advantage of:
- Superposition: the ability to exist in multiple states at once. For a qubit, that means it is simultaneously equal to 1 AND 0 until it’s measured definitively. Only then can we know its state for certain is 1, or 0. This is the one of the properties that makes quantum technology potentially capable of being orders of magnitude faster than classical counterparts, which are limited to discrete states.
- Entanglement: when two qubits are entangled, they remain connected even when separated by incredible distances. For example, that could mean entangled partner qubits share the exact same state no matter the distance. This is the property that makes secure communications and highly precise sensors possible.
Qubits are created when particles - ions, photons, electrons, etc. - are given these special properties. But not all qubits are created equal: how the qubits are created determines other key traits of the qubit, like its ideal operating environment. Currently there is no standardized qubit, but there are a few types that have risen in popularity.
Here we’ll be discussing only three types of qubits: superconducting qubits, trapped ion qubits, and photonic qubits. Keep in mind that there are other types of qubits, each with different advantages and disadvantages.
Superconducting qubits are created using superconducting circuits inside a quantum computer to create entanglement. These qubits are manipulated using electromagnetic pulses to control the magnetic flux, electric charge, or phase difference across specific areas of the superconducting circuit. These qubits are used by Google’s Sycamore processor. This is the processor Google used to show quantum supremacy in 2019. In 2021, IBM used superconducting qubits to build its record breaking 127-qubit Eagle quantum computer.
An advantage of using superconducting qubits is that they are based on technology already being used in semiconductors and operate very fast in experimental quantum computers. However, superconductors must be kept at temperatures of nearly 0 degrees Kelvin in order to operate. This type of qubit also loses its superposition easily compared to other qubit types.
Working IQM Quantum Computer installed in Espoo, Finland.
Attribution: Ragsxl, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Trapped Ion Qubits
Trapped ion qubits are created when an ion is enclosed by an electric field and are manipulated with lasers. This type of qubit has been preferred by academia for a while, and in 1995 trapped ion qubits formed the foundation of the first basic quantum circuit.
This type of qubit is being used by IonQ, Quantinuum, Alpine Quantum Technologies, and others to develop quantum computers. The advantages to utilizing trapped ion qubits are that they have a longer life and can easily interact with their neighbors. They’re also very stable when in a superposition state. Like other platforms, trapped ion qubits have been limited in scale thus far, though it may be possible to build larger systems by connecting multiple traps in a cluster.
Photonic qubits are made up of entangled photons. There are a few ways of generating photons to be used as qubits. This type of qubit is used to create connections between processors, making it possible to create and scale smaller processors to increase performance.
The big names that are leveraging this type of qubit in computing are Xanadu, ORCA, and PsiQuantum. Photonic qubits are also used by quantum networking by companies like Aliro. Like other qubits, photonic qubits can represent, encrypt, transmit, and detect superposition states. The advantages to using photonic qubits are they don’t require supercooling and can travel over existing fiber-optic cable, making them an ideal option in building a quantum internet in the future. However, photonic qubits are easily deflected or absorbed on the way to their destination. When that happens, the quantum information is lost.
You can deep dive into more detail about photonic qubits in this previous blog post.
The unique properties of qubits may have a huge impact on computing in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals, materials science, and logistics. These same properties could have potentially game-changing impact when used to create quantum networks. Networked sensors for more power / precision, unhackable communication networks, and even connecting existing quantum computers to increase computing power without requiring much larger quantum processors. For some real-world examples of how qubits function, check out our blog.
Want the latest in quantum technology developments delivered straight to your inbox once a month?
Sign up for our newsletter, where we share the biggest news about quantum networks and related technologies, alongside interesting and informative content.
Click the image below to view a larger version. | <urn:uuid:6fab9ceb-b237-4f66-b5e2-e74929b30ca4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.aliroquantum.com/blog/qn-basics-a-simplified-overview-of-qubits | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925070216-20220925100216-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.915137 | 1,146 | 3.96875 | 4 |
A prototype of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) $100 laptop is due to be unveiled shortly by Kofi Annan at the UN World Summit in Tunisia.
To produce a machine for under $100 is a very ambitious target. Indian developers (opens in new tab) have so far come close with a $200 laptop, and not-for-profit developers Ndiyo have also come up with the low-cost Nivo (opens in new tab) computer, but its use of a thin client approach to cut down on costs makes it more suitable for schools and cbyer cafes.
Nonetheless, the MIT believes its aim of a $100 durable laptop for kids is achievable and that such a machine would revolutionise the education of children in developing countries.
Having snubbed Apple’s OS X, the $100 laptop will be a Linux-based machine running on a 500 Mhz processor, and will be wi-fi enabled. It will feature an innovative full colour screen, which can be switched to black and white when viewing in bright sunlight. Where electricity is a problem, kids will be able to use a hand crank to provide power to the laptop.
Its rugged design is intended to ensure it can handle the rough and tumble that is part and parcel of kid’s lifestyles, with children in Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa likely to be amongst those first to benefit.
To counter the relatively high telecommunications costs in some developing countries, the MIT says the laptop will make use of its own innovative peer-to-peer technology to enable machines to share Internet connections. What the $100 machine won’t have, however, is stacks of storage with the current spec set at only 1Gb.
So will MIT really be able to reach its ambitious target? Well it is attacking costs on three main fronts. Firstly, it has looked to cut costs by tackling software bloat and producing the innovative display for around $35 has also helped. Finally, the sheer intended scale of production – the aim is to ship 100 million to 150 million laptops every year by 2007- will also help MIT towards its target.
MIT is already close, having succeeded in whittling down the estimated costs to $110 per machine (opens in new tab), according to MIT Media Lab's Chairman Nicholas Negroponte.
One important question remains, however. Coming from a rich western nation this might seem strange but will $100 actually be cheap enough to bridge the digital divide with the poorest of nations? Given that the average gross national income (per capita) in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa is below $300 (opens in new tab), providing a $100 laptop to a child suddenly seems like an expensive proposition for certain governments. Nonetheless, MIT should be applauded for its efforts. | <urn:uuid:a306eebc-5685-464c-a12e-ce6ad568b03d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/2005/11/16/100-laptop-moves-closer/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334912.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926144455-20220926174455-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.943841 | 574 | 2.875 | 3 |
Imagine that you are relaxing at home on a Friday night. It's around 11:30 p.m. and you are deciding whether to go to bed or stay up to watch a movie. While deciding what to watch you gently fall asleep with remote in hand, just to be woken up a cacophony of emergency sirens. Is there a tornado? Some sort of natural disaster?
You call 911 - along with 4,000 other concerned citizens - just to find out there is no emergency. Even so, a siren blares every 90 seconds... for the next hour and a half. So much for your tranquil Friday evening.
This exact scenario took place in Dallas, Texas in mid-April 2017. The cause of the alarm wasn't an emergency or even a technical failure, it was hackers. And while the attackers have not been discovered, it did reveal the flaws in our digital infrastructure.
Of course, cybersecurity risks don't just affect public services, businesses are also in danger of being hacked. Improve your chances of overcoming a cyberattack with CyberPolicy!
The Siren Song
Surprisingly, Dallas' rude awakening by 156 screaming sirens wasn't due to a software security flaw, but rather an outdated and flawed radio communication system.
Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax says the radio signal was spoofed by hackers and measures have been taken to prevent the incident from happening again (although he did not reveal what those measures were, fearing that it could inspire copycats).
Reporters to TechCrunch speculate that the hackers may have recorded the siren commands during a system test or actual tornado, then played them back to launch the attack. Another idea is that the assailants played a number of command signals in hopes of setting off the alarms; something which is not dissimilar to a brute force attack to crack passwords.
Still, the Dallas attack isn't the only time our infrastructure has been hacked. In 2016, a small New York dam was incurred by seven Iranian computer hackers. In Arizona, one novice cybercriminal launched a distributed denial-of-service attack against 9-1-1, resulting in flood of bogus phone calls. In lighter news, electronic road signs are regularly compromised to display silly messages including \"Zombies! Run!\" or \"Hackers Rule.\"
Thankfully, incidents like these are typically part of a prank or are meant to stress test security flaws (as in the case of Iran's dam hack). But that's not to say that tragedy is an impossible dream. In fact, many experts believe it's only a matter of time until our vulnerabilities are exposed and exploited.
Learning the Easy Way
Don't wait until it's too late. Find a way to stymie cyberattacks against your business. Common steps to improve your security include: | <urn:uuid:f4afa678-856b-4e33-9248-1992087e9705> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cyberpolicy.com/cybersecurity-education/what-a-racket-156-dallas-emergency-sirens-hacked | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335326.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929065206-20220929095206-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.958833 | 568 | 2.53125 | 3 |
As additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, becomes more commonplace, researchers and industry are seeking to mitigate the distortions and stresses inherent in fabricating these complex geometries.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering and Pittsburgh-based manufacturer Aerotech, Inc. recently received a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to address these design issues by developing new, fast computational methods for additive manufacturing.
The proposal, "Novel Computational Approaches to Address Key Design Optimization Issues for Metal Additive Manufacturing," is a three-year, $350,000 GOALI (Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry) grant funded by the NSF's Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI).
The team, based in the Swanson School's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, includes Associate Professor and Principal Investigator Albert To; and co-PIs Assistant Professor Sangyeop Lee and Adjunct Associate Professor Stephen Ludwick. Aerotech, Inc. will partner with Pitt by providing designs and evaluation.
The group's research is an extension of previous funding from the Research for Advanced Manufacturing in Pennsylvania program (RAMP).
"The ability to create geometrically complex shapes through additive manufacturing is both a tremendous benefit and a significant challenge," Dr. To said. "Optimizing the design to compensate for residual distortion, residual stress, and post-machining requirements can take days or even months for these parts."
To mitigate these challenges, Dr. To and his group will first develop a simple yet accurate thermomechanics model to predict residual stress and distortion in an AM part.
Next, they will develop a topology optimization method capable of generating designs with both free-form surfaces and machining-friendly surfaces.
According to Dr. To, this will compensate for the geometric complexity and organic nature of AM parts, which contribute to their potential for distortion and post-machining problems.
These approaches will then be developed and tested using real parts and design requirements provided by Aerotech.
Aerotech's Stephen Ludwick expects that "the tools developed through this collaboration will allow us to produce the complex parts enabled by additive manufacturing with a minimum of trial-and-error and rework. This in turn allows us to design stiff and lightweight components in our high-speed motion systems which are also used by other companies engaged in advanced manufacturing."
"By utilizing advanced mechanic theory, we hope to reduce design optimization of additive manufactured parts to minutes, thereby reducing the time of design life cycle," Dr. To said. "This would lead to wider adoption of AM by the U.S. manufacturing base and further improve the economic sustainability of the additive manufacturing process."
NSF GOALI Grants
Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) promotes university-industry partnerships by making project funds or fellowships/traineeships available to support an eclectic mix of industry-university linkages. Special interest is focused on affording the opportunity for:
- Faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students to conduct research and gain experience in an industrial setting;
- Industrial scientists and engineers to bring industry perspectives and integrative skills to academe; and
- Interdisciplinary university-industry teams to conduct research projects.
This solicitation targets high-risk/high-gain research with a focus on fundamental research, new approaches to solving generic problems, development of innovative collaborative industry-university educational programs, and direct transfer of new knowledge between academe and industry.
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(November 30, 2021) Ransomware, phishing, denial-of-service attacks, credential stuffing — the list of potential cyberattacks just continues to grow. According to a study by the University of Maryland, Internet-connected systems experience an attempted cyberattack every 39 seconds. That’s more than 2,200 attacks daily.
No security tool can defend against all forms of attack, and various security products have different strengths and limitations. That’s why a layered security architecture offers the strongest protection from cyber threats.
A layered security architecture is based on the notion that the whole is many times stronger than the sum of its parts. In other words, the synchronization of multiple security measures produces a stronger effect than if those components are working individually.
The first step is to prevent malicious traffic from ever entering the network. Perimeter defense starts with a firewall, which can be delivered through software, a hardware appliance, or a combination of the two. The firewall forms a barrier between two or more networks and controls who can access information behind the barrier and how they can access it.
Intrusion prevention systems (IPSs) supplement firewalls by continuously monitoring for suspicious activity and actively reporting or blocking it. IPSs are more advanced than intrusion detection systems that can only issue alerts. These tools typically sit just inside the firewall, analyzing and capturing suspicious packets. IPSs may also be included in next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) or unified threat management (UTM) solutions.
In a layered security approach, antivirus software is installed not just on endpoint devices but also at the network perimeter. Organizations must also take steps to secure traffic that is reaching users and applications. Web application firewalls, spam filters, content filtering tools, and related solutions help ensure that application traffic is clean.
Controlling Access, Protecting Data
Authentication and authorization software establishes the identity of a network user and defines where that user can and cannot go on the network. Authentication is traditionally accomplished with username and password combinations but should be augmented by multifactor authentication. In the authorization phase, the software will determine what applications, data, and other resources the authenticated user can access.
Encryption is another important element of layered security. Confidential data at rest or in transit is at risk if left unprotected. Strong encryption algorithms prevent data from being read without the decryption key. Data loss prevention tools can scan outgoing emails and require that sensitive information be encrypted before it is sent.
Email and Endpoints
Most malware is distributed via email, and can quickly spread if a user opens a malicious attachment or clicks a malicious link. Organizations need an email security solution that prevents spam and malware from reaching the user’s inbox. But email security doesn’t stop there. Advanced tools can also detect and block fake emails and hijacked email accounts, a key source of phishing attacks.
The latest endpoint security solutions protect user devices from malware, going beyond point-in-time scans to provide continuous monitoring that actively scans in the background. These solutions may also require devices to meet minimum security standards before connecting to the corporate network.
In light of that, a layered security infrastructure must be closely aligned with the organization’s security policy, which defines what rules are to be imposed and applies those rules to all users and resources. Best-in-class security solutions incorporate policy management tools that allow an organization to define, distribute, enforce and audit security policies consistently across the enterprise.
No single security device can provide adequate defense against constantly evolving threats. Addressing all aspects of security through a layered security approach can significantly reduce the risk of attacks.
ABOUT MAINSTREAM TECHNOLOGIES
Mainstream Technologies delivers a full range of technology services in Arkansas and the surrounding region including managed technology services and consulting, custom software development, and cybersecurity services. We also offer industry-leading data center services in our Little Rock facilities. Established in 1996, Mainstream has earned a reputation for delivering quality, reliable, and professional technology services for public and private-sector customers across the United States.
IT Business Development Manager
(479) 715-8629 Office
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Someone is going to commercialize a general purpose, universal quantum computer first, and Intel wants to be the first. So does Google. So does IBM. And D-Wave is pretty sure it already has done this, even if many academics and a slew of upstart competitors don’t agree. What we can all agree on is that there is a very long road ahead in the development of quantum computing, and it will be a costly endeavor that could nonetheless help solve some intractable problems.
This week, Intel showed off the handiwork its engineers and those of partner QuTech, a quantum computing spinoff from the Technical University of Delft and Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek (TNO), which as the name suggests is an applied science research firm that, among other things, is working with Intel on quantum computing technology.
TNO, which was established in 1988, has a €500 million annual budget and does all kinds of primary research. The Netherlands has become a hotbed of quantum computing technology, along with the United States and Japan, and its government wants to keep it that way and hence the partnership in late 2015 with Intel, which invested $50 million in the QuTech partnership between TU Delft and TNO so it could jumpstart its own quantum computing program after sitting on the sidelines.
With this partnership, Intel is bringing its expertise in materials science, semiconductor manufacturing, interconnects, and digital systems to play to help develop two types of quantum bits, or qubits, which are the basic element of processing in a quantum computer. The QuTech partnership involves the manufacturing of superconducting qubits, but Intel also is working on another technology called spin qubits that makes use of more traditional semiconductor technologies to create what is, in essence, the quantum transistor for this very funky and very parallel style of computing.
The big news this week is that Intel has been able to take a qubit design that its engineers created alongside of those working at QuTech and scale it up to 17 qubits on a single package. A year ago, the Intel-QuTech partnership had only a few qubits on their initial devices, Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware at Intel, tells The Next Platform, and two years ago it had none. So that is a pretty impressive roadmap in a world where Google is testing a 20 qubit chip and hopes to have one running at 49 qubits before the year is out. Google also has quantum annealing systems from D-Wave, which have much more scale in terms of qubits – 1,000 today and 2,000 on the horizon – but according to Intel are not a generic enough to be properly commercialized. And if Intel knows anything, it knows how to create a universal computing substrate and scale its manufacturing and its deployment in the datacenters of the world.
“We are trying to build a general purpose, universal quantum computer,” says Clarke. “This is not a quantum annealer, like the D-Wave machine. There are many different types of qubits, which are the devices for quantum computing, and one of the things that sets Intel apart from the other players is that we are focused on multiple qubit types. The first is a superconducting qubit, which is similar to what Google, IBM, and a startup named Rigetti Computing are working on. But Intel is also working on spin qubits in silicon are very similar to our transistor technologies, and you can expect to hear about that in the next couple of months. These spin qubits build on our expertise in ordinary chip fabrication, and what really sets us apart here is our use of advanced packaging at very low temperatures to improve the performance of the qubit, and with an eye towards scalability.”
Just as people are obsessed with the number of transistors or cores on a standard digital processor, people are becoming a bit obsessed with the number of qubits on a quantum chip, and Jim Held, director of emerging technology research at Intel Labs, says that this focus is a bit misplaced. And for those of us who look at systems for a living, this makes perfect sense. Intel is focused on getting the system design right, and then scaling it up on all vectors to build a very powerful quantum machine.
Here is the situation as Held sees it, and breathe in deeply here:
“People focus on the number of qubits, but that is just one piece of what is needed. We are really approaching this as engineers, and everything is different about this kind of computer. It is not just the devices, but the control electronics and how the qubits are manipulated with microwave pulses and measured with very sensitive DC instrumentation, and it is more like an analog computer in some respects. Then it has digital electronics that do error correction because quantum devices are very fragile, and they are prone to errors and to the degree that we can correct the errors, we can compute better and longer with them. It also means a new kind of compiler in order to get the potential parallelism in an array of these qubits, and even the programs, the algorithms, written for these devices are an entirely different kind of thing from conventional digital programming. Every aspect of the stack is different. While there is research going on in the academic world at all levels, as an engineering organization we are coming at them all together because we know we have to deliver them all at once as a computer. Moreover, our experience tells us that we want to understand at any given point what our choices at one level are going to mean for the rest of the computer. What we know is that if you have a plate full of these qubits, you do not have a quantum computer, and some of the toughest problems with scaling are in the rest of the stack. Focusing on the number of qubits or the coherence time really does a disservice to the process of getting to something useful.”
This is analogous to massively parallel machines that don’t have enough bandwidth or low latency to talk across cores, sockets, or nodes efficiently and to share work. You can cram as many cores as you want in them, but the jobs won’t finish faster.
And thus, Intel is focusing its research on the interconnects that will link qubits together on a device and across multiple devices.
“The interconnects are one of the things that concerns us most with quantum computing,” says Clarke. “From the outset, we have not been focused on a near-term milestone, but rather on what it would take from the interconnect perspective, from the point of view of the design and the control, to deliver a large scale, universal quantum computer.”
Interestingly, Clarke says that the on-chip interconnect on commercial quantum chips will be similar to that used on a conventional digital CPU, but it may not be made out of copper wires, but rather superconducting materials.
The one used in the superconducting qubit chip that Intel just fabbed in its Oregon factory and packaged in its Arizona packaging facility is a bit ridiculous looking.
Quantum computing presents a few physical challenges, and superconducting qubits are especially tricky. To keep preserve the quantum states that allow superposition – a kind of multiple, concurrent state of the bits that allows for parallel processing at the bit level, to over simplify hugely – requires for these analog devices to be kept at extremely cold temperatures and yet still have to interface with the control electronics in the outside world, crammed into a rack.
“We are putting these chips in an extremely cold environment – 20 millikelvins, and that is much colder than outer space,” says Clarke. “And first of all, we have to make sure that the chip doesn’t fall apart at these temperatures. You have thermal coefficient of expansion. Then you need to worry about package yield and then about the individual qubit yield. Then we worry about wiring them up in a more extensible fashion. These are very high quality radio or microwave frequency chips and we have to make sure we maintain that quality at low temperature once the device is packaged. A lot of the performance and yield that we are getting comes from the packaging.”
So for this chip, Intel has wallpapered one side of the chip with standard coaxial ports, like the ones on the back of your home router. Each qubit has two or more coax ports going into it to control its state and to monitor that state. How retro:
“We are focused on a commercial machine, so we are much more interested in scaling issues,” Held continues along this line of thinking. “You have to be careful to not end up in a dead end that only gets you so far. This quantum chip interconnect is not sophisticated like Omni-Path, and it does not scale well,” Held adds with a laugh. “What we are interested in is improving on that to reduce the massive number of connections. A million qubits turning into millions of coax cables is obviously not going to work. Even at hundreds of qubits, this is not going to work. One way we are going to do this is to move the electronics that is going to control this quantum machine into this very cold environment, not down at the millikelvin level, but a layer or two up at the 4 kelvin temperature of liquid hydrogen. Our partners at QuTech are experts at cryo-CMOS, which means making chips work in this 4 kelvin range. By moving this control circuitry from a rack outside of the quantum computer into the refrigeration unit, it cuts the length of the connections to the qubits.”
With qubits, superposition allows a single qubit to represent two different states, and quantum entanglement – what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” – allows for the states to scale linearly as the qubit counts go up. Technically, n quantum bits yield 2 to the n states. (We wrote that out because there is something funky about superscripts in the Alike font we use here at The Next Platform.) The interconnect is not used to maintain the quantum states across the qubits – that happens because of physics – but to monitor the qubit states and maintain those states and, importantly, to do error correction. Qubits can’t be shaken or stirred or they lose their state, and they are extremely fussy. As Google pointed out two years ago at the International Super Computing conference in Germany, a quantum computer could end up being an accelerator for a traditional parallel supercomputer, which is used to do error correction and monitoring of qubits. Intel is also thinking this might happen.
The fussiness of superconducting qubits is probably one of the reasons why Intel is looking to spin qubits and a more standard semiconductor process to create a quantum computer chip whose state is easier to maintain. The other is that Intel is obviously an expert at manufacturing semiconductor devices. So, we think, the work with QuTech is as much about creating a testbed system and a software stack that might be portable as it is investing in this particular superconducting approach. Time will tell.
And time, indeed, it will take. Both Held and Clarke independently think it will take maybe eight to ten years to get a general purpose, universal quantum computer commercialized and operating at a useful scale.
“It is research, so we are only coming to timing based on how we think we are going to solve a number of problems,” says Held. “There will be a milestone where a machine will be able to tackle interesting but small problems, and then there will be a full scale machine that is mature enough to be a general purpose, widely useful accelerator in the supercomputer environment or in the cloud. These will not be free-standing computers because they don’t do a lot of things that a classical digital computer does really well. They could do them, because in theory any quantum computer can do anything a digital computer can do, but they don’t do it well. It is going to take on the order of eight to ten years to solve these problems we are solving now. They are all engineering problems; the physicists have done an excellent job of finding feasible solutions out of the lab and scaling them out.”
Clarke adds a note of caution, pointing out that there are a lot of physics problems that need to be solved for the packaging aspects of a quantum computer. “But I think to solve the next level of physics problems, we need a healthy dose of engineering and process control,” Clarke says. “I think eight to ten years is probably fair. We are currently at mile one of a marathon. Intel is already in the lead pack. But when we think of a commercially relevant quantum computer, we think of one that is relevant to the general population, and moreover, one that would show up on Intel’s bottom line. They key is that we are building a system, and at first, that system is going to be pretty small but it is going to educate us about all aspects of the quantum computing stack. At the same time, we are designing that system for extensibility, both at the hardware level and at the architecture control level to get to many more qubits. We want to make the system better, and larger, and it is probably a bit premature to start assigning numbers to that other than to say that we are thinking about the longer term.”
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Smart technology has gained plenty of attention in recent years, paving the way for retailers to upgrade the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. Local governments are adopting smart city concepts for new digital infrastructures while retailers have quietly embraced IoT sensors that monitor the customer journey. Here are ways smart retailing inspired by smart city development will impact consumers.
How Retail Can Learn from Smart Cities
The concept of smart retail is a subset of smart cities with similar goals of establishing an interconnected ecosystem that improves physical processes with analytics. Retail management platforms are steadily integrating with IoT and AI technology to enhance the customer experience, as well as internal processes. Local governments and utility companies have already pioneered the smart city paradigm that has led to more efficient operations and deeper connections with the community.
Smart cities include digital parking meters and traffic control monitoring devices that connect with the internet to allow for real-time analysis of traffic conditions. Traffic officials can use this information to make rerouting decisions due to accidents, bad weather, or road conditions. Machine learning technology can recommend alternate routes in a matter of seconds. Retailers can use this model to evaluate patterns in their in-store foot traffic, learning which displays get the most attention.
Understanding Smart Retailing
At the core of smart retailing is a mobile app that connects the store with customers. Once customers download the app, they can stay connected with the store; the same way homeowners constantly remain connected with their utility provider through an app that monitors energy consumption. A useful store app can keep customers updated on store deals and other offerings based on their purchasing history.
Smart shops are essentially physical stores that embrace smart technology to create a more compelling and diverse customer experience. These stores are increasingly becoming integrated with digital catalogs and other visual resources that provide deeper insights on products for customers.
Technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are blurring the lines between the digital and physical worlds. Collectively, all this new technology contributes to a smart ecosystem.
The store app serves as a digital doorway into the brand. It can serve the same function a website does, providing a convenient resource to quickly answer customer questions. Smart shops can be automated with interactive displays, driven by AI software that embodies facial recognition. Self-service checkout currently is one of the more common smart retailing strategies.
Here are two major trends currently revolutionizing the retail industry:
- Need for Simplified Organizational Processes - Retailers can use smart technology to refine and simplify organizational processes. Machine learning software can study mountains of data to detect system inefficiencies in seconds. The technology can further be used to improve communication within the organization and among customers. Retail management should consider a modern customer relationship management platform that provides an easy-to-read dashboard and integrates with data-gathering devices.
- Discovering Seamless Ways to Sell - Smart technologies can help improve the sales funnel and connect the customer more closely with the product. Since experiencing the product is the most crucial part of the customer journey, retailers should explore virtual options alongside other ways to make the checkout process more seamless. Thinking beyond traditional physical limitations is the key to maximizing the emerging strategies of smart retailing, allowing for more mobile-friendly experiences. | <urn:uuid:cc7d2167-c863-4406-9621-7f22872d5289> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://iotmktg.com/introducing-the-smart-retail-revolution-into-smart-cities/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.925627 | 655 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Cloud 101: The Basics
Cloud computing is clearly one of today’s most enticing technology areas and is currently one of the top buzzwords in the Hi-Tech industry. Cloud computing is not a new concept; most of us already use this technology on a daily basis through services like Hotmail, Gmail and Facebook. In the simplest of terms, cloud computing is IT-as-a-Service; rather than an organization building its own IT infrastructure to host databases or applications, this is done by a third party with large server farms. The organization then accesses its data and applications over the internet. In other words, under this new procurement model, IT becomes a utility, consumed like water or electricity.
Cloud computing is growing fast, according to Gartner the market is currently worth about $2.4bn, but is predicted to grow to $8.1bn by 2013. Several large companies have already partially adopted the ‘Cloud’ approach including all of the top five software companies. More recently business services provider Rentokil Initial has rolled out a cloud email solution to its 30,000 employees.
It’s not difficult to see the benefits of cloud computing and enthusiasts are quick to point out its key benefits:
• Scalability: Organizations that have grown rapidly, perhaps through acquisitions, often struggle with the complexities required to develop a single coherent enterprise infrastructure. Furthermore, cloud systems are built to cope with sharp increases in workload and seasonal fluctuations. Take for example a tour operator who has to cope with a huge surge in demand during the summer months or a disaster recovery team that requires additional computing power to respond to a large scale emergency.
• Cost Effective: As IT providers host services for multiple companies; sharing complex infrastructure can cut costs and allows organizations to only pay for what they actually use.
• Speed: Simple cloud services can be deployed rapidly and work ‘out of the box’. This is a great advantage for small emerging businesses that may need to establish a secure e-commerce website quickly. Equally, for more complex software and data base solutions, cloud computing allows organizations to skip the hardware procurement and capital expenditure phase.
• Mobility: Many companies today operate a geographically diverse workforce. Cloud services are designed to be used anywhere in the world, so organizations with globally dispersed and mobile employees can access their systems on the move.
However, despite the trumpeted business and technical advantages of cloud computing, many businesses have been relatively slow on the take up. Major corporations that are cloud users are for the most part putting only their less sensitive data in the cloud. There appear to be significant concerns over certain aspects of cloud computing, including: reduced control & governance, regulatory requirements, excessive standardization, usability and fears over issues of connectivity.
However, without a shadow of a doubt the biggest area of concern is the impact on information security. Will corporate and customer data be safe? What about data protection and legal compliance requirements? What are the corporate risks involved in entrusting a single entity with the data of an entire organization.
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1 - Getting Started with Agile
Overview of AgileCore Values of Agile Principles of Agile Common Methodologies of Agile
2 - Addressing the Myths, Challenges, and Benefits of Agile
Overcome the Myths and Misunderstandings of AgileOvercome the Challenges of AgileThe Benefits of Agile
3 - Introducing the Scrum Methodology
Identify Roles and Responsibilities in ScrumDefine the Sprint Ceremonies
4 - Executing Sprint Ceremonies
Estimate a Scrum ProjectConduct a Sprint Planning MeetingConduct a SprintConduct a Sprint Review MeetingConduct a Sprint Retrospective Meeting
Actual course outline may vary depending on offering center. Contact your sales representative for more information.
Who is it For?
This course is intended for business professionals in a variety of roles who want to learn about Agile methodologies as a prelude to Agile adoption or migration, and for those who work on projects that require more flexibility and adaptability than traditional project management approaches.
To ensure your success, you will need a basic understanding of how projects are executed in the business environment, and an interest in Agile methodologies. | <urn:uuid:d38a4825-f20d-470b-b671-5b2358cad963> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://hawaii.newhorizons.com/training-and-certifications/course-outline/id/1035992176/c/introduction-to-agile-and-scrum-methodologies | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.822665 | 261 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The UK's history of cryptography is fascinating, with famous cryptanalysts like Alan Turing, Dillwyn Knox, and W. T. Tutte deciphering different code machines used in World War I and II.
To celebrate the achievements of the past and reinvigorate students on cryptography, the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquaters) has released a code-breaking app on Android, named Cryptoy. An iOS version is set to see a 2015 release.
Cryptoy currently focused on four methods of encryption: Shift, Substitution, Vigenère and Enigma. The app makes it especially hard at higher levels, testing students who have the ability to crack code.
The GCHQ is interested in finding the next batch of code-breakers for the future. It is unclear how the GCHQ will get in contact with the potential candidates, or how the GCHQ will be able to identify actual codebreakers from cheaters.
This is not the first time the GCHQ has used public routes to employ new code-breakers, the Daily Telegraph ran a cryptic crossword and those who solved it received a chance to work at the GCHQ.
Encryption has moved from a wartime function designed to hide messages, to a way for Internet services to provide security against surveillance. This has blackened the GCHQ’s reputation when it comes to codebreaking, and now the next generation will most likely be cracking Facebook or Apple code.
New encryption techniques are on the rise, as more people worry about who is reading their private messages. Apple and Google recently announced new encryption on mobile devices, set to stop the FBI from accessing the devices without a warrant.
Terrorist organisations still use some encryption techniques when messaging, but some have been caught chatting on Facebook about potential attacks. The attack on UK soldier Lee Rigby was reportedly planned on Facebook a year beforehand the incident. | <urn:uuid:e2778747-d661-4cad-96e4-2751f94693e8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/2014/12/12/gchq-release-cryptoy-app-designed-budding-spies/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337415.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003101805-20221003131805-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.934608 | 380 | 2.75 | 3 |
It’s hard to imagine doing business in the 21st Century without email. It’s provided us with an instant tool for communication and an easy system for archiving information. Email also has given hackers a portal through which they can employ a phishing attack and infect an organization’s servers with malware and gain sensitive information, virtually effortlessly.
A phishing attack is when cyber criminals make a targeted attempt through email to trick individuals into opening links, providing sensitive information or downloading attachments with malicious software.
Phishing attempts are becoming more sophisticated and ever more frequent. For instance, more than 70 percent of targeted cyberattacks in 2017 involved the use of phishing emails, according to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report 2018. That same report found that 7,710 businesses were hit by a scam each month in 2017.
Infomax recommends employees undergo regular training on how to recognize a phishing attack and stay aware of the latest scams. We offer regular cybersecurity training through our Complete Cloud and iGuard Managed IT services. Here are our tips on how to spot an email phishing attack.
Sender asks for personal information
Hackers have become very sophisticated, and an email can arrive in your inbox that looks authentic, mirroring the email interface of yours or another company. However authentic the email looks, a mental red flag should be raised if the individual is asking you to provide or confirm personal information. Whether it’s from an alleged human resources representative asking for your personal identification or an internal or external sender asking for financial information, you can’t be sure who may see your data once you hit the send button.
Trusted sources will never require you to email sensitive personal or business information because they know how easily accessible that information is to hackers. A trusted organization will encourage you to call a number, send mail or visit a separate, secured online platform.
Email contains unfamiliar links
Similar to mirroring an email, hackers create false webpages that mimic real sites. When you’re prompted to enter information, such as a password, into the fake site, cyber criminals gain access to your and your organization’s information. They can also create malicious links that resemble real web addresses you or other employees frequent, hoping those who open an email don’t look too closely at a URL before they click.
Instead of clicking links train yourself and your colleagues to read a link in an email, checking it against the frequented URL in a web browser. Additionally, hover over and read the web address of links concealed within the text of the email.
Email is poorly written
An easy way to spot a phishing attack is if it contains awkward phrasing, rampant misspellings and grammatical errors. Emails from legitimate companies reflect the professionalism of those who work there. Before proceeding, those on the receiving end also should check that the email address from the sender is legitimate, not containing additional words or characters that readers may not notice on first glance.
Suspicious attachments are included
Never click on or download email attachments that look suspicious or that you are not expecting. The attachment could be a malicious URL or virus that can corrupt the user’s computer and lead hackers into the company’s network. Your business should invest in antivirus software that will scan for suspicious attachments. Employees should also verify attachments with senders by emailing them on a separate thread, calling them or messaging them in another way.
Remember not to give in to pressure from an unknown sender and always take time to consider the information received in an email before reacting. To secure training for your organization, contact us today. | <urn:uuid:24d4fcd0-d3fa-486b-8ec7-36aabb815ea5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.infomaxoffice.com/tag/email-threats/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337723.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006025949-20221006055949-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.92311 | 741 | 2.75 | 3 |
These resources are for high school computer science teachers, university faculty, or anyone working in, studying, or curious about software engineering.
I was “out and about” online looking for some entry-level coding resources to help my daughter’s curious friend begin exploring and experimenting with coding. He is entering high school and has a lot of great ideas, along with the energy and enthusiasm to pursue those ideas. He had an idea for a new app, and he wasn’t quite sure where to even begin building his software development skills. That’s not something we’re really offering at this time, but in the interest of “helping him succeed” and feeding the needs of future technologists, I went in search of free, user-friendly resources that would allow him to learn by doing. Exploring and playing around with technology is the fastest, most effective and most affordable way to learn, and that’s what people need to get engaged and build new skills. I was so excited about what I found that I had to share the resources here. This blog is for you Rafael!
The guide provides tips and resources to help you develop your technical skills through self-paced, hands-on learning activities. It is intended for self-taught, advanced high school or university-level Computer Science students considering seeking an internship or full-time job in the tech industry generally. The resources shared here are intended to help supplement your education or provide an introduction to relevant topics.
Whether you’re a student or an educator, newer to computer science or a more experienced coder, or otherwise interested in software engineering, there’s something you can benefit from in this curated set of hands-on learning activities and other resources compiled into Google’s Guide to Technical Development. You can use any of the guide’s resources, in any order. But, if you’re not sure where to start, you can follow one of the recommended learning paths below based on your current skill level. These resources and recommended learning paths have been curated by university computer science faculty and Google engineers with students in mind..
Choose a Learning Path
You can use any of the guide’s resources, in any order. If you’re not sure where to start, why not follow one of these paths curated by university computer science faculty and Google engineers?
Foundations of Programming
This learning path includes free online learning resources created to reinforce basic software engineering skills for new programmers. If you’ve already taken a class or two, try this selection of resources to supplement and expand what you’re learning. This resource set is great for general practice and gets into topics like mastering lists, strings, objects and references, values and pointers, and testing and debugging.
With 33 free learning activities included in this subset of resources, you can decide where you’d like to start!
- Solve Problems! Do you prefer hands-on practice and putting your skills to the test in order to prefer to test your skills first to get a sense of what you may still need to work on? Start off trying to solve a few hands-on challenges and see how you do.
- Practice testing & debugging! Build confidence with learning activities that let you practice checking and fixing your own code!
- Complete them in order! Start with the easier resources first, and build your confidence as you advance through the material.
This learning path sharpens skills and tools for experienced programmers and advanced students. If you’re beyond introductory university courses or are an experienced coder, these resources may help you refine your skills and technical know-how as you prepare for a career in the tech industry.
With 21 free learning activities included in this subset of resources, you can decide where you’d like to start!
- Practice Problem Solving! For more experienced programmers with hard-to-spot knowledge gaps, the sequence of activities starts with questions and activities that help you identify those areas of skill building that may require a little more attention from you.
- Open Source First! Creating code from scratch is not cost-efficient or a good use of your time! Skillful [and resourceful] software developers know how to find and leverage great snippets of code that soeone else has already developed and used. In this sequence of hands-on learning activities, you’ll learn to “use open source code effectively”.
- Recommended Sequence. Complete them in order! Continue your coding journey by going through a sequence of activities that build important software engineering skills.
This learning path takes you to the cutting edge of computer programming – but keeps you from falling off! The hands-on learning activities in this curated content set help you get a good handle on machine learning through online coursework and competitions.
Consider this your Machine Learning Crash Course (MLCC). Once you have the basics down, you can build your skills and confidence by applying ML techniques to big datasets in real-world competitions.
If you are ready to move past traditional programming and explore machine learning, start here. Once you build the skills you need in this toolkit, you can practice real-world problems in Kaggle competitions.
With 60 free learning activities included in this subset of resources, you can decide where you’d like to start!
Check out these free machine learning resources!
These resources help you build your skills in three key areas: Cloud applications, Data & Machine Learning in the cloud, and cloud infrastructure management. The content curated and included in this subset of learning activities will help you build skills in the following areas:
- Application Development – Learn to use cloud to develop applicaitons, games and online services. Dig into Google’s Compute Stack, serverless architectures and clou storage in order to build products that take advantage of the cloud.
- Data & Machine Learning – Dissect massive datasets. Improve your understanding of data and new tools used to take maximum advantage of that data, like BigQuery, Dataprep and CloudML – all of which can be leveraged for data analysis and machine learning.
- Cloud Infrastructure for Application Optimization – Learn to monitor an application with Stackdriver, deploy microservices at scale with Kubernetes, manage access control and more [courtesy of Google].
With 53 free learning activities included in this subset of resources, you can decide where you’d like to start!
Hands-on Learning Activities
Foundational Programming Activities & Practice
These practice exercises and skill-building challenges have been curated by Google to help you build your foundational programming skills. Enjoy!
- Former Coding Interview Question: Find longest word in dictionary that is a subsequence of a given string
- Using strings in Java (Java For Beginners: Strings, String Functions & Chars)
- Using arrays in Java (Java For Beginners: Arrays)
- stringSplosion problem
- maxSpan problem
- withoutString problem
- sumNumbers problem
- canBalance problem
- Hangman Part 1: Challenge
- Hangman Part 2: One open source solution
- Concept Challenge: References and Objects
- Mapshare problem
- Java Object References
- Sort array problem
- Simple interpreter problem-solving, in Java
- Simple interpreter problem-solving, in Python
- Hash Tables
- Implementing a key value store in a hash table
- word 0 problem
- wordLen problem
- Pairs problem
- wordCount problem
- encoder problem
- Compiler Rules for Class Construction
- Riffing on Unit Testing
- Debugging Your App
- Testing Your App
- blackjack problem
- evenlySpaced problem
- collapseDuplicates problem
- makeBricks problem
- 5 Java Debugging Problems You Probably Have and How to Solve Them
- Former Coding Interview Question: Minesweeper
Advanced Programming Activities & Practice
These practice exercises and skill-building challenges have been curated by Google to help you build and practice more advanced programming skills. Enjoy!
- Former Coding Interview Question: Compression and Decompression
- Testing and confidence: Optimizing performance
- Algorithmic problem solving and interviews
- Challenge: Which tests should you run?
- Google’s Applied CS Skills program
- Learning multiple languages: Java for Python programmers
- Learning multiple languages: Java for C++ programmers
- Learning multiple languages: Python for Java programmers
- Working in multiple languages: “Distributing Candies” problem
- Working in multiple languages: Palindrome Permutation II
- Working in multiple languages: Maximum Vacation Days!
- Movie Review Sentiment Analysis
- Wikipedia accuracy review
- App development for infectious microbial genomics (former Summer of Code project with Google)
- Open source skills: Commonly used GitHub tips and tricks
- Open source skills: GitHub usage and workflows
- Tool up: A sampler of tools for software engineers
- Existing code base: Working on someone else’s code
- How to Read Code: 8 Things to Remember
- Existing Code Base: Hug Life
- Former Coding Interview Question: Find the Volume of Each Lake Created by Rainwater
Visit the Resource Library
Check out all the different learning resources in the guide: problems and projects, former Google interview questions, online courses, education sites, videos, and more.
If you don’t want to follow a sequence suggested by content curators, you can move freely throughout the available learning activities and content. The resource library includes all the items listed in all the pathways referenced above – all sortable by content category referenced above.
This is a great set of resources for any existing or aspiring technologist looking to build our their skills. As always, is it important to give credit for the curation of these resources where it is due. The information referenced above has been gathered via Google’s work with students, faculty, and universities. In particular, Google has acknowledged the contributions of their outstanding volunteer faculty advisors: Laleh Behjat, University of Calgary; Judith Gal-Ezer, Open University of Israel; Mia Minnes, University of California San Diego; Sathya Narayanan, California State University Monterey Bay; and S. Monisha Pulimood, The College of New Jersey. They gave substantial input to the design and content and helped keep the needs of their faculty peers and students front and center.
Call to action!
Share your favorite or most helpful learning activities in the comments below for others in the Cybr Community to benefit from! | <urn:uuid:07af8c06-4c6e-41be-aa33-c971d5e4259f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybr.com/beginner-archives/build-your-technical-skills-with-free-hands-on-learning-activities/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334942.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926211042-20220927001042-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.909793 | 2,209 | 3.140625 | 3 |
The study, published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry, also pinpoints genetic markers that seem to influence how quickly the body eliminates lithium from its system.
“Our model could already now be used to predict how much lithium a patient with bipolar disorder will need. This could cut valuable time spent on finding the right dose for each patient, potentially with life-saving impact,” says Martin Schalling, professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet and the study’s senior author.
Lithium is one of the most important treatments for patients with bipolar disorder, a condition that has been linked to an increased risk of suicide. The chemical substance works as a mood stabilizer and reduces episodes of depression and mania.
How much is needed vary greatly between individuals and finding the right dose for each patient is key as too much can be toxic while too little is ineffective. To minimize the risk of side-effects, clinicians tend to initiate treatment at low doses that increase over time, meaning it could take months before the treatment has an effect.
To overcome this, researchers have long sought to find a model that could predict dose response in individual patients. Previous studies have identified markers such as age, sex and kidney function as possible predictors of how quickly the body eliminates lithium from its system (lithium clearance), which can be used to determine the amount needed on a daily basis. However, most studies have been limited by small sample sizes.
In the current study, the researchers examined electronic health records and registry data from a total of 2,357 patients with bipolar disorder, which may represent the largest sample size for this kind of study to date. Both men and women in ages ranging from 17 to 89 were included, mainly of European ancestry.
The study found associations between the speed of lithium clearance and age, sex, kidney function (measured as eGFR), serum lithium concentrations and medication with diuretics and substances targeting the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS), which could be used to treat hypertension and other conditions.
“Our findings suggest that older patients, women, patients with reduced kidney function, and those taking certain medications require lower doses of lithium. Interestingly, we also discovered that the amount of lithium taken and lithium concentrations in the blood do not seem to be completely proportional, which goes somewhat against current thinking.
Our model based on these predictors explained around 50–60% of the variance in lithium clearance, which is better than previous models and could be used to inform treatment decision,” says first author Vincent Millischer, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, and resident in psychiatry at the Medical University of Vienna.
The study also found associations between a lower lithium clearance and one genetic locus on chromosome 11 and could also show that genetic variants affecting BMI and kidney function were associated with lithium clearance. Even though adding the genetic markers only marginally improved the model’s predictive capability, the researchers say it opens the opportunity of personalized medicine in lithium treatment in the future.
“Next, we will test our model in a clinical trial to see if it can reduce the time it takes to find the right amount of lithium for each patient,” Martin Schalling says. “If the outcome is positive, we will develop a digital app that could be used by psychiatrists in the future to help assess lithium dosage for patients with bipolar disorder.”
Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a chronic disorder characterized by recurrent mood fluctuations. It is associated with both high morbidity and mortality (Carvalho et al., 2020), hence long-term prophylactic maintenance treatment is recommended (Vieta et al., 2011). Lithium, introduced in 1949 (Cade, 1949), remains probably the most effective drug for long-term therapy in BD, preventing both depressive and manic recurrences and reducing the risk of suicide, dementia and all-cause mortality (Geddes et al., 2004; Del Matto et al., 2020; Severus et al., 2014; Miura et al., 2014). It is consequently recommended as first line treatment in most guidelines (Yatham et al., 2018; Malhi et al., 2015; Grunze et al., 2013; Verdolini et al., 2020), either as monotherapy or combination (Wingård et al., 2019).
Despite the long-term effectiveness of lithium, there are concerns regarding its safety profile. Aside from the narrow therapeutic index, the need for monitoring, and some frequent side effects such as diarrhea, polydipsia and tremor, lithium’s toxicity profile includes an increased risk of renal failure and reduced urine-concentrating ability, hypothyroidism, hyperparathyroidism, and weight gain (McKnight et al., 2012; Tondo et al., 2017).
Weight gain is among the most distressing lithium-associated side effects for patients (Gitlin, 2016). In one study, despite ranking third in frequency, it ranked first among patients’ rating of bothersome side effects of lithium use and second amongst bothersome side effects leading to lithium discontinuation (Gitlin et al., 1989).
Nevertheless, weight gain remains as one of the less studied complications related with lithium treatment. Besides this, there is a high prevalence of weight gain and weight-related conditions due to other medications used to treat BD. Among these, metabolic syndrome (around 37 %) (Vancampfort et al., 2013), obesity (around 21 %) (Krishnan, 2005), type 2 diabetes mellitus (around 14 %) and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (22–42 %,) are prominent (Soto-Angona et al., 2020; Vancampfort et al., 2016).
These associated comorbidities lead to cardiovascular disease and higher premature mortality in BD patients (Correll et al., 2017; Staudt Hansen et al., 2019; Kessing et al., 2015; Hayes et al., 2015). People with BD who suffer weight-gain and related comorbidities also have a worse clinical course, more depression, associated physical comorbidities, and higher suicide rates (Hayes et al., 2015; Fagiolini et al., 2003; Torrent et al., 2008).
To date, findings about lithium-induced weight gain are controversial and inconsistent (Gitlin, 2016; McKnight et al., 2012). In fact, definitions of weight change and duration of observation differ across studies, precluding any simple averaging of lithium-induced weight gain. From the available studies, it is also unclear whether weight gain correlates with lithium dose or levels (Gitlin, 2016).
Furthermore, the majority of studies include BD patients concurrently treated with psychotropic medications other than lithium, such as antipsychotics, valproate, and some antidepressants, which might contribute to weight gain (Torrent et al., 2008). Finally, genetic factors may be much more relevant than lithium itself (Bopp et al., 2019).
In this context, lithium-induced weight change is of increasing scientific and clinical interest for both patients and practitioners, considering that weight gain is usually one of the most dreaded side effects for patients and that in many occasions, it is the main reason for treatment discontinuation (Gitlin et al., 1989).
To provide evidence-based information for decision-making and accurate information to patients and professionals, the primary aim of this study is to systematically investigate whether lithium induces weight change and, if so, to quantify the magnitude of this association, compared to active comparators or placebo. The secondary aim of this study is to examine whether lithium-induced weigh change is moderated by duration of lithium therapy.
reference link :https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421003109?via%3Dihub
More information: “Improving lithium dose prediction using population pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenomics: a cohort genome-wide association study in Sweden”, The Lancet Psychiatry (2022). www.thelancet.com/journals/lan … (22)00100-6/fulltext | <urn:uuid:61ee0179-b7d0-423e-aec6-80129c972e46> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://debuglies.com/2022/05/13/six-predictors-could-help-determine-the-amount-of-lithium-needed-to-treat-patients-with-bipolar-disorder/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334942.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926211042-20220927001042-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.910422 | 1,689 | 3.15625 | 3 |
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Happy Woman Crush Wednesday! As we celebrate Black History Month, this weekly lady boss feature will focus on the profiles, stories, and interviews of black women entrepreneurs and business leaders. Our goal is to connect and inspire like-minded women across all industries.
This week’s lady boss feature is Maya Angelou, an American poet, civil rights activist and award-winning author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the first nonfiction bestseller by an African American woman. Maya was also an actress, screenwriter, and dancer.
Maya Angelou had a difficult childhood. Her parents divorced when she was three and lived with her brother and grandmother. As an African American, she experienced racial prejudices and discrimination in Arkansas. When she was seven, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When Maya revealed what happened, the culprit was murdered by her uncles. The traumatic experience left her almost completely mute for five years. This early life is the focus of her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
During World War II, Angelou moved to California and won a scholarship to study dance and acting at the California Labor School. However, her plans were put on hold when she was pregnant. She then moved to San Diego, and worked as a nightclub waitress and prostitute. Ironically, she was discovered by a theater group at the strip club that saved her career. In the mid-1950s, Maya's career as a performer began to take off. She landed a role in a touring production of Porgy and Bess, later appearing in the off-Broadway production Calypso Heat Wave (1957) and releasing her first album, Miss Calypso (1957).
Maya then got involved with the civil rights movement. She then began publishing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made her an international star, and continues to be regarded as her most popular autobiographical work. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays and television shows spanning over 50 years. Angelou received several honors and awards throughout her career, including two NAACP Image Awards in the outstanding literary work (nonfiction) category, in 2005 and 2009. In 2011 Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
If you're interested in knowing more about Maya Angelou's life, watch the full video below by NowThis Entertainment.
Inspired to learn more about how we empower Lady Bosses around the world? Reach out to Apps Admins today! | <urn:uuid:60df095b-d000-43f0-8891-5a8c571649b3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.appsadmins.com/blog/wcw-lady-boss-weekly-feature-lindsay-perry-0-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334942.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926211042-20220927001042-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.978945 | 557 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Ever since the Internet "exploded“ in the 1990s, reaching virtually every household in the developed world, the threat of hackers stealing data and destroying computers has been present.
And since the dawn of the Internet, those threats have been met with antivirus software, firewalls and other means of security aimed at keeping the intruders out.
However, following the recent security breaches in big companies such as Sony Pictures Entertainment (opens in new tab), or the second biggest U.S. health insurer Anthem (opens in new tab), which saw the companies damaged for millions of dollars, it’s becoming clearer that this protection system simply doesn’t work.
Instead, as experts on cybersecurity say, the attackers should be neutralised once they enter the system, Phys.org writes (opens in new tab).
But that’s a gamble, and first businesses must be convinced into trying a new approach.
According to U.S. cybersecurity company FireEye, hackers stick around inside the victim’s computer for an average of 229 days before being spotted.
The traditional defences must "have a description of the bad guys before they can help you find them," said Dave Merkel, chief technology officer at FireEye Inc. "That's just old and outmoded. And just doesn't work anymore," he said.
"There's no way to guarantee that you never are the victim of cyberattack."
The weakness of relying on a firewall is that it's like building a fence around a housing complex but not hiring a guard to patrol the interior streets, said Ed Amoroso, chief security officer at AT&T.
Even though there’s an increased awareness in the US and in Asia about cyber security and internet-related threats, many companies are still reluctant to spend more on keeping safe. | <urn:uuid:057160e0-8a5f-4189-b6fa-79779c4178f9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/2015/02/10/experts-suggest-letting-hackers-network/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335124.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928051515-20220928081515-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.963438 | 374 | 2.734375 | 3 |
How would it change data and integration if a programming language could differentiate between other languages, based on data type?
This week, Carnegie Mellon University unveiled the first stage of Wyvern, an open source programming language that does just that.
Wyvern is news for two reasons:
- It received funding from the U.S. National Security Agency.
- It’s designed to make mobile and Web applications more secure.
Wyvern increases security by allowing coders to use multiple languages within the same program. According to the press release, Wyvern supports a “variety of targeted, domain-specific languages, such as SQL for querying databases or HTML for constructing Web pages, as sublanguages, rather than writing the entire program using a general purpose language.”
Wyvern allows you to add new languages “without worrying about composition,” according to Cyrus Omar, a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department and the lead designer of Wyvern’s type-specific language approach. Because it can accommodate multiple languages, Wyvern eliminates the workarounds programmers would otherwise use, experts told SD Times. These workarounds can cause bottlenecks and introduce security vulnerabilities, including code injection attacks, cross-site scripting attacks and SQL injection attacks.
That sounds awesome, but what piqued my interest is the way Wyvern identifies languages.
“Wyvern determines which sublanguage is being used within the program based on the type of data that the programmer is manipulating,” the press release states. “Types specify the format of data, such as alphanumeric characters, floating-point numbers or more complex data structures, such as Web pages and database queries.”
These types provide the context, which allows Wyvern to identify the sublanguage.
“Wyvern is like a skilled international negotiator who can smoothly switch between languages to get a whole team of people to work together,” said Jonathan Aldrich, associate professor in the Institute for Software Research (ISR) and head of Wyvern’s research team. “Such a person can be extremely effective and, likewise, I think our new approach can have a big impact on building software systems.”
At this point, it’s worth reiterating that the intended use is for Web and mobile apps, according to Aldrich. That said, he also pointed out to SD Times that while Wyvern isn’t targeted at systems programming, it’s possible someone could use Wyvern’s language extension ideas and build a systems programming language.
So what does this mean for data and integration use? That hasn’t been part of the discussion yet, but documentation shows data and integration is on the minds of the Wyvern team. Wyvern documentation notes that one strategy used by Wyvern is “High-level abstractions for architecture and data.” It also notes in the “motivation for Wyvern” section that “integration should not be supported only on the server side, as with Ruby on Rails, but across the client and server.”
Wyvern is not the first programming language to understand other languages. What’s unique here is that Wyvern combines two features that previously didn’t exist in one language:
- It is not limited in its ability to determine which embedded language is used.
- It does not limit which embedded language programmers can use.
Lifehacker has a research paper excerpt that explains this in developer-ese, if you’re interested.
Although it’s not fully developed, the language and supporting documentation is available on GitHub to would-be contributors.
Loraine Lawson is a veteran technology reporter and blogger. She currently writes the Integration blog for IT Business Edge, which covers all aspects of integration technology, including data governance and best practices. She has also covered IT/Business Alignment and IT Security for IT Business Edge. Before becoming a freelance writer, Lawson worked at TechRepublic as a site editor and writer, covering mobile, IT management, IT security and other technology trends. Previously, she was a webmaster at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and a newspaper journalist. Follow Lawson at Google+ and on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:d3a1ab9a-9f91-4620-8eeb-a1f1623f97a2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itbusinessedge.com/web/wyvern-programming-language-leverages-data-types-to-specify-sublanguages/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335355.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929131813-20220929161813-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.930487 | 880 | 2.78125 | 3 |
NAT is a firewall. It's the most common firewall. It's the best firewall.
I thought I'd point this out because most security experts might disagree, pointing to some "textbook definition". This is wrong.
A "firewall" is anything that establishes a barrier between some internal (presumably trusted) network and the outside, public, and dangerous Internet where anybody can connect to you at any time. A NAT creates exactly that sort of barrier.
What other firewalls provide (the SPI packet filters) is the ability to block outbound connections, not just incoming connections. That's nice, but that's not a critical feature. Indeed, few organizations use firewalls that way, it just causes complaints when internal users cannot access Internet resources.
Another way of using firewalls is to specify connections between a DMZ and an internal network, such as a web server exposed to the Internet that needs a hole in the firewall to access an internal database. While not technically part of the NAT definition, it's a feature of all modern NATs. It's the only way to get some games to work, for example.
There's already more than 10-billion devices on the Internet, including homes with many devices, as well as most mobile phones. This means that NAT is the most common firewall. The reason hackers find it difficult hacking into iPhones is partly because they connect to the Internet through carrier-grade NAT. When hackers used "alpine" as the backdoor in Cydia, they still had to exploit it over local WiFi rather than the carrier network.
Not only is NAT the most common firewall, it's the best firewall. Simple SPI firewalls that don't translate addresses have an inherent hole in that they are "fail open". It's easy to apply the wrong firewall ruleset, either permanently, or just for moment. You see this on internal IDS, where for no reason there's suddenly a spike of attacks against internal machines because of a bad rule. Every large organization I've worked with can cite examples of this.
NAT, on the other hand, fails closed. Common mistakes shutdown access to the Internet rather than open up access from the Internet. The benefit is so compelling that organizations with lots of address space really need to give it up and move to private addressing instead.
The definition of firewall is malleable. At one time it included explicit and transparent proxies, for example, which were the most popular type. These days, many people think of only state packet inspection filters as the "true" firewall. I take the more expansive view of things.
The upshot is this: NAT is by definition a firewall. It's the most popular firewall. It's the best firewalling technology.
Note: Of course, no organization should use firewalls of any type. They break the "end-to-end" principle of the Internet, and thus should be banned by law. | <urn:uuid:fb8887f8-49ac-4b57-b6c0-0fd1cc602646> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.erratasec.com/2017/01/nat-is-firewall.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930212504-20221001002504-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.95431 | 600 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Everybody is by now aware of the vulnerabilities baked in to many modern processors. These vulnerabilities, called Meltdown and Spectre, can potentially allow for malicious software to extract data from the kernel memory of an affected system. This is memory that would normally be used to store information in a secure manner to prevent other applications from accessing it. These vulnerabilities potentially affect every processor released in well over a decade that support specific optimizations intended to speed up the operation of the processor.
So how does this work?
These exploits work by attempting to force the processor to run a number of instructions that access areas of memory would not normally be accessible speculatively (out of order) so that the results of those instructions wind up getting saved in the CPU’s cache. When the CPU catches up to the instructions that were run out of order and realizes that they should not have had access to that data it will abort those instructions, but the information in the CPU cache may still be changed.
The attackers can then leverage other exploits to extract this data from the CPU Cache and view information that may have been contained in areas of the systems memory that they would not normally have access to – including possibly reaching outside of a virtual machine and into the host – or other virtual machines on the same host.
In theory any processor that supposed speculative execution is going to be vulnerable in some way. Some CPU architectures are built in a way that makes them more susceptible to the issues than others, but most CPU’s built in recent memory – including the ones in your mobile devices are susceptible – at least on paper.
What needs to be done to protect against this?
First off keep in mind that the sky is not falling, these issues are bad but there are things that can be done to mitigate the issue
- Ensure any patches for the operating system are installed to protect / mitigate against the issue.
- Check with your hardware vendor for any questions on the systems that you have and if they are affected.
- Ensure any firmware updates / microcode updates appropriate to your systems are installed as soon as possible.
While you are waiting for the appropriate firmware updates to come from your hardware vendor it’s more important than ever to protect yourself with a comprehensive security plan, including a updated antivirus solution, application whitelisting, and of course Deep Freeze.
How does this impact Faronics Products?
Faronics has re-tested Deep Freeze Enterprise, Deep Freeze Cloud and Faronics Anti-Virus to make sure that our products are not affected by the respective WIndows update patch and the results are positive. No updates are required at this time.
Microsoft has implemented a requirement in the January 3rd patches for this issue that requires antivirus vendors set a specific set of registry keys before the patch can be installed. Our team has been working to validate this patch over the last several days and we have found no issue with having Faronics Anti-Virus installed when this patch is placed into a system.
We have updated our cloud based platform so that the appropriate registry keys are put in place on customers systems automatically the next time the machine is thawed. Once this is completed, updates can either be installed using the workstation tasks of the Deep Freeze service, or manually if desired. Cloud customers can also use the Software Updater feature of the platform to push out the updated versions of Chrome, and Firefox released over the last several days that include additional mitigation against these attacks.
For customers running the on-premise version of the software they can either set the key manually using a 3rd party tool or you can download and use a patch that we have developed for this purpose. As always, if you have Deep Freeze installed you will need to thaw the machine prior to setting the registry key or running the utility linked above.
This utility can be pushed using the Remote Launch capabilities of both the Deep Freeze Enterprise Console, or Faronics Core Console.
Once this registry value is in place you can run Windows Update using Deep Freeze Cloud, or through the Enterprise Console to get the update installed and in place on your systems. Customers running Deep Freeze Standard will need to manually update once the registry key is in place.
Customers running macOS can simply install the appropriate patches from Apple on their devices either through a manual process of thaw, install, and freeze, or using the Maintenance Schedule in the Deep Freeze Mac product to install and update the systems without intervention. | <urn:uuid:28e1f494-43e5-45c6-b206-25efa5b09b27> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.faronics.com/news/blog/meltdown-spectre-vulnerabilities-faronics-solutions-affected | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337287.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002052710-20221002082710-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.942493 | 909 | 2.671875 | 3 |
HOW DOES PUSH-TO-TALK WORK?
Push-to-talk, push to talk, or PTT, works by facilitating conversations across various communications lines. A push-to-talk switch or button is used to switch users from voice mode to transmit mode.
What is Push-to-talk?
What is Push-to-talk Technology?
Push-to-Talk technology can be used to carry voice communications across various different types of networks and devices.
What are Push-to-talk Devices?
Devices that are most commonly used to support push-to-talk, or PTT, conversations are two-way radios, walkie talkies, and cell phones. Various networks from land mobile radio, to broadband, and beyond are also used to support push-to-talk technology.
Who Uses Push-to-talk?
Push-to-talk technology supports the lifeline of many first responders through instantaneous communication. All public safety personnel from police officers, firefighters, paramedics, command staff, dispatchers, and more rely on push-to-talk technology. PTT also supports the operation of many businesses, from manufacturing, retail, hospitality, transportation, healthcare, and many more.
What are the Key Benefits to Push-to-talk?
Push-to-Talk communications technology offers a number of key benefits. Here is a list of a few:
- Instant Communications - Push-to-talk technology from Motorola Solutions enables teams to communicate instantly, across devices, no matter their location. Say goodbye to dropped calls, and dead zones with the power of instant PTT communications.
- Ease of Use - PTT is easy to use, no matter the device of choice. A simple push-to-talk switch or button is used to switch users from voice mode to transmit mode. Just like the name, users simply need to push the button, and start talking, it’s that easy.
- Rapidly Deployable - Setting up push-to-talk technology can be done in less than 24 hours with the TLK 100 Push-to-Talk radio from Motorola Solutions. Simply place your order online, get your radio, and start talking. No set-up time or configuration required.
Explore Push-to-talk From Motorola Solutions
Public Safety Push-to-talk Radios
Join the millions of first responders across the world who trust our mission-critical push-to-talk radio communications to keep them safe.
Commercial Push-to-talk Radios
Whether you’re looking for a sleek, lightweight digital push-to-talk radio or a scalable portable push-to-talk radio, with MOTOTRBO™ you’ll find the right device to fit you.
Business Push-to-talk Radios
Our on-site push-to-talk business radios are designed to meet your needs, whether it’s instant PTT, or ruggedness to withstand harsh environments.
Tlk 100 Push-to-talk Two-way Radio
Combine the broad coverage of a nationwide cellular network with the ease of two-way push-to-talk radio communications.
Wave Push-to-talk Application
The WAVE PTT Mobile App provides instant PTT communication, multimedia messaging & more. | <urn:uuid:8cf625d5-f8b9-4684-a5c8-34af932355fc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/solutions/how-does-push-to-talk-work.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337287.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002052710-20221002082710-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.872565 | 678 | 2.84375 | 3 |
What all the hype is about and why you should care
Read more »
Artificial intelligence is all around us.
Not so long ago, artificial intelligence (AI) existed only in the world of science fiction - but today, AI pervades our daily lives – whether we’re aware of it or not. So much of what we do and the tools we use or dependent on data-driven analytics.
Take these examples:
Have you used a ride-sharing service (like Uber or Lyft) lately? These companies track millions of metrics each day, then employ machine learning (DL) and deep learning (DL) – both subsets of AI – to match drivers with riders, optimize routes, develop safety processes, and much more.
Laundry time? Some washing machine manufacturers are introducing next-generation models controlled by apps – and those apps use AI to determine the best cycle for the type of clothes you’re washing, and also help with maintenance and troubleshooting to ensure your machine is operating to optimal results.
In the healthcare space, one organization has trained and taught algorithms to augment the work of radiologists, allowing them to make diagnoses more accurately and efficiently. | <urn:uuid:3099bfae-5114-425f-895b-93b2dba7455e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.sentia.ca/Blog/PID/1133/evl/0/CategoryID/50/CategoryName/Artificial-Intelligence | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337287.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002052710-20221002082710-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.921265 | 242 | 2.859375 | 3 |
It’s a question you may not have thought about before, but it’s a valid concern to have. Mining pools have access to an immense amount of hash (computing) power in their race to create new blocks. Currently, this activity provides an invaluable service in maintaining the security of a blockchain. And, miners have a monetary incentive to keep par with the course.
Those incentives may not be around forever, though. If bitcoin, or other cryptocurrencies, start losing value, those miners will need to switch to a more profitable activity or risk failure.
Before getting into the doomsday scenario, though, let’s run through a quick mining pool refresher.
How Do Mining Pools Work?
When you mine cryptocurrency, you effectively compete against other miners to solve a mathematical puzzle. The first miner to complete the problem gets to create a new blockchain block and receives a mining block reward of some cryptocurrency in return.
The odds of earning a block reward correlate directly to the amount of hash power you dedicate to the network. The greater the amount of your hash power, the more frequently you create new blocks and receive cryptocurrency.
Mining pools simply pool together the hash power of several miners. Pooling resources together is advantageous for miners as they’re able to earn a steady stream of income rather than sporadic, lump sum rewards.
Mining Pools Control A Lot of Computing Power
Currently, Bitcoin’s average hash rate is 50,000,000 tera hashes per second (TH/s), or 50 million trillion hashes per second. Bitcoin’s largest mining pool, BTC.com, controls around 22 percent of that hash rate – 11,000,000 Th/s. Let’s do a little math now.
The Bitcoin network hash rate has bounced between 30 and 60 million TH/s over the last year. | Source: Blockchain
We can assume that a high-class ASIC miner consumes 0.1 watts per Gh/s, which equates to 100 watts per Th/s. Therefore, the BTC.com mining pool handles:
(100 watts per Th/s) x (11,000,000 Th/s) = 1,100,000,000 watts or 1100 megawatts.
Continuing the calculation, our mining pool then consumes 26.4 gigawatt-hours per day, which, finally, gives us 9636 gigawatt-hours per year.
To put this into perspective, the Hoover Dam produces an average of 4500 gigawatt-hours each year. So, the BTC.com mining pool utilizes more electricity than two Hoover Dams. Or in other terms, the mining conglomerate consumes roughly the same energy as 925,000 American households.
So, What Else Can Mining Pools Do With This Power?
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), much of this computing power doesn’t translate well to activities outside of cryptocurrency mining.
A large chunk of a bitcoin mining pools’ computing power comes from ASICs, highly functional processors explicitly built for cryptocurrency mining. Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners are specialized down to the type of cryptocurrency they can mine. For instance, you’re unable to mine bitcoin, which implements a SHA-256 algorithm, with a Litecoin (Scrypt algorithm) miner.
However, some cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, utilize a GPU-exclusive mining algorithm. So, there are still plenty of general GPUs mining cryptocurrency that can transition to other functions. For that reason, it’s beneficial to examine what else mining pools can accomplish with all the computing power they have access to.
A Force for Good
There are quite a few positive activities towards which mining pools could use their energy.
Instead of forcing miners to solve random mathematical puzzles, some projects have them contribute to an activity with inherent value, such as creating protein folding simulations. Protein folding is a computationally intensive process that assists with medical and other scientific research. Often, labs don’t have the resources to create these simulations, so outsourcing to cryptocurrency ‘miners’ brings a ton of value.
As an alternative to mining, a few blockchain projects reward participants for loaning out their spare computing power to other machines. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and CGI all require an immense amount of computing power that a single entity may have trouble producing on their own. A network of computers, though, can easily fill that gap.
Or, an Evil Reckoning?
But, not everyone naturally has good intentions. From a cybersecurity standpoint, mining pools also have the potential to cause serious harm.
Recently. we conducted extensive analysis on one of the most disruptive acts a mining pool could contribute to – password cracking. The results are slightly frightening.
Note: For these examples, we’re assuming that a hacker is using brute force methods to crack your password. Other, more sophisticated attacks exist (like dictionary attacks), so the estimates below are on the conservative side.
Using a single GTX 1060 miner, it would take you around 40 days to crack an eight character SHA-256 password. If you plan on breaking a 12 character one, though, you better bring some popcorn because you’ll be waiting over 3 billion days.
This example helps proves why, when it comes to creating your password, you need to consider complexity, but more importantly, you should create passwords with sufficient length.
Ethermine is Ethereum’s largest mining pool, controlling over one-quarter of the hash rate. | Source: Etherchain
So, it’s clear that one miner can’t realistically crack your password. How about an entire mining pool?
Ethermine, Ethereum’s largest mining pool, has 280 TH/s of hash power when attempting to crack Kerboros5 passwords. For those unfamiliar, Windows machines commonly implement Kerboros5 to hash passwords.
With that amount of computing power, Ethermine could, if it so chooses, crack an eight character Kerboros5 password in 20 seconds. An eight character NTLMv2 password, another regular Windows option, would take less than a minute to break.
Taking account the entire Ethereum network, common security tools like LastPass look like child’s play with a two minute cracking time.
Amount of time it takes to crack eight-character password hashes using different levels of resources
Examining twelve-character passwords, however, paints a much different picture. It would take Ethermine over 47 years to crack a Kerboros5 password with twelve characters and nearly double that time to break an NTLMv2 password of the same length. These timeframes, once again, demonstrate the importance of your password’s length.
Amount of time it takes to crack twelve-character password hashes using different levels of resources
Should You Be Worried? Yes and No.
It’s highly unlikely that mining pools will switch away from cryptocurrency mining anytime soon. The current block rewards, crypto prices, and potential market growth make the opportunity too lucrative to pass up.
However, as block rewards dwindle, transaction fees may not be incentive enough to keep many miners around. It’s possible we could have a host of GPUs lying around with which a mining pool, like Ethermine, could use nefariously. Even a single 6 GPU miner produces enough computing power to crack passwords.
With more teraflops than the world’s fastest supercomputer, the options (both good and evil) for Ethereum’s top mining pools are truly endless. | <urn:uuid:8c17734a-6742-48ac-b164-61a69f232558> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ledgerops.com/blog/what-if-mining-pools-used-their-power-for-evil-07-10-2019/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003133425-20221003163425-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.911759 | 1,561 | 2.515625 | 3 |
According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), most cyber attacks, including ransomware and business email compromise, begin with phishing. Although losses due to ransomware now exceed billions annually, most ransomware protection and response measures don’t protect against the most common phishing attacks.
Established research shows that phishing attacks most commonly occur from a maliciously registered, confusingly similar domain name, a compromised or hijacked legitimate domain name, or via email header spoofing.
The risk of not addressing your domain security can be catastrophic. Domains that are not being protected pose a significant threat to your cyber security posture, data protection, consumer safety, intellectual property, supply chains, revenue, and reputation. CSC recommends paying close attention to the following cyber risk framework for domain security: | <urn:uuid:be65f24f-005d-4bc6-8918-d2de70090f13> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cscdbs.com/blog/why-domain-security-is-your-first-line-of-defense-to-mitigate-phishing-attacks/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003133425-20221003163425-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.902023 | 160 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The HIPAA Security Rule lays out all the requirements a covered entity (CE) must fulfil to fully comply with HIPAA legislation. It stipulates the various safeguards that must be in place to protect a patient’s Protected Health Information (PHI).
There are three main categories of safeguards:
Administrative Safeguards include continuous risk assessments and audits to identify the main risks that threaten PHI.
Physical Safeguards include protecting the PHI from unauthorised access (e.g. ensuring screens cannot be seen from unrestricted areas) and preventing the loss of PHI should an accident occur.
Technical Safeguards prevent HIPAA violations when PHI is transferred over digital networks.
Administrative safeguards ensure that data is managed in a safe and secure manner. They apply to both CEs and their business associates. The accessibility (who, when, where and how) must all be carefully controlled and assessed through regular risk assessments. If such assessments are overlooked, the likelihood of a data breach is dramatically increased.
With the increased in the use of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, administrative safeguards have become even more important. Policies that maintain the integrity of PHI regardless of whether it is on a personal device or otherwise represent best practice.
Physical safeguards primarily relate to the hardware upon which the PHI is stored. They also concern the location of these devices, such as access to the rooms or floors of a building where the data is stored.
According to a Manhattan Research/Physician Channel Adoption Study, nearly 90% of doctors use a personal advice during their daily work routine. It would not be a leap to speculate that the figures are similar for other healthcare professionals. HIPAA requires that such devices, or any device that can be used to access PHI, must automatically log-off after a certain period of inactivity. This is to prevent unauthorised access if a workstation is unattended.
It is also recommended that CEs and their associates have a plan for the loss of mobile storage devices such as USB drives or external hard-drives.
Under HIPAA, there are three levels of “control”: access controls, audit controls and integrity controls. The first two regard authentication of personnel accessing the PHI whilst the latter instructs CEs on how to properly store PHI. This is to ensure that the data is not inappropriately altered or deleted.
When PHI is being transferred between employees, it must also be protected. CEs and their associates must ensure that during and after the transfer the integrity of the data is maintained and no unauthorised third party can access it.
With this in mind, all text messages and emails sent by healthcare employees must be secure. They must also be accountable – meaning the full digital footprint of a patient’s data must be traceable. This can be complicated, as some messages may remain on service providers’ servers.
Unfortunately, ensuring that every email and text message sent by an employee is appropriately encrypted is a mammoth task. Instead, many CEs will choose to use a secure messaging service. These services fully comply with HIPAA security stipulations.
Secure messaging apps can be downloaded onto laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets, irrespective of operating system. All communications sent through the service are encrypted and recorded, contained within the organisation’s private network.
The secure services often have additional safeguards built in. For example, messages sent over this service may have set “lifespans” after which they will be securely removed from a device. Most will also have authentication systems and forced log-offs to prevent unauthorised third-party access.
By increasing accountability and ensuring PHI integrity, these apps afford medical professionals more time to deal with patients. They also allow test results – such as X-Rays or CT scans – to be quickly and securely sent between doctors and shared with patients. This can increase collaboration and speed up patient discharge. | <urn:uuid:63b572dd-88e7-4454-aa50-0d3de899e5ca> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.defensorum.com/hipaa-data-regulation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003133425-20221003163425-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.942172 | 818 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Isn’t it just everybody’s dream: to walk up to an ATM, swipe your card, get a flashy screen reading “We Have A Winner,” and watch the machine spew out all its money? That dream just became reality.
At least in a great presentation from Barnaby Jack at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas. “Jackpotting Automated Teller Machines Redux” was planned for last year, but was pulled, allowing Jack another year of research. He did two demos. One was walking up to an ATM, opening it, plugging in a USB device, and restarting it. The other involved remotely bypassing authentication, installing a rootkit over the network, giving him complete control over the machine, and managing it remotely or by typing a secret combination of keys on the machine to get access to the rootkit. Or by swiping a special card. The rootkit would also capture the data from any card inserted and send it to the C&C Server (still standing for command and control, not for credit card).
A very flashy presentation, but what’s behind it?
Most people tend to ignore the fact that a lot of today’s devices and machines are internally running fairly standard computers and operating systems. ATM machines, cars, medical devices, even your TV may have such a computer inside, allowing updates over a network. Software unfortunately has flaws. The more complex, the more flaws, so sometimes updates are necessary to add new functionality, instead of replacing a device with a new one, fixing flaws found, etc.
In the first case the attack is made easy as most, if not all vendors of ATMs use a master key to unlock them, giving easy access to the motherboard. Using master keys is definitely a bad security technique but other solutions may be really difficult in practice. And allowing code from a USB device to run is what makes the attack possible. In the demo it took only 5 seconds and a reboot.
In the second case Jack used a flaw in the authentication to make unauthorized changes, and run the attack program. But the principle was just the same as with millions of other computers that each quarter become victims of an attack and part of a botnet.
So these computers need some protection against unauthorized changes. Running anti-malware software on them is obviously not a good solution; it would need constant updating and would make a heavy impact on the systems you want to protect. So the future is in using application control, configuration control, and change control to lock down those systems, so you can still make authorized updates and changes but not run unauthorized code from an attacker.
OK, so much for now. I’ve seen some ATMs in the lobby that I need to look at. 😉
Follow us to stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats. | <urn:uuid:b56aa8e8-b1bb-4375-8389-4d04bae2867b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.mcafee.com/blogs/other-blogs/mcafee-labs/remote-jackpot-hacking-atm/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003133425-20221003163425-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.943765 | 600 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Born at the turn of the century, the Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming industries at lightning speed today. IoT describes the network of physical objects—"things"—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies that connect to and exchange data with devices and systems over the internet. IoT devices range from ordinary household objects to sophisticated industrial tools.
In 2021, the number of active IoT devices has grown to more than 10 billion, and IoT is expected to continue to thrive. By 2025, more than 152,200 IoT devices will connect to the internet every minute. Flourishing well into the future, the number of active IoT devices is projected to surpass 25.4 billion in 2030.1
IoT is useful because, in a nutshell, the Internet of Things is smarter than the Internet. IoT devices create information about connected devices, analyze it, and make decisions – all without human intervention. Security cameras, sensors, vehicles, buildings, and software are examples of things that can exchange data among each other.
So, what exactly does IoT technology look like? The three types of IoT devices include consumer IoT, enterprise IoT, and industrial IoT.
Consumer IoT devices make our home and personal lives more convenient, efficient, and secure. Such devices include smart lighting, appliances, security systems, and more.
Enterprise IoT devices gather data from physical assets to improve safety and troubleshooting and to better manage the assets. Enterprise IoT devices empower companies to reduce manual work and increase overall business efficiency. Examples of enterprise IoT devices include condition monitoring sensors (temperature, humidity, smoke, power, etc.) and worker location and safety monitoring devices.
Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices enable businesses to digitize plants for smart manufacturing and connected factories. Applications also include robotics, medical devices, and software-defined production processes. Commonly used in manufacturing operations, smart devices are also present in construction vehicles, supply chain robotics, solar and wind power, agricultural sensor systems, smart irrigation, and more.
While consumer IoT devices are important to us all, in this article we focus on the latter two applications: enterprise and industrial IoT.
Enterprise and industrial IoT devices share the same technical premise: they collect data via sensors and send the data to remote monitoring software that you can access on your mobile phones, tablets, or desktop PCs.
Enterprise IoT devices deliver predictive analytics, leverage condition-based monitoring to improve people and environmental safety, maximize operational efficiency and productivity, and manage energy (PUE) – all of which equip your business to thrive in a changing world. These devices analyze collected data via intelligent dashboarding and reporting.
Typical enterprise IoT devices from Black Box include AlertWerks and Magikk. Black AlertWerks Wired is a state-of-the-art IoT solution that offers real-time environmental monitoring to protect mission-critical IT equipment. Loaded with intelligent sensors and monitoring gateways, AlertWerks actively monitors the conditions in a rack, server room, or data center and protects critical assets from extreme temperature, humidity, power spikes, water leaks, and smoke.
Another enterprise device, Black Box Magikk is a small, wearable, sensor-activated device that combines the power of satellite-based positioning and sensor-based data to track workers' locations. Equipped with two-way communication, single-button calling, and emergency SMS, Magikk is the device to choose for personal safety and real-time monitoring of remote workers.
An industrial IoT device, Black Box JIDO is an advanced, easy-to-use GPS tracking and security solution for the transportation and logistics industry. It provides real-time GPS location data for protection of valuable assets in transit and storage. With JIDO, authorized personnel gain 24/7 access, visibility, and control over the status of long-distance shipments in transit and storage, while all data is securely stored in the cloud.
Prime applications for enterprise and industrial IoT include asset management and digitizing processes. By digitizing manufacturing processes, businesses optimize assets, maximize operational efficiency and productivity, and better manage energy (PUE).
You can also expect to see IoT applications for AI-enabled visual inspection for quality control, AI-powered bag loading, and AI-driven perimeter intrusion monitoring for modern warehouses.
As you have learned, the personal and business potential of IoT technology is nearly limitless. Because businesses are driven by a need for regulatory compliance, we are likely to see more regulation of IoT as the technology matures. Increased network agility, integrated artificial intelligence (AI), and the capacity to plan, deploy, automate, and secure diverse use cases at hyperscale will accelerate the industrial and enterprise IoT.
Ready to embrace the future with IoT? Learn about IoT devices from Black Box: | <urn:uuid:8a1bc66b-a8c3-4fa3-8cb1-fd74fcaa9bf7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.blackbox.com/en-be/insights/blogs/detail/technology/2022/01/07/how-iot-empowers-businesses-to-leverage-monitoring-reporting-and-data-analysis-to-optimize-productivity-and-profits-in-an-ever-changing-workplace | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337529.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004215917-20221005005917-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.908581 | 988 | 3.171875 | 3 |
How Artificial Intelligence is Used Across Industries
In our last post
, we took a look at how artificial intelligence is the digital edge. In this post,
we’ll take a look at some examples of how AI is being used in different industries.
First, let’s define artificial intelligence (AI). It is automating processes that previously required human interaction. A high-end example
is a driverless car. A simpler example is a chess-playing computer. AI is changing how we work and play and it is touching every aspect of our lives. AI is the intelligent digital edge. It’s where people and devices meet. It’s processing data
on the spot rather than sending it to the cloud. Banking/Finance
AI is becoming a game changer in the financial industry. Because AI learns through progressive, deep learning algorithms, it can be predictive. In the financial industry,
that means AI can be used to prevent fraud rather than just detect it. AI can also be used to change the customer experience too. For example, Capital One became the first financial services company to enable customer account access through Alexa. Today,
20% of people do their banking digitally and most financial executives believe that AI will become the primary customer touchpoint by 2020. Retail
In a survey of 2500 senior IT decision makers conducted by Opinion Research for Mitel,
95% say digital transformation is a key component in improving the customer experience. 56% say a better customer experience results in higher customer satisfaction.
Today, customers, especially millennials, already embrace digital technology.
They expect a highly personalized experience that ties together voice, video, movie and online channels. AI has already changed shopping by providing personalized recommendations based on previous customer preferences. AI can also help with store management
in terms of stock, layout analysis, sales predictions, and more.
Machine learning, as a subset of AI, is already a fixture in factories and monitoring stations. But, AI has more critical uses in manufacturing
and industry. By analyzing IoT data, AI can forecast loads and demand, predict hardware failures and initiate recovery procedures so crews can be sent out for preventative maintenance. It’s estimated that by 2020, more than 50% of internet traffic
could come from IoT sensors as the number of connected devices grows to 34 billion.Security and Public Safety
AI is becoming a critical component in public safety. For security and surveillance cameras, AI can become the digital eyes,
instead of human eyes, and analyze movement. This can help police spot crimes and monitor public spaces for accidents and disturbances.
In addition, facial recognition is a big part of security systems at borders, airports, etc. Computers
can scan through thousands of images faster and more accurately than a human can. Facial recognition security is now also being used almost everywhere from smartphones and building access systems to credit cards and driver’s licenses.Healthcare
Artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of healthcare and 2018 is expected to be an explosive year for AI in healthcare. The possibilities are limitless. AI can act as a virtual assistant and help doctors diagnose patients, provide treatment
plans, analyze lab tests, etc. It can also act as a life coach reminding people to take their pills, track medication consumption and provide pain management procedures. AI is becoming a critical component in healthcare from the OR and ER to remote patient
visit systems. Personalized AI
Artificial intelligence is personal too. You interact with it every time you ask Siri a question or tell Alexa to turn on the lights. Music recommendation systems, such as Spotify or Pandora, are based
on artificial intelligence as well.
Artificial intelligence is the basis for smart buildings. A great example of this is The Edge, possibly the smartest building in the world. It’s also officially the greenest office
building in the world. The Edge is Deloitte’s headquarters in the Netherlands and a building that knows there you live, what car you drive, who you’re meeting with today, where to find a desk, your preferences for temperature and light, and
more. The Edge is the most fully realized example of using intelligent edge technology and the IoT to change the way, how and where we work. For example, every light is powered by an Ethernet cable. The building is packed with 28,000 sensors. It’s
a cool place where people want
to work. Take a look at The Edge and see for yourself.
Learn more about The Edge in this Bloomberg article
.Begin your digital transformation
These are just a few examples of the rise of artificial intelligence. As the world of internet of things expands, many devices are being created to process data on their own. These intelligent IoT devices
do more than simply collect and deliver data. Many process data on the spot rather than send it to the cloud for analysis. Intelligent IoT devices are beginning to effectively analyze diverse sets of data to produce value in real-time – and at the
Learn how you can begin your digital transformation to the intelligent digital edge at BlackBox.com/Intelligent-Digital-Edge | <urn:uuid:eb983bac-e67b-4d76-8aa3-d06d4693071c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.blackbox.com/en-se/insights/blogs/detail/bbns/2018/04/02/how-artificial-intelligence-is-used-across-industries | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337529.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004215917-20221005005917-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.932457 | 1,082 | 2.9375 | 3 |
School is fully back in session for kids all across the world, and for many students, that means logging back online to learn, do homework, submit assignments, and maybe even continue some distance learning, depending on their school's pandemic precautions.
But with more Internet activity comes likely more stress for families who, understandably, worry about how to keep their children safe online. Thankfully, there are countless guides for children's Internet safety—not to mention Malwarebytes Labs' own comprehensive guide—but many of those guides, through no malicious intent, assume a similar skill level for all children.
But what about children with special needs?
How do you teach strong password creation for children with learning disabilities? How do you teach children how to separate fact from fiction when they have a different grasp of social cues? And how do you make sure these lessons are not only remembered for years to come, but also rewarding for the children themselves?
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Alana Robinson, a special education technology and computer science teacher for K – 8, about cybersecurity trainings for children with special needs, and about how, for some lessons, her students are better at remembering the rules of online safety than some adults.
"I teach 100 students, 10 classes, [and] I used not a very strong password for every student in this one class ... and I said ‘By the way, everyone has this [password],’ and they’re like, when I said everyone has this same password, they’re like ‘Oh no no! That’s not a strong password, oooh’ and they literally let me have it.”Alana Robinson
Tune in to hear all this and more on this week's Lock and Code podcast, by Malwarebytes labs. | <urn:uuid:0ea1509d-9b4b-4cc3-8a29-794bc0d10ca2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/podcast/2021/09/teaching-cybersecurity-skills-to-special-needs-children-with-alana-robinson-lock-and-code-s02e18 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337529.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004215917-20221005005917-00725.warc.gz | en | 0.95619 | 380 | 3.15625 | 3 |
SHODAN is a search engine that lets you find specific computers (routers, servers, etc.) using a variety of filters. Some have also described it as a public port scan directory or a search engine of banners.
Web search engines, such as Google and Bing, are great for finding websites. But what if you’re interested in finding computers running a certain piece of software (such as Apache)? Or if you want to know which version of Microsoft IIS is the most popular? Or you want to see how many anonymous FTP servers there are? Maybe a new vulnerability came out and you want to see how many hosts it could infect? Traditional web search engines don’t let you answer those questions.
So what does SHODAN index then? Good question. The bulk of the data is taken from ‘banners’, which are meta-data the server sends back to the client. This can be information about the server software, what options the service supports, a welcome message or anything else that the client would like to know before interacting with the server. For example, following is a FTP banner:
This tells us a potential name of the server (kcg.cz), the type of FTP server (Solaris ftpd) and its version (6.00LS). For HTTP a banner looks like:
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:03:04 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) AuthMySQL/2.20 PHP/4.1.2 mod_gzip/220.127.116.11a mod_ssl/2.8.9 OpenSSL/0.9.6g
Last-Modified: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 08:51:04 GMT
You can find out more about Shodan here. | <urn:uuid:15a2180d-cdb5-42b4-abaf-d2139a46257a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://md3v.com/tag/find-routers | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334596.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925193816-20220925223816-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.880817 | 406 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Quality of Service Networking Quality of Service networking capabilities on routers and switches enable administrators to set data traffic priorities. When optimal performance is required, such as in a telephony or data communications network, QoS choices are useful. During times of congestion, QoS network settings will prioritise mission-critical services. The quality of service of a […]
Learn how bandwidth in networking refers to the amount of
data transmitted, over a time period, between two telecommunication
Remote Monitoring, known as RMON, supports monitoring of network operations from a centralized location. It goes beyond a standard MIB.
SNMP supports the collection of statistical information on network devices. SNMP is Simple Network Management Protocol.
Learn more about the port mirroring technique of copying a data packet at one port and then forwarding it to another port for inspection.
A SSID is a Service Set Identifier. This unique name identifies a wireless network and is part of every packet transmitted on the network.
A full-duplex system transmits and receives over one channel simultaneously. With half-duplex, transmissions run in two directions, but not at the same time.
A command line interface (CLI) allows a user to interact with an operating system or application. The CLI prompt a user to act. | <urn:uuid:f8720e92-1592-4898-b92a-7e5891f0f66b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.comms-express.com/infozone/article-category/other/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.886901 | 264 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Think about the last time you had that eureka feeling – that moment in time when your mind was blown. If I had to bet, you can vividly recall the entire scene. You probably were able grasp something previously unfathomable. In education, we start our students off with many of these moments. Moments like seeing the spectrum through a prism for the first time or making a baking soda volcano.
You could argue that those experiences are due to the age of students and not the curriculum itself. I disagree though. Our students end their time with us through rote memorization and a feeling of we are never going to use this in life. As students get older, these eureka moments are harder to come by. Concepts that we teach become more complex. Augmented and virtual reality can change this by letting us experience the abstract personally.
Is virtual reality just another gimmick?
Let’s start our discussion with virtual reality. It is what you will use first due to cost and development. With virtual reality, you are completely cut off from the physical world. The most immersive implementations have you wearing a headset that is tied back to a high end computer through one or more wires. Depending on the content, you might also wear headphones. The two most popular high end products are Facebook’s Oculus and HTC’s Vive.
Basic content in virtual reality can be 360 degree video. If you have ever been to EPCOT, think about the circle vision movie in Canada. Unlike that attration, a 360 degree video in VR can allow you to look up/down as well.
You probably have looked at the prices of those products, realized that they still require a dedicated computer/phone (at least for VR), and said – education can’t afford this. Right now, you are right. Cheaper way to let students experience VR would be through a mobile device with something like Google Cardboard and to pair it with content like this. Do you think students in science would remember more about Pluto from a textbook or by traveling with the New Horizons probe as it flew past? With a 360 degree video, you can look anywhere you want – at times your mind will even believe you are there. Try standing up while watching a 360 degree skydiving video if you don’t believe me. 🙂
More complex content includes fully interactive games and simulations. These range from Minecraft to SCUBA diving. In these, you manipulate the virtual world through a traditional controller or with two hand controllers. In some, you are stationary. Others track your physical movements and bring them over into the virtual world. Having tried both the Oculus and Vive, I prefer the Vive. I got a bit motion sickness using the Oculus as I was physically stationary but flying in my mind.
The beauty of virtual reality is that it removes the abstraction of numbers and provides experiences that we can’t physically have. What has more impact:
- reading that a bluewhale is 18 times longer than the average human or swiming past the whale in VR?
- being told that Jupiter gravity protects the inner Solar System from comets or using your hands to throw comets at earth only to see Jupiter’s gravity well alter the orbit?
- studying the works of da Vinci or walking through the Louvre during a virtual field trip?
Education has a bad reputation of jumping on every gimmick that comes along (usually preceded by a change of administration). When exploring new technology, I usually push for data showing a benefit. Because this technology is so new, I don’t know of any hard studies showing a correlation between student performance and VR use. In this case, that is not dissuading me from pushing for some kind of adoption. At the least, I solidly believe that it would make a wonderful incentive tool for students.
Augmented reality is the future of education
Virtual reality can let you go to places or do things that could never be done in a classroom. So why am I more excited about augmented reality than VR? Augmented reality brings the magic of virtual reality into the physical world. The most prominent example would be Microsoft’s HoloLens. The HoloLens is a self-contained augmented reality set. Currently, you wear what looks like a miniature welder visor/TRON helmet that is capable of mapping your surroundings and projecting a hologram that you can see. You can interact with these holograms and pair them onto physical objects. The HoloLens has two specific things that amaze me. First, no wires. Second, it is intuitive.
This paragraph was originally about how incredible it is to project and use holograms. Every description either seemed understated or had too many exclamation marks. Instead, here is a (blurry) picture of my wife seeing a hologram for the first time. If my memory is correct, she is seeing a puppy running around my head.
VR originated for entertainment. AR, including HoloLens, is being developed with collaboration as the cornerstone. In the near future, it is easy to see an environment where every student is wearing a device similar to this. Instructors could bring in objects to teach a point. A physics lesson could let students each build a tabletop trebuchet. Velocity, momentum, and gravity would be taught by tweaking individual components in real time. Want to see what a longer arm on the trebuchet would do? Simply extend that part of the hologram. Teachers could invite experts to a teach a lesson. AR can even allow us to speak with the past. History becomes more memorable when you have a class discussion with Theodore Roosevelt.
An early glimpse
You won’t be seeing these widely adopted for quite a while. The price point isn’t right and the management/collaboration features aren’t even built yet. I do think that there is a place for this technology in education right now though. Areas like libraries often provided the very first computers for students to use. I think that role can be embraced once again by providing future engineers the chance to use this technology now.
What your thoughts on VR and AR? Am I just a bit too optimistic? Are they just another gimmick? Or do they have ability to inspire students? | <urn:uuid:a0e4d35a-2857-42bf-a232-f5e489f5b559> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://deployhappiness.com/tag/ar/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335530.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001035148-20221001065148-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.959395 | 1,279 | 3.265625 | 3 |
It is already a common sense that Windows OS users are a preferred target for cyber criminals. Every hour, every minute they construct new cyber deception and hacking techniques. As a result, it was only a matter of time when the crooks would strike the virtual community with heavy artillery. Likewise, AtomBombing was devised. IT professionals express their concerns as this code injection technique causes devastating effects on any Windows system. So is it the time to worry or is it only smoke without fire?
Looking from a positive perspective, the IT professionals were able to get a sight of this menacing technique before it was launched on a massive scale. According to their reports, the essence of this terrifying technique lies in its vital ability to avoid the detection of security tools. Instead of exploiting system vulnerabilities, the malware targets the Windows OS designing peculiarity. Whether you run Windows XP or Windows 10, you might be targeted by this destructive technology. Specifically, AtomBombing exploits the incorporate feature of Windows, particularly, Atom tables, to implement the attack.
Specifically, atom tables keep strings and corresponding identifiers of the existing applications. What is more, they can be used for different purposes. DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) programs exploit this technique to share item-name and topic-name strings with other programs. In other words, by meddling with these settings, AtomBombing hijack technology obtains the status of a legitimacy. Since its commands are regarded as legitimate processes, it can bypass anti-virus detection tools. Furthermore, it has been revealed that by running commands of GlobalAddAtom and GlobalGetAtomName, the technology is able to clean the evidence of hijacked threats in the targetted processes.
Due to this technology, the cyber criminals are able to perform MITM (man-in-the-middle) browser assaults, take screenshots of the infected device and even steal the passwords of your personal accounts, including a bank account. All this activity is disguised as usual Windows OS processes. Such findings are certainly not reassuring and might cause great concerns for some users. Though at the moment there is no counterattack strategy against AtomBombing, there are some positive signs. The early detection of such terrifying technique will help the IT specialists to invent confronting measures. Likewise, Microsoft authorities are also expected to release the improved or even altered versions of Windows 10 to help the users dodge the attacks of cyber criminals. | <urn:uuid:574cc887-05ce-404e-a1dc-cb725b642739> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.2-spyware.com/the-introduction-of-atombombing-in-cyberspace-should-windows-os-users-worry | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.93663 | 482 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Whether in the cloud or on-premises, businesses across the spectrum of technologies are moving toward software-as-a-service (SaaS) and applications to create innovative products and services. Alongside this innovation comes the need for improvements to security. Application security and application security controls are important for any business making applications.
Application security is a set of measures designed to prevent data or code within applications from being stolen or manipulated. It involves security during application development and design phases as well as systems and approaches that protect applications after deployment.
Application security controls are techniques that improve the security of applications at the code level, reducing vulnerability. These controls are designed to respond to unexpected inputs, such as those made by outside threats. With application security controls, the programmers have more agency over responses to unexpected inputs. Application security helps businesses stave off threats with tools and techniques designed to reduce vulnerability.
2022 CrowdStrike Global Threat Report
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Application Security and Controls
Application security risks come into play for any applications that a business builds and runs. Application security controls can be separated into types based on which part of the application process they protect. These controls are designed to uncover and reduce security vulnerabilities and help businesses face the myriad security risks associated with applications.
Definition of Application Security Controls
Application security controls are steps assigned to developers to implement security standards, which are rules for applying security policy boundaries to application code. One major compliance businesses must follow is the National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication (NIST SP), which provides guidelines for selecting security controls. There are different types of application security controls designed for different security approaches that include:
- Authentication: Confirming if a user’s identity is valid; necessary to enforce identity-based access.
- Encryption: Converting information or data into code to prevent unauthorized access; can involve individual files or an entire project.
- Logging: Examining user activity to audit incidents of suspicious activity or breach.
- Validity Checks: Making sure data entered and processed meets specific criteria.
- Access Controls: Limiting access to applications based on IP addresses or otherwise authorized users.
Importance of Application Security Controls
Application security controls are a great baseline for any business to add security to applications at the code level. These controls can keep disruptions to internal processes at a minimum, respond quickly in case of a breach and improve application software security for businesses.
Application security controls give better visibility about traffic in an application with logging. Encryption helps to reduce risk of breaches and reduce security vulnerabilities. Application security controls can be tailored to each application, so a business can implement standards for each as needed. Reducing security risks is the biggest benefit of application security controls.
Application Security Risk
So, what are application security risks? To say the risks for web application security are numerous would be an understatement, but the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a great place to learn about of the scope of risks.
At the top of the list is broken access control, which had over 318,000 occurrences in data provided to OWASP. The security vulnerabilities of broken access control might mean destruction and modification of data and unauthorized access to information and applications. Other top security risks include:
- Injection: When attackers execute arbitrary operating system commands on a server running an application.
- Security Misconfiguration: Opens weaknesses when security is not properly aligned with application functions.
- Outdated Components: Old code that was secure can be made more vulnerable over time as new types of attack are developed.
Every piece of an application has security risks, which is why it is so important to maintain application security controls at the code level. However, while application security controls are a fantastic layer of security, more challenges continue to arise.
Challenges of Modern Application Security
Some of the challenges presented by modern application security are common, such as inherited vulnerabilities and the need to find qualified experts for a security team. Other challenges involve looking at security as a software issue and ensuring security through the application security life cycle. It is important to be aware of these challenges before beginning application security processes.
Common Challenges of Modern Application Security
Common challenges for modern application security are bound to occur for any business interested in secure applications, and include the following:
- Inherited vulnerabilities: Companies often rely on software and code from outside sources, and these are likely to contain vulnerabilities.
- Third-party and open-source vulnerabilities: Open-source software might contain components of code that pose security risks and have IP risks from restrictive licenses.
- Adopting a DevSecOps approach: The process of incorporating security measures through every phase of the IT process.
- Finding qualified experts: Security teams play a vital role in application security and finding experts or training security teams already in place is necessary.
- Lack of a centralized management tool: Without a centralized tool to support development teams, a business will either have extra overhead dealing with each siloed application team, or a lack of insight into reporting for applications.
Security as a Software Issue
Software weaknesses, defects and faults all contribute to less secure software and applications. Security vulnerabilities like these can allow exploitation and attackers can force software into an insecure state. These weaknesses crop up in software security, container security and cloud security.
In each case, deploying workloads without proper security can lead to vulnerability and breaches of security. Secure software practices aim to reduce or eliminate the ability of attackers to exploit faults and backdoors. These practices can eliminate weaknesses in code and create software that is attack tolerant and attack resilient. Ensuring these software security features are included across the application security lifecycle helps protect businesses.
Application Security Lifecycle
The application security lifecycle refers to implementing security measures across all steps of application development. From planning to design, architecture, testing, coding, release and maintenance, the application security lifecycle encompasses an application from start to end. To achieve cloud security, the application security lifecycle ends in ongoing maintenance.
Whether applications are cloud-native or on premises, the application security lifecycle is vital. Application security testing, API security, cloud security and steps all along the developmental process help protect businesses and their code. In addition to security professionals and modern application security measures, there are types of application security tools that can support application security.
Types of Application Security Tools
Application security tools involve various types of security testing for different kinds of applications. Security testing has evolved since its inception and there is a right time to use each security tool. A modern business needs to secure applications to keep its data safe.
Available Application Security Tools
There are a variety of application security tools available:
- Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP): Provides personalized application protections based on insight into internal data.
- Software Composition Analysis (SCA): A process that automatically detects open-source software in code to evaluate security, compliance and quality.
- Static Application Security Testing (SAST): A security testing method to analyze source code for vulnerability.
- Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): Provides insight into how applications behave during production.
- Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST): Used to analyze code during testing run by automation and human testers.
- Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST): Products designed to identify vulnerability in applications on mobile platforms.
- Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP): The practice of cloud-native applications and infrastructure.
Recommended Tools for Application Security Testing
Application security testing began as a manual process where security teams would run tests and attempt to discover security flaws. As technology advanced many of these processes became automated, generating the multitude of available security application tools.
The right security tool depends on the timing in development and which security issue is most pressing. DAST should be used throughout development and writing of code while WAF is needed once an application is on the web. Other tools are used in niche cases like MAST and CNAPP. Of the available security tools, a business should use all that can help keep each application secure.
Types of Applications Modern Organizations Need to Secure
What applications need to be secure in order to ensure proper security operations? This depends on where a business’s applications are running. Web application security is needed for applications that interact with websites. API security is necessary for applications that contain data and interact with other applications. Cloud-native application security is a must when working with code in the cloud.
The types of application a modern business needs to secure are those that are most vulnerable. By using application security tools and security best practices, a business can keep its applications safe without losing functionality.
Application Security Best Practices
The security best practices for web applications involve using security teams, tools and application security controls in tandem. Whether a business needs cloud security, web application security or API security, the security best practices provide a helpful guideline.
Applying Best Practices for Application Security
There are many security best practices available, but a few should take priority:
- Perform a threat assessment of your code and applications.
- Include security throughout the application development process (DevSecOps).
- Prioritize remedial operations to resolve threats after identifying them.
- Measure application security results with frequent testing.
- Manage and limit privileges so those who have access to code and applications are the right teams.
How to Secure Applications
The first step to achieving secure applications is to establish a security team. In addition to security teams and tools, there are security trends a business should be aware of. Application security tools will continue to be embedded in the DevOps tool chain. Container security for deploying applications is a piece of the software supply chain with known weaknesses. Security for infrastructure as code will continue to grow as more applications move to cloud-native.
Main Approaches to Application Security Testing
There are three main approaches to application security testing: black box security testing, white box security testing and gray box security testing. Black box security testing happens from the outside in. It simulates the approach of a real attacker with no prior knowledge of the way the application functions. Because this method doesn’t need knowledge of the individual application, it is technology independent.
White box penetration testing gives the tester full information on the network, system and application along with credentials. This testing is faster and can save on testing costs. White box testing is a great solution for attacking an application from multiple vectors quickly.
Gray box penetration testing is in between the other methods, with limited information being shared before testing. Often, this involves giving the tester privileged credentials, to test the potential damage attacks from a seemingly authorized user can cause. Each of these methods is good at a specific strategy of penetration testing, and all can be valuable for application security.
How CrowdStrike Helps with Application Security
Application security is vital to protect businesses from outside threats. The application security tools work alongside security professionals and application security controls to deliver security throughout the application lifecycle. Having the security tools available and in place is vital. With multiple types of tools and methods for testing, achieving application security is well within reach.
The CrowdStrike Falcon® platform can help you keep applications secure and proactively monitor and remediate misconfigurations while giving you visibility into potential insider threats across various hosts, cloud infrastructures and business applications. Learn more here. | <urn:uuid:3e7a03d1-e6dd-461c-8d3c-5f77a40a6bb5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/application-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00125.warc.gz | en | 0.921166 | 2,344 | 2.8125 | 3 |
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