text stringlengths 234 589k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 62 values | url stringlengths 16 734 | date stringlengths 20 20 ⌀ | file_path stringlengths 109 155 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.65 1 | token_count int64 57 124k | score float64 2.52 4.91 | int_score int64 3 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Storing optical data into sound waves on a chip
For the first time, researchers convert the digital information in the form of light waves into sound waves inside a microchip. The breakthrough is crucial in the development of photonic integrated circuits, the basis of computers that uses light instead of electrons to manage and store data.
If successful, these systems would not subjected to electromagnetic interference, produce too much heat, or consume too much energy.
Light is extremely useful when it comes to moving information across a great distance, but its unbeatable speed also a harm. As it makes it difficult for computer and telecommunication systems to process the stored information. Speed isn’t useful if the information cannot process.
Therefore, sound waves or rather the conversion from light to sound waves, work so well here. This process slows the information down long enough for it to process, before it’s converted back into light waves and sent on its way.
“The information in our chip in acoustic form travels at a velocity five orders of magnitude slower than in the optical domain,” said, Dr. Birgit Stiller, research fellow at the University of Sydney. It is like the difference between thunder and lightning.
Traditional electronic devices used in telecommunications and optical fiber networks vulnerable to interference and can produce excessive heat using too much energy. Implementing light and sound waves on a photonic microchip eliminates these problems. Photons are immune to electromagnetic interference, and there is no electronic resistance to produce heat. With this process, overall bandwidth increases and data can travel at light-speed.
Researchers said, unlike previous systems this allows us to store and retrieve information at multiple wavelengths simultaneously. Also, increases the efficiency of the device.
Researchers said, this work marks an important step forward in optical information processing. This concept fulfills all requirements for current and future generation optical communication systems.
Computer systems are only going to continue getting bigger and faster, but the amount of heat that advanced devices create makes them difficult to use and maintain. However, companies like IBM and Intel explore the possibility of using such chips in their systems.
More information: [Nature communications] | <urn:uuid:899a6ecf-3fbc-4042-8fea-724a8b482dda> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://areflect.com/2017/09/19/for-the-first-time-researchers-storing-optical-data-into-sound-waves-on-a-chip/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930181143-20220930211143-00529.warc.gz | en | 0.907645 | 441 | 3.578125 | 4 |
A firewall will defend your business by proactively blocking unauthorized access to your business’s network. Most companies realize hackers, malware and viruses are a great threat to the security of their company, but will simply rely on antivirus software. Such software is important and will quarantine and recognize infections, but as the saying goes, and ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Managing your network security should be a top priority for businesses of all sizes, and firewalls are a great first step.
What is a Firewall?
Firewalls function by protecting your computer from hackers, malware, and viruses by monitoring data entering your network or computer to ensure nothing unintended or harmful slips through.
Being a key feature of most credible security software, basic computer firewalls are built in the security settings of most computer operating systems like Microsoft Windows.
Having a firewall, however, does not mean the configurations are appropriately done. A basic default firewall is often not enough to counter sophisticated attacks.
Besides blocking legitimate activity, poorly managed firewalls can cause difficulty to end-users and lead to workflow errors or the user disabling a firewall out of frustration.
Companies should seek knowledge on how to configure firewalls properly, understand how to respond in case alerts come up, know when to let data through, and know when it’s safe to override the firewall’s protections.
While all these are beyond the capabilities of many users, trusted IT partners can remotely manage firewalls for the business, ensuring they are secure.
How Do Firewalls Work?
Firewalls prevent malicious software and unauthorized connections from accessing your network by examining the data that is being sent to your network and determining if it is legitimate based on predefined conditions.
They monitor outgoing and incoming network traffic, and if they detect unauthorized access in your system, they decide whether to allow or block based on the instructions given.
Firewalls are essential for businesses, especially with remote working employees since they have to securely connect to the company’s network connection from potentially unsecured locations.
Types of Firewalls
Firewalls can either be hardware or software based. Most small businesses go for software firewalls out of ease. This type of firewall is installed directly on computers and only protects the machine it’s on.
Most operating systems have built-in software firewalls that offer basic protections to the users. There are advanced software firewalls that are customized to protect against ransomware, malware, and viruses.
On the other hand, hardware firewalls are router or stand-alone systems which act as a barrier, or firewall, between the internal network of a business and the internet. Hardware firewalls are more robust and can protect many devices on a network without the installation of any software on individual devices.
Which One Is Right For You?
One main problem with hardware firewalls is that they do not protect employees who work away from the protected network.
For example, if employees are working at home, hotels, or airports, they will not be protected by the firewall installed in the office.
These employees will need to have firewall software installed on each of their devices. Many small businesses choose to utilize both hardware and software firewalls to ensure complete coverage. Each device may have a software firewall installed on the individual devices while also setting up a more advanced hardware firewall to protect their whole network. By doing that, all devices will be protected despite the location.
Software and conventional firewalls require updates to function properly. Also, the firewalls have to be configured in the right manner for them to protect your business against all potential threats. These two make it difficult for companies to manage firewalls since they have a limited budget and limited time.
Most network protection plans use firewalls to protect businesses against DDoS attacks, malware, botnet attacks, network intrusion, and data leaks.
Benefits Of Having A Firewall In Your Business
Blocks Unauthorized Access
Having a business brought down by cyber-attack can be devastating for most small to mid-sized businesses. Any unauthorized access to the system files could lead to leakage of private client information, loss of vital data and could compromise more security features.
The consequences that come along with breach of security are unbearable for most small businesses. 60% of businesses that suffer a cyberattack go out of business within 6 months.
Any business that has a managed firewall is better protected against these problems. If an unauthorized user tries to access your network remotely, a firewall can give an alert on the attempted breach of security while blocking access.
By doing this, your business will be made aware of the attempt and have time to respond before the issue becomes more severe and potentially devastating.
Prevents Access to Problematic Content
Some firewalls don’t just focus on traffic coming into your network. They can also prevent unauthorized access to dangerous or distracting websites
Companies will often choose to block access to sites like Facebook or other unnecessary sites during office hours since they feel it reduces distractions, which will affect the productivity of the work.
But it’s not simply about preventing wasted time. Firewalls can also prevent access to malicious sites that are known to install malware and viruses on the computers of those who visit them.
Such protections help prevent employees from being victims of a phishing scam. A phishing attack often employs an official looking email to get an unsuspecting employee to click on links that direct them to a website that harbors these destructive programs.
Managed firewalls will help your company ensure access to legitimate websites and prevent access to ones that can do you harm.
Protects Against Viruses
While firewalls themselves don’t act as antivirus software, they do help prevent the installation of viruses by ensuring only authorized data flows through your network.
By detecting and blocking any network threats, your firewall acts as a first line of defense in the protection against viruses. To ensure complete coverage, companies will want to deploy both firewalls and antivirus software.
Business owners should always ensure their firewall is kept updated with the most recent threat profiles.
Firewalls Are Your First Defense Line.
Despite firewalls providing security to your business, they are fallible.
An end-user might override the firewall settings leaving the system open to attacks. This happens when some employees fall victim to scammers or fail to understand the importance of firewalls.
To protect against such failure, you should educate your team on the importance of firewalls. In addition, don’t simply rely on software firewalls that are easily deactivated. Hardware firewalls setup and managed by dedicated IT professionals mitigate this issue.
Businesses should always note that one of the best ways of protecting information is by limiting access to it.
Storing your most secure files only where necessary. If a file is stored in many areas, it is more vulnerable. Access of such files should be limited to those who need them, and they should have strong passwords in addition to being encrypted.
Firewalls Do More Than Securing Your Business.
Good firewalls do not simply block traffic; they do more than that. You can use a firewall to check for details about the traffic on your network. Checking the traffic helps with troubleshooting network issues and regulatory compliance issues. Firewalls also help in enforcing business policies on internet usage by filtering unprotected to unsavory content.
Always Keep Your Firewall Updated
Up-to-date firewalls work best. Security threats are constantly evolving, and a firewall isn’t something you just set and forget.
If you fail to maintain and update your firewall, you leave your business exposed to the latest threats. Like all antivirus software, the firewall needs regular updates to detect the newest threats identified by the manufacturer. Outdated security systems are a common cause of network breaches and one attackers specifically hunt for.
Firewalls are a necessary component of any network’s security setup and no businesses should be without them. While firewalls may sound complex, they are easily implemented by competent IT professionals. If your company doesn’t have internal IT operations, then you can outsource these tasks to a managed service provider like Fastech Solutions. Managed service providers act as your IT department and can implement the necessary firewall defense to keep your company secure. | <urn:uuid:cf63223e-0266-41ae-9ea1-5b18d51b856d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://myfastech.com/why-your-business-needs-a-firewall/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930181143-20220930211143-00529.warc.gz | en | 0.935075 | 1,722 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Radiation workers can control and limit their exposure to penetrating radiation by taking advantage of time, distance, and shielding. Reduce Time: By reducing the time of exposure to a radiation source, the dose to the worker is reduced in direct proportion with that time.
How are healthcare workers protected from radiation?
Healthcare facilities keep a close watch on their employees’ radiation levels with special badges called dosimeters. Employees wear their dosimeters throughout the workday, which measure and record their radiation exposure, according to Dr. Greg Cumberford, Alberta-based dentist.
How can medical staff protect themselves from radiation exposure in the radiology department?
All staff must either stand inside the protective cubicle near the control panel during radiography or fluoroscopy procedure. Wear a protective lead gown when inside the room. Lead gloves must be worn when hands are within the primary beam while holding the patient.
How can you protect yourself from radiation at work?
- Minimize time spent in areas with elevated radiation levels. Minimizing the exposure time reduces a worker’s dose from the radiation source.
- Maximize distance from source(s) of radiation. …
- Use shielding for radiation sources (i.e., placing an appropriate shield between source(s) of radiation and workers).
How can nurses avoid being harmed by radiation exposure?
(1) Put on shoe covers and protective gloves before entering the patient’s room. (2) Work quickly, but effectively and courteously. Minimize your time in the room. Remember, no matter how long you are in the room, you will not receive a radiation exposure large enough to cause adverse health effects.
What material can protect you from radiation?
The only factor that matters when it comes to x-ray shielding is density. This is why lead aprons and blankets are the most effective shielding material to fight off x-rays and gamma-ray. After all, lead has a very high number of protons in each atom (82 to be specific), which makes it a very dense metal shield.
What methods are used to protect the operator from excess radiation?
Mobile rigid shields on wheels for transport to various areas. Ceiling-suspended transparent barriers. Flexible (lead or lead equivalent) aprons, vests, and skirts. Thyroid collars/shields.
How much do protective aprons and shields reduce radiation exposure?
Shielding is mainly achieved by wearing protective lead aprons of 0.25 or 0.5 mm thickness, which have been cited to attenuate over 90% and 99% of the radiation dose, respectively .
What are the 3 cardinal rules for radiation protection?
To do this, you can use three basic protective measures in radiation safety: time, distance, and shielding.
What are radiation protection measures?
Radiation protection principles are based on three factors: time, distance, and shielding. To reduce any dose, minimize the time of exposure, maximize the distance away from the sources, and maximize the shielding between the sources and the point of exposure.
How can you protect yourself from radiation waves?
5 Tips to Safeguard Against Electromagnetic Radiation
- Disable Wireless Functions. Wireless devices — including routers, printers, tablets, and laptops — all emit a Wi-Fi signal. …
- Replace Wireless With Wired Devices. …
- Keep EMF Sources at a Distance. …
- Use Your Smartphone Safely. …
- Prioritize Sleeping Areas.
What are the sources of radiation in the healthcare setting?
Human exposure to radiation also comes from human-made sources ranging from nuclear power generation to medical uses of radiation for diagnosis or treatment. Today, the most common human-made sources of ionizing radiation are medical devices, including X-ray machines.
What level of PPE is needed for radiation exposure?
Level A with a self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) should be worn if the hazards are unknown. In the presence of chemical hazards, biological hazards, recent fire, or low-oxygen areas, Level A or Level B PPE may be appropriate.
How can you reduce the risk of radiation?
Use Time Distance and Shielding to Protect Yourself.
Putting distance and shielding between you and a radiation source is an immediately effective way of reducing your exposure. Reducing the time you are being exposed is another way. Use a Respirator or Face Mask if You are exposed to airborne sources.
How do you care for a radioactive patient?
Therapy Patients Treated with Sealed Radioactive Source Implants – Nursing Care Specific Instructions. Do not spend any more time in patient’s room than is necessary to care for patient. In particular, time at patient’s bedside should be kept to a minimum. Specific “stay times” will be provided on the patient’s door.
How do you rid your body of radiation?
Decontamination involves removing external radioactive particles. Removing clothing and shoes eliminates about 90 percent of external contamination. Gently washing with water and soap removes additional radiation particles from the skin. | <urn:uuid:22a48a5f-8495-4273-884c-5cbebb7c6916> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://bestmalwareremovaltools.com/physical/how-do-healthcare-workers-protect-themselves-from-radiation.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00529.warc.gz | en | 0.924561 | 1,052 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Tips & Advices
- Keep security software current: Having the latest security software, web browser and operating system is the best defense against viruses, malware and other online threats.
- Automate software updates: Many software programs will automatically connect and update to defend against known risks. Turn on automatic updates if that’s an available option.
- Protect all devices that connect to the Internet: Along with computers, smartphones, gaming systems and other web-enabled devices also need protection from viruses and malware.
- Plug & scan: USBs and other external devices can be infected by viruses and malware. Use your security software to scan them.
- Lock down your login: Fortify your online accounts by enabling the strongest authentication tools available, such as biometrics, security keys or a unique one-time code through an app on your mobile device. Your usernames and passwords are not enough to protect key accounts like email, banking and social media.
- Make your password a sentence: A strong password is a sentence that is at least 12 characters long. Focus on positive sentences or phrases that you like to think about and are easy to remember (for example, “I love country music.”). On many sites, you can even use spaces!
- Unique account, unique password: Having separate passwords for every account helps to thwart cybercriminals. At a minimum, separate your work and personal accounts and make sure that your critical accounts have the strongest passwords.
- Write it down and keep it safe: Everyone can forget a password. Keep a list that’s stored in a safe, secure place away from your computer. You can alternatively use a service like a password manager to keep track of your passwords. | <urn:uuid:5a53b0b0-47b2-4071-bc6d-54d82f98b56f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybermaterial.com/online-safety-tips-for-older-adults/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00529.warc.gz | en | 0.896853 | 352 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Secure Element (SE) is a chip that is by design protected from unauthorized access and used to run a limited set of applications, as well as store confidential and cryptographic data.
Smartphones and tablets, hardware cryptowallets, and other devices use Secure Element. The chip can store and process information such as PIN codes, passwords, fingerprints, payment information, and much more.
Secure Element security
Restricted access to the chip ensures Secure Element’s strong protection. First, no programs can be installed on it (all of its software is preinstalled). Second, only trusted applications (for example, digital wallets) and devices (for example, POS terminals) have read and/or write access to the chip. Secure Element is also designed to counter many known attacks, in particular side-channel attacks.
Secure Element technology provides the following features at the hardware level:
- Detection of hacking and modification attempts;
- Creation of a Root of Trust (RoT) platform for encryption systems;
- Provision of secure memory for storing private encryption keys, bank card details, and other information;
- Cryptographically secure generation of random numbers;
- Generation of keys — for example, pairs of private and public keys for asymmetric encryption.
Secure Element applications
Secure Element has uses in various areas where data security is crucial.
- Authentication. Access to online services can be protected not only by a username and password, but by strong authentication based on credentials that are stored and processed inside the chip. Secure Element authentication can be applied for logging in to critical services, such as a VPN or corporate e-mail.
- Digital signature. Secure Element can store keys for digitally signing documents or other data, as well as generate a signature. What’s more, the key is not sent anywhere, so it cannot be intercepted by malicious programs.
- Contactless payments. Secure Element can be used for contactless payments with your mobile device. All payment information is stored on the secure chip, which uses NFC technology to communicate directly with payment terminals.
- Cryptocurrency wallets. Using a so-called cold wallet based on a specialized device with a Secure Element chip is the most reliable way to store public and private cryptographic keys.
- Biometric data storage. Secure Element is also used in biometric passports. The secure chip ensures the safe storage of sensitive data.
Secure Element types
Secure Element can be implemented in one of several ways:
- As a removable device:
- In a universal integrated circuit card (UICC)
- In a Micro SD card
- As an embedded SE (eSE);
- As a cloud service.
Cloud Secure Element and Host Card Emulation technology
In developing payment platforms, both Google and Microsoft have encountered trouble because not all devices on which their operating systems are installed have a Secure Element chip, which is required for NFC-based payments. For that reason, Google initiated the creation of a cloud-based Secure Element.
The technology for hosting a secure storage in the cloud and interfacing it with mobile devices is called Host Card Emulation (HCE). It can considerably cut the cost and complexity of managing the secure storage without significantly compromising security.
HCE functionality was first implemented in Android KitKat 4.4 as part of the Google Pay (formerly Android Pay) payment service. | <urn:uuid:7b686195-a2e5-4c2f-a05a-637eb524d025> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://encyclopedia.kaspersky.com/glossary/secure-element/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00529.warc.gz | en | 0.916173 | 682 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Competing quantum interactions enable single molecules to stand up & raise prospect for nanofabrication
(Warwick.ac.uk) Nanoscale machinery has many uses, including drug delivery, single-atom transistor technology, or memory storage. However, the machinery must be assembled at the nanoscale which is a considerable challenge for researchers.
his prospect is now a step closer to reality thanks to an international effort led by the Research Centre Jülich of the Helmholtz society in Germany including researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick.
In the paper, ‘The stabilization potential of a standing molecule’, published on the 10th November 2021 in the journal Science Advances, an international team of researchers have been able to reveal the generic stabilisation mechanism of a single standing molecule, which can be used in the rational design and construction of three-dimensional molecular devices at surfaces.
Dr Christian Wagner from the Peter Grünberg Institute for Quantum Nanoscience at Research Centre Jülich commented, “To make technological use of the fascinating quantum properties of individual molecules, we need to find the right balance: They must be immobilized on a surface, but without fixing them too strongly, otherwise they would lose these properties. Standing molecules are ideal in that respect. To measure how stable they actually are, we had to stand them up over and over again with a sharp metal needle and time how long they survived at different temperatures.”
Now that the interactions that give rise to a stable standing molecule are known, future research can work towards designing better molecules and molecule-surface links to tune those quantum interactions. This can help to increase stability and the temperature at which molecules can be switched into standing arrays towards workable conditions. This raises the prospect of nanofabrication of machinery at the nanoscale. | <urn:uuid:a376a074-9039-49b4-8aa3-6cae73f1443b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.insidequantumtechnology.com/news-archive/competing-quantum-interactions-enable-single-molecules-to-stand-up-raise-prospect-for-nanofabrication/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00529.warc.gz | en | 0.92058 | 375 | 3 | 3 |
A few days ago, billionaire inventor Elon Musk—PayPal pioneer and the man behind Tesla Motors—boldly stated that he is deeply afraid of artificial intelligence because it is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.” He followed up the statement with a tweet that read: “Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital super-intelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable.”
It’s easy to dismiss Musk’s dystopian comments as paranoia, but they actually make a lot of sense. The idea that machines could take over isn’t novel. In fact, the theme presents itself in plenty of novels and sci-fi movies. Even the idea that they could replace and eradicate humans isn’t improbable, especially if you think along the lines of terrorism and purposeful malware that might be used to infect other machines.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory, and it certainly isn’t lunacy—though, at least for now, a machine takeover remains extremely far-fetched. Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom has forwarded compelling questions about what happens when machine intelligence surpasses humans in his book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.
Others, such as Ray Kurzweil, have adopted a decidedly more optimistic view. Even so, he too has stated that technology could wipe out humanity.
One thing is certain: Despite years of discussion about AI, it is finally beginning to take shape. Siri and Google Now are becoming smarter and better. IBM’s Watson, which has a remarkable ability to learn, is already redefining everything from weather forecasting to business analytics.
However, since a digital crystal ball does not yet exist, we’ll have to wait for the future to unfold to receive our answers about artificial intelligence.
For now, business and IT leaders, software developers and others should carefully consider the implications and ramifications of AI technology. As we have seen time and time again, too many companies rush too many products to market without adequate consideration for security and outcomes.
Automobiles and medical devices are now targets. Utility grids and traffic systems have already been exploited. Meanwhile, the Internet of things is opening a connected door to a level of online hacking, attacking and cyber-theft that is almost incomprehensible.
Perhaps it’s time for humans to begin thinking more intelligently—rather than artificially—about the future. | <urn:uuid:f148b205-27aa-43d7-803b-78e2cd13eb7e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.baselinemag.com/blogs/will-ai-go-nuclear/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338073.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007112411-20221007142411-00529.warc.gz | en | 0.948027 | 495 | 2.53125 | 3 |
On the surface, E-learning is simple enough to understand. A broad umbrella term that is used to refer to using technology in a learning, educational environment, E-learning could be a number of things; touch-responsive, interactive technological systems in a young classroom, online testing systems, web-based courses, online databases; they all qualify as e-learning systems.
The past few years have seen a markedly increasing use of e-learning methods, especially in two sectors: online courses/teaching or VLEs (virtual learning environments), and online, open-source information databases. Universities worldwide [my alma mater included] employ the use of Moodle, a learning platform that provides personalised learning environments to students. An open-source platform, students, educators and faculty can access personally, systematically tailored learning environments to access information related to reading material, courses, grading and notifications, with easy, simplified intra and inter-departmental communication streamlined by the interface. An extremely useful tool, it significantly simplifies the learning experience.
For Users: (Via Examining the Khan Academy Model)
With internet access increasingly permeating fields where resources are typically scarce (such as highly advanced or specialised qualification), e-learning tools can greatly help with practice, tutoring, honing specific skill sets or even teaching new ones altogether.
The popular Khan Academy, set up by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Salman Khan in 2006, provided micro-lectures via YouTube videos, exercises and educator tools to those who needed them, entirely free of cost.
The interface has since expanded, with the gamification of the website; a previously video-only set of tutorials is now interactive, with medals awarded to users during the learning process. This has both modernised the online learning experience and made it more of an open, fun experience for younger learners, while still providing necessary skills.
Videos by the Khan Academy, which initially focussed solely on Mathematics, now span a range of topics across the sciences, such as biology, cosmology, health and medicine.
For Coders and Developers- SCORM vs. xAPI
A lot of software used by the Khan Academy (and other e-learning portals) tends to be open source, which is extremely convenient for developers to build on.
The existing technical standard for e-learning software products, SCORM, is in place to indicate to programmers the degree to which their code can interact with e-learning software. ExperienceAPI (also known as xAPI and Tin Can API), a new e-learning standard designed to replace SCORM, is an e-learning software specification that allows learning content and learning systems to speak to each other in a manner that records and tracks all types of learning experiences.
More analytics-rich than its predecessor SCORM, xAPI means that e-learning is now available across wider platforms that are not as restricted. Performance tracking, already a feature in some e-learning databases, is now not restricted to browsers, finding support in desktop and native mobile applications.
Platform transition, working on an e-learning set via a certain platform (via browser) and being able to continue it via a native application, is another feature xAPI allows. xAPI is also much more specific than SCORM, allowing more granular tracking by developers, coders and users, resulting in a more analytical, data-rich experience across the board.
Ultimately, this benefits both user and developer, with each community able to effectively track progress, effectiveness and interaction via a single, open source software specification.
Writer and communications professional by day, musician by night, Anuradha Santhanam is a former social scientist at the LSE. Her writing focuses on human rights, socioeconomics, technology, innovation and space, world politics and culture. A programmer herself, Anuradha has spent the past year studying and researching, among other things, data and technological governance. An amateur astronomer, she is also passionate about motorsport.
More of her writing is available here and she can be found on Twitter at @anumccartney.
(Image credit: Learnsity) | <urn:uuid:849fa72b-fed5-4d4a-a014-d82dc57a4a22> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://dataconomy.com/2015/02/why-e-learning-is-the-future-of-education/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334942.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926211042-20220927001042-00729.warc.gz | en | 0.939353 | 845 | 3.046875 | 3 |
AI bias must be tackled to avoid it 'unknowingly' harming people
Experts warn we must "think about the ethical implications" of AI bias
While AI hasn't quite come of age, it's now got to a point where most people understand what the benefits are.
However, for all the benefits on offer, companies looking to take advantage of AI must still put ethical considerations and the avoidance of bias on the priority list, according to a panel session held at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week.
"Accuracy levels are so high now that the kind of things you can do in one year were not possible years ago with hundreds of people," said Richard Socher, chief scientist at Salesforce.
"Now that this stuff is working, we really need to think about the ethical implications."
Kathy Baxter, an architect in Salesforce's Ethical AI Practice, concurred about the need to ensure such sophisticated technologies do more good than harm, adding: "How do we rebuild software that truly has a positive impact on the people it serves?"
"AI can do so much tremendous good, but it can have the potential to unknowingly harm individuals. We can't expect AI to magically exclude bias in society bias is baked in."
Baxter continued: "How do we represent the world that we want and not the world as it is?"
Given AI essentially needs to learn, it will take its lead from human beings so it's the responsibility of humans to act ethically and do the right thing when it comes to AI development, agreed the panel moderated by Salesforce futurist Peter Schartz.
Baxter stressed that in particular, there's a need to ensure that people are not adversely impacted because of factors they cannot change or control, such as gender or race.
The panel highlighted that it will be just as important to educate people on the shortcomings of AI and potential bias as it is to promote the benefits of smart systems. Ultimately, like with technology today, the results you get out are only as good as the data that's put in. The same is true of AI as it stands now.
"AI will have a bigger impact than the internet on humanity," Socher added. "AI will pick up bias and either amplify it or keep it going. We have to educate people that AI is only as good as the training data."
When it comes to that so-called training data, Baxter said Salesforce recognised its role in boosting awareness and education levels. Using Trailhead, as well as other AI-focused resources, the cloud firm hopes to help open peoples' eyes to the potential and the pitfalls so they can make informed decisions.
"The quality of that training data is key. It helps customers see and understand the data so they can identify if there is any bias there if there are any errors, so they can correct it," Baxter added.
"Ethics is a mindset, not a checklist and we need to instil it early on."
Big data for finance
How to leverage big data analytics and AI in the finance sectorFree Download
Ten critical factors for cloud analytics success
Cloud-native, intelligent, and automated data management strategies to accelerate time to value and ROIFree Download
Remove barriers and reconnect with your customers
The $260 billion dollar friction problem businesses don't know they haveFree Download
The future of work is already here. Now’s the time to secure it.
Robust security to protect and enable your businessFree Download | <urn:uuid:d29db91c-1290-456b-ae98-f27a964404d0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itpro.com/business-strategy/31998/ai-bias-must-be-tackled-to-avoid-it-unknowingly-harming-people | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334942.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926211042-20220927001042-00729.warc.gz | en | 0.962645 | 718 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Cloud computing is one of the most important technologies in the world right now, but it can be extremely confusing at times. This series aims to take the jargon out of the cloud and explain things in a much more brain-friendly way.
Following on from the adoption of cloud services for compute infrastructure, with Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions, companies are now also benefitting from putting their storage needs into the cloud – with new “Storage-as-a-Service” offerings coming to the market. What is Storage-as-a-Service and who are the targeted customers for this offering?
Storage-as-a-Service is a model where storage capacity is leased to businesses to meet their requirement to store company data that can be accessed globally via the internet. The benefits of a SaaS model for storage includes a lower cost for securing the storage resources and scalability on demand for storage requirements that can be accessed and managed by the customer. In a similar way to other as-a-service models, Storage-as-a-Service is funded through an operating expense model versus requiring a capital investment, minimizing the upfront spend required by the customer. Furthermore the service opens up possibilities for disaster recovery in the cloud, making recovery of data to the cloud much simpler with lower risks associated around any failures and reduced costs associated with recovering the data.
With an increasing number of businesses running their shop-front on the web and with an increasing emphasis on the online environment for researching, connecting with others and undertaking online transactions, there is an increased reliance on IT applications and on the business IT infrastructure. These changes bring a high demand for increasing amounts of data to be stored and backed up at high reliability and security levels and in a reduced amount of time.(opens in new tab)
Traditionally data has been stored on hard disks located in-house or at a local data centre, which despite being perceived as more secure and under local management control has persistently been under threat from disk crashes and subsequent data loss. One of the biggest challenges of storage continues to be our inability to predict how much of it is required and when exactly the increased storage amounts need to be provisioned.
With the advent of cloud solutions, Storage-as-a-Service, replication services and disaster recovery services in the cloud are just some of the services which are available to assist businesses with these enhanced needs for data storage, backup and recovery solutions and who are seeking business continuity options.
Traditionally IT departments would need to add disk arrays to meet the needs of the increased growth of business data. Similarly in order to implement a data recovery and continuity solution, IT would be required to add additional storage and / or another site that would replicate the data making the IT architecture complex and costly to be managed. There would also be added complexity if the data is required to be accessed from multiple locations.
However with the “Storage as a Service” model the storage component is integrated as another element of the cloud making it scalable on demand and enabling cloud security features to also benefit from the storage component, making it more secure. Finally there is a high reachability of the data as cloud as a model makes the information accessible from anywhere – extending the same feature to Storage-as-a-Service.
Typically Enterprises who are struggling to cope with the increased data storage requirements of the business and / or who have an ageing storage infrastructure in-house, can benefit from Storage-as-a-Service so that the mission critical data of the company can be accessed on the cloud, benefitting from global accessibility, redundancy and scalability.
Storage-as-a-Service is undoubtedly gaining popularity for both businesses and consumers and offers an opportunity for service providers to deliver added value to businesses who are no longer finding in-house physical storage as the best solution for their company. It also satisfies business needs for additional capacity in terms of scalability, accessibility, cost and data recovery.
For more cloud jargon busting check out the rest of our "99 Problems but the cloud ain't one series: | <urn:uuid:16db04ad-40a7-42b2-9bcd-cad5fe633911> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/2015/02/16/99-problems-cloud-aint-one-storage-service/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335124.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928051515-20220928081515-00729.warc.gz | en | 0.954699 | 824 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The rise of the Internet has brought tremendous benefits to people’s education. But, it also makes people targets to hackers and theft of sensitive information, which is why every student must learn about online cyber security at some point.
These days, almost every student owns a smart device or a laptop. This immense use of technology brings up devastating statistics for young people – 55% of Americans aged 18 through 29 experience data theft.
Learning cybersecurity tricks is crucial if you want to protect your personal information, as well as your academic writings from cyber attacks.Viruses can delete your papers, cyber thieves can steal an identity, and let’s not even think about those vengeful ex-friends or partners that may ruin your online reputation even if you are using the best Kali Linux laptop.
Many students think that their school has all the security they need. Yes, the people at your IT department will thwart some of the hack attacks and keep the school network from crashing, but this doesn’t make academic institutions cyber security colleges.
That being said, you should use the following online cyber security tips on a regular basis.
1. Check Your Bank Statements Regularly
Most people today have access to online bank statements or receive them at the end of the month. Try to check this statement as often as possible. There are thieves that won’t quite empty out your account, but will sneakily take smaller amounts of money over longer periods of time. If you don’t pay attention, it won’t raise suspicion, but they’ll hurt your already limited budget.
2. Back-Up All of Your Data
The best way to promote computer security is by backing up the data on your devices. Nowadays, there are many options to do this. You can keep your important information in a safe place, such as a secure cloud, get an external hard drive, etc.
3. Don’t Click on Everything You See
This goes without saying, but think twice before you click on everything you like. If something sounds too good to be true, it is often too good to be true. If you’re in doubt about a company or service that you’re interested in learning more about, or a site you want to sign up to, Google it first to get some information.
4. Be Careful with Public Computers
You’re probably carrying your own device with you everywhere you go, but campus libraries will also have public computers. At some point, you’ll have to use a public computer. When you do, make sure you use it wisely. Don’t save passwords, log out of profiles, and try not to access sites that reveal your banking or sensitive information.
5. Don’t Shop on Strange Websites
Shopping online can be addictive and will give you more options than you can get in actual stores. However, not everything that looks good will come as such. Also, not every website will be safe to use. So, shop with caution. If you want to buy something from a new store, make sure to Google it first. Review the privacy policies of such websites.
6. Be Careful About Where You Share Your Personal Data
Even when you’re trying to get something for free, like for example a small book of tips to choose a right essay topic, don’t reveal your personal information upon signing up unless you’re certain that the website is safe to use.
7. Always Have an Updated Security System in Place
If you don’t have one, get one as soon as possible. There are plenty of affordable options of anti-viruses, as well as free trial versions that will keep your data safe until you get the money to opt for a paid version. When you pick an online cyber security system, search for one that doesn’t just protect you from viruses, but also filters from span and provides firewall protection.
8. Register Your Devices
It is always wise to register your device. At school, register it with the campus police. It boosts the odds of your device making it back safely to your possession. Also, it will come handy if you ever have to make a police report.
9. Enable ‘Find my Phone’
Modern phones have a ‘find my phone’ option that you can enable so that you can track the phone down if you misplace it. There are also plenty of downloadable apps that will help you track your phone if you lose it or have it stolen.
Data theft is something you hardly think of until it happens to you. Cyber-attacks are more and more frequent every day and, to avoid falling victim to such theft, you need to take all the precautions possible. To keep yourself and your data secure, use the nine tips above. | <urn:uuid:0791935c-3335-47e2-a044-feb9e938b1a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://kalilinuxtutorials.com/online-cyber-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337287.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002052710-20221002082710-00729.warc.gz | en | 0.943046 | 997 | 3.125 | 3 |
Change your life - help First Responders Save lives!
Make one or more of the Kits and donate to your local First Responders!
plus keep one for your emergencies!
#1 Goal - To stop Arterial Bleeding FIRST!
Saving a Life is easy if you are prepared!
Trauma Aid to keep a victim alive until EMS can get to scene!
Arterial injuries can lead to death quickly!
up to 200,000+ people die each year from hemorrhagic/ hypovolemic shock!
Another 30,000+ have traumatic amputations and ~40+% die before they enter the EMS system!
The EMS "Golden Hour" starts when the victim enters emergency care but the victim MUST have enough blood to carry oxygen to the Heart, Brain and Core to survive - That is why Stopping Bleeding whether Arterial or severe Venal is so IMPORTANT !
1) - Stop Arterial Bleeding with Tourniquet
2) - Check for and treat lung penetrations
3) - Stop major Venal Bleeding
4) - Start Cardiac Resuscitation if no heartbeat
Once you have done all the above
- Do Not Remove Anything - Bandages, Tourniquet, Chest Wound Closure!
- Do Not STOP CPR
- Await the EMS Teams.
Injuries that can cause one to bleed to death include:
·gunshot wounds #1
·crush or traumatic amputation of extremity from car accidents..etc
·stab or puncture wounds
·deep cuts or lacerations
Depending on the artery, some arteries like the Dorsalis Pedis (foot) Artery you'll have a few minutes, but with the Femoral (Leg) , Brachial (Arm) or Carotid (Neck) Artery, one can bleed out fast and lose consciousness in less than a minute and completely bleed out in less than 5 minutes!
Remember the adult heart pumps blood at several liters per minute at high pressure (up to 4 PSI) and an adult has about 4 or 5 liters of blood.
- A loss of 15 +% blood volume loss the mean arterial and pulse pressures fall and heart rate increases resulting in more blood loss and shock.
- A loss of greater than 40% is life threatening and CPR may be needed on top of stopping the bleeding.
Arterial bleeding is easy to recognize – Bright red blood gushing out following the heart pulse. Venial bleeding is more of an oozing and darker in color.
Basic Steps to stop or mitigate Arterial bleeding -
- Application of Tourniquet to stop Arterial Bleeding (Arterial Wounds Only)
- Direct Pressure on other wounds and Elevation of the extremity
Learn how to save a life from arterial bleeding and learn CPR ! | <urn:uuid:65ae711f-f53b-4d2e-98d9-4ce747adb18b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.networkdatapedia.com/post/how-to-make-a-stop-the-bleeding-kit | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337731.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006061224-20221006091224-00729.warc.gz | en | 0.813558 | 600 | 2.65625 | 3 |
A new adversarial attack technique has been developed that can force machine learning systems to slow down and cause critical failures. This technique is developed by scientists working at the University of Maryland. It neutralizes optimization methods that speed up deep neural network operations.
The attack changes the input data to stop neural networks from making early exits and forces them to work full computations. It can negate the advantages of multi-exit architectures.
These architectures can reduce the energy requirements of a DNN model at inference time to half. Researchers displayed that any input can craft a deviation of a system that wipes out those savings entirely.
Researchers tested DeepSloth on several multi-exit architectures. If an attacker has full knowledge of the targeted architecture, the early exit efficacy can be reduced by 90% to 100%.
However, even if attackers do not have the exact information regarding the target model, DeepSloth can still reduce the efficacy by 5%–45%. This is equal to some sort of DoS attack on neural networks.
According to the researchers, when multi-exit architecture models are served directly from a server, targeted DeepSloth attacks can occupy the server’s resources and stop it from using its full capacity.
In scenarios where a multi-exit network is divided between the cloud and an edge device, this attack can force the device to send all its data to the server.
By doing this, the edge device may miss critical deadlines. For example, in any health monitoring program that uses AI to quickly identify accidents and call for help if required, any delays could lead to fatal results.
The researchers stated that this could be one of the first attacks targeting multi-exit neural networks in this way. Moreover, adversarial training, a usual way of protecting the machine learning models from adversarial attacks, is not much effective against these attacks. Although this technique is not yet harmful, more such devastating slowdown attacks can be discovered in the future. | <urn:uuid:264a8d82-fa95-4eb7-ba2c-924d3afbdb03> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cyware.com/news/deepsloth-an-adversarial-attack-on-machine-learning-systems-dbfc5b2e | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338213.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007143842-20221007173842-00729.warc.gz | en | 0.942779 | 398 | 2.765625 | 3 |
During a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, General John Raymond, the chief of U.S. space operations, stated: “Space is a data domain.” And to help the Space Force continue to explore this domain, the organization plans to hire numerous data scientists this summer.
According to Raymond, the Space Force has seen a significant uptick in interest from the private sector. Four hundred applicants applied from various industries, and after vetting by Space Force officials, the applicant pool was reduced to 45 candidates. Ultimately, the plan is to bring six new hires on board.
As an independent branch of the U.S. military, Space Force personnel must pass certain physical assessment tests. However, officials plan to replace the annual physical fitness test with a more holistic physical and mental wellness program that emphasizes the benefits of both physical activity and mental health throughout the year. FCW has more on this and other ways the Space Force is evolving to accommodate more employees with private sector backgrounds.
A recent piece in Space.com offers a fascinating look at how data science is employed to further our understanding of space. After combing through old data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have identified nearly 1,500 new asteroids.
The team used observations captured by Hubble’s cameras during the period between April 30, 2002 and March 14, 2021. The typical observation time for these devices is 30 minutes, and the team knew that moving asteroids would look like streaks in the images. Because these streaks are often curved, it’s difficult to train computer systems to detect them automatically, so a team of citizen data scientists is needed.
Over 11,400 volunteers analyzed over 37,000 images to identify those with streaks. Armed with these classifications, the astronomers trained an automated machine learning algorithm to look for additional asteroid images and ultimately made the identification of almost 1,500 new asteroids.
According to the lead researchers, the combination of both human and artificial intelligence to pour over the vast amount of Hubble data is “a game-changer.” In the future, the team plans to study the shape of the asteroid trails to determine how far they are from Earth and also better understand their orbits.
For more on how data and analytics are shaping the future of space, check out this previous APEX of Innovation post. | <urn:uuid:d882d314-143c-468e-a811-34c53fe8624b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.apexofinnovation.com/data-science-takes-off-for-space/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334596.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925193816-20220925223816-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.942256 | 468 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Transport Mode vs Tunnel Mode: Which Should I Use?
When using VPN as a client, there are two distinct modes that can be available. These are usually transparent to the end user, but are important to understand. Making an assumption of which option is in use can lead to delayed issue resolution as well as frustration by the engineer and client.
For the purpose of this post, we're primarily focusing on transport mode and tunnel mode in terms of the IPSEC protocol. It’s important to note that Request For Comments (RFCs) were published in the mid 1990s and superseded by new ones a few years later. This is a suite of protocols that has held up over time for IPv4 and refreshed for IPv6.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. Traditionally, they used to secure network traffic from one site or endpoint to another. By secure, we mean encrypt such that the contents cannot be viewed except for by the intended parties/sites. Most of the time this is used to encrypt those connections over the Internet. This is not the only use case though. Some organizations require encryption over private circuits such as MPLS, VPLS or Point to Point. While they are private connections, they are not secured nor encrypted and a VPN helps with that.
What Is Transport Mode?
Transport mode is an available option for creating a tunnel. This is primarily reserved for Point-to-Point tunnels. Those are where endpoints only need to communicate directly with each other. In today's world of SD-WAN where full mesh VPN tunnels are at the push of a few buttons this may seem crazy but you do have to remember when these types of tunnels started out. In the mid 1990's, encryption was not everywhere as it is today.
A key differentiator in transport mode is that the IP headers are not encrypted. It is only the payload of the data. Because the data is not really encapsulated like tunnel mode, the headers need to be unencrypted so routers can look at the source and destination and determine how to route them. For this reason, the original source and destination are viewable to everyone. This may not be an issue but it is the main distinction point aside from tunneling sites versus specific endpoints.
Transport Mode: Use Case 1
Prior to IPSEC, tunneling protocols existed. They served the purpose of connecting sites together over the internet. These protocols did not use much if any encryption. Security was fairly relaxed in the early days of the internet. At the time protocols like L2TP (Layer Two Tunneling Protocol) or Cisco's GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation) existed. While they provided great tunneling capabilities, their encryption was limited to nonexistent.
It was easy to just configure a transport mode tunnel between sites. It served the purpose of encrypting these already existing tunnels. It allowed organizations to ease into IPSEC without having to rebuild their tunnels in transport mode. If they used something like GRE, the tunnel worked, they just wanted to layer on encryption to make it more secure. Their knowledge of GRE configuration and troubleshooting wouldn't go to waste.
Transport Mode: Use Case 2
In some cases, entire sites do not need to be encrypted, just two endpoints on the internet. In that case, transport mode could be used, particularly if you are not concerned about encrypting the IP headers and obscuring the original sources and destinations. This can work well for two endpoints that communicate directly over the internet, particularly in cases where the protocol is more or less plain text/raw. This is compared to modern applications and protocols that may use modern encryption techniques like TLS.
Transport Mode: Use Case 3
In some cases, point- to-site (P2S) connections may use a transport tunnel to encrypt connectivity between a client and a VPN concentrator. They may do this because they then use a proprietary tunneling protocol as mentioned in Use Case 1. This is fairly rare today though as they typically use IPSEC Tunnel Mode or a form of TLS/SSL/HTTPS tunnels.
Expounding on it a bit though, a Transport Mode tunnel is very similar to a TLS or HTTPS connection in that the IP header information is viewable but the payload is encrypted and protected. It is a modern day example of a Transport Mode tunnel.
What Is Tunnel Mode?
Tunnel mode is the most popular today between the two IPSEC modes. It takes roughly the same amount of configuration to setup but allows access to an entire site. It’s usually used For site-to-site (S2S) tunnels or P2S tunnels. While entire sites are usually in scope though, Firewall ACLs can further restrict access to actual endpoints.
Unlike transport mode though, the entire original packet is encapsulated, encrypted and then appended to a new packet. The outer packet appears to communicate between the public endpoints. Someone sniffing the packets cannot view the internal packets which show the original source, destination or payloads. This not only provides great protection (encryption) but also provides some obscurity too.
Tunnel Mode: Use Case 1
In the case of S2S tunnels, an entire site is tunneled to another site privately. This works very much like GRE as we discussed earlier except that tunnel mode provides the GRE functionality and the encryption all in the same technology. It is a singular configuration, instead of configuring two separate protocols and tunnels. As engineers become more familiar with this, it just made sense as IPSEC is a standardized protocol so it interoperated with many different vendors. In its early days while the RFCs were being revised it was a little rough but it has gone through quite a bit to become universally accepted and used between nearly all vendors.
Tunnel Mode: Use Case 2
For a P2S tunnel, this is typically your end-user VPN client connection where you have the end client (Point) tunneling to an entire site. Many times this acts just like a normal S2S tunnel except one side (client side) is a /32 or singular IP address in the tunnel endpoint.
This is the use case that most people are familiar with for corporate workers. Particularly those with older and legacy thick clients that require direct access to back end servers to communicate.
Tunnel Mode Hesitancy
In some cases, there may be IP overlaps that prevent tunnel mode. There are tricks to work around this such as smaller subnets or doing network address translation (NAT) to remap the overlap. Sometimes these can be tricky and therefore Transport Mode may be more acceptable in some of those edge cases.
In IPSEC's early days, there was a little hesitancy and skepticism so the tried and true tunneling protocols were used. Those environments typically required homogeneous environments as many of the tunnel protocols were vendor specific. In today's world though, it is very convenient to have a protocol mode that both tunnels and encrypts, unifying the technology and that works across most if not all vendors on the market.
Which Mode To Use?
Generally, tunnel mode is what you're going to run across most often as an IT pro. The topic of transport mode versus tunnel mode does not come up and it’s just assumed to be tunnel mode. Unless you have a very legacy environment using older protocols, tunnel mode is your choice. In other cases you may have an extreme edge case and in those scenarios you usually know you need transport mode. | <urn:uuid:f77e91c2-b29b-429d-9510-061283d2dd37> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cbtnuggets.com/blog/certifications/security/transport-mode-vs-tunnel-mode-which-should-i-use | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334987.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927033539-20220927063539-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.94722 | 1,542 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Artificial general intelligence is the holy grail of AI research; this form of an AI system can think for itself, has common sense, has a similar intelligence level to humans and could even pass for a human in conversation.
AGI raises big questions about ethics and human employment, but the most fundamental questions about AGI and how close we are to it have yet to be answered.
In late 2018, in a book titled Architects of Intelligence, futurist Martin Ford interviewed AI professionals who said that, on average, there was a 50% chance that common sense AI would be completed by 2099. Google’s Ray Kurzweil put it at 2029. Rodney Brooks, co-founder of iRobot, was at the end of the spectrum, predicting the year 2200.
Samir Hans, AI expert at Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory, predicted that we’re going to see tangible results in two to three years. AI can already learn from its mistakes, which means there’s a feedback loop that improves the AI over time. | <urn:uuid:609b2d0a-f255-4ef5-bfd1-aa60b8e6cd7c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.mariakorolov.com/2019/common-sense-ai-approaches-point-to-more-general-applications/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334987.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927033539-20220927063539-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.966859 | 220 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Smart cities need smart security. A connected system of power grids, transportation, IoT devices, automated buildings and cloud-systems means that an attacker only needs to breach one entry point in order to put an entire city at risk. A single vulnerability could allow attackers to make lateral moves across an entire network.
These threats are already a reality for many developing smart cities around the globe. Last year, the city of Dallas had their warning systems attacked, allowing 156 of their sirens to go off at once, causing enough fear and confusion to overload emergency services beyond capacity. More recently, the city of Atlanta suffered a devastating ransomware attack – making all electronic records inaccessible by encrypting their data. The attack hit 5 out of 13 networks, forcing many residents back to using pen and paper, fearful of spreading it further.
The first step to tackling these risks is leveraging data from the city’s multiple smart systems–
Which Types of Data Can Be Collected from Smart Cities?
Every element of a cloud-connected smart city is built to collect data around the clock. Some of this data has become second nature by now, such as the timetables of buses or trains, weather updates, or map data that lets us know if we should reroute our journey to avoid traffic. Other innovations are newer and still feel futuristic to many, from road sensors that can provide valuable information on vehicle and foot traffic, to street lights that sense pedestrian activity and adapt to suit.
Connected transportation is a key element of any smart city, and therefore a key vulnerability. From connected car sharing and ride sharing, to autonomous public and private transportation, these innovations in mobility are already in action in developing smart cities around the globe.
New data streams have also become a reality due to these vehicles, with an estimated 250 million connected cars on the road by 2020. Sensors in the cars themselves help gather insights on fuel usage, engine status, and maintenance requirements. Access to telematics data with GPS gives data analysts an added layer of information, allowing for on-road diagnosis of vehicle needs, and providing predictive maintenance to address repairs and security breaches before accidents or errors occur. Integration with mobile app data takes this even further- supporting valuable business intelligence by learning about the behavioral habits of the vehicles and passengers on the road.
Smart city environments are going to continue to grow in increasingly complex ways as new services and products enter the mix. With so much data to collect and manage – protecting it from cyber threats becomes a challenging task.
More Data Means More Risk
Threats to a smart city environment are constantly shifting. They include confidentiality and integrity compromise of sensor data through IoT devices, data loss as a result of inadequate management and storage, availability issues due to connectivity failures, and remote exploitation and malware injection originating anywhere from the main servers down to one individual sensor or user interaction.
Despite all of these threats and more, a third of state and local governments admit that their current data is not actionable. While most smart cities are collecting data from each system, whether that’s buses, trains, roads, sensors, and so forth – they do not have access to a clear view of how each interacts with the others. Cities can only stay safe if we use the wealth of data we’re collecting to get an accurate understanding of what’s happening on the ground.
Visibility of the data sources is key. But with so many interconnected elements in a smart city, how can businesses, authorities and governments leverage this data to stay safe?
One Clear View: Aggregating Data for Incisive Visibility
Simplifying the complex data environment of smart cities helps to ensure the validity and security of the data you’re collecting. In order to benefit from this, the solution should be a cloud-based platform that can access the data streams from each disparate source, display them in a ‘single pane of glass’ approach, and correlate them to detect fraud, service issues, cyber-threats and anomalies.
This service model can enable you to analyze data traffic across the entire ecosystem of a connected infrastructure. A solution that looks at just the sensors may miss dangerous information leakage from the data center, or a breach attempt through the user’s mobile app for example. Only by looking at all the streams of data in one place can you begin to get a full picture of the health and status of the environment in question.
Now consider the protection this could provide for our smart cities as a whole. All data is tracked and correlated as it comes in, whether that’s from the vehicles on the roads, or IoT sensors, smart devices like parking meters or traffic monitors, user smartphones and wearables. Municipalities can feel confident that their streets are protected from fraud or cyber-crime without blind spots or missing data, despite the complex connected system they’re a part of. The city is also automatically given a stronger security posture for issues of compliance and cybersecurity regulation, as your ecosystem is simplified, the data anonymized, and you can even set your own custom policy violations to stay on top of incidents in real-time.
Protecting Smart Cities with the Power of Big Data
An interconnected web of cloud-based connected transportation that includes public transit, connected cars, smart sensors and autonomous vehicles is already a reality. Protecting these systems against cyber-crime is essential, as just one vulnerability has been shown to breach an entire city. Accessing one comprehensive view of all your data sources enhances your security posture exponentially, alongside opening up opportunities for innovation and success.
H1'2022 Automotive Cyber Trend Report
Securing Smart Mobility Requires a Fresh Approach to API Security
Connected vehicles and smart mobility services use numerous APIs. Everything from OEM-driven companion apps, infotainment systems, OTA servers, telematics servers, and EV charging management or…Read more
EV Charging Stations Cyber Vulnerabilities Could Be EVs Achilles Heel
Electric vehicles (EVs) are a critical pillar of the global automotive revolution we’re experiencing today. Over the next five years, the US government will invest…Read more
Upstream’s 1000th Automotive Cybersecurity Incident: Use NFC Card to Gain Control in 130 Seconds
As a part of Upstream’s ongoing effort to monitor, analyze the cyber threat landscape and assess the impact of automotive-related cybersecurity incidents and vulnerabilities, we…Read more
Charging Station’s Cybersecurity Risks Endanger EV Adoption
Automakers and consumers are experiencing a breakthrough in electronic vehicle (EV) adoptability. Wide-spread easily accessible charging station networks are quelling range anxiety and replacing it…Read more | <urn:uuid:1b155a7f-d741-44cd-9202-7ba47c32ca0d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://upstream.auto/blog/cyber-crime-is-a-reality-in-smart-cities-how-can-we-protect-connected-transportation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335254.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928113848-20220928143848-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.923957 | 1,361 | 3.015625 | 3 |
The modern Web threats such as Aurora, Stuxnet, and Zeus infiltrate organisations through a variety of coordinated tactics, in a combination of two or more, according to Websense 2010 Threat Report.
The report said that phishing, compromised websites, and social networking are carefully coordinated to steal confidential data and cybercriminals and their blended attacks are taking advantage of security gaps left open by legacy technologies like firewalls, antivirus, and simple URL blockers.
The Web threats are no longer binary files delivered in attachments, but are script-based attacks and are embedded in rich media like Flash, and are spread rapidly on the social Web.
Moreover, reputation filters provide zero security for threats delivered via top ‘legitimate’ websites like Google, Facebook, and YouTube, where 80% of Web traffic goes.
The report revealed that most of today’s blended attacks have not been previously identified, as they are ever-evolving and pre-tested by cybercriminals on common anti-virus products before they are released.
In 2010, cybercriminals adapted their strategies to address the social websites and sites with dynamic user-generated content, and the attacks are now more blended, sophisticated, targeted, and use new tricks and methods of threat delivery.
The Websense 2010 Threat Report findings revealed that 111.4% increase in the number of malicious websites from 2009 to 2010; 79.9% of websites with malicious code were legitimate sites that have been compromised; and 52% of data-stealing attacks were conducted over the Web.
In addition, 34% of malicious Web/HTTP attacks included data-stealing code; and 89.9% of all unwanted emails in circulation during this period contained links to spam sites and/or malicious websites.
The US and China continued to be the top two countries hosting crimeware and receiving stolen data during 2010.
The report said that searching for breaking news represented a higher risk (22.4%) than searching for objectionable content (21.8%); and 23% of real-time search results on entertainment lead to a malicious link.
Further, 40% of all Facebook status updates have links and 10% of those links are either spam or malicious.
Websense vice president of business development, product management and marketing Devin Redmond said with so many intertwined vectors, these threats demand a new approach to security that looks at both inbound and outbound content.
"To protect against today’s blended and sophisticated threats, companies need to plug the spaces left by a scattershot spraying of point offerings and move to a unified security architecture that protects their content," Redmond said. | <urn:uuid:4c4af337-29a3-47df-856c-92253f5b754c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://techmonitor.ai/technology/software/web-attacks-more-blended-sophisticated-targeted-websense-report_111110 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.950657 | 537 | 2.546875 | 3 |
What Is Fingerbox?
The Finger Box is ostensibly a relatively simple device. But in fact a modern finger box is a staggeringly complex machine, with late 20th Century models comprised of many finely crafted components. These are most often distributed in sets of nine, but the poor, the disenfranchised and the mentally handicapped have all been observed amusing themselves for hours at a time with just a single unit. Finger boxing (also referred to colloquially as "fingering" and/or "boxing") is a rapidly growing trend among youths aged 13-18. All the same, finger boxing is well known throughout the former British Empire as the sport of gentlemen.
Finger boxes date back at least three centuries, when they were made by individual craftsmen for personal use. The commercial instance of the device, though certainly in a cruder and less intricate form than today's complex models, was developed by Sir Eustace Henry Trollington in 1862 in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.
Finger boxes quickly became immensely popular among British sailors, who used them during their long sea voyages. Naval models of that era can often be recognized by their heavy coating of protective wax.
However, the initial commercial popularity was short-lived when a group of vicious saboteurs started distributing finger boxes contaminated with old razor-blades, broken glass and carpet tacks. Panic ensued as a result of the dismemberments, lock-jaw and — in some cases — slow and inexorable deaths. This led to the inevitable banning of the devices by the UK parliament in 1901, with most of the developed world quickly following suit. The nations of East Asia were noteable exceptions to this ban.
The Japanese and Chinese craftsmen had access to a wide variety of tropical wood, leading to a great deal of innovation in the esthetic qualities of Asian finger boxes in the inter-war period. Meanwhile most of their finger boxes replicated the functionality of the 1862 Trollington design.
Here you see a Misawa craftsman's finger box in mahogany and blond teak, a classic single-hole unit using a modification of the Trollington mechanism.
The early 1930s saw the first multi-hole designs, an innovation thought to have been developed in the Malay peninsula, perhaps in southern Thailand. Rumors quickly spread about these as-yet unseen devices. They were commercially seen for the first time a few years later in the underground markets in Hong Kong specializing in prohibited goods such as finger boxes, tonga plugs, and both raw and crystallized laforulum.
Boxes from this period are expensive and hard to come by, but they are easy to maintain. Periodic applications of boiled linseed oil are sufficient to protect the wood and the internal mechanism.
Although still illegal in Europe, the Americas and the major Oceanic nations, the finger box black market prospered after World War II. Japanese craftsmen produced them for the export market, as the near-disappearance of the geisha class had deprived them of their principal domestic market. Wealthy decadent Germans bought finger boxes in vast numbers, leading to commemorative models specifically crafted for the German market.
The British legal ban was allowed to expire, and again most nations followed. Finger box sales flourished during the 1980s.
Misguided Soviet competition with the west led to some impractical designs during the early through mid 1980s. Steel and other metals were introduced, to the abhorrance of finger box traditionalists and purists. Maintenance is significantly more involved with a steel finger box, with all the oxidation caused by the moisture drawn by skin oil. Furthermore, a 32-hole finger box as seen here would be of no practical application. Its limited production before the collapse of the Soviet Union was intended only to underscore the ideology of collectivism through programs of group boxing, activities often announced but seldom carried out except among Party elite.
However, that is not to say that Warsaw Pact finger box technology was not without its useful innovations. Here we see an East German kit for tuning, adjusting, and zeroizing finger boxes. Notice that this elaborate kit includes a full set of flanging discs as well as the less commonly seen damping rods (in a variety of diameters) and roller beams for precise torsion settings!
Then, the entire concept of the finger box changed in the mid 1990s with the development of the first finger box with embedded electronics, invented by an unnamed Chinese engineer.
Soon after the construction of the industrial plants in the Shenzhen area of China, the international market was flooded with low-cost injection molded devices advertised as finger boxes but lacking almost all the expected features. Aficionados refer to these as "toy boxes", and many Internet chat rooms are periodically flooded with so-called "flame wars" prompted by the naive (or sometimes malicious) reference to these as actual finger boxes.
A class action lawsuit was brought before The Hague to prohibit the use of the term "finger box" in connection with these low-cost plastic devices. However, the suit was eventually dismissed due to the lack of a legal finger box market in Europe during the time period cited as prior art.
The modern quality finger box costs around $50 per box and demand outstrips supply by ten to one, with some waiting times rumoured to be up to four years. Stainless steel units are advertised for $80 and up, promising low maintenance and simplified cleaning, but the production of these is even further backlogged than is the case with the traditional wooden units. And, while a stainless steel finger box is certainly a rare item, those owners willing to speak on the subject have reported the performance as barely adequate.
However, finger box connoisseurs often prefer the vintage designs. Some pre-World-War-II finger boxes have reportedly been sold for upwards of $5000, at least in the case of specimens with fully documented provenance tracing back to the craft ateliers of Kyōtō.
Y'know, I'm not sure about these new e-fingerboxes. Sure, they're pretty, but a 250-year-old teak fingerbox made in England, Germany or Japan will do the job just as well, and has got tons of potential for upgrading. I've got a collection of all sorts, and I must say that one of my favourites is a 170-year-old scrimshandered palm fingerbox from Rehoku which feaures part of a dendroglyph and was crafted by British sailors stuck on the island from HMS Prophetess. It's a gorgeous bit of work and is so beautiful. The overall feel is very good inside too, as it was lined with lambskin and felt. The mechanism is in tip-top condition because even though it's a wooden Heidelburg design the actual wood used is, like the case, palm and thus can be kept beautifully clean and functional with palm oil, which also brings out a lovely dark finish. It's locked with an ivory key (cut from whalebone) engraved with the intials A.E. and in a niche inside the lid is a Gold Sovereign, which I only found when examining the fingerbox just after I bought it — I was looking at the hinge and I noticed a tiny button, and click! Out it came. It's a wonderful piece of work, I had it insured for £17,000 but I think it would make several times that at auction... implying that I'd ever sell such a wonderful object, of course.
A mid-20th century set of fifteen carefully matched finger boxes can be seen by the public in Detroit at the Detroit Institute of Art. | <urn:uuid:e935bd2b-71f1-48b5-8f76-84c55e555dab> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cromwell-intl.com/fun/fingerbox/Index.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335530.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001035148-20221001065148-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.972142 | 1,561 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Having released two major Windows versions for the x64 architecture (also known as ‘AMD64’), Microsoft has opened the door to inexpensive 64-bit computing for just about everybody. At the 2005 Virus Bulletin Conference I presented a paper on the x64 architecture, detailing how known 32-bit viruses and rootkits interact with it.
There were a number of questions from the audience at the end of the presentation, but the most interesting one was a question posed by a researcher from Symantec’s European AntiVirus Research Centre. It related to Internet Explorer in Windows x64 and how ActiveX objects and BHO (Browser Helper Objects) – which until now have been exclusively 32-bit – work (or don’t work) in the Windows x64 environment.
The significance of this, of course, is that there is a great plethora of spyware and adware which installs from the Internet via IE vulnerabilities, through the use of ActiveX technology or Java applications.Read Full Story | <urn:uuid:e98293dc-eb22-4bc7-8db8-bc72bb83bcda> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://it-observer.com/exploring-x64-treme-heights-internet.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.935762 | 207 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Event Log Definition
In computing terms, an event is any significant action or occurrence that’s recognized by a software system. This occurrence could originate from operating systems, networks, servers, firewalls, anti-virus software, database queries, hardware infrastructure, etc. The event is typically recorded in a special file called the event log.
An event log is a chronologically ordered list of the recorded events. Note that “Event Log” is also a core component of Microsoft Windows, but this article covers the generic term used across all operating systems—including Windows.
Event logs contain crucial information that includes:
- The date and time of the occurrence
- The actual description of the event
- The severity of the event
- The application or process involved
- Any specific code to identify the event
- Other relevant information, like IP addresses or user names
Such information is crucial for ITOps, DevOps, and SecOps teams to understand what happened to a system—for example, whether it crashed, malicious activity occurred, or the infrastructure failed.
In this article, we’ll examine what’s recorded in an event log, why event logs are essential, and when event logs are used.
What Does an Event Log Contain?
In computer systems, an event log captures information about both hardware and software events. These event logs can be part of the operating system or specific to an application.
For example, Windows Event Log entries are generated on any computer running Windows OS. These events are generally classified by one of three categories:
- System-related events that capture events from the operating system itself
- Application events logged by applications running on the Windows machine
- Security events that capture login and logout events
Similarly in Linux, the Syslog (or rsyslog or journalctl) process records both OS and application-related events. In Red Hat’s Linux distros, the event log is typically the
Applications, servers, and networking
A database event log records information that includes:
- Access requests
- Internal messages generated by the database engine
- User-initiated queries
- API requests
- … and so on.
The SQL Server error log (usually named
ERRORLOG) is an example of a database event log.
Web servers like Apache or Nginx record their events in
error.log . The access log records web server connections, and the error log contains error messages generated by the software itself.
In the networking realm, a router event log records network traffic events and changes made to router configuration. Meanwhile, a firewall event log records events such as blocked traffic for specific ports.
In the context of cloud services, event logs like AWS CloudTrail, CloudWatch Log, or AWS Config record events sent by different services. Examples of such events can be database events from RDS instances or the output of a serverless function from Lambda.
Common Event Log Fields
An event log is a structured file containing records of event data. Typically, an event log will have a common set of fields for each event. These fields can be:
- The classification and severity level of the event. Examples include “general information,” “warning,” or “critical error.”
- The event timestamp
- The source of the event, such as hardware, software, operating system, application module, library, or remote IP address
- Optionally, the destination of the event, which can be an application or an IP address, or some other location
- Optionally, an event number that uniquely identifies the event, such as a web server internal error code
- The user name, for user-generated actions
- The actual event description
The purpose of these fields is to provide all relevant information surrounding the event for analysis.
How Are Event Logs Populated?
All operating systems—and most applications—generate their own event logs. In most cases, they will continually write to the same file, starting a new file when a file-size threshold is reached. Logging may be verbose, or it may be concise. How the event log for each application is populated depends on how the application is configured to send its events to the log.
Usually, system administrators set up the event logging configuration for each application they are managing. Configuration parameters can include the name of the log file, the event-related fields to capture, the retention period for the events, the minimum severity level to log, time zone, and so on.
Software developers also use logs to capture event information from the custom applications they are developing. In fact, any custom-written application can send its events to an operating system event log as long as the application can access the log and can call the related API to post the data. For example, in the T-SQL language for Microsoft SQL Server, custom database application events can be sent to the Windows application event log.
Why Are Event Logs so Important?
Event logs are essential for root cause analysis of problems and incidents—whether those problems are due to hardware faults, OS errors, security breaches, application failures, or performance degradation. The most effective way operations teams and engineers can trace the root cause of an issue is by going through the events in the log files that preceded the incident in question.
Troubleshooting can also involve correlating and analyzing multiple event logs.
By aggregating and correlating data from event logs across different components, a troubleshooter can construct a complete picture of that system. Modern log management depends on the ingestion of multiple event logs to reveal trends, anomalies, and patterns. This approach has become necessary for complex distributed systems, in which an issue can’t always be detectable by analyzing a single log.
This kind of in-depth collation and analysis is a crucial component of system observability, which is the ability to measure a system’s current internal state from the data it generates—including event logs.
Log Everything, Answer Anything – For Free
Falcon LogScale Community Edition (previously Humio) offers a free modern log management platform for the cloud. Leverage streaming data ingestion to achieve instant visibility across distributed systems and prevent and resolve incidents.
Falcon LogScale Community Edition, available instantly at no cost, includes the following:
- Ingest up to 16GB per day
- 7-day retention
- No credit card required
- Ongoing access with no trial period
- Index-free logging, real-time alerts and live dashboards
- Access our marketplace and packages, including guides to build new packages
- Learn and collaborate with an active community | <urn:uuid:e28051c3-8107-41bf-9bf4-9f695e8bd6a2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/observability/event-log/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.902241 | 1,393 | 3.375 | 3 |
How Much Do You Know About Power Cord Types?
Network engineers that work around the world are well aware of the many different plugs and sockets in use in data centers. But the first-time experience in a foreign data center might be hard if you don’t know which power cord is used there. There is more than one standard being used in the world. A different country may use different power cord types, different plugs and connectors, especially the plug types.
IEC 60320 is a set of standards specifying power cords appliances up to 250 volts. Though different country owns different power cord types and standards, the IEC 60320 is recognized as an international standard used by most countries in the world. The “C” represents the code standard for connectors made by IEC 60320. Different types of connector are specified for different combinations of current, voltage and temperature.
Among the connector types, C13, C15 and C19 are the most commonly used ones in data centers. Details are listed in the table below:
IEC 60320 power cords uses even number for plug and odd number for the mating receptacle, and usually male appliance inlet is 1 higher than the sheet for the corresponding female cable connector. Therefore the most common used power cord types is C14 to C13 and C20 to C19. Other common power cord types also include C14 to C15 and C20 to C15.
Though IEC 60320 standard is used by most countries in the world, in fact it mainly aims the connectors types (C13, C15, C19). For plugs types, it differs from country to country.
The NEMA standards are commonly adopted in most North American countries and some countries that follow NEMA standard. Among the NEMA 5-15P plug are the most widely used in sockets. They are three-wire circuits (hot, neutral and ground), and are rated at 15 A at 250 V, although they usually carry 110 V.
NEMA 5-15P to NEMA 5-15R power cord is the most common type. The NEMA 5-15P stands for the plug, and the NEMA 5-15R stands for the receptacle. Other frequently used power cord types that use NEMA 5-15 plug include NEMA 5-15P to C13 and NEMA 5-15P to C15.
CEE 7/7 is now the de facto plug standard in many European countries, and in some countries that follow CENELEC standard. European countries that do not use CEE 7/7 are Denmark (AFSNIT 107-2-D1), Ireland, Italy (CEI 23-50), Malta (BS 1363), Cyprus (BS 1363), Gibraltar (BS 1363) and Switzerland (SEV 1011). The most popular power cords that adopt CEE 7/7 plug include CEE 7/7 to C13, CEE 7/7 to C15, and CEE 7/7 to C19.
Some other countries also have their own plug standard. For example, Australian standard AS/NZS 3112 (Type I), Brazilian standard NBR 14136 and Japanese standard JIS C 8303 (Type A, B), etc. But one common thing is that they might all adopt the IEC 60320 connector standard.
Related Article: Power over Ethernet Switch Explained | <urn:uuid:26a07fd3-4be0-4e6f-9d49-c5783b2c2eb0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.fs.com/blog/small-power-cord-big-difference.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337836.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006124156-20221006154156-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.918889 | 701 | 3.5625 | 4 |
The internet enables the collection and responsible sharing of data to address challenges in the United States. To address the challenges of today, the nation needs data to be timely, relevant, and detailed according to White House Chief Scientist, Denice Ross.
Data is essential to a healthy democracy and a thriving equitable society. The internet is an enabler for the United States data supply chain. However, it’s easy to become complacent with already collected, but when a crisis hits the need for better data becomes clear.
Then, “we realize how much more we need out of our data. We need it to be more frequent, detailed, and granular,” Ross said during the State of the Net conference on Feb. 28.
Lack of proper internet access in recent years proved that United States data has several inadequacies. For example, during the pandemic, data was a crucial element to providing resources to communities in need. However, limited internet access led to failures in providing an accurate representation of disparate and rural communities leading to inequalities in COVID-related care, vaccine distribution, etc.
Ross highlighted the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a step forward in the right direction to improving access to high-speed internet, ensuring the collection and responsible sharing of crucial data to answer challenges facing the country today.
“Ensuring every American has access to reliable high-speed internet is a key aspect of the bipartisan infrastructure law. It sets aside $65 billion in funding to help ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet with this historic investment in broadband infrastructure deployment,” Ross said.
Additionally, the legislation will help lower prices for internet service and help close the digital divide, so that more Americans can afford internet access.
This investment, according to Ross, will create the opportunity for a more reliable data supply chain, ensuring that the United States gets more out of its data to respond to various challenges the nation is or may encounter. | <urn:uuid:9217f81d-cb34-450f-8fe3-be50722963e1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://origin.meritalk.com/articles/wh-chief-scientist-access-to-internet-enables-reliable-data-collection/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338280.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007210452-20221008000452-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.932856 | 402 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Because cryptocurrency is accessible, easily verifiable, and publicly documented in the blockchain, it's become the cybercriminals' currency of choice and a major player in recent phishing and cyber-extortion activities. Learn how to protect your organization.
Cryptocurrency is accessible, easily verifiable, and publicly documented in the blockchain. For these reasons, it has become the cybercriminals' currency of choice and a major player in recent phishing and cyber-extortion activities.
Researchers analyzing phishing and business email compromise incidents between October 2020 and May 2021 identified that attacks related to cryptocurrency were on the rise - particularly around the time that certain organizations announced that they would start accepting Bitcoin payments and interest in crypto soared. The growing interest in cryptocurrency's potential to make an investor rich has allowed cybercriminals to exploit the trend and prey on people's lack of knowledge about this relatively new form of currency.
In the past, crypto-related attacks were mainly linked to extortion and ransomware attacks. However, threat actors have started to incorporate cryptocurrency into email threats, specifically impersonation, business email compromise attacks, and spear phishing impersonation. Here are some of the most common types of crypto-related scams to look out for:
In crypto-related ransomware attacks, cybercriminals steal credentials and lock the organization's data with encryption until a ransom paid in Bitcoin is met. These attacks have been on the rise since early 2020, with ransom payments increasing by 60% and Bitcoin accounting for almost 98% of ransom payments.
Bitcoin blackmail is a type of extortion where the perpetrator threatens to release stolen or sensitive data unless a ransom is paid in crypto. In most Bitcoin blackmail cases, targets receive an email claiming their computers have been hacked and their webcams were taken control of to record videos of them in private. If you don't send funds to their Bitcoin account, the attacker will threaten to distribute your compromising videos to family, friends, and colleagues.
Bitcoin sextortion scams
Sextortion scams are phishing attacks threatening the victim that they will release videos of them visiting adult websites or performing sexual acts that were captured by remotely turning on their webcam. The cybercriminal coerces the victim into paying a Bitcoin ransom. To make the scam more believable, the attacker may provide private information about the victim or go into the technical detail of how they captured the video proof, including the name of the adult sites visited.
Cyber Incident Response Planning for Crypto-related Attacks
Experts advise targets never to pay the ransom as most incidents involve threat actors bluffing that they have compromised your private computer and accessed your webcam. However, it's hard to tell if the attacker got your email from a data breach and may also have access to your other confidential data.
If your organization fears it can't take any risks and may have no choice but to pay the ransom, your best defense is to fortify your email security. Remember, Bitcoin blackmailers and sextortion scammers often use spoofed email addresses and get the email addresses of their targets from data breaches. Therefore, preventing email threats from reaching your inbox is as critical to avoid scams related to crypto as defending your organization from a data breach.
To learn more about what organizations can do before, during, and after a crypto-related email threat, contact us for a robustemail security solutionwith a high operationalization level. | <urn:uuid:a4ceac27-f814-44e1-971e-119faf221683> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.anubisnetworks.com/blog/rise_in_crypto_cybercrimes | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338280.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007210452-20221008000452-00129.warc.gz | en | 0.955441 | 697 | 2.578125 | 3 |
You might know what a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is. But if you’re like many people out there, you probably don’t use one. You should though. And when you finish this blog post, you’ll know why.
A VPN is a private network established over the internet. That might sound complicated, so simply put, a VPN provides security for your device’s internet connection. The layer of security VPNs provide is how you make sure that data you send and receive is encrypted and safe from trackers, hackers and anyone else trying to intercept your data while it’s in transit.
Companies and schools use VPNs to let people connect to local networks from anywhere. And you can also use a VPN to stay anonymous whether you’re at home, at work or school, or using an untrusted public network. And as an added bonus, of course, a VPN also lets you change your virtual location, which can mean unrestricted access to a whole world of content.
So why is online anonymity so important? Who better to answer that than two real FREEDOME VPN users. And while we can assure you these guys are both real, in keeping with the theme of anonymity, let’s just call them “John” and “Doe”.
“Anonymity is important because I really see it as a human right. Like if I’m looking for things that are really personal, I have the right to stay private and keep that information private,” says John, a university student who’s been using FREEDOME VPN for three months and counting.
Doe, who is 29 and in the IT industry, has used VPNs before, but recently switched to F-Secure’s FREEDOME. For him, using a VPN isn’t just about protecting himself today: it’s an investment in the future.
“I’ve never had problems myself, but we know for a fact that there are organizations and people out there right now who are looking to get their hands on our information and identities for whatever reason. This is definitely going to be a bigger problem in the future, and I want to be prepared,” says Doe.
Both John and Doe say that most of their friends in the tech industry are using VPNs right now. But unfortunately, there are lots of people out there who aren’t.
“I really wish people were more aware of the fact that they’re potentially giving away parts of their identity and privacy every single time they go online without a VPN,” says Doe.
“If you think about how people are feeding more and more of their personal information into a wider and wider range of sites, services etc., it’s obvious that the potential risks to our privacy are also increasing,” he says.
John and Doe definitely know what they’re talking about and we couldn’t agree more. There’s never been a better time to take control of your online anonymity. So check out the FREEDOME VPN site for videos and more info. And don’t forget to tap or click to get yours! | <urn:uuid:74c8a0cd-5a68-4146-bc41-77dea08882b8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.f-secure.com/is-your-identity-safe-online-you-might-be-surprised/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334620.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925225000-20220926015000-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.955864 | 676 | 2.828125 | 3 |
In 2020, cybersecurity attacks on supply chains surged because of Covid-19, and it’s predicted that cyberattacks will cause $6trn (USD) worth of damages in 2021.
What is a supply chain attack?
A supply chain attack is a particular type of cyberattack that seeks to damage an organization by targeting less secure elements in the supply chain. It happens when a hacker infiltrates your system via a partner vendor or provider with access to your system and data.
These hackers aren’t picky; they’ll target any industry from the financial sector, oil industry, to government sectors. Historically, supply chains overlooked their own security, but there is now growing frustration on how best to tackle this issue.
Examples of supply chain threats and risks
Supply chain threats can penetrate many departments of a business simultaneously. Here are the types of risks involved.
|Type of Risk||Consequences|
|Supply Risk||• Inaccessibility of suppliers
• Theft of vendor credentials
• Breach from the vendor network
• Modification of the source code through malware
• Supply of compromised software
|Operational Risk||• Malfunctioning of the plant
• Sudden interruption in operation
• Failure to detect coding errors
• Product specification fraud
• Data theft
|Customer Risk||• Intellectual property theft
• Manipulation of data
• unauthorized access to customer’s data
• Fraudulent communication
• Information sabotage
Real-world third-party attacks
General Electric and Canon, 2020
In February 2020, one of General Electric’s third-party suppliers, Canon, experienced a data leak through unauthorized employee access. The leak exposed a mass of personal data, including details of passports, driving licenses, birth certificates, and tax forms. Canon wasn’t able to discover how many people were affected by the breach.
SolarWinds malware attack, 2021
Earlier this year, SolarWinds, the network management software used by around 18 000 organizations, including US Homeland Security, had malware planted by hackers after being certified as ready for customers.
One of America’s biggest insurance companies, CNA, which also offers cyber insurance, was subject to a likely ransomware attack in March 2021. The attack caused network disruption so severe that CNA were forced to take down the affected systems from the network, which included corporate email.
The principles of supply chain security
The principles of supply chain security ensure a complete overview of your supply chain and establish effective control throughout. The principles are separated into stages, making supply chain security accessible, thorough, and manageable.
Understand what needs to be protected and why
Looking at the sensitivity of your own supply chain contracts, identify the value of the assets and data that has been or will be shared. In addition to this, assess the level of protection needed for:
- the assets
- how they’re handled
- the product or services themselves
Vulnerabilities in software
Software and third-party platforms (and the trust put into them) are more extensive than ever as the pandemic demanded an even faster move to digitization due to national lockdowns and new border controls.
It’s critical to acknowledge and be cognizant that malware can be inserted into third-party software applications (or hardware, for that matter) by hackers before delivery or integration in the form of counterfeits or originals that have been maliciously tampered with.
Malicious hackers are also experts at finding security gaps and vulnerabilities in wider networks once in place, so understanding how your vendor manages their cybersecurity must be a priority.
While it can seem insurmountable, establishing control of supply chain cybersecurity is doable and manageable – it comes down to action and communication internally and externally.
1. Revisit and reinforce your own security responsibilities – as a supplier and consumer.
The supply chain will see you as a consumer and supplier, meaning your cybersecurity responsibilities in these roles can both overlap and differ. You’ll be subject to specific requirements as a supplier, such as following industry audits and standards, and at the same time, will need to request reports from such audits from your own vendors.
2. Communicate your minimum levels of security and incident response requirements.
Establish and communicate the minimum level of security needed for your suppliers that are justifiable, reasonable, achievable, and to a degree, flexible. Creating one-size-fits-all cybersecurity measures won’t adequately account for the varying levels of risk or the types of contracts you’ll inevitably have.
Identify existing suppliers who don’t meet your minimum requirements and let them know what they are, along with the rationale.
In addition to agreeing with plans for incident responses, these proactive bare minimums will enable you to build security considerations into the procurement processes, saving time and resources on retrospective contractual fixes and security breaches. It’ll also give you the collateral to provide to suppliers to do the same in their own organization for full-circle supply chain security.
3. Train all parties, including employees.
Despite malware and ransomware attacks becoming more common and involving higher stakes, the actual impact and risk factors are often underestimated. Training and educating all parties involved, including employees, emphasizes the importance of forming and keeping good habits and open communication channels for spotting missed vulnerabilities and improvement opportunities.
Supply chain cybersecurity requires continuous improvements and changes as you introduce new suppliers, gain new customers, and the types of threats and attacks evolve.
Industry compliance standards, such as PCI-DSS, and the necessary audits naturally show the existing state of your systems, highlighting the areas needing improvement. However, conducting frequent risk assessments and practicing disaster recovery outside of audits should be a regular task.
Maintaining the rule of least privilege and ensuring that no one person holds too much power or influence over cybersecurity measures is vital.
A complete supply chain security strategy requires risk management principles and cyber defense in depth. It needs to adhere to protocols set by government agencies and customs regulations.
Pro-active, extensive, and validated cybersecurity solutions – ENHALO
Security Operations Center – Proactively monitors external and internal threats, provides rapid response to incidents, protects both digital and physical assets, and assists with meeting sector-based security compliance.
Security Awareness Training & Testing – SATT Turn your staff into your strongest security asset; turn a human error into a human firewall.
The supply chain is only secure when every link in the chain takes responsibility and holds others accountable.
Disclaimer Insights and press releases are provided for historical purposes only. The information contained in each is accurate only as of the date material was originally published. | <urn:uuid:04c9860c-8044-45a5-94c4-6c0fa3ccc974> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://enhalo.co/security-services/cybersecurity-and-your-supply-chain/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334620.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925225000-20220926015000-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.933089 | 1,385 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Patch management consists of scanning computers, mobile devices or other machines on a network for missing software updates, known as “patches” and fixing the problem by deploying those patches as soon as they become available. Patches are a type of code that is inserted (or patched) into the code of an existing software program. It is typically a stop-gap measure until a new full release of the software becomes available.
Patches are created by software companies when they know of an existing vulnerability and ensure that hackers don’t use that vulnerability to break into your corporate network.
In patch management, an individual team or an automated software determines which tools need patches and when fixes need to be made. Many times, installation can be done to a central administrative computer and be reflected across all other devices. In some cases, patches have to be installed separately on different devices – especially if the patches are for software installed only on a few computers.
Patch management also involves determining which patches are essential and when they should be installed on a system.
Patch management acquires, tests and installs multiple code changes to administered computer systems to keep them updated. The process also determines the appropriate patches for each software program and schedules the installation of the patches across different systems.
Patches are necessary to ensure that the systems are fixed, up to date and protected against security vulnerabilities and bugs that were present in the software. Failure to patch makes a network doubly vulnerable – not only is the vulnerability there, but it has now also been publicized, making it more likely to be exploited by malicious users, hackers and virus writers.
Proper patch management can greatly improve an enterprise’s security by addressing the vulnerabilities in its software and operating systems. Here are a few reasons why patch management is a critical expenditure in almost any IT budget:
Security is the most critical benefit of patch management. Network security breaches are most commonly caused by missing patches in operating systems and other applications. Comprehensive patch management can guard against vulnerabilities across different platforms and operating systems – including Microsoft®, MAC OS X® and Linux® operating systems, Amazon Web Services (AWS), other cloud platforms – as well as third-party applications.
The emergence of “bring your own device,” or BYOD, has opened up a whole new avenue of opportunities for cyber-attackers. Employees increasingly use their personal and office devices interchangeably to do their work – requiring personal devices to be protected as well. A good patch management software installs patches across all devices, regardless of their physical location. In the process, it addresses many of the challenges that come with using personal devices.
Computer crashes due to defective software can still happen and this eventually leads to lower productivity levels. A patch, on the other hand, reduces the possibility of crashes and downtime, thereby allowing workers to do their tasks without interruptions.
Cyberthreats have become commonplace and this is why regulatory bodies are mandating that businesses apply the latest patches to avoid these threats. Noncompliance can lead to stiff penalties, so a good patch management strategy is necessary to comply with these standards.
Patches are not always about fixing bugs. They can also include new features and functionality that can tap into the latest innovations of the software. Companies are constantly working on new features and sending new functionality in the form of patches, so downloading and installing them can help you work better and smarter.
Perspective about the business environment
Patch management can provide an overview of your current business environment. Many times, vendors stop sending patches for their software because they are working on the next version, or the company has gone out of business and is not producing bug fixes. It’s wise to stop using software that no longer has technical support. Patch management helps to identify such software, so you know when to change to new software.
Installing the latest updates is not the most effective process of patch management. In fact, every tool should follow a detailed set of steps to ensure that the end result is economical, efficient and effective.
Here are some keys steps to developing an up-to-date inventory of the existing devices:
Create a patch management policy.
Scan the network and devices on a regular basis to identify vulnerabilities and missing patches.
Validate the successful deployment of the downloaded patches in a testing environment and check for any incompatibilities or performance issues.
Apply the patch across the entire organization, if no issues were uncovered during the testing phase.
Create detailed documentation and reports about patch download, testing and installation for auditing and compliance.
Though these steps may vary, the larger point is the updates should not be installed as they become available. Instead, they should go through a process laid down by the organization. Such a process-oriented approach will also make it easy to follow some of the best practices of patch management.
Patch management is typically high on an administrator’s to-do list. If done incorrectly patch management can be a risk for the organization instead of a risk mitigator. A few simple best practices however easily eliminate all of these risks as well as ensure that the process is finished quickly and efficiently.
Here are some best practices for patch management to help an organization enhance its security and to stay updated on all the latest additions made to any software:
Know why you’re doing it
Patch management is an essential part of the software world and it is important for the management as well as the admin team to understand its benefits for the organization as a whole. Communicating the essential nature of patch management will help to make it an integral part of IT activities.
Monitor the patch status of all your applications
Always be aware when new patches are needed. The easiest way to accomplish this is by employing a solution that monitors your network patch status and notifies you automatically when patches are available. If budget is an issue another possibility is to keep track of what applications you use and periodically check the respective websites for new issued updates.
Always run a test
The patches provided by software companies are designed to work well in isolation. But in the real world, any computer will have more than one type of software. This means there is always a possibility for incompatibilities between a patch and other software. When deploying patches without properly testing them out, you risk that one of the patches might conflict and cause issues on the organization’s infrastructure. It’s a good idea to test the patch on a handful of computers before applying it to the entire network.
Work with your managed service providers
Many managed service providers offer patch management services to suit the needs of different businesses. If you’re pressed for time or resources, consider this option so you can focus on your core business while patches will be handled by these providers, thereby providing a win-win situation for you in both these aspects. If budget is an issue, there are free solutions by Microsoft that can help automate patch management for Microsoft products. However, it is still essential to patch non-Microsoft products even if this needs to be done manually.
Establish a disaster recovery plan
Another important, yet often overlooked, best practice is to have a disaster recovery plan should your patch management fail and cause problems. Backups are the easiest option and they can also be used to mitigate other risks such as a virus infection or intrusion.
Having an established and documented patch management policy will help your organization protect itself from viruses and security vulnerabilities. But what should a patch management policy include, apart from deploying patches?
Know when there is a need for a patch to be made. A patch management policy should have a section detailing what must be done to ensure the security personnel know what to do in this situation. The policy should include monitoring of current events because it is not always the case that a patch is released before a vulnerability is made known to the world.
An essential step in patch management is to ensure that the patch about to be deployed will not conflict with the current environment. To do this the organization will require an effective change management policy so that patches can be tested on these systems before being deployed to live environments.
What requires patching?
Applications that are not connected with the operation system also require patching because they can be a security risk. It is important to define the scope of the patch management operation to ensure no application is overlooked during the patch management process.
The patch management policy must list the times and limit of operations the patch management team is allowed to carry out. The policy needs to include a notification to users when they can expect reboots or when they are required to have their machines available for a patch deployment.
Handling cases where a patch isn’t available
The policy should include details of what the security team should do when an application or operation system component requires patching but that patch is not yet available.
Include a disaster recovery procedure, including details on how to revert bad patches or what the team should do if reverting to a previous version is not possible.
Document patching efforts to demonstrate compliance with certain regulations. Effective reporting can also help pinpoint potential issues that will help the team avoid pitfalls in future.
Over the last few years, automated patch management tools have emerged to take this pressure off administrators and to improve the overall efficiency of downloading and installing patches across different devices. As a result, every organization can update all its endpoints with the latest patches and with little human interference, regardless of its hardware specifications and geographical locations.
But how do you choose the right patch management software, given the large number of patch management tools available today? Here are some capabilities that should be present in any good automated patch management software:
Works across different platforms and operating systems – including Microsoft®, MAC OS X® and Linux® operating systems, Amazon Web Services (AWS), other cloud platforms, as well as third-party applications.
Scans the entire network to identify missing patches across different software.
Downloads patches directly from vendors’ sites.
Includes efficient patch testing and deployment.
Provides detailed reporting to give administrators a complete idea of missing, downloaded, tested and installed patches.
Installs easily across all devices such as desktops, laptops and servers.
Integrated with automated patch management to help you save time.
Generates reports on the status of each update and relevant statistics about patch installs and updates for auditing purposes.
Bayview Medical Clinic
See why the clinic decided to up their security game and began using GFI LanGuard.
Watch and see how FrugalBrothers has built its business around providing high quality email protection and network security tools. | <urn:uuid:ff29d083-f2e4-4db4-9eab-54f4288c501a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.gfi.com/company/blog/patch-management | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.946005 | 2,191 | 3.28125 | 3 |
If you ask most people to define the term "cyberattack," they may talk about viruses, malware, and ransomware threats. If you ask who the attackers are, they may attribute them to individual or nation state hackers. If you inquire about the goals of the attacks, answers may include destroying/corrupting data or exfiltrating data. And, if you ask how to defeat cyberattacks, typical suggestions are firewalls and antivirus software.
Of course, all of this is true. But, the problem is that these answers leave a gaping hole when it comes to the continuum of attack surfaces and corresponding cybersecurity responses. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly common to describe cyber targets that rely only on perimeter defenses, like firewalls, antivirus, and anti-malware software, as “hard and crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside” — these are not desirable attributes for a cybersecurity solution.
Data in Transit, In Use, and At Rest
A key aspect of securing digital data is understanding that it may exist in different states at different times. For example, the term “data in transit,” also known as data in flight or data in motion, refers to data flowing through a network. These may be private intranets and public networks like the internet. By comparison, the term “data in use” refers to information being actively accessed and manipulated by a software program. This data is stored in a nonpersistent digital state, typically in a computer’s random-access memory (RAM) or the caches and registers associated with the central processing unit (CPU).
Another distinct type of data, data at rest (DAR), refers to data that is physically housed in a storage device, like a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). This article will focus on SDDs, since there may be differences between HDD and SDD cybersecurity implementations and because the deployment of SDDs has overtaken that of HDDs. Cybersecurity solutions like firewalls, antivirus, and anti-malware software predominantly focus on external threats by protecting data in transit and data in use. However, in addition to external attack vectors, many security breaches and data loss incidents can be traced to insider threats, such as unauthorized access to sensitive information or computers and/or drives being mislaid or stolen. If left unprotected, DAR becomes the “soft and chewy” treat upon which hackers love to feast.
Never Trust, Always Verify
A good way to protect DAR is to store it on a removable drive, separate the drive from the host computer, and lock it in a safe. Of course, this does not prevent theft from the safe. In addition, at some stage, the drive will have to be removed from the safe to be reinstalled on a computer or transported to another location. At that point any unprotected data becomes vulnerable to attack.
The need to secure DAR, whether resident on a computer, stored in a safe, or in transit from one location to another, is essential. The potential impact of data breaches, hacking, and lost or stolen computers (including notepads, laptops, and PCs) is a matter of national security and may potentially be the difference between life and death. The challenge in our highly mobile world is ensuring data is easily accessible while simultaneously secure to prevent intrusions and unauthorized access.
The “zero trust” security model is one of the more recent responses to cyberthreats. The central concept behind zero trust is “never trust, always verify.” This precept means that devices should not be trusted by default, even when connected to a managed network, such as a military local area network (LAN), and even if they have been verified previously. Today, protecting DAR is understood to be a critical piece of a zero-trust solution.
Full Disk Encryption
The term “disk encryption” refers to using cryptographic techniques to convert data stored on an SSD into an unreadable form that cannot be easily deciphered by unauthorized personnel. In addition to encrypting data as it’s written onto the drive, it’s necessary to decrypt the data as it’s read from the drive. Both encryption and decryption are computationally intensive activities.
Users can perform encryption selectively by encrypting individual files or using full disk encryption (FDE), which encrypts everything on the disk. In some cases, FDE may exclude the portion of the disk containing the boot code that initiates the operating system (OS) loading sequence. However, FDE systems that truly encrypt the entire disk, including any OS boot code, afford the highest level of protection.
Irrespective of whether FDE is performed in software (SWFDE) or hardware (HWFDE), the data is automatically encrypted as it’s written to the disk and decrypted when it’s read from the disk in a manner that is transparent to the user.
A key aspect to FDE is for the drive itself to be cyber-locked with a data encryption key (DEK) so that authorization acquisition (AA) is required to access the data on the drive. In a standard deployment environment where the SSD carrying the data is mounted in a client computer, such as a notepad, laptop, or desktop machine, AA may be achieved by the user entering a password. The preferred scenario is for AA to occur before booting the OS, which is referred to as pre-boot authentication (PBA). A higher confidence level is provided by employing multifactor authorization (MFA), such as a common access card (CAC) or a USB security key.
Software or Hardware?
SWFDE and HWFDE are both highly effective. One consideration with SWFDE is that high-grade encryption requires a significant amount of computation, which can load the host computer and slow down performance. SWFDE also provides a larger attack surface for potential hackers. Another consideration is that SWFDE is OS-dependent, so organizations that employ multiple Oss, like Linux and Windows, will be obliged to deploy variants of their SWFDE.
In the case of HWFDE, when the hardware encryption engine (EE) is located on the drive, it is referred to as a self-encrypting drive. In addition to providing encryption and decryption at hardware speeds while offloading the host computer, HWFDE provides a smaller attack surface to hackers. In addition, some HDFDE solutions are OS-agnostic, which means they will work with any OS, including the use of virtual machine (VM) environments.
Cyberthreats are on the rise, and fielding comprehensive cybersecurity solutions is a complicated business. In addition to protecting data in use and data in flight by using tools, like firewalls, antivirus, and anti-malware software, protecting DAR is now understood to be a critical piece of a zero-trust solution.
The best way to protect DAR is with FDE, implemented in either software or hardware. Many users prefer HWFDE because it offloads the host computer and reduces the attack surface. However, many self-encrypting drives, especially consumer-grade devices, are delivered with empty master passwords and have other potential security failures, including substandard encryption.
In order to be acceptable for use by the Federal Government, a HWFDE DAR solution must be validated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) certified. FIPS are guidelines for federal computer systems, developed by NIST per the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and approved by the Secretary of Commerce. This ensures self-encrypting drives meet the highest levels of cryptographic security and give users confidence that their valuable DAR is secure against cyberattacks.
Anyone considering cybersecurity solutions is strongly urged to engage with domain experts in order to fully secure their data in use, their data in flight, and DAR. | <urn:uuid:b1acd0de-8cb1-41a2-89d1-0567f0813f0d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.missioncriticalmagazine.com/articles/94032-securing-government-and-military-data | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.939203 | 1,647 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Welcome to today’s thrilling howto on implementing Linux software RAID
with no expense other than however many hard disks you wish to use, whether they be inexpensive
ordinary PATA (IDE) drives, expensive SCSI drives, or newfangled serial ATA (SATA) drives.
RAID (define) is no longer the exclusive province of expensive systems with
SCSI drives and controllers. In fact it hasn’t been since the 2.0 Linux
kernel, released in 1996, which was the first kernel release to support
What RAID Is For
A RAID array provides various functions, depending on how it is
configured: high speed, high reliability, or both. RAID 0, 1, and 5 are
probably the most commonly used.
RAID 0, or “striping,” writes data across two or more drives. RAID 0 is
very fast; data are split up in blocks and written across all the
drives in the array. It will noticeably speed up everyday work, and is
great for applications that generate large files, like image editing.
It is not fault-tolerant — a failure on one disk means all data in the
array are lost. That is no different than when a single drive fails, so
if it’s speed and more capacity you want, go for it.
RAID 1, or “mirroring,” clones two disks. Your storage space is limited
to the size of the smaller drive, if your two drives are not the same
size. If one drive fails, the other carries on, allowing you to
continue working until it is convenient to replace the disk. RAID 1 is
slower than striping, because all writes are done twice.
RAID 5 combines striping with parity checks, so you get speed and data
redundancy. You need a minimum of three disks. If a single disk is lost
your data are still intact. Losing two disks means losing everything.
Reads are very fast, while writes are a bit slower because the parity
checks must be calculated.
You may use disks of different sizes in all of these, though you’ll get
better performance with disks of the same capacity and geometry. Some
admins like to use different brands of hard disks on the theory that
different brands will have different flaws.
What RAID Is Not
It is not a substitute for a good backup regimen, backup power
supplies, surge protectors, and other sensible protections. Linux
software RAID is not a substitute for true hardware SCSI RAID in
high-demand mission-critical systems. But it is a dandy tool for
workstations and low- to medium-duty servers. PATA (or IDE) drives (define) are
not hot-swappable, but you can set up an array with standby drives that
automatically take over in the event of a disk failure. If you don’t
want to use standby drives your downtime is limited only to the time it
takes to replace the drive, because the system is usable even while the
array is rebuilding itself.
Hardware RAID controllers come in a rather bewildering variety.
Mainboards come with built-in IDE RAID controllers, and PCI IDE RAID
controller cards can be had for as little as $25. Most of these are
like horrid Winmodems, in that they require Windows drivers to work and
have Windows-only management tools. I wouldn’t bother with IDE RAID
controllers — Linux software RAID outperforms them in every way, and
A true hardware RAID controller operates independently of the host
operating system. You’ll find a lot of choices for SATA (define) and SCSI drives. SATA controllers cost from $150 to the sky’s the
limit, depending on how many drives they support, how much onboard
memory they have, and other refinements that take the processing load
away from the system CPU.
Good SCSI controllers start around $400 and have an even higher sky.
Both SATA and SCSI controllers should support hot-swapping, error
handling, caching, and fast data-transfer speeds. A good-quality
hardware controller is fast and reliable; but finding such a one is not
so easy. Many an experienced admin has lost sleep and hair over flaky
Something to keep in mind for the future- as SATA support in Linux
matures, and the technology itself improves, it should be a capable
SCSI replacement for all but the most demanding uses. (For more
information see the excellent
pages posted by the maintainer of the kernel SATA drivers, Jeff
Software RAID Advantages
Linux software RAID is more versatile than most hardware RAID
controllers. Hardware controllers see each drive as a single member of
the RAID array, and handle only one type of hard disk. Most hardware
controllers are picky about the brand and size of hard disk — you can’t
just slap in any old disks you want, but must carefully choose
compatible disks. And it’s not always documented what these are.
Linux RAID is a separate layer from Linux block devices, so any block
device can be a member of the array — a particular partition, any type
of hard drive, and you can even mix and match. Endless debates rage
over which offers superior performance, hardware or software RAID. The
answer is “it depends.” An old slow RAID controller won’t match the
performance of a modern system with a fast CPU and fast buses. The
number of drives on a cable, the types of drives and cabling, the speed
of the data bus- all of these affect performance in addition to the
speed of the CPU and the demands placed on it.
One disadvantage is hot-swap ability is limited and not entirely
Converting An Existing System To RAID
First of all, your power supply must be capable of powering all the
drives you want to run on the system. Adding as many drives as you want
is easy and inexpensive. If you’re going to purchase new hard disks,
you might as well get SATA, because the cost is about the same as PATA.
SATA drives are faster and use less cabling, and will soon supplant
PATA drives. PCI controller cards for additional PATA and SATA disks
cost around $40, and will run two disks each. The built-in IDE channels
on mainboards can handle two disks each, but you should run only one
disk per channel. You’ll get better performance and minimize the risk
of a fault taking out both hard disks.
Next, install the raidtools2 and mdadm packages. If you
want your RAID array to be bootable, you’ll need RAID support built
into the kernel. Or use a loadable module and use an initrd
file, which to me is more trouble than rebuilding a kernel. Next week
in Part 2 we’ll cover how to do all of this. You may get a head start
by consulting the links in Resources. | <urn:uuid:36913c01-ac4e-49e5-bfc1-efcdc9f97e50> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/guides/raid-faster-and-cheaper-with-linux/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.905255 | 1,526 | 3.15625 | 3 |
On June 12th the Vietnamese National Assembly voted in a new cybersecurity law. The legislation did not come easily having gone through more than 12 drafts and much debate in government and the business sector. The claimed purposes of the legislation are to increase Vietnam’s Internet sovereignty, that is the data of Vietnamese people should remain within and under the control of Vietnam, and to improve the cybersecurity of the country by controlling what and how people communicate online.
The Law on Cybersecurity regulates all companies, both domestic and foreign with online activities used by customers in Vietnam.
Highlights of the new cybersecurity law
Website owners, no matter what their type, must not allow people to post any material that might be considered ‘anti-state’, inciting opposition or offensive. Owners must have mechanisms for monitoring, verifying, and removing such content from their sites.
Vietnamese or foreign businesses that offer service over the Internet or other telecom networks must:
authenticate user information when they register
keep that user information confidential
cooperate with the Vietnamese authorities and share user information during investigations or users breach cybersecurity law
within 24 hours of notification by the authorities any offending material must be deleted and prevented from appearing
personal information of users must be held within Vietnam for a certain, as yet undefined, period
foreign service providers are required to set up representative offices or branches within Vietnam
While one of the goals of the legislation is that overseas businesses such as Facebook, Google and Twitter should respect Vietnam’s Internet sovereignty the legislation places a large burden upon both domestic and foreign internet services.
Improving Vietnamese internet sovereignty by controlling Vietnamese data
Minister of Public Security, To Lam, said earlier this year that the data of Vietnamese users is national property and should be retained and controlled within Vietnam. By retaining control over user data, the state can maintain security and fight criminal activity. This is, for Vietnam, an issue of national security and sovereignty.
Pundits suggest that the new provisions will result in severe limitations on Vietnam economy by dampening the foreign investment climate and promote a repressive climate that have potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression.
Clare Algar, Amnesty International’s Director of Global Operations expressed strong concerns:
“This decision has potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression in Viet Nam. In the country’s deeply repressive climate, the online space was a relative refuge where people could go to share ideas and opinions with less fear of censure by the authorities.
“With the sweeping powers it grants the government to monitor online activity, this vote means there is now no safe place left in Viet Nam for people to speak freely.”
The great Vietnamese firewall
The Chinese Cybersecurity Law was passed in November 2016, coming into effect in June 2017. Coincidentally, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security proposed a draft of a Vietnamese Cybersecurity law just five days later. The Vietnamese law is very similar to the Chinese legislation although the Ministry of Public Security claims that their version was modelled upon cybersecurity laws from the United States, China, Czech Republic, Japan, and others. It is probably not too surprising that the legislation in both Vietnam and China should be similar given that both countries have an identical political system and so would have similar cybersecurity and Internet sovereignty concerns.
The new legislation and emphasis upon Vietnamese Internet sovereignty should be seen in the context of the proposed national firewall to be set up by the Ministry of Defense and managed with the Ministry of Public Security. The result will be a package of legislation and measures that closely echo what has already happened in China. The government will have close control over what people are able to see and say online within Vietnam.
The surveillance state and free speech
For many years China has been held up as the bogyman of the free Internet particularly since the Great Firewall went live in 2006. China has a reputation for controlling what its citizens see of the Internet and regulating closely what Chinese Internet users can say online. Whatever effects we see in China will become apparent in Vietnam.
Since the Great Firewall started ‘protecting’ Chinese citizens, many of the states that criticised China for regulating the Internet within its borders have now introduced their own cybersecurity laws to control what is seen on the Internet and removing the privacy that was once taken for granted. For example, in the European Union, it has been a legal requirement that all EU member states must retain electronic communications data for between six and 24 months. In the United Kingdom, all Internet Service Providers are required to retain relevant communication data for up to 12 months.
The most visible effect of Vietnam’s new Cybersecurity Law, for most Internet users, will be censorship and a reduction of freedom of speech. This will work on several levels:
No more anonymous registration for social sites, forums or blog comments will mean that people’s online activities can be tied to their real-world persona. People may no longer be able to say whatever they want with impunity.
Site owners and their managers will tend to become proactive in respect of the content that is seen on their sites. Rather than face repercussions from state law enforcement and censors they will either remove or not allow content that they think might be problematic. This may well be made worse, from the point of view of freedom of expression, because there are not clear guidelines as to what is and is not acceptable, webmasters will be likely to err on the side of caution.
Because of the cost of fulfilling Internet sovereignty requirements on foreign online businesses to be legally present in Vietnam and to store data of Vietnamese people within the country it is likely that some businesses will simply choose to deny Vietnamese people access to their services. Similar effects have been seen within elsewhere.
Vietnam has some 55 million regular social media users; the new Internet sovereignty and cybersecurity measures will reduce their exposure to the outside world and reduce the ability of outsiders to communicate openly with Vietnamese people. In a world made smaller by easy and cheap communications this is probably a backward step. | <urn:uuid:059f2f5a-1d16-4ecc-ae9e-42a05a3b512c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/vietnams-new-cybersecurity-law-and-push-for-internet-sovereignty-reduces-freedom/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337595.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005073953-20221005103953-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.948836 | 1,217 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Get started creating, modifying, and understanding bots
The tasks in Build a basic bot cover general concepts related to creating and editing a TaskBot.
Bot developers or Bot Creators must have a basic understanding of the following concepts:
- Variable: A storage location that is referenced and manipulated by a computer program. Variables can be for known or unknown information.
- Loops: Runs one or more lines of code repetitively. A loop typically repeats, depending on a condition, or runs for one time for each element in a collection. | <urn:uuid:cb02b717-e203-4628-bd45-67fdda210592> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://docs.automationanywhere.com/fr-FR/bundle/enterprise-v11.3/page/enterprise/topics/aae-client/bot-creator/build-basic-bot/aae-create-modify-understand-bots.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030333455.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924182740-20220924212740-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.908646 | 110 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Modular Data, it is a compact device that can be easily stationed anywhere to serve customers' current data center, or it can be built into a system of modules, modular data center’s are an effective alternative to conventional brick and mortar data centers. Many of the usual components, such as fuel, it, cooling, fire safety, and access control, are present in these data centers. Furthermore, these compact systems help with energy savings because they use less resources than conventional data centers.
The global modular data center industry was worth valued $16.56 million in 2019, which is expected to grow to $65.55 million by 2027, with a CAGR of 19.0% between 2020 and 2027.
The modular data centers simplicity comes from the fact that they can be quickly replaced if they become outdated or if new technology is required. Demand for solutions and services are on the rise. Cloud-based networking, artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, and other technologies have aided in the creation of scalable data centers. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a minor effect on the development of the modular data center industry. Stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures have been implemented in most nations, resulting in an increase in remote employment and media use.
As of the growing number of environmental conservation and energy use regulations imposed by different governments around the world, modular data centers are in high demand. The modular data center's enclosed space is easier to cool than a single wide room, and built-in aisle containment reduces hot and cold air mixing. As a result, modular data centers are more energy efficient and use fewer resources than conventional data center’s, assisting companies in meeting their intrinsic requirement for reduced energy usage.
Data centers were often built to order, with the possibility of modification based on the user's needs. These features allowed data center customers to request data center’s that could respond to their needs as well as the organization's overall operational environment. . This lack of customization and limitation in buying options is expected to hinder the global modular data center market growth.
To reduce the risk of downtime, best-in-class modular data centers have built-in cooling and power redundancies. They have what is known as concurrent maintainability in more detail. Organizations may scale data halls incrementally without losing reliability or the freedom to optimize the environment flexible, to modularly built colocation data center. As a result, colocation vendors are expected to open up a plethora of options for the deployment of modular data center.
Due to increased acceptance of modular data center solutions and benefits associated with modular data center solutions such as improved energy consumption, mobility, speed & agility, and scalability, in contrast to conventional data center solutions, the system segment experienced the fastest growth in 2019 and is projected to continue its supremacy in the coming years. The data center market share was dominated by large companies in terms of business size, and this trend is likely to continue in the coming years also IT & Telecom is projected to have the largest market share over the forecast era, with key market participants concentrating on developing advanced prefabricated data centers to meet the growing demand in the IT and Telecom industries.
As of the large presence of leading modular data center providers and the thriving IT & telecom industry, North America dominates the modular data center market share. Furthermore, the market's growth is fueled by a boom in investments by major players as well as the government in the development of advanced prefabricated data centers. Due to factors such as the comprehensive expansion of 5G network infrastructure in the area and the increase in number of start-ups and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies such as India, China, and South Korea, Asia-Pacific is projected to expand at the fastest pace during the modular data center industry forecast period.
Baselayer Technology, LLC, BladeRoom Group Ltd., Cisco Systems, Inc., CommScope, Inc., Dell, Inc., Eaton Corporation, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., IBM Corporation, Iron Mountain Corporation, LLC, Rahi Systems, Rittal GmbH & Co., KG, Schneider Electric SE, SGI Corporation, Stulz GmbH, The Hewlett-Packard Company, Vertiv Co., and ZTE Corporation are some of the Key players in the industry. | <urn:uuid:ffc53a18-4bb0-4eb5-b644-189e0da1653e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.alltheresearch.com/press-release/modular-data-center-market-expected-to-grow-at-a-cagr-19-by-2027 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334644.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926020051-20220926050051-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.940489 | 890 | 2.796875 | 3 |
In case of data breaches, analysts and investigators need to dig into the dark web in search of their stolen data and to find the perpetrators. The dark web is used by threat actors to conduct their criminal activities with a minimal chance of being detected. They also hide their physical location, which makes it hard to determine the jurisdiction they reside in or operate in. All kinds of threat actors use the dark web, from terrorists and criminal organizations to lone wolves, hackers, and other threat actors. They use the anonymity of the dark web to plan and execute a multitude of criminal acts, including phishing and ransomware attacks, selling leaked and stolen credentials, espionage, extortion, human trafficking, money laundering, buying and selling drugs, and acts of terror.
But first, we must answer the question: what is the dark web? The dark web is part of the internet. The internet consists of millions of web pages, databases, and servers, all running 24/7. The part that most people use is the surface or open web. This part is only a small section of the internet; the majority of the internet is not visible. This part consists of the deep web (where content can only be accessed with authorization, such as bank accounts) and the dark web. The dark web is the part of the internet that few will ever see, let alone interact with. It consists of IP addresses that are routable, but not in use. Basically, it is a repository of hidden websites that can only be accessed with special software. There is a lot of dark web vs deep web misunderstanding. To clarify, the deep web refers to non-indexed pages only, while the dark web refers to pages that are both non-indexed and involved in illegal niches.
Now that we have defined what the dark web is, we must answer the next question: how to access the dark web. Standard search engines only work on the surface or open web since the content is indexed there by search engines. The answer is using dark web search engines to access the dark web. Since the dark web is not as safe as the surface web, analysts and investigators could be vulnerable to the scrutiny of the threat actors related to the investigation, once they have accessed the dark web to trace e.g., stolen data, suspicious cryptocurrency payments, and criminal activities.
To access the dark web safely, analysts and investigators need powerful tools to detect index hundreds of millions of web pages and other online content on the dark web to gain real-time intelligence. Only such an automated dark web tool can conduct a comprehensive and safe dark web search to collect and analyze huge volumes of public dark web data for actionable insights.
The automated dark web monitoring tool of Cobwebs searches and analyzes the dark web activities that are on the radar to gain real-time intelligence for acting upon and preventing threats to the community. Dark web monitoring is the process of searching for and keeping track of relevant information found on a portion of the internet not accessible via normal means. Dark web monitoring can e.g., identify mentions of threats to entities on dark websites and marketplaces, particularly any mentions which include compromised data being illegally shared or sold. Dark web monitoring services are therefore a great way to get actionable dark web threat intelligence by conducting a dark web scan.
The AI-powered automated dark web tool of Cobwebs answers three important questions that investigators and analysts have: how do you access the dark web, how to browse the dark web, and how to search the dark web.
With a dark web scanning service, they know how to get on the darkweb safely and anonymously. Dark web searching to e.g., get a dark web list is done quickly and efficiently, evening the playing field between law enforcement and threat actors. The dark web tool of Cobwebs, using artificial intelligence (AI) as well as machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) smart algorithms, can also recognize threat patterns stemming from the dark web by searching and analyzing large volumes of big data. The platform can also assist in identifying and reconstructing the real identities of virtual personalities on the dark web by extracting critical insights. It also allows analysts and investigators to gain situational awareness, get real-time alerts to prevent crime and other illicit activities by staying ahead of threat actors and criminal acts, and trace dark web footprints to find out what certain persons and groups are up to.
To conclude, dark web tools help investigators and analysts to get dark web access to identify threat actors, follow the cryptocurrency money trail, map connections between threat actors, their affiliates, and group members to solve and prevent crimes such as cyber threats. They are also useful for detecting and preventing insider threats since dark web monitoring software can scan for direct mentions of a specific organization or specific assets that could indicate a potential breach. As there is a lot at stake, a proactive dark web solution covers all the possible places where key data could wind up, and help businesses and governments stay one step ahead of the criminals. The AI-powered WEBINT platform of Cobwebs knows how to search on dark web to get the actionable data needed to detect and trace illicit activities. | <urn:uuid:ca439be7-fe6d-46f8-9074-d157282bd399> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cobwebs.com/dark-web-access-get-actionable-insights-into-illicit-activities/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337473.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004023206-20221004053206-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.925389 | 1,046 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Setting up a network that is reliable, convenient, and fast is not an easy task. You need to be extremely careful about how you are setting up the network and tread on these grounds with caution.
However, there are some cool tricks that can make you achieve your goals on your home or office network without making a mess of cables around your stations.
For most people, cables are a mess and they want to have a clean, minimalistic workstation. But some people want to have an ethernet connection for better performance of the internet on the PC.
Can I Plug An Ethernet Cable Into A WiFi Extender?
Yes, you can connect a Wi-Fi Extender with Ethernet cable for two applications. If you are using or looking to use a Wi-Fi extender and want to look for the compatibility of the extender with an ethernet cable. Here is how it works.
A Wi-Fi extender is a device that enhances the signal strength from your existing Wi-Fi router. The main difference between a booster and Wi-Fi extender is that a booster only improves the signal strength that would increase the geographical area covered by your Wi-Fi router.
But an extender on the other hand improves the speed and connectivity as well, by creating a Wi-Fi network of its own that is collaborating with your original Wi-Fi router.
It can be connected with your Wi-Fi router through different cables or through Wi-Fi connection itself, but it needs to be plugged into a power outlet. If you are looking to plug an Ethernet cable into a Wi-Fi extender, there are two concepts that you must be aware of.
Connecting the Extender with the router via Ethernet Cable
While the most optimal solution is to connect your Wi-Fi Extender with your original Wi-Fi router through Wi-Fi itself. It has some drawbacks as well that you don’t want to have on your network.
These include the low speed of the internet, occasional signal losses, connectivity errors, and more. Just be mindful that you are plugging the cable in an input port, and not the output port.
So, most of the Wi-Fi extenders have an ethernet port on them that works as an input port. What you need to do is, connect an ethernet cable to one of the output ports on your router and then connect that cable to the input port of your Wi-Fi extender.
This would improve the connection between both and you can enjoy a seamless browsing experience. This would work for you well if there is more difference between the router and extender and you are okay to have some wire laying around.
Connecting a device with Extender via Ethernet cable
If you are looking to improve the speed of connection for your Gaming PC, laptop, Smart TV or gaming console, you can connect it with an Ethernet cable as well.
There are multiple output ports on your extender that you can use for this purpose.
All you need to do is connect an Ethernet cable to one of these output ports on the Wi-Fi extender and connect the other end to your device. It would work totally fine, as these ports are designed for the same purpose. | <urn:uuid:fc2082da-605d-4866-b4ab-30a936750859> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://internet-access-guide.com/can-i-plug-an-ethernet-cable-into-a-wifi-extender/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337473.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004023206-20221004053206-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.944741 | 666 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Technology has driven global prosperity for centuries. Unfortunately, it has brought severe side effects. Some of today’s most pressing challenges have been partially caused by technology advances.
Consider three examples:
- CO2 emissions. The invention of the steam engine in the 18th century laid the ground for today’s fuel-powered motors and generators. These are causing man-made CO2 emissions, which are the likely cause of global warming.
- Water pollution. Numerous chemicals invented in the 19th and 20th centuries are responsible for the rise in water pollution levels.
- Poor mental health. With suicide rates at record levels and younger generations increasingly unhappy with life, recent studies indicate that the use of smartphones and similar devices is largely to blame for deteriorating mental health.
Using technology for the better
Over the last four decades, the world has witnessed an interesting new trend. Technologies have been invented and employed solely to make the world a better place. Entire industries have developed around clean energy such as wind and solar. In 2013, wind energy in the US avoided the use of an estimated 95.6 million tons of CO2 – the equivalent of 16.9 million cars on the road – estimates The American Wind Energy Association.
Nowadays, entire organizations exist aiming to make the world a better place. American car manufacturer Tesla’s main mission is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”. Its founder Elon Musk emphasises that CO2 reduction is a key goal. He has built a loyal workforce excited to join his mission. Although other firms may be less bold in embracing sustainability, it has become common practice to create a Chief Sustainability Officer role, or to audit suppliers based on sustainability guidelines.
Streamlining global efforts until 2030
In September 2015, the UN General Assembly’s 194 countries adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. It includes 17 sustainable development goals, which member countries can use to measure progress.
In this context, the vision of the World Economic Forum’s Digital Economy and Society System Initiative is ensuring our digital future is inclusive, trustworthy and sustainable too. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a key focus. It is one of the three most impactful technological advancements we will see before 2030, according to McKinsey. By 2025, the IoT’s economic impact will be around $11.1 trillion – 14% of today’s global GDP – the firm projects.
Looking beyond the IoT’s economic impact, the Forum is researching its effect on society and on the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Here are two results from this research, followed by an example case.
Result 1: The Internet of Things could be a game-changer for sustainability
Most current IoT projects can contribute to achieving both the SDGs and the UN’s 2030 mission. An analysis of more than 640 IoT deployments, conducted in a collaboration between IoT Analytics and the World Economic Forum, showed that 84% of existing IoT deployments can address the SDGs.
Interestingly, 75% of these projects concentrate on five SDGs:
#9 Industry, innovation, and infrastructure (25%)
#11 Smart cities and communities (19%)
#7 Affordable and clean energy (19%)
#3 Good health and well-being (7%)
#12 Responsible production and consumption (5%)
Why is the impact of IoT so large? At its core, IoT is about measuring and remotely controlling previously unconnected “things”. It reaches people and objects that older technology could not.
Examples include a remote water-monitoring solution that ensures clean water in regions with an indigenous population, and smart lighting initiatives in Chinese cities that halve total power output.
Result 2: Scaling current success stories is a key challenge
Of the analysed IoT deployments, 95% are small or medium scale. Only a very small portion are large or macro-sized.
Why are most projects so small? The IoT market is still in its infancy. The reasons why projects haven’t yet scaled to a large size – defined as affecting at least one million people, involving several industries and being rolled out across a continent – are various.
On the technical front, interoperability challenges with equipment slow down scalability, as do different IT back-ends. On the commercial front, the budgets for sustainable IoT implementations are currently extremely limited, because they mostly come from company funds related to “innovation and digital projects”. It will be some time before mainstream business P&L budgets – which are substantially larger – can convert these small implementations into large-scale deployments.
Example: An IoT for sustainable development project
The Smart Green Infrastructure Monitoring project in Chicago helps reduce urban flooding and prevents property damage, using better informed capital planning for infrastructure investments. It was developed by City Digital in Chicago.
It has a fairly high IoT sustainability impact due to its clear focus on vulnerable groups and its scalability. The project was scored against 5 KPIs: scale of projects; SDG target penetration; influence on SDG targets; scalability and replicability potential; and focus on vulnerable groups. The results and other inspiring case studies can be found at http:/wef.ch/IoT4D.
Capitalizing on the opportunities: Where to go from here?
IoT projects which main priority is to address sustainable development challenges are crucial, but an even greater impact could be achieved by prioritizing sustainability goals within commercially driven projects. A significant number of the executives we interviewed leading these projects don’t necessarily see a direct link between their projects and sustainable development goals. However, 84% of IoT deployments – 70% of which were driven by the private sector – are addressing the SDGs, the research showed.
Additionally, 75% of these concentrate on the five goals that correspond to some of the most profitable industry applications. This suggests that these projects’ significant impact on sustainability is almost unintended, or at least not their main driver.
Takeaways for stakeholders designing IoT deployments
Embracing a sustainability awareness culture is essential. Not only to maximize sustainability impact, but to build on commercial opportunities. Of the projects analysed, 95% are small or medium in scale. A significant number of them are successful, at least in the five areas of highest concentration within some of the most commercially viable industries. This presents an opportunity to scale up some of these projects to a large or macro size.
Identifying sustainability goals and adopting an impact measurement framework will reveal opportunities for replicating successful solutions across untapped areas.
There are fewer IoT deployments focusing on SDGs like SDG 2 “zero hunger”, SDG 4 “education”, SDG 15 “life on land” or SDG14 “life below water”, according to the research. Some successful IoT deployments which focus on the top five SDGs could be replicated to deliver social impact in areas with fewer concentration of IoT solutions. This would generate new business opportunities.
We need to foster a new mentality in IoT stakeholders, and particularly within the private sector, which prioritizes sustainability goals as part of commercial project design. Sustainability is not only the prerogative of CSR departments. It is an essential pillar of business, investment and cooperation. It maximizes social impact while still delivering – and potentially increasing – commercial value.
For more information on the IoT sustainability initiative, please visit the interactive research page.
Building on the research results. To accelerate the adoption of sustainable IoT, the Forum has published a set of IoT Guidelines for Sustainability that will be discussed at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2018 in Davos, 23-26 January. These address some of the most pressing issues today, including collaboration models, infrastructure investments and innovative business models.
This article was written by:
Rodrigo Arias, Content Lead, Technology, Media & Digital Industry, Global Leadership Fellow, World Economic Forum LLC
Knud Lasse Lueth, CEO, IoT Analytics
Abhay Rastogi, VP Strategy, Business Development & Partnerships, IoT Analytics | <urn:uuid:42a2c309-385f-4d5a-a469-1c5956221e5c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://iot-analytics.com/effect-iot-sustainability/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337473.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004023206-20221004053206-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.932639 | 1,665 | 3.5 | 4 |
Phishing is a common attack used by criminals to obtain sensitive information, such as login credentials and payment details, from users. It happens when an attacker, posing as a trusted source, tricks a victim into clicking on a malicious link or downloading a spam file sent via email, text messages, phone calls or social media. Unfortunately, phishing is becoming more frequent. If you fall into this trap, you could end up with malware, system slowdowns, sensitive data loss or worse.
Phishing attacks can be severely damaging for small and medium businesses resulting in severe financial losses as well as a loss of market share, reputation and stakeholder trust. Unfortunately, the attack vector is becoming more sophisticated and frequent with each passing day.
Why phishing attacks are becoming more frequent
Over the last year and a half, a significant number of organizations had to transition to remote/hybrid work models. While the switch allowed operations to continue without interruption, the scattered workforce and mobile endpoints brought their own set of challenges. One of the main problems was vulnerabilities becoming more visible to hackers, who quickly exploited them through phishing attacks.
Many businesses, in an effort to stay afloat amid the global crisis, completely disregarded cybersecurity. This included decreased spending on security posture, a lack of employee training and much more. Such mistakes opened the door for cybercriminals.
Constantly evolving attacks
Keep in mind that hackers constantly strive to uncover and exploit even the tiniest flaws in your business. They're constantly shifting their strategy, so you're practically defending against a moving attacker.
Threat actors have recently targeted businesses via the website contact form, pretending to be legal authorities, saying that the company is not complying with the law and asking the organization to download a "report."
Cheap phishing tools
Several low-cost phishing tools are available on the dark web, allowing even non-technical people to become hackers.
How can businesses stay safe?
To avoid falling victim to phishing, all small and midsize businesses (SMBs) must be constantly vigilant. To keep your business safe, you must:
- Facilitate regular security awareness training to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that employees strictly adhere to relevant security requirements.
- Ensure that your IT infrastructure is up to date so that hackers cannot exploit unpatched/non-updated systems
- Enforce strong password policies and create a system that prohibits anyone from evading them.
- Try and isolate vital infrastructure components as much as possible, so that everything doesn't collapse like a house of cards after a breach.
- Conduct mock phishing drills to get data on your employees' degree of alertness.
- Deploy an automated phishing detection solution that is powered by artificial intelligence.
Trying to guard against phishing on your own takes a lot of effort and resources, especially if you're running a business. Collaborating with an expert like us relieves you of additional concern and responsibility. Contact us today to set up a consultation and we'll handle the heavy lifting for you.
Furthermore, a technology audit can inform you if any of your IT components have risks that must be mitigated quickly. To help you through the process, we have created an infographic titled "Why Annual Technology Audits Are Essential." Click here to view. | <urn:uuid:8157c60e-22db-42a7-b209-9e15ee15de69> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.mis-solutions.com/2022/06/4-reasons-phishing-is-becoming-more-frequent/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337473.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004023206-20221004053206-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.953343 | 686 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model for networking outlines the various layers where load balancing can be performed. Ostensibly, these are Layer 7 (Application) and Layer 4 (Transport) as shown in Figure 1 below.
A Layer 7 load balancer operates at the highest level applicable and provides for deeper context on the Application Layer protocols such as HTTP. Operating at the Application Layer, a Layer 7 Load Balancer can use this additional application awareness to make more complex and informed load balancing decisions based on the content of the message, to apply optimizations and changes to the content (such as HTTP header manipulation, compression and encryption) and ensure reliability and availability by monitoring the health of applications.
As shown in the OSI Model, Load Balancing at the Application Layer (Layer 7) is this highest level applicable and provides for deeper context on the Application Layer protocols such as HTTP. Operating at the Application Layer, a Layer 7 Load Balancer can use this additional application awareness to make more complex and informed load balancing decisions based on the content of the message, to apply optimizations and changes to the content (such as HTTP header manipulation, compression and encryption) and ensure reliability and availability by monitoring the health of applications.
A Layer 7 Load Balancer is also referred to as a reverse proxy.
Layer 4 load balancers operate at the Transport layer e.g. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Typically, the routing decisions at Layer 4 are based on source/ destination IP / Port without further packet inspection. A Layer 4 load balancer is not inspecting the message contents and unable to provide smarter application layer routing decisions and to apply optimizations and change the message content.
Learn more about Layer 4 load balancing.
Whilst we refer to Layer 7 Load Balancing for ease-of-reference, HTTP combines functions from OSI Layers 5, 6 and 7; which the Kemp Technologies Layer 7 Load Balancer leverages for enhanced functionality.
Requests received by the Load Balancer are typically distributed to an application based on a configured algorithm. Kemp Technologies provides the following load balancing algorithms:
Learn more about load balancing algorithms.
Persistence enables all request from an individual client to be sent to the same server to that application context can be maintained. Persistence is also referred to as “affinity”, “server affinity” or “server sticky”.
Kemp Technologies provides the following persistence methods:
Context switching allows the Load Balancer to direct traffic based on the content and context of the information in the request from the client.
Content Rewriting allows the Load Balancer to rewrite client requests and replies to support use cases on hiding internal URLs and supporting applications with hardcoded URLs.
Layer 7 Load Balancers provide the ability to terminate SSL traffic. Handling SSL/TLS encryption for network packets is a resource intensive task. Doing this on the web servers and application servers that are there to serve client requests puts an additional overhead on servers that should be optimized for content delivery.
Kemp Technologies provides the following features:
Health checking has evolved as a means for the Load Balancer to query the application server and application to determine that it is working correctly and available to receive traffic. The load balancing algorithm respects the results of the health check and only sends requests to application servers and applications that are available and can respond in a timely manner.
Due to its logical position on the network, a Layer 7 Load Balancer inspects all the Layer 4 and Layer 7 traffic flowing to and from websites and application servers. All this activity is recorded in the logs to aid monitoring and tracing with respect to networking information. These can be passed to dedicated monitoring tools for analysis, and any suspicious activity can be identified. Best practice says that the logs should be sent off from the network device that collects them and analyzed remotely.
Looking at an example, a user visits an online store with a virtual shopping cart. The online store is served by several application servers serving the content e.g. images of the items for sale and the virtual shopping cart. As the user browses the online store and puts items into the virtual shopping cart, the Layer 7 load balancer provides content rules to maximize public facing resources to local resources on the application server optimized for images, caching and compression of the image files to ease network congestion and persistence for the virtual shopping cart so that the user does not lose their purchases.
Kemp LoadMaster is an advanced and award winning Layer 4- 7 load balancer offering high performance hardware/virtual/cloud and bare metal options to suit customer needs and includes core functions like Server and Application health monitoring, SSL acceleration with FIPS 140-2 support, Caching/Compression, TCP Multiplexing, an automation-enabled API and more.
To gain an even greater level of understanding about layer 7, why not deploy a trial license today and configure layer 7 virtual services. | <urn:uuid:0f69bf93-858f-443a-9d0a-2b7d70c6100e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://kemptechnologies.com/es/load-balancer/layer-7-load-balancing | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337625.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005105356-20221005135356-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.893232 | 1,005 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Introduction to laptop security
Laptops are a staple of modern organizations. They’re an essential tool for businesses and workers, and they’re a great way to stay connected. But they also represent one of the greatest security risks that businesses and employees face.
Why are laptops such a big security risk?
The main reason that laptops are such a big security risk is that they can be easily compromised. A typical laptop has many different ways it can be hacked into:
They often have vulnerabilities in their operating systems or software (like Windows). They often use default passwords that can be easily guessed by hackers. They often have ports which allow remote access to the internet via USB or Bluetooth connections (in order to connect other devices). And they often have apps downloaded onto them which allow hackers to access sensitive data stored on them (like email accounts, passwords etc).
The top 5 security threats laptops present in the enterprise:
1 – Phishing Attacks
A phishing attack is an attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details (and sometimes indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. An email that appears to be from a known or trusted source but is actually from an unknown or untrusted source is known as “spear phishing”.
2 – Hacking Attempts
A hacking attempt is any activity that attempts to gain unauthorized access to a computer system. Laptops, which are often used outside of the office, are a prime target for hackers. They’re more vulnerable because they’re portable and tend to contain sensitive information.
3 – Insider Threats
An insider threat is any person who has been granted access to an organization’s resources and intentionally uses those resources for malicious purposes. This can include employees, contractors, suppliers, customers or anyone with authorized access to a business’s network.
4 – Theft or Loss
Theft or loss of laptops can cause significant damage to your company because it contains sensitive and confidential information that should not be accessible by unauthorized persons. In addition, there may be legal implications if the laptop was stolen from an employee’s home and you did not have appropriate security measures in place.
5 – Network Perimeter and Endpoint Security
The first layer of protection is network perimeter security (NPS). This could be something like a firewall or VPN. It should help prevent unauthorized access to your data and prevent attacks like phishing attempts or man-in-the-middle attacks where someone intercepts data as it travels between two systems.
Endpoint security (ENS) is software that runs on your device to protect against malware, viruses and other threats. For example, most antivirus products offer ENS features that scan files before they’re opened or sent out over the internet in order to block malicious programs from entering your system. A good ENS product will also monitor your computer’s memory for suspicious activity and alert you if anything unusual happens with your computer’s processes or files (such as when a hacker tries to install malware onto your machine).
Even post-COVID many workers are not returning to company offices. In the U.S., 59% of employees working from home during the pandemic say they prefer to work remotely. Some companies have already announced they are switching to a permanent remote workforce, making adequate network perimeter and endpoint security critical moving forward.
The Solution: Unified Endpoint Management
Tame your unmanaged devices
Unmanaged devices are a major security risk that can lead to costly data breaches and productivity loss. brightfin helps you gain visibility into all your corporate devices, whether they’re on-premises or mobile.
Securely deploy new devices with ease
Deploying new laptops is a time-consuming process that involves manual steps like creating accounts, installing software and configuring settings. Automate this process with a unified endpoint management (UEM) solution that simplifies the setup process for new devices and enables you to deploy them across multiple platforms.
Stay up-to-date with patches & OS upgrades
It’s important to update your OS regularly to ensure you have the latest security patches installed and that your company is protected from hackers who may be targeting known vulnerabilities within a particular software version. A UEM solution makes it easy for admins to quickly check which patches need to be installed across their entire fleet of laptops, desktops and tablets so they don’t miss critical updates due to lack of time or resources necessary for manual tracking. | <urn:uuid:a21720ae-e35a-4889-bab8-978878728f55> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.brightfin.com/resources/top-5-laptop-security-threats-for-your-enterprise/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337625.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005105356-20221005135356-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.940656 | 935 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Read time: 6 minutes, 25 sec
What is Data Loss Prevention?
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a solution for exposing sensitive data. DLP is used by organisations to safeguard and protect data as well as to adhere to legislation. Through their network, businesses transmit sensitive data to partners, clients, remote workers, and other authorised users, but occasionally an unauthorised user may be able to intercept it.
Why your organization needs data loss prevention?
A “borderless” network perimeter with numerous attack vectors has been produced by today’s digital transformation, which started with mobile devices and continued with embedded systems, social media applications, hypervisors, and the proliferation of connected devices.
Organizations need to make sure that their most sensitive data and assets are secured in order to adapt to this technological transformation. When implemented correctly, DLP offers visibility, granular control, and data security coverage to defend against human error-related data loss and external threats. The creation of a thorough data loss prevention strategy shouldn’t be put off; it may assist your business in safeguarding its “crown jewels,” ensuring compliance with the changing regulatory environment, and preventing the publication of the next data breach story.
You don’t know where the private information of your business is kept, where it is sent, or who is accessing it.
DLP technology gives IT and security employees a complete picture of where data is located, how it moves through the organisation, and how it is being used. It lets you to protect and maintain control over sensitive data, such as customer information, personally identifiable information (PII), financial information, and intellectual property. It does this by comparing network actions to your organization’s security regulations. Your firm will be able to develop the right rules to safeguard this data and decide which assets need to be protected and at what cost after having a complete grasp of this data.
Although your business has a plan in place to guard against external intrusion, it does not cover employee theft or the unintentional disclosure of sensitive data by partners and employees.
Data loss may not always occur as a result of outside, hostile attacks. One important factor is internal employees accidentally disclosing or improperly handling confidential information. In 28 percent of the attacks, insiders were involved, according to Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report. It can be particularly challenging to protect against insider threats because it’s difficult to tell when someone is abusing their rightful access to data. DLP has the ability to identify confidential information-containing files and stop them from leaving the network. It has the ability to implement policies that protect data on an as-needed basis and can stop sensitive data transfers to USB devices and other removable media.
For instance, access to a particular endpoint may be immediately barred in the event that a security event is discovered. In response to occurrences, policies may also quarantine or encrypt data
The responsibility, adverse exposure, penalties, and lost revenue linked to data breaches worry you.
Alarmingly frequently, data breaches have been in the news. Through fines, negative publicity, the loss of important clients, and legal action, they can wreak financial havoc on an organisation. The mean time to identify (MTTI) breaches have reportedly reached an average of 191 days, which equates to nearly six months of dwell time for attackers, according to the Ponemon Institute’s 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study. Lateral movement is made possible by dwell time, which is essential for boosting hackers’ chances of success.
You’re worried about your next audit and wish to continue adhering to the intricate laws.
Regulations like the GDPR and New York Cybersecurity Every regulated firm that collects, stores, and utilises sensitive customer data must raise the bar to meet new standards as a result of requirements, which are ushering in a new era of accountability. Failure to comply with regulations may result in fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover and orders to stop processing. Controls over technology are becoming important in some instances to achieve compliance. These controls are offered by DLP, together with policy templates and maps that cover certain requirements, streamline compliance, and permit the gathering and reporting of metrics.
Data must be safeguarded from security risks brought on by BYOD and IoT.
DLP assists in preventing the unintentional disclosure of sensitive data across all devices when used in conjunction with complementing safeguards. DLP can monitor data and dramatically lower the risk of data loss wherever it resides, whether it is in use, at rest in storage, or in transit over the network.
Types of DLP Solutions
An company might lose data in a number of ways. The numerous methods that sensitive data may be removed from an organisation should be able to be recognised by the DLP solution. The various DLP solution types include:
Data on the network’s devices is monitored by an endpoint DLP solution. To monitor and safeguard the data stored on endpoints such as laptops, servers, smartphones, printers, etc., this solution is installed. Even when the endpoint is online or linked to a public network, endpoint DLP safeguards the data on such endpoints. Additionally, this method stops sensitive data from being transferred to USBs
This DLP system is put into place on the network and keeps track of data transfer. Any device linked to the network may monitor, safeguard, and prevent all incoming and outgoing data. All of the network-connected devices can be subject to the DLP policies. Data on offline devices cannot be protected by this solution; it can only secure data on devices that are connected to the network.
The email DLP system keeps track of emails and filters them based on particular keywords. This remedy can lessen email-based data leaks.
A cloud DLP solution keeps an eye on and safeguards the data kept in the cloud. Emails, documents, and other forms of files may all be protected and monitored with the service.
Techniques needed for your data loss prevention
- Determine the primary data protection objective in order to determine the appropriate DLP solution for the organization.
- Implement a centralised DLP programme and collaborate with various departments and business units to define standard DLP rules that control data for the organisation. Data visibility will rise as a result throughout the organisation.
- Make an evaluation of the different forms of data and their importance to the company. Determine the type of data, whether it is sensitive, and where it is stored. Consider the data exit points. Then assess the danger of each type of data being compromised to the organisation.
- Make a method for classifying data that includes both structured and unstructured information. Internal, private, public, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, and other types of data may exist.
- Create policies for data processing and correction for various sorts of data. DLP software comes with pre-configured rules based on laws like GDPR and HIPAA. These guidelines can be altered to suit the requirements of the company. Create controls to lower the danger to the data. To lessen the unique data risks, organisations should build granular, fine-tuned controls.
- Employee education can lower the possibility of insiders accidentally leaking data. A good data loss prevention programme depends heavily on employee knowledge and comprehension of security standards. Employee understanding and adherence to data security policies and best practises can be improved with the support of awareness campaigns and trainings such as posters, emails, online trainings, and seminars.
- Utilize indicators like the number of events, the mean time to incident response, and the proportion of false positives to gauge how effective your DLP system is.
A company’s security depends heavily on having the right cyber security platforms and solutions in place. Any firm can utilise DLP to stay ahead of threat actors, whether they are internal or external. Any business, especially banks and healthcare companies, must prioritise protecting sensitive consumer and corporate data. At Encryption Consulting, we place the utmost importance on cyber security. We work with organizations to create the most secure environment possible using methods such as DLP, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and encryption assessments. We provide assessment, implementation, and development services for PKI, encryption, and Hardware Security Modules (HSMs). If you have any questions, visit our website at www.encryptionconsulting.com. | <urn:uuid:1110cd07-fcb8-462f-afe5-ac01a6de55cc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.encryptionconsulting.com/author/kirtan/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335034.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927131111-20220927161111-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.926854 | 1,736 | 2.875 | 3 |
PALO ALTO, Calif. – How many times have you printed out a document on a
sheet of paper, used it once, and tossed it out? According to Xerox’s Palo
Alto Research Center (PARC), 44.5 percent of the time that’s exactly the
fate of a printed page. Print out something like directions or a memo for quick reference and then it’s off to the recycling bin.
Paper is often used for all of a few minutes and tossed out. That’s a waste of more than just the paper, but the power used to create it. It takes 204,000 joules of power to create a new sheet of paper and 114,000 joules to recycle one.
So what if you didn’t have to make new pages but could reuse the old
ones? To reduce that waste, PARC has among its many projects a reusable
paper where the printout fades away after 24 hours, allowing it to be
The demo was part of a number of technologies on display here at the
vaunted Palo Alto Research Center which has historically produced numerous breakthroughs in computer graphics, user interface, networking and other technologies.
P>In the case of the erasable paper, Xerox partnered with Xerox Research
Centre of Canada to create a paper that can be reused again and again, until
it rips, that is. The concept, as Eric Shrader, area manager for PARC’s
hardware systems laboratory described it, is similar to photoreactive
glasses that automatically darken when you go outdoors into the sun.
The paper itself is standard paper that can be recycled and will only
cost around two or three times the normal price of paper –- or about two to three cents per page instead of a penny. | <urn:uuid:8f4581b4-5286-4613-89b2-b3c70e969328> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.datamation.com/erp/do-we-need-reusable-paper/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335286.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928212030-20220929002030-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.926915 | 388 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Who Invented the Computer? Kubrick, Clarke, and HAL 9000
Who Invented the Computer? This is the twenty-seventh installment in our ongoing series.
Computers have been appearing on the silver screen for almost a century. Beginning in the 1930s and throughout the 40s, Paramount Studios played newsreels from Popular Science magazine before their feature films. These five-minute shorts contained reports of scientific advances including atomic power, radar, and computers.
The first movie to actually feature a computer in a major role was Desk Set in 1957. This romcom starred Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as co-workers who eventually realize their love for each other despite of Tracy's infatuation with his latest (and greatest) invention, the EMERAC computer.
As the idea of powerful electronic brains spread throughout the world, computers soon played essential roles in numerous Hollywood plots. The more memorable of these films include 1961's The Honeymoon Machine, in which Steve McQueen and fellow shipmates secretly employ a powerful naval computer to win big bucks at roulette. There was also the French new wave science fiction neo-noir film, Alphaville (1965), and the 1967 espionage thriller Billion Dollar Brain starring Michael Caine.
Computers would continue appearing in films and television shows, but it wasn't until 1968 that a computer was given a starring role. In filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey — developed simultaneously as a screenplay and a novel by Kubrick and British author Arthur C. Clarke — the computer HAL 9000 is a principal protagonist. To this day, HAL remains the most famous computer in cinematic history.
A Star Is Born
2001 has grown to be a fan favorite of almost everyone who is interested in science fiction or computers, with most having watched it multiple times. In creating his masterpiece, Kubrick spared no expense, employing his innovative style of cinematography along with extensively intricate models of various spacecraft and locations along with cutting-edge special effects of astronauts floating weightless in space and inside the ship.
He even had a 27-ton ferris wheel built for shots of the crew exercising inside of the ship. To create the illusion of running on a rotating ship, Kubrick secured pieces of equipment inside the wheel and had the actors jog in place as the wheel rotated beneath them.
A hallmark of Kubrick films was presenting characters and circumstances in a manner that caused audiences to ponder existential questions of morality, technology, and of course, the future of the human race. In 2001, he brought all three questions to the forefront by highlighting the concept of artificial intelligence ("AI") that eventually learns more than the humans who created it.
HAL is the sentient onboard computer for Discovery One, a spaceship travelling on a classified mission to Jupiter. HAL controls the ship and is responsible for detecting potential equipment malfunctions before they happen and alerting the crew to needed repairs. At one point in the journey, HAL begins acting in a manner that causes the two-man crew to suspect something is wrong with its (his?) programming.
Growing increasingly concerned over HAL's decision making, the two astronauts climb into one of the ship's transportation modules to prevent HAL from overhearing their discussion. In one of the film's most chilling scenes, the crew decide that HAL must be turned off by disconnecting it from the ship's power source.
While HAL can't overhear the discussion, however, one of his cameras is able to view the men's faces. And unbeknownst to the humans, HAL has developed the ability to read lips — and begins planning to protect itself and the mission by killing the crew.
Although 2001 eventually became famous, its original reviews were wildly mixed ranging from Hollywood heavyweight Rock Hudson who walked out early saying, "What is this bulls--t?" to "It succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale" from film critic Robert Ebert.
What Did We Learn?
While the final scene of the movie has caused many a debate the film's exact meaning, Kubrick was satisfied that he achieved his main goal of introducing the concept of artificial intelligence to the public. Fascinated at the increased usage and advancements of computers in our modern world, Kubrick wanted audiences who saw 2001 to ponder what life would be like living with computers that had become self-aware, a reality he saw as inevitable.
As he explained in an interview given upon the film's release, "We were trying to convey ... the reality of a world populated — as ours soon will be — by machine entities who have as much, or more intelligence as human beings, and who have the same emotional potentialities in their personalities as human beings."
Whether they intended to or not, Kubrick and Clarke opened the door to the trope of sentient computers attempting to destroy mankind, a disturbing possibility that has inarguably, if largely subconsciously, informed the broadly adversarial view that many people have of computer technology in general. Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy and thus far the rampages of malicious computer programs have been wholly confined to the realm of science fiction and comic books.
There is, however, increasing concern from prominent individuals like Elon Musk and Bill Gates about the possibility of a computer program going full Skynet. (That is to say, precipitating a nuclear holocaust as the opening salvo in a war to eliminate humankind. The reference is the James Cameron's 1984 film The Terminator.) This may be a timely concern, as worldwide spending on AI research and development projects exceeded $20 billion in 2021 and is expected to continue increasing for the foreseeable future.
HAL may have been a fictional computer, but it occupies a central position in the recollection of movie goers. So much so that, whenever the movie is brought up in discussion, HAL is almost always the first aspect of the film that comes to mind. Few even remember the names of the astronauts — and if they do recollect that one of them was named Dave, then it's only because of HAL saying, "Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye." (HAL's preternaturally calm, mellifluous voice was supplied by Canadian stage actor Douglas Rain, who later narrated the documentary film The Man Who Skied Down Everest.)
Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke may not have invented a real computer. But they certainly did invent a memorable one.
What's In a Name?
An interesting postscript to the story of HAL 9000 concerns the thinking computer's benign-sounding (at least initially) nickname. Clarke explained that the name is a loosely formulated acronym derived from the the descriptive phrase "heuristically programmed algorithmic computer" by taking the leading H and the AL from "algorithmic."
Following the film's release, fans took note that the letters in HAL are, alphabetically, one letter removed from those in IBM, which consulted on the film. An intentional insult? Not so, according to Clarke, who later apologized for the perception that he and Kubrick had made the name of their computer a satiric dig at the "estimable institution" that had partnered in their creative venture.
In the nonfiction companion book The Lost Worlds of 2001, Clarke wrote: "As it happened, IBM had given us a good deal of help, so we were quite embarrassed by this, and would have changed the name had we spotted the coincidence." (IBM corporate logos appear in various spots in the film, and the company ultimately did not object to being closely associated with a cinematic story featuring a murderous computer.) | <urn:uuid:1866a21c-c65b-479e-810b-d050e5ae5333> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.gocertify.com/articles/who-invented-the-computer-kubrick-clarke-and-hal-9000 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335444.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930051717-20220930081717-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.966049 | 1,524 | 3.75 | 4 |
Mar 25 2020
As more applications generate massive amounts of data — think IoT, AI, analytics — the time taken to transfer, analyze and process that data is becoming a significant factor, slowing storage networks and systems. Computational storage is a way to update storage architectures and strip out latency, making the storage-compute process more efficient.
This emerging technology provides a new generation of devices that pairs SSDs with compute capabilities, bringing the compute closer to where all that overwhelming data originates. Much of this data isn’t vital to the functioning of the business or needed with any urgency. With compute capabilities closer to the sources of that data, it can be preprocessed and sorted, so only the valuable data is sent over the network for further analysis or processing.
As Salil Raje, executive vice president and general manager of Xilinx’s Data Center Group, said in a presentation at 2019 Flash Memory Summit, with computational storage, “you work on the data in the inner loop of the SSD, improving latency and performance for all the lower-level functions so the high-level functions can be done in the CPUs.” The CPUs are freed up to handle the most important data.
The bottom line: This storage technology facilitates parallel computing, reduces network traffic and mitigates other constraints on compute, I/O, memory and storage. And it’s coming to enterprise storage systems soon.
What follows is the computational storage terminology you’ll need to know to understand computational storage and how it works before it becomes part of your work life.
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines a computational storage array (CSA) as a device that combines computational storage devices, such as computational storage drives (CSDs) and computational storage processors (CSPs), with other optional storage devices and control software. In these arrays, the field programmable gate array (FPGA) acts as an accelerator, sitting in between the CPU and the SSD arrays. These arrays can use any vendors’ SSD, and the accelerators and SSDs can scale independently. Bandwidth can be optimized between the accelerator and the SSDs.
A CSD is a device that has an FPGA or an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) embedded in an SSD to act as an accelerator. CSDs provide compute services and persistent data storage, such as NAND flash. The number of FPGAs or ASICs in a CSD can scale with the number of SSDs; as capacity is added, accelerators are also added. There is a dedicated link between the SSD and accelerator, which enables the optimization of bandwidth between the accelerator and flash storage. This approach provides much higher bandwidth than is traditionally available to SSDs. CSDs can be customized for specific workloads.
NGD Systems’ Newport U.2 computational storage drive.
A CSP provides compute services to a storage system but doesn’t provide persistent data storage. In a CSP, the accelerator and storage are on the same PCIe subsystem. The drive used as the accelerator plugs into the standard SSD slot and communicates with the SSDs over the PCIe subsystem using PCIe peer-to-peer transfers. This setup also provides high bandwidth. CSPs use vendor-independent SSDs.
A computational storage service (CSS) refers to a compute task or service that a CSD, CSP or CSA provides. According to SNIA, a CSS can be a fixed storage service that provides a specific function, such as compression, RAID, erasure coding or encryption. A CSS can also be programed to provide multiple services, such as an OS image, a container, a Berkeley packet filter or an FPGA bitstream.
Computing at the edge involves distributed technology that makes it possible to process data close to where it originates and is collected at the network periphery. Mobile devices were the original driver behind edge computing’s development; the proliferation of IoT sensors and devices has made it an even more critical element of IT infrastructure.
Edge computing has a variety of architectures. Time-sensitive data at the edge can be processed where the data originates, using an intelligent device. Or data can be sent to a nearby server for initial processing. With the massive amounts of data generated by IoT devices, it makes sense to use edge computing and computational storage to do initial processing at the edge and send only the most valuable data to the central data center. This approach conserves network resources and reduces response times.
Computational storage facilitates parallel computing, reduces network traffic and mitigates other constraints on compute, I/O, memory and storage. And it’s coming to enterprise storage systems soon.
An edge device is any piece of hardware that controls data flow at the network periphery or at the point where two networks meet. These devices usually serve as network entry and exit points, and they provide functions such as transmission, routing, processing, monitoring, filtering and storage. Examples of edge devices include edge routers, routing switches, firewalls, as well as IoT sensors, actuators and gateways.
Storage at the edge involves devices, such as CSDs, used to capture and store data at the network’s edge and close to the originating source. Early examples of edge storage were storage devices in remote offices and DAS for laptops used in the field. Automating backups was the primary concern of early edge storage administrators.
Today, edge storage is all about what to do with all the data coming from IoT devices, how to deal with limited connectivity to some IoT devices and where to put the raw data that must be archived. As the volume of data generated from IoT devices and other applications explodes, organizations use computational storage methodologies and tools to sort data close to where it originates and send it to where it makes the most sense for next-step processing or storage.
Hyperscale computing is an approach used in data centers that handle massive amounts of data and have changing demand for IT resources. Distributed, flexible infrastructure is used to quickly respond to an increase in demand for computing resources without adding latency or requiring additional space and power resources. Hyperscale computing and computational storage are connected, because hyperscale computing requires the ability to scale storage independently from compute. This storage-compute independence provides the flexibility hyperscale data centers need to quickly respond to changing data storage demands.
Computational storage devices take the unique approach of using multicore processors, which can index data as it enters a storage device. Multicore processors can screen for specific entries, an approach that can be helpful with AI and other more advanced applications.
As more data is collected at the network edge from IoT sensors and devices, the interface between the storage controller and the storage bus has become a chokepoint. Computational storage solves this problem. With compute capabilities placed directly on the storage device, data can be processed or analyzed where it resides in real time and only a subset is moved to the host.
SNIA established the Computational Storage Technical Working Group in November 2018 to facilitate the use of this new technology in application environments. The working group was charged with creating standards to enable the interoperability of these new devices and defining interface standards and protocols for system deployment, provisioning, management and security. As of December 2019, the group released a draft of its Computational Storage Architecture and Programming Model for public comment. SNIA also has a Computational Storage Special Interest Group that highlights the technical working group’s work. | <urn:uuid:48f2ef01-31f4-4353-ac25-3066bab9ec84> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ngdsystems.com/nvme-computational-storage-terminology-explained/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337889.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006222634-20221007012634-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.909661 | 1,531 | 2.875 | 3 |
IoT devices are being incorporated more and more into smart factories. IoT devices are endpoints that have a unique IP address and that can connect to the Internet; they are expected to be used for various purposes not only in development but also in production environments, in combination with original programs developed in-house as well as other physical devices.
There are various brands of IIoT devices on the market, such as Arduino Industrial 101, Industrial Shields, Industrino, and Iono Arduino. Notably, Arduino now offers a Pro line especially for industry. Also, customizable small single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi are becoming more popular because of their flexibility and cost efficiency.
Source: Trend Micro
Related story: Forward-looking security analysis of smart factories [Part 2] Security risks of industrial application stores
Related story: Factory Security Problems from an IT Perspective (Part 3): Practical approach for stable operation | <urn:uuid:83c47416-1fd7-485c-b546-8f17913bec3c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cybersecurity-review.com/news-june-2020/forward-looking-security-analysis-of-smart-factories-part-3-trojanized-libraries-for-industrial-iot-devices/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337889.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006222634-20221007012634-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.951956 | 188 | 2.609375 | 3 |
One aspect of this complexity is where privacy fits in with disinformation—false or misleading information spread intentionally to confuse or manipulate people. Disinformation is also called bad information, “weaponized information” and “fake news”.
Disinformation is different from misinformation—false or misleading information spread unwittingly—but the two together have eroded trust in information to the point we’re in an “information crisis”. (The WHO characterizes the spread of mis and disinformation and the mistrust in information about COVID-19 as an “infodemic”.)
Since our remit is protecting information privacy, we were interested to hear how Julia Angwin, award-winning investigative journalist, editor-in-chief of The Markup and author of Dragnet Nation, linked privacy to disinformation in a recent podcast with Aspen Digital‘s Executive Director Vivian Schiller. The episode is part of the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Digital’s Disinfo Discussions, an initiative of the Institute’s new Commissioner of Information Disorder exploring disinformation and misinformation in the information crisis.
Angwin links privacy to disinformation in two ways
1. Lack of privacy generates disinformation
Angwin says relentless data surveillance has forced individuals to protect their privacy by engaging in some degree of information obfuscation: “You can’t avoid being seen, so you change how you’re being seen. This is disinformation.”
When Angwin wrote her landmark book, Dragnet Nation, she tried all the ways she could to escape what she calls “dragnet surveillance”. She says: “I wasn’t trying to evade the FBI; I was just trying to get out of indiscriminate tracking that is everywhere. I did all sorts of things like getting a burner phone and fake identities and different types of accounts, and what I found was that I was really engaging in quite a bit of disinformation.”
“The world of relentless surveillance has actually forced individuals to try to protect their privacy through misdirection and obfuscation. This is literally a coping technique for a world of relentless surveillance … the world of surveillance creates a need and a requirement for everyone to engage in a bit of disinformation,” she said.
Angwin says this has set the standard for a level of disinformation we haven’t seen before.
2. Lack of privacy subjects people to disinformation
Angwin says digital technology has allowed the creation of propaganda (a form of disinformation) on a mass scale. Where once the purview of governments, she says propaganda has become an industry and vulnerable communities are most at risk from the disinformation it spreads.
“The industry needs to know who to distribute propaganda to—and that’s where the data exploitation market comes in. You can find vulnerable people because you can buy lists of them. When people used to send junk mail, these lists were called ‘sucker lists.’ These were people who are going to fall for your scam. Now, of course, you can buy any kind of sucker list on Facebook or Instagram.” And “any kind” is right. These lists can now be granularly targeted by various factors including a person’s political and religious leanings, household income, age, location and more.
Angwin believes propaganda weaponizes disinformation and lies “because they can be sent directly to the people who are most vulnerable to receive them. News is being filtered and tailored to people.”
She points out that Facebook sells “sucker lists” via its ads, for example. Users can buy ads targeted to certain people, based behavioural data.
“We are served information that they believe might be attractive to us. There are millions of people who might be susceptible to dis and misinformation,” Angwin says.
What’s the fix?
Asked whether it’s possible to individually control this tracking and data exploitation, Angwin says no. “Honestly as an individual you have very little control because we need to use these technologies to participate in daily life. Ultimately your ability to decline participation in the data exploitation market is pretty minimal. Most you can do is minimize around the margin but not opt out entirely.” (We’d recommend you use MySudo.)
Angwin says most platforms are only offering “an illusion of control” over our personal data. “You go into some sort of privacy menu, and you can turn all these knobs and dials. The studies have shown that the more knobs and dials there are, the more you feel you’re in control and the more willing you are to accept privacy violations. So they offer you these very confusing settings, and you move them around and you think, ‘Oh, I’ve really solved this.’ The truth is, not really, you haven’t.”
As such, Angwin believes there aren’t remedies, so much as considerations. She implores people to think about “whether the benefits of microtargeting really outweigh the risks”.
“The idea of categorizing all human behavior and then allowing commercial interests to use those to target individuals: Are the risks to society higher than the benefits to advertisers?” she asks.
Listen to the full podcast episode, ‘Privacy in the Age of Disinformation’.
You can mitigate the risks to your personal privacy and your exposure to disinformation by using MySudo app, and you can rapidly produce branded cybersecurity solutions for your customers to do the same through our complete privacy toolkit, Sudo Platform. | <urn:uuid:0c1689ae-2572-417b-8e0e-c593ad537ec0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://anonyome.com/2021/07/the-links-between-privacy-and-disinformation-julia-angwin/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334871.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926113251-20220926143251-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.941288 | 1,169 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Atmos Energy has announced that it has recently completed the installation of a natural gas-powered fuel cell at its corporate data centre, which it says can generate high efficiency, grid-independent electricity with low emissions.
According to the company, the 460-kilowatt fuel cell generates electricity and heat through an electrochemical process with no combustion or moving parts – allowing it to deliver up to 90 per cent system efficiency and much lower emissions, or emissions-free when coupled with renewable natural gas or carbon offsets.
Looking ahead, Atmos Energy hopes to power the fuel cell with renewable natural gas (RNG) produced from methane captured at landfills and livestock farms or combine with carbon offsets, to further benefit the environment and deliver even greater sustainability.
“Natural gas once again proves it plays a pivotal role in lowering greenhouse gas emissions while increasing reliability to our critical facilities,” said Jennifer Ries, Atmos Energy vice president of pipeline safety. “We are excited to have this innovative technology operational and will continue to explore additional pathways to achieve increased reliability and a low carbon energy future.”
The as-yet-unnamed manufacturer is cited as claiming that a natural gas-powered fuel cell offsets approximately three times more carbon dioxide than either solar or wind thanks to the fuel cell’s high efficiency, high-capacity factor, and very low or zero emissions. They also claim that fuel cells also use much less land than other renewable energy projects, generating nearly 500 times more power per square foot annually than solar or wind. | <urn:uuid:989ce6ae-2538-4cb0-a0a1-26b304888f08> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://digitalinfranetwork.com/news/atmos-energy-installs-natural-gas-fuel-cell-at-corporate-data-centre/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335304.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929034214-20220929064214-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.937541 | 312 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Security Architecture for Smart Factories
Building smart factories is a substantial endeavor for organizations. The initial steps involve understanding what makes them unique and what new advantages they offer. However, a realistic view of smart factories also involves acknowledging the risks and threats that may arise in its converged virtual and physical environment.
As with many systems that integrate with the industrial internet of things (IIoT), the convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) in smart factories allows for capabilities such as real-time monitoring, interoperability, and virtualization. But this also means an expanded attack surface. What’s more, cyberthreats in converged environments can directly translate to physical scenarios.
IIoT security, therefore, plays a crucial role in creating and operating smart factories. But how should it be implemented? Identifying the building blocks of IIoT security is key to answering this question.
Mapping the data
Smart factory operations are data-driven. The abundance of data a smart factory harnesses can include the amount of raw materials it has in storage, the production speeds of its machines, the location of ongoing deliveries, and a great deal more, depending on its industry. Big data allows the smart factory to paint a virtual copy of physical operations that is used to carry out functions such as predicting outcomes and making autonomous decisions.
Organizations should be prepared for the vast amount of data this entails. They should be able to identify the types of data to be used and map out its course from collection and transfer to processing and storage. Mapping also means noting all possible exit and entry points. Personnel, for example, can move information from the office to the factory using external storage devices like USB flash drives. Terminals can also be taken in and out of factories for servicing. Aside from setting security protocols for personnel in handling such scenarios, tools should also be used to make sure that these portable devices are clean and virus-free before being connected or reconnected to the factory’s systems.
Securing the network and various communication channels
Data is also communicated over the network that connects the smart factory. Using the right cybersecurity measures on the network and the cloud can help prevent exploitation of device vulnerabilities, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and malware infection, among other security incidents. In-house IT systems not directly connected to the factory should be updated if necessary as doing so will reduce the possible entry points of attacks. Monitoring the network will also allow the early detection of suspicious behavior.
Noting the individual communication channels used within the factory, including those involving industrial control systems (ICSs) as well as other devices, can help in pinpointing possible areas of exposure. Also, knowing what kind of information is being transferred through the various channels can show which channels need stricter security. Organizations can also keep their remote access controls or any other external communications secure by using strong firewalls, encryption, authentication, and intrusion detection. These steps can help in preventing man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks and information theft by threat actors.
Just as every device and piece of equipment on the factory floor is important to overall production, so is each important to the security of the smart factory. Setting up devices on the factory floor should be meticulously done with the goal of trimming away unnecessary functions, connections, and instances of data collection. This should allow devices to operate with improved precision and reduce areas of compromise and data theft.
It is also important to remember that vulnerabilities will always be a concern with regard to connected devices. Looking into possible vulnerabilities should be one of the preliminary steps in choosing equipment. In addition, once the factory is operational, regular patching should be part of its maintenance procedures.
Throughout all this, physical security of each device should not be neglected. Unauthorized access to a device can lead to a compromised network, just as a compromised network can lead to device malfunctions.
Assuming compromise and minimizing damage
In a smart factory environment, assuming compromise and planning countermeasures can minimize damage from a successful intrusion. Organizations should set protocols to alert of, contain, and mitigate attacks that could penetrate initial defenses. One containment technique for ICSs, for example, could be the use of network segmentation, where equipment and devices are grouped into hierarchies based on the sensitivity and criticality of their functions; this could prevent malware from spreading immediately to more sensitive and critical devices.
Security should be part of the periodical maintenance of a smart factory. Regular maintenance should also be done to ensure that each component of the factory is updated with its most recent patches or firmware. Considering the convergence of IT and OT systems in smart factories, using a layered security approach like Connected Threat Defense will enable security solutions across networks, endpoints, and cloud environments to share information and defend each component of these converged systems.
Company personnel play an important role in this regard as well. Given that personnel directly access data and machinery, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and policies concerning the right handling of equipment and systems should be created carefully with input from both IT and OT departments. Involving personnel in the security of the environment in which they work can help establish and maintain a consistent level of security not only on the factory floor but across the organization as well.
From the design phase
These security recommendations are meant to be embedded deep within the smart factory’s architecture. This is because, especially in the case of smart factories, security should be considered as early as possible — from the design phase.
After all, weak defenses can allow threat actors to negate the very advantages organizations sought in building smart factories in the first place. Rather than quicker production of quality goods, enterprises with inadequately secured smart factories may have to deal with threats and risks that can cause undetected defects, which, in turn, may necessitate costly product recalls. Or instead of predicting and preventing accidents on the factory floor, organizations may be subjected to undetected attacks that can actually cause the incidents.
Implementing security measures late into the process or even once a smart factory is already operational can mean overhauling work procedures or replacing expensive equipment, among other undesirable consequences. Security, therefore, should be treated as a necessary component, not a mere accessory.
Originally this article was published here.
For over 30 years, Trend Micro’s unwavering vision has been to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. For the past 30 years, its employees have been inspired to protect individuals, families, businesses and governments as they look to harness the potential of emerging technologies and new ways of sharing information. | <urn:uuid:4ce7fe7f-b285-4017-9648-a5cc1fee5137> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.iiot-world.com/ics-security/cybersecurity/security-architecture-for-smart-factories/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335304.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929034214-20220929064214-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.938529 | 1,353 | 2.609375 | 3 |
What Edge AI is and How It Serves Drone-Based Solutions
The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) is about as popular as the field of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data. According to Statista, the number of IoT devices worldwide is projected to reach 75.44 billion by 2025. Such are sensors, smart speakers, PCs and tablets, cameras, automobiles, robots, drones, and so on.
The functioning of IoT systems is extremely data-driven. At the dawn of connected devices, data collected from multiple sources came into on-premise systems for processing. Then, data-related operations have migrated from on-premise systems to cloud environments. To date, implementing edge computing for IoT is not a luxury but a necessity.
Edge computing has given rise to the concept of edge AI. Complex machine learning models as well are relocating to the edge.
What is edge computing, and what is edge AI? How can your business benefit from it? Why does your organization need to learn how to implement AI at the edge?
Let us talk you through these all.
Edge Computing vs Cloud Computing for AI
Edge computing implies decentralization. It means data doesn’t need to go a long way to the place where it can be stored for further uses. Edge computing eliminates the need to send data to a centralized computing environment, that is, to the cloud. All the processing and analyzing are possible on-site.
So, the main difference between edge computing and cloud computing is that data analysis can be conducted close to the data sources. These sources of data are smart digital devices that transmit data, whether in real-time or delayed mode, into the central data repository or node. Then, data can be handled out of the data center and in a location where data streams are generated.The volumes of data around the world are growing exponentially and will reach 79.4 zettabytes by the year 2025. It is edge computing that can help handle an immense weight of data. Click To Tweet
Edge computing helps overcome such downsides of clouds as the dependence on latency and bandwidth. What is more, the speed of data transmission and timeliness of data analysis are closely tied to hardware capacity that edge computing is independent of. That is why edge computing finds wide application in remote areas and locations difficult to reach.
AI at the Edge
AI moves into smart devices. The agility of data-related processes at the edge makes the edge AI hardware market to grow in size faster. It is predicted to amount to 1559.3 million units by 2024. This fact underpins a host of new capabilities edge AI can offer to businesses.
Edge infrastructure enables data collection and residing in the same location. For instance, drones, consumer and enterprise robots are gaining more and more popularity whilst acting as edge devices that generate data requiring processing.
Edge data processing, independent of hardware restrictions, goes hand-in-hand with more privacy and more data transfer security. That is one of the key reasons to consider locating more complicated AI algorithms at the edge.
Edge AI means that AI algorithms are running locally on hardware devices. The algorithms work based on using data generated on the device. But since neural networks fuel most of AI systems today, running such systems at the edge requires a lot of computing power.
The challenge in meeting the performance requirements for AI inference is in ensuring high accuracy of the output of algorithms within low power consumption. However, the breakthrough in hardware options, including graphics processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and system-on-a-chip (SoC) accelerators, has made edge AI possible. Such hardware market leaders as NVIDIA, Intel, and Qualcomm contribute immensely to the development of AI at the edge.
Another factor is that AI inference requires much less computing resources than ML model training. The amount of data the algorithm needs to provide the output is several times smaller than training datasets.
Thomas Bittman, Gartner analyst, touched upon edge infrastructure superiority over cloud computing in his article The Edge Will Eat the Cloud. He shared that cloud computing may lack the capacity to meet data processing needs. As he pointed it out, trends towards centralization, space savings, self-service, and pervasive automation pose extra difficulties for employing cloud computing since volumes of data are growing faster than hardware capacities. People interact with digital assistants and other edge devices in real-time. They want it here and now: to receive a recommendation in a matter of seconds, get instant help with a self-driving car, or get a push notification as driving past a store they are looking for. Automation and acceleration of such tasks require removing bottlenecks in data processing infrastructure.
There is already a solid background for implementing AI at the edge and employing it for delivering benefits to both users and providers. The applications of edge devices augmented with AI vary across industries.
Edge AI Enhances Drones to be Used in Construction, Traffic Monitoring, and Cartography
Drones are the type of edge devices that can serve multiple purposes. Their work is based on such technologies as visual search, image recognition, object detection and tracking. If you want to find out more about the working principles of these technologies, learn how visual search works on visiting InData Labs Blog.
AI-enhanced drones mimic human visual search psychology to detect and identify people and objects practically the same way humans do. Human psychology and real-world visual search inspire engineers to create powerful data-driven solutions.
Edge AI allows efficient data analysis and output generation, based on the datasets gathered and transferred to the edge node by drones, and helps with the following objectives:
- Real-time object recognition and tracking. Drones can track vehicles and traffic flow for security and safety reasons.
- Predictive maintenance for aging infrastructure. Bridges, roads, and buildings deteriorate over time and may endanger the lives of millions. Drone-assisted monitoring can help ensure that needed repair works will be done in due course.
- Face recognition. While this opportunity triggers debates over the ethics and legitimacy of using the technology, AI drones with facial recognition can be used for good in many cases.
- Logo detection. Marketing teams can use drones to monitor brand presence or collect data to estimate the real impact of brand logo placement.
Drones can facilitate the provision of mapping and cartography services. Building maps might require appointing a specialist or an expert team to get into an area impossible to explore or dangerous to humans, whereas a drone-based solution fueled by edge AI will enable edge devices to work on their own.
If you plan to build a 3D pollution map, drones can assist in gathering data about air, noise, or radiation. They can facilitate creating a damage detection map by scanning roads, bridges, and constructions and delivering all the data into the local data processing center. After that, a provider of AI and big data solutions as InData Labs can assist you in creating custom maps to visualize different kinds of data.
Pros and Cons of Edge AI
Having all the data gathered in one place raises concerns in terms of security, privacy, costs, and hardware capacity. Something can go wrong and cause unforeseen breakdowns in business processes.
Running ML-based algorithms at the edge entails numerous advantages:
- Privacy for user devices
- Eliminated issue of network latency
- Bandwidth won’t be a problem (especially for AR and VR apps)
- Implementing AI at the edge will help, in general, cut expenses on AI processing
- Technologies allow running complex neural network-based solutions on edge devices
But there are some disadvantages you need to take into account:
- Complex AI systems are still difficult to serve at the edge, which could be a risk for business
- Edge AI is a relatively new tendency, and there is some uncertainty of its usages with certain edge devices
- The growing capacity of networks may make cloud AI no less efficient
Depending on your business nature and goals, you can make an informed decision on the further strategy and technologies your business needs to grow and prosper.
Edge computing and later edge AI have opened up opportunities for taking a fresh and efficient approach for processing data and fueling a wealth of data-driven solutions. Whether used individually or along with cloud systems, edge infrastructure is what businesses need to enable smooth work of real-time highly personalized custom solutions and applications. Among the key benefits of running AI inference at the edge are the privacy of user devices, security of data transmission, savings on hardware, and absence of issues with bandwidth and latency.
As a recently raised trend, AI at the edge requires informed decision-making. To opt for edge AI to enhance your business processes, you need business acumen and a forward-looking approach to technology implementation. But having grasped the pros and cons of edge infrastructure, you can level up many edge devices, including robots and drones, with the help of edge AI.
Start Your Breakthrough Project with InData Labs
If you need consulting on edge AI software development and help with making big data solutions an asset for your business, contact us and let us take a deep dive into your challenges to find the best options for you. | <urn:uuid:19d2b4e2-4ecf-4d11-bf39-08bfa3ddefeb> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://indatalabs.com/blog/edge-ai | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335469.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930113830-20220930143830-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.913157 | 1,893 | 3.125 | 3 |
IoT Possibility and Challenges in Bangladesh context
We are on the verge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Smart technologies are taking us to a world that has tremendous opportunities for everybody. With opportunity there comes challenges also. We have to make sure that we overcome challenges to take advantage and grab our fair share of the opportunity.
What is IoT?
Though almost all of us have heard about IoT, some of us are not sure what exactly IoT is. IoT stands for the “Internet of Things” that is a network of humanless devices and components. Very often with IoT, we mean IoT devices. A physical or digital device or system that is connected to the Internet and sends data without human help or interventions. Normally IoT devices have a connection with one or more sensors or actuators. Sensors are electronic components that can measure one or more environmental parameters. For example, a temperature sensor can read your body temperature. Actuators are components that are used to move or control anything. An example of an actuator can be a robotic hand or component of a robotic hand. Sometimes these devices data directly to a server over the internet or sometimes one device sends data to another device and that second or parent device sends the data to the internet. Examples of IoT devices are Alexa The Internet Connected Speaker, Smart home, smart building, remotely controlled AC, Connected Industry, Air quality monitoring station, Weather monitoring station, Industrial monitoring system, etc.
IoT has reached everywhere in the modern world. Using IoT smart kitchen system you can monitor gas usage in the smart stove and optimize the gas usage with IoT connected smart gas stove. Remotely it also checks for leakage and safety hazards and notifies the user. Again the stove can be controlled remotely.
In smart home applications, lots of sensors monitor room temperature, room air quality, outside air quality, outside light amount, etc to optimize the room air quality, temperature, light, and other comfort and safety parameters. Besides smart home application makes sure that your energy usage is optimized. So it has reached the bedroom, living room, and balcony.
A smart factory or connected factory leverages IoT. It has sensors connected to every important point of movement of a production chain. It monitors which machine is rotating at what speed, how is fuel, or electricity usage. How is its performance in terms of efficiency? AI connected IoT smart factory can find out which part of a manufacturing plant or industry is the cause of the slowness of your manufacturing process. Then factory owners can easily replace that portion or machine to gain overall high productivity.
Further, IoT used farming method is on the pace now. It senses real-time weather, rain and humidity condition, soil nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, ph, and other vital parameters value of the surrounding of the crops. After that, these farming IoT systems suggest when to sow your crops seedling in what amount and also automate the watering process to reduce cost and maximize production.
This way IoT has touched every sphere of life and lifting the living standard to a different level in terms of comfort, profit, and production rate.
IoT in Bangladesh:
As the world is a global village in presence of today’s technology and communication, different sectors of Bangladesh are adopting IoT quickly along with the rest of the world. Some people have already installed smart home in their house to live up to the standard. IoT enabled water quality, air quality monitoring has been established by different government organizations. BWDB, BMD, BADC, DoE, and lots of other organizations are trying to use IoT connected devices to improve different monitoring in their respected areas. Smart farming, Smart metering is further increasing day by day. Some cities are also on trial to experience smart city applications powered by IoT. Not all but some portion of connected factory application is in use in some smart industries and manufacturing plants. But we still are behind by a margin compared to the West.
The fields that can be benefited immediately from IoT in Bangladesh:
Think about sectors that contribute more to the country’s economy. They are likely the best fields to apply IoT as well as other latest innovations. If we can leverage IoT, we can have an edge over our competitors. The opposite is also true. If we do not bring technology such as IoT in those filed where we are a little ahead of other nations we are going to lose our upper hand in a shorter while.
Bangladesh is doing well in the field of garments. We have very cheap labor that is true. But if we can utilize this labor more efficiently that will certainly improve productivity. Different IoT applications can track the worker and show statistics that can help decision-makers to take important decisions more accurately. IoT smart factory, connected industry this type of application can help us to reach a position where we will be comfortably ahead of others. The western world is trying to develop an automated garment factory where the dress will be produced without any human intervention. We have enough human power. But if they really automate it, it will make things harder for us. Then again, to grow an industry you will need some supportive industry nearby. So even if they automate we will get some time before the full echo system can be established there. We can make use of this fact. We can go for a hybrid approach. Find out what are the sections of the dressmaking work by automating which we can gain higher speed in production. Then we can try to automate those sections using Artificial Intelligence-powered IoT (AIoT). On the rest of the section where human is doing great, we can keep the human workers.
Bangladesh’s agricultural sector is the sector where most of its population is making their living. Bangladesh is placed as 2nd in freshwater fish production in 2020 . The use of IoT can increase the efficiency of fish production and can take us to a place where nobody can beat us in a shorter while. Different IoT based water monitoring and environment controlling solution can increase fish production to a significant amount. Again high precision farming or precision agriculture can increase our crop productivity and increase our GDP by a substantial value.
Blue economy or ocean-based income is another promising sector that we can make use of IoT. Bangladesh has a vast possibility in the blue economy. 16% of the total fish production of our country is from the sea . Alarmingly there is a dead zone found in the Bay of Bengal. This dead zone is 60000 square kilometers in size. This region of the sea does not have enough oxygen for fish to survive. Though most of this dead zone is inside India’s marine boundary Bangladesh also has a portion of it. We need IoT based monitoring and research to track the dead zone and find out the problem and solution. Most importantly we need to make sure it does not further move to our marine boundary. If it does certainly that will reduce our fish production and lots of people from the coastal areas will be jobless.
The traffic problem in Dhaka is known to everyone. Smart city applications can be used to minimize traffic problems and save people’s effective time. There are lots of other sectors where specific domain experts can suggest improvement using IoT.
Stats that Inspire us:
Some stats of the IoT market that can inspire us towards IoT
- In 2016—the global spending on the IoT was $737 billion
- In 2018—the North American IoT market generated $83.9 billion in revenue
- During 2020—global spending on the IoT should reach $1.29 trillion
- By 2021—the industrial IoT market size should reach $124 billion
- By 2024—the global IoT healthcare market should reach $14 billion
- By 2026—Experts estimate that the IoT device market will reach $1.1 trillion
IoT security the first challenge:
As I said earlier great opportunity comes with great challenge. Though IoT seems to be the key to the digital future, it also brings some insurmountable challenges with it. Digital Security is the single most significant challenge of those challenges. The cybersecurity problem is nothing new but for IoT, it has a more terrible effect. How is that? Let’s understand by example. Previously for cybersecurity say you have a website where people do blogging. If it is hacked 2 to 3 days your blog is down. You clean everything reset the password and set it up again. But in case you have an IoT enabled home or industry this will not be the same. If a smart home is hacked, a malicious user can take control of it. He can turn on your room heater continuously to set your house on fire. He can use your baby monitor camera to monitor you. Hackers can find the location of your car and track you on the road to hijack you to the point by a previous well-planned route analysis. A friendly hacker can hijack your smart farming solution and water it too much so that all your crops are dead before they have even grown to size.
Another example can be cybercrime by industrial nations. Say there is country-A who pollute the air so much with their industry. Another country B is located near country-A. Country-B has 100 air quality monitoring stations all over their country. If these IoT stations are not security hack-proof these data can be modified by country-A to look like clean air by a simple man in the middle attack. Country-B then will never find that what bad impact country A is putting on country B’s air pollution. So now maybe you are thinking, is it happening to us? You may also think that people are not really this bad. If you are thinking the second one just go to a CIRT website https://www.cirt.gov.bd/incident-reporting/statistics/ and see a stat of how much cyber attack happens every day.
What else? If your industrial IoT(IIoT) application is compromised it can be another Stuxnet event. Stuxnet a computer worm first uncovered in 2010 made by an unknown nation for attacking Iran, infected 2,00,000 computers and ruined 1000 advance machines! Experts who researched Stuxnet concluded that it cannot be made by a small team or small effort but it has to be inspired by a government. Though it was for the Industrial Control System now IoT is getting involved in those places.
What is the solution?:
Though IoT is one of the toughest sectors to secure in the field of digital security, it is not impossible. We have to make sure that we deploy IoT solutions that are secure, certified, and authorized. Even if it is not certified the organization or person adopting it should verify it with a digital security expert or private organization. Not necessary that it has to be a government organization but also it can be a private organization that you can trust.
IoT security is a major area of research and along with a typical but proven cybersecurity solution, there are also new ways that are coming to secure IoT once and for a big while. Blockchain-based IoT security is one of the leading new ways to protect IoT. Further, we have to explore new ways. In addition, to be successful in IoT we have to do well in hardware. To ensure IoT is used in every sector of Bangladesh we need to make sure we can produce our own. Otherwise, we cannot adopt it at a faster rate. Not all IoT application is probably feasible to produce by a single country. But we can try to produce as many categories as possible by assessing the impact and importance of those devices and keeping our capability in mind. Thanks to GOD, Bangladesh has a young generation that is making its mark on international ICT competitions like ACM ICPC, International Math Olympiad, International Blockchain Olympiad, etc. We have cheap labor that is a must for producing IoT devices on a large scale. We have a government that wants digitalization. Combining all of these we can gain an unprecedented position in IoT development adoption and exporting. If we are able to do it, we believe our economy will be one of the brightest digital economies in the world.
Other things that can be a positive catalyst:
When we pursue developing IoT on a large scale for accelerating our economy we would certainly have to focus on some other technology that is also disrupting and work side by side with IoT. Some of those are Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big data analysis, Hardware development, Embedded system development, etc. They are like fitness necessary to run for IoT race. I believe Quantum computers can be a key to future security ruler. We need expert ready and loaded on this field too. The government is making an investment in these fields for some time now. But we do not see enough private sector investment in these advanced computing fields. In addition, different government and private organizations also need to make habit of using local IoT solutions rather than costly foreign products to inspire the local entrepreneurs.
Bangladesh is a digital inclined nation and making progress towards information technology at mentionable speed. Our government is determined to make us a digital nation. So we want to adopt IoT as fast as possible to be a digital economy dependent country. Otherwise, we will not be able to take a fair share of the 4IR (Fourth industrial revolution). We have to make sure whatever IoT we are adopting is authenticated by an expert team or organization or personnel. What we need is secure IoT, not just IoT. We have to keep in mind that IoT can be a weapon to secure a place in the future. But insecure IoT is a weapon that will only harm ourselves.
MD Badsha Molla
CIRT Systems and Web Administrator
BGD e-GOV CIRT | <urn:uuid:faa77134-81c8-48e7-be6f-9adc3254da56> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cirt.gov.bd/iot-possibility-and-challenges-in-bangladesh-context/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335469.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930113830-20220930143830-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.944118 | 2,967 | 2.796875 | 3 |
As we begin October, we are reminded by the US Department of Homeland Security that it is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It’s really surprising to me, though, that the US government would even *need* to run a marketing campaign to highlight the cyber tragedies we see in the news every day. After all, if you have not heard of attacks like WannaCry or Petya, just think of household names like FedEx, Maersk, Deloitte, Equifax, and Sony – they have all been victims of recent cybersecurity breaches.
Brands like these are a part of our everyday lives, but the risks they face are the same threats we endure every day at work, and at home. No one, anywhere, is immune to the effects of phishing attacks, social engineering, and missing security patches that can be exploited. In fact, many businesses do not manage these threats well, and if corporations are failing at basic cyber security hygiene, odds are you are probably failing at home as well.
As a part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, it is not just about what we are doing wrong, it is also about changes we need to make to our technology and even our personalities in order to avoid future threats.
Changing Bad Habits
One of the considerations we need to make is that our own (bad) habits that have caused some of the “rabbit hole” of threats. To illustrate, let me share with you a recent study on privileged access management conducted by BeyondTrust. The results speak directly to the risks of having usernames and passwords that can lead a hacker to compromise our computers and data. What the study identified was not revolutionary. Cyber security professionals have provided statistics about password changes, types of passwords, and password reuse for years.
What the study did find directly translates to cyber security awareness – specifically, why individuals, even with the knowledge of these flaws and risks, continue to execute the same behavior. This was eye opening. Human traits like Apathy, Greed, Pride, Ignorance, and Envy are helping fuel many of the breaches and why so many people are dealing with malware, identity theft, skimmers, and other types of scams and fraud.
A Little Self-Reflection, Please
So, for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month we must educate about the statistics. We must be aware of how and why breaches happened. We must educate on how to prevent the next potential breaches. And most importantly, we must do some self-reflection and understand why we continue the same poor behavior even though we understand the risks.
The biggest difference we as practitioners can make this month is to put the risks in plain English, back them up with facts, and make a compelling argument.
For more on what we uncovered in our study, the 5 Deadly Sins of Privileged Access Management, download the results today. Use that study to compare where your current cyber practices are at, and what you need to do to get better.
Morey J. Haber, Chief Security Officer, BeyondTrust
Morey J. Haber is the Chief Security Officer at BeyondTrust. He has more than 25 years of IT industry experience and has authored three books: Privileged Attack Vectors, Asset Attack Vectors, and Identity Attack Vectors. He is a founding member of the industry group Transparency in Cyber, and in 2020 was elected to the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) Executive Advisory Board. Morey currently oversees BeyondTrust security and governance for corporate and cloud based solutions and regularly consults for global periodicals and media. He originally joined BeyondTrust in 2012 as a part of the eEye Digital Security acquisition where he served as a Product Owner and Solutions Engineer since 2004. Prior to eEye, he was Beta Development Manager for Computer Associates, Inc. He began his career as Reliability and Maintainability Engineer for a government contractor building flight and training simulators. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. | <urn:uuid:ef46c72b-913a-468e-b145-6e1aead8daf7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.beyondtrust.com/blog/entry/national-cybersecurity-awareness-month-can-get-little-self-reflection-please | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925070216-20220925100216-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.96203 | 825 | 2.515625 | 3 |
It's no secret that many schools and districts in America are severely underfunded. Despite being the best way to guarantee an educated and prosperous populace, education in America has gone through some serious budget cuts since the recession in 2008. In fact, a review of the 2013-2014 school year by state found that 35 states are providing less funding per student than they did before the recession. And while this needs to be worked on at a governmental policy level, as it stands, schools have to make due with what they have.
That being said, costs need to be cut where they can. With this in mind, virtualization of computer and IT systems within schools is emerging as an effective way to use a budget effectively while still providing the technological education necessary to thrive in the modern world.
Virtualization: What is it and how is it cost-effective for schools?
In order to grasp why virtualization is so beneficial for the education system, it's important to fully understand what it is. Basically, there are two types of virtualization. The first has to do with a school's use of servers. Server virtualization allows a single physical server to act as multiple by housing many virtual ones in one machine.
This has a dual effect in terms of cost-cutting. First, it cuts down on the physical costs of multiple servers. With machines with zero VMs, 95 percent of a server's capacity isn't being used in the current model. If schools were to virtualize, their hardware costs in terms of servers would plummet as they began to use servers more effectively and efficiently.
Server virtualization would also reduce costs by allowing different school districts to share files more easily. As new instructional materials are distributed, sharing of these materials in a virtual environment is typically as simple as a file copy operation.
The second common type of virtualization is that of the desktop. As knowledge of computers becomes more and more necessary to function within the modern world, classrooms will need to continue to add them into curricula. As this happens, students will need a desktop specific to their classes and their schedule. Before virtualization, a student would need to be given a specific laptop if the school wished for them to have a desktop catered to the student's needs in each of their classrooms.
However, desktop virtualization allows for a student's workplace to follow them from class to class without the necessity of a specific laptop assigned to them. This practice also allows for a greater safety in terms of the students files in a disaster recovery scenario. If a computer the student is working on crashes or stops working for whatever reason, their entire desktop can be moved from one work station to another without any level of difficulty. This not only saves money in terms of technical support, as a student who can't access their files would need help or risk missing the day's lesson, but it also saves the headache of having to start from scratch. | <urn:uuid:68847c2e-5fab-4288-87f3-11afd678d598> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.isgtech.com/virtualization-of-the-classroom/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925070216-20220925100216-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.973756 | 588 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Amazing Facts About Cats - 25 Interesting Facts About Cats
Here is a collection of amazing facts about cats.
Amazing Facts About Cats
- The nose pad of a cat is ridged in a pattern that is unique, just like the fingerprint of a human.
- Cats have 290 bones and 517 muscles in their body.
- Cats are born with blue eyes. They change at approximately 12 weeks of age.
- During her productive life, one female cat could have more than 100 kittens.
- The biggest breed of domesticated cats are called a Maine Coon cat and weighs up to 11 kg.
- Purring doesn’t necessarily mean a cat is happy. Sometimes cats will purr when they are scared or hurt.
- A cat’s IQ is only surpassed by that of monkeys and chimps in the world of animals.
- Cat’s sense of smell is 14 times stronger than ours. This means they can smell the odour in the litter box much earlier than us.
- Cats have 30 permanent teeth, while adult humans have 32.
- Killing a cat was punishable by death in acient Egypt.
- There are more than 500 million domestic cats in the world, with 33 different breeds.
- The average age for an indoor cat is 15 years, while the average age for an outdoor cat is only 3 to 5 years.
- A cat uses it’s whiskers to tell if the space they are contemplating entering is big enough for them.
- Cat urine glows in the dark if a black light is shined on it. This is a good way to detect cat urine in your home.
- A cat’s hearing is much stronger and more sensitive than a dog’s or a human’s. Our hearing stops at 20 khz; a cat’s at 65 khz.
- Cats often have a third eyelid that is not normally visible to us. If you are seeing it more often – the cat may be.
- A cat’s heart beats twice as fast as a human heart, at 110 to 140 beats per minute.
- Cats are partially color blind. They have the equivalency of human red/green color blindness. (Reds appear green and greens appear red; or shades thereof.)
- Cats don’t see detail very well. The person may appear hazy when standing in front of them.
- Cats can jump between 5 & 7 times as high as their tail.
- Only about 80% of cats have the gene that allows them to respond to the effects of catnip. The other 20% are not affected by it.
- Your cat loves you and can read your moods. If you’re sad or under stress, you may also notice a difference in your cat’s behavior.
- Cats are the sleepiest of all mammals. They spend 16 hours of each day sleeping. With that in mind, a seven year old cat has only been awake for two years of its life!
- Sometimes your cat will find it difficult to find the treats you throw him on the floor. The reason is because cats can’t see directly under their own nose.
- A cat will almost never meow at another cat. This sound is reserved for humans. | <urn:uuid:aff89706-314e-4fa1-a597-31894778af0a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.knowledgepublisher.com/article/976/amazing-facts-about-cats-25-interesting-facts-about-cats.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334912.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926144455-20220926174455-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.942218 | 685 | 3.28125 | 3 |
The sheer number of cyber-attacks and threats present in today’s world is considerable. As the number of threats we face grows at an exponential rate it has become harder for cyber experts to keep up. According to the Verizon Data Report, more than seventy percent of attacks exploit known vulnerabilities with available patches. Once the vulnerabilities become known to the hackers they take advantage of them within minutes. With the number of threats growing, costing an average of $445 billion worldwide and the industry facing a shortage of 1.5 million experts, it is taking longer to detect an mitigate attacks. It has been reported that it can take about 146 days to fix vulnerabilities. Organizations are now looking towards more technologically advanced ways to detect those threats more efficiently and effectively.
AI is the use of technology to program computers to perform tasks related to learning, planning, or problem solving more intelligently than the average human. AI is said to be the driving force of the fourth industrial revolution and will soon become merged as part of the cybersecurity sector. Narrative Science has said that by 2018, sixty-two percent of large enterprises will be using AI technologies. AI technology can be used to protect confidential data and critical infrastructure from attackers with its ability to detect, prevent, and patch vulnerabilities. As the convergence of machine and device communication becomes more prevalent, AI will become a fundamental source to identify, mitigate, perform risk assessments, and remediate vulnerabilities that may arise.
The Internet of Thing (IoT) technologies like tablets, cell phones, Bluetooth devices, or smart phone devices, are integrating as a part of our everyday lives. IoT devices hold private, sensitive data and if exploited can affect organizations negatively. As technology advances, the threats organizations face are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect, as hackers are finding new and smarter ways to disguise their trails. The use of artificial intelligence can be used in detecting these hidden threats. It is important for organizations to perform risk assessments, determining the real risks they face and the impact of those risks.
Organizations AI can also be used in determining the appropriate steps and response to take in risk assessments. As the idea of AI technology morphs into a reality, startup firms are creating complex versions of AI with the ability to recognize patterns and prevent attacks before they happen. Smart technologies use have already detected and mitigated threats, including ransomware and zero-day attacks. AI based technology, like IBM’S recent development of Watson for Cyber Security, Amazon’s use of Havest.AI, or Google developing an AI-based system. The integration of AI technology in cybersecurity is only the beginning in tackling the complex security threats and will require the use of a multilayered approach of artificial intelligence and industry experts. | <urn:uuid:4013d64d-5891-461b-9120-d96930beef0b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.lifars.com/2017/05/artificial-intelligence-future-cybersecurity/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927225413-20220928015413-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.950358 | 550 | 3.28125 | 3 |
- People go on social media to feel better: around half of people choose to post optimistic things online – including things that make them smile (61%).
- However, social media doesn’t always leave people feeling positive: 57% admitted that after going on social media they have felt that someone has a better life than them.
- People use social media as a forum for gaining social validation: only a third (31%) of people are not bothered about the number of likes they receive for their posts.
- People – men especially – become upset if they do not get the likes they hope for: a quarter of men (24%) said they worry that if they get few likes their friends will think that they are unpopular, compared to one-in-six (17%) women.
- In striving to receive more likes on social media, people can put themselves and their loved ones at risk by disclosing private information: 37% share their home town, 31% share their email address, 30% share their relationship status, 18% share details of their place of work and 14% share their address.
- Social media impacts the relationships people have in the physical world: a third of the respondents to the survey admitted that they now communicate less with their parents (31%), children (33%), partners/spouses (23%), friends (35%), and colleagues (34%) because they can see them and communicate with them via social media.
This study was conducted online by research firm Toluna, October – November, 2016. Users from 18 countries were surveyed online. A total of 16,750 people, aged over 16 years old, split equally between men and women, were surveyed. Data was weighted to be globally representative and consistent.
Not all the survey results have been included in this report. To request further data please contact Kaspersky Lab at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Social media has the potential to bring us, as an online community, closer together than ever before. It allows us to share moments, memories and photos with each other, communicate across borders, build and maintain friendships and develop communities. Given the opportunities and the appeal, perhaps it’s no surprise that by the third quarter of 2016 Facebook had 1.6 billion monthly active users, and Twitter averaged 317 million users.
However, despite social media’s clear ability to bring us together, can it also sometimes leave us feeling down? And what are the implications for our security online?
With this question in mind, Kaspersky Lab undertook a study to delve into people’s relationship with social media. We wanted to gain a better understanding of what people expect from being active on social media, and the reality.
The findings were fascinating. Across the globe we have found evidence of social media contributing to people feeling let down, insignificant, or negative. Worse still, in some instances, we found that in their quest for social validation, people are sharing an increasing amount of sensitive information on social media platforms, with men willing to take greater risks than women.
At Kaspersky Lab, our mission is to help people protect what matters most to them. We will, therefore, use the findings of this study to help people have a healthier relationship with social media – one in which they do not feel the need to put themselves at risk.
Section 1: Not living up to expectations
The findings of the research suggest that although many people initially join and spend time on social media to make themselves feel good, and to be entertained, they are sometimes disappointed. The study shows us that annoying advertising, a lack of likes and even jealousy leave them feeling negative after spending time on social media.
The survey shows us that people use social media for positive reasons – 65% use social networks to stay in touch with existing friends, colleagues or acquaintances, and 60% go on social media to see entertaining/ funny posts.
The desire to use social media for entertainment and for its positive effects is evident in the results of the survey, with this being the most popular option selected by respondents. Around half of people choose to post optimistic things online – including things that make them smile (61%).
People also turn to social media to make them happy – 40% of people agree that looking at happy pictures they have posted on social media cheers them up, 29% agree that when they feel down, they regularly look at happy pictures they have posted in the past and 32% agree that the more they look at happy pictures, the more they forget the times that weren’t so great.
Although people go on social media to post something positive about themselves, the proliferation of cheerful posts about hobbies, holidays, and events etc. that they encounter in the process can leave social media users feeling less positive than they may expect. For example, 37% of respondents admitted that looking at past happy posts of their own can leave them with the feeling that their own past was better than their present life. Social media can also leave users with the impression that their friends are enjoying life more than them. 59% have felt unhappy when they have seen friends at a party that they didn’t attend. Even a friend’s happy holiday pictures have had an unhappy influence on 45% of Internet users and around three-quarters of people said that annoying advertising on social media has a negative influence on their mood (72%).
Section 2: The quest for social validation
The study demonstrates that through the forum of social media, people are searching for social validation, to make them feel good. And in this quest, they are placing importance on something as simple as how many likes they receive for their social media posts.
With only a third (31%) of people saying that they are not bothered about the number of likes they receive for their posts, videos or photos, the majority of respondents to the survey admit that they want their posts to be liked. Furthermore, because this is important to them, after they have posted or commented on something on social media, most people (55%) check their post for any reaction or response several times a day or more.
The data also shows that men are prone to checking their social media a little more often than women. And people – men especially – become upset if they do not get the likes they hope for. A quarter of men (24%) said they worry that if they get few likes their friends will think that they are unpopular, compared to one-in-six (17%) women. One-in-four people (28%) admit they get upset if somebody who matters to them doesn’t like their posts, rising to 29% of men. 24% also said they feel jealous if their friends like somebody else’s posts.
From these results, it is clear that people are eager to be publicly liked on social media. Their quest for social validation can even lead people to post embarrassing, or inappropriate things, in order to get more likes. 27% admitted that they would reveal something funny about a friend and 26% would do the same about a co-worker if it would secure them a significant number of likes on social media. Around one-in-ten would reveal something embarrassing or confidential about their co-workers, friends or employers. Men are twice more likely to do this than women, with 12% of men saying they would reveal something confidential about a friend, compared to 5% of women.
But the hunt for more likes doesn’t stop there. The survey shows us that one-in-five people (21%) are ready to express strong views about something – even if they wouldn’t normally express views like that – if it meant they would gain a significant number of likes. Around one-in-ten (12%) said they would pretend to be somewhere or doing something that might not be strictly true, post photos of friends under the influence of alcohol (12%) or photos of friends or themselves wearing something revealing (10%) in order to get more likes. Some people (7%) are even prepared to post photos of themselves naked. Men are more prepared to take these greater risks than women, suggesting that a high number of likes is more important to them and that they are willing to go further for social validation than women.
In striving to receive more likes on social media, people can put themselves and their loved ones at risk by disclosing private information they don’t want other people to know.
According to the research, a third of people (33%) would be worried if somebody discovered where they live and what their house looks like, when they are away from home (36%), or how old their children are and how to find them (33%). People would also be worried if others knew their dating history (22%), salary (30%), or their intimate secrets (51%).
Nevertheless, the research shows a large number of people sharing information about themselves and their connections on social media, making it easier for others to discover exactly what people want to keep protected. 37% share their home town on social media, 31% share their email address, 30% share their relationship status, 18% share details of their place of work and 14% share their address, all of which results in sensitive information being available to others online, who can exploit it if they wish.
Section 3: Online communication is changing our real relationships
The research shows us that online communication is impacting the relationships we have with others in the physical world.
Many survey respondents believe that their communication with parents, friends, spouses, colleagues, etc. has become more regular as a result of social media. 80% said that they communicate more regularly with friends, 77% said they communicate more regularly with colleagues and 70% communicate more regularly with their partner or spouse, as a result of being connected on social media.
Around half of respondents also believe that the quality of their relationship with other people is better as a result of being connected with them on social media. This is especially the case for parents, as 55% of respondents said they had a better quality relationship with their children now that they are on social media. Similarly, 50% said they have a better relationship with colleagues and 46% said they have a better relationship with their partner and parents as a result of being connected via social media.
However, the research shows that social media can also have a negative impact on relationships. With people’s tendency to post photos of themselves or others under influence of alcohol, wearing something revealing or even naked in order to get more likes, it is possible to put social media at the heart of some modern-day relationship damage. This is the case for 21% of parents, whose children have seen them in compromising circumstances as a result of social media. Around one-in-five (16%) respondents also admitted their relationship with their spouse or partner has also been damaged as a result of them being seen in a compromising situation on social media.
Commenting on the research findings, Dr. Astrid Carolus, Media Psychologist at the University of Würzburg has said: “Studies show that today digital communication complements real-life communication. We live in a globalized and highly mobile world resulting in distances between partners and family members. Digital communication is an opportunity to bridge the gaps our modern lives in different cities or countries have caused. However, digital communication cannot replace face-to-face communication – at least not always and not completely. Digital communication is less rich in terms of sensory channels affected resulting in “reduced” sensory quality.”
Furthermore, people cannot always evaluate their online communication objectively. Under certain circumstances they perceive their online communication as “hyperpersonal communication” and thus they can misread and over-interpret the messages on social media. “Being confronted with a reduced communication mode leaves room for interpretation under some circumstances, resulting in rather positive interpretations and positive feelings. We feel especially close, we blind out the rather negative, focus the possible positive intentions behind a text message and over-interpret. Although being reduced in terms of media richness, it is an emotionally charged medium. Because it is reduced it is sometimes bigger than real life.”
Whilst for the majority of people, face-to-face communication with friends and family has continued as usual, a significant third of people admit that as a result of social media, they communicate face to face less. A third of the respondents to the survey admitted that they now communicate less with their parents (31%), children (33%), partners/spouses (23%), friends (35%), and colleagues (34%) because they can see them and communicate with them via social media.
The findings of the survey show that social media can act as a double-edged sword in today’s society. There seems to be a consensus among the majority of users that social media shouldn’t, and doesn’t, replace face-to-face communication channels. But despite this, social media is changing our relationships. It changes how we communicate with each other and what we see on social media has a knock-on effect on our physical world relationships.
Social media is a forum that people go to for social validation, to feel good, to keep in touch with others, and to share good news. Yet, that doesn’t mean it is a place that always makes people feel positive. Seeing one long news feed of everyone else’s parties, events, holidays and good news, or not receiving many likes on a post, can sometimes leave people feeling disheartened about their own lives.
At Kaspersky Lab, we help people protect what matters most to them. This study has shown us that in order to generate more likes and feel better about the time they spend on social media, people are being tempted into sharing more information; potentially putting themselves and the people they care about at risk. In order to protect themselves, people need to be more cautious and cyber-savvy about the information they share on social media. That will not only help to mitigate the risks of the online world, it will also help to prevent relationship damage in the physical world as a consequence of online activities. | <urn:uuid:66bb3cd7-13c8-477e-bcd9-e51bd4625d3f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/digital-depression/13781/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335326.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929065206-20220929095206-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.971659 | 2,895 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Two-sided markets, also called two-sided networks, are economic platforms having two distinct user groups that provide each other with network benefits. The organization that creates value primarily by enabling direct interactions between two (or more) distinct types of affiliated customers is called multi-sided platform (MSP). Two-sided networks can be found in many industries, sharing the space with traditional product and service offerings. Example markets include credit cards, composed of cardholders and merchants; HMOs (patients and doctors); operating systems (end-users and developers); yellow pages (advertisers and consumers); video game consoles (gamers and game developers); recruitment sites (job seekers and recruiters); search engines (advertisers and users); and communication networks, such as the Internet. Examples of the well known companies employing two sided markets include such organizations as American Express, eBay, Facebook, Mall of America, Match.com, Monster.com, Sony, Skype, Google and others. Benefits to each group exhibit demand economies of scale. Consumers, for example, prefer credit cards honored by more merchants, while merchants prefer cards carried by more consumers. They are particularly useful for analyzing the chicken-and-egg problem of standards battles, such as the competition between VHS and Beta. They are also useful in explaining many free pricing or “freemium” strategies where one user group gets free use of the platform in order to attract the other user group. Two-sided markets represent a refinement of the concept of network effects. There are both same-side and cross-side network effect. Each network effect can be either positive or negative. E.g. positive same-side network effect is end-user PDF sharing or player-to-player contact in PlayStation 3 and negative same-side network effect appears when there is competition between suppliers in online auction market or dates on Match.com. The concept of network effects were conceived independently by Geoffrey Parker & Van Alstyne (2000,2000, 2005) to explain behavior in software markets and Rochet & Tirole (2001,2003) to explain behavior in credit card markets. The first known peer-reviewed paper on interdependent demands was published in 2000. Multi-sided platforms exist because there is a need of intermediary in order to match both parts of the platform in a more efficient way. Indeed this intermediary will minimize the overall cost, for instance, by avoiding duplication, or by minimizing transaction costs. This intermediary will make possible exchange that would not occur without them and create value for both sides. Two-sided platforms, by playing an intermediary role, produce certain value for the both users (parties) that are through it interconnected, and therefore those sides (parties) may both be evaluated as customers (unlike traditional seller-buyer dichotomy). | <urn:uuid:775c0742-78cc-4c53-8660-1df5284f878e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://datafloq.com/read/entity/platform-2/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335491.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930145518-20220930175518-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.954402 | 568 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are a substantial part of everyday life and the use of the technology continues to grow.
Consider the label on a bottle of alcohol at the store meant to discourage stealing or the small device/sticker on a car windshield that allows fine-free toll road use: those are all RFID tags.
While most RFID tags are used for merchandise or to track packages, they can also be used to help track pets or patients in hospital settings.
What Are RFID Tags and How Are They Used?
- LF systems have a range between 30 and 300 KHz and a read range up to 10 cm. These systems are more frequently used in applications like access control and livestock monitoring.
- HF systems have a range between 3 and 30 MHz and a read range from 10 cm to 1 m (3 ft). These systems are commonly used for electronic tickets, payments, or user experience applications.
- UHF systems have a range between 300 MHz and 3 GHz and a read range up to 12 m (39 ft). These are the systems most commonly used in retail inventory tracking, parking garages, door access, and asset management.
Passive vs. Active RFID Tags
There are two types of RFID tags — passive and active. Passive RFID tags are the most common; they do not require a direct line of sight to a reader but do have a much shorter read range, and are smaller in size and lightweight.
Passive RFID tags are ideal for:
- Supply chain and inventory management
- Asset and personnel tracking
- Industrial and manufacturing
- Brand protection and anti-counterfeiting
- Real-time location systems (RTLS) using 3D orientation insensitive design
- Gate and perimeter access control
- Pharmaceutical and healthcare
- Entertainment and travel
- Apparel and retail
Active RFID tags are less common and require their own transmitter and power source. These tags tend to be bulkier, rugged, durable, and more expensive. An example of an active RFID tag is a beacon used for RTLS, constant medical monitoring, or theme park attendance.
What Is NFC Technology?
A subset of HF RFID, near field communication (NFC) technology connects the Internet of Things (IoT) and can be used for more complex, secure interactions. The communication between an NFC tag and an object can go both ways, making everyday objects smarter and more trustworthy. NFC is limited to HF, close-proximity communication and only one NFC tag can be scanned at a time. NFC is incredibly simple to use and since most mobile devices are now NFC enabled, it typically does not require any additional infrastructure to adopt the technology.
Identiv’s RFID Tag Portfolio
RFID tags allow businesses to run efficiently with little cost and positive results. There are multiple options, including physical access cards, inlays, tags, labels, or touchless solutions, and adding tamper functionality can transform an RFID tag into a smart seal. Identiv’s portfolio offers a wide range of RFID solutions for any application imaginable — it even includes Eco-Friendly RFID Tags that boast the lowest carbon footprint in the industry.
The Identiv Team is ready to discuss custom RFID solutions today via firstname.lastname@example.org or +1 888-809-8880. | <urn:uuid:153b3865-8da5-4eda-8225-46840be97e64> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.identiv.com/community/2021/02/12/what-are-rfid-tags-and-how-are-they-used/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.89447 | 699 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Why is satellite latency so high? (and it’s not all to do with distance)
This blog is Part 1 of a 3-part blog and concentrates on high latency, the subsequent parts will discuss jitter, the effect of atmospheric conditions and choice of wavebands.
If we want to our applications to be available globally we have to bear in mind that there are lots of places on the Earth where wired and mobile (or other wireless communications) are not available, for example:
– In remote places (some less remote than you might think!)
– On aircraft flying over oceans or remote locations
– On ships distant from the shore
– In certain military situations
– Certain emergency services requirements, i.e. first responder
Just about the only reasonable way to serve these locations is to use satellite communications, provided you have a view of the sky that is. Due to their height satellites have a very large coverage (up to slightly less that 50% of the Earth’s surface you might think, but more on that in a moment).
It sounds fantastic. Why do we bother with any other kind of communication system then, after all most of us could mount a satellite antenna on outside of our offices, houses etc.? The answers are both technical and commercial:
– Satellite bandwidth has traditionally been very expensive
– Until recently satellite bandwidth has been very limited (128Kbps, 256Kbps)
– Satellites traditionally added a large amount of latency (delay) to network traffic
– Jitter is created which can affect streaming applications e.g. voice, video, rapid telemetry
– Adverse weather can cause large or almost complete data loss
But that was then. Things are changing:
– Bandwidth is becoming more available and less expensive, though still pricey compared to wired and mobile
– Lower satellite orbits are becoming available, which reduce latency
– There is an increased choice of wavebands which have better penetration of the atmosphere and rain
The technical factors “stress” applications in ways not encountered with other networks and if we want our applications to work we will need to test them in satellite networks and employ programming strategies which work around those stresses.
In this blog I’m going to focus on high satellite latency and its implication on applications. Look out for further blogs on jitter, the effect of atmospheric conditions and choice of wavebands.
Why is satellite latency high?
Anyone who has used the ping utility tool will have seen some very high ping times at times. For example, to many points opposite you on the Earth (antipodean) you may see ping times via undersea cable routes of 300ms, but you can see big ping times even to nearer locations – this is due to queuing i.e. the links are busy and your data has to queue which causes delay.
A satellite ping time might be 700ms or more and that’s nothing to do with queuing. Why’s that?
Because the satellite is very high indeed. Traditional Geosynchronous (aka Geostationary or simply GEO) satellites sit 22,236 miles (35,786 Km) above sea level, which is a very long way away, in fact almost 3 Earth diameters (just under 1 circumference) away. No wonder it takes so long to ping to the other side: your ping and the response has to go up and down to the satellite 4 times since you’re not, in general, directly under the satellite.
Simple solution, make them lower, yes indeed and that has been thought of. There are offerings for LEO (Low Earth Orbit and MEO (Medium Earth Orbit) but they have a problem. At anything but the GEO orbit level the satellite cannot maintain position in one spot over the Earth without needing to be driven all the time (which is impracticable), so at the lower orbits the satellite are moving, relative to the Earth’s surface, sometimes very quickly. Not so convenient for fixing on them, then.
Lastly to get round the back of the Earth will take more than one hop and that implies even more latency.
So how does this high latency impact your application?
Over a GEO satellite any chatty application will have to wait for a response from the server side (or client depending on the direction) which will take 700ms to perform.
Compare that to LANs (Local Area Networks) with 1-3ms response times and WANs (Wide Area Networks) with 10-300ms delays – depending on end point locations with mobile and wireless networks adding somewhat to this. It’s clear that after a few round trip conversations an application may be intolerably slow or even timeout, compared to functioning well in wired or wireless networks.
And how can you fix satellite high latency issues with applications?
Clearly you can’t just move the satellite! Though, there are lower orbit satellite options available that may work for you both in terms of service provided and budget.
If you need to work with the satellite as it is, then changing the way your software communicates offers the best solution:
– Change timeout values on network requests to allow for higher latencies
– Use overlapping network requests and responses where possible – instead of waiting for something to complete before requesting the next thing
– Caching more data where possible means you don’t need the network all the time
Sometimes you can use other software or equipment solutions to help you out, but they can be expensive. For example, if fundamentally, you have a data transfer issue i.e. the latency prevents you from using up the bandwidth available to you in the service, then, if you use standard transfer methods (ftp, Microsoft CIFS or your custom application that uses TCP to transfer blocks of data etc.) you can get equipment and/or software that may cache on your behalf and/or acknowledge receipt of data locally to the transmitter thus avoiding the latency. These are termed WAN optimisation solutions, but they don’t work in all cases, they can be expensive and they, themselves can cause issues.
But how do you know whether you have any issues with your application in satellite networks at all
Dirty word coming here: You need to “Test”
That may not be as formal as it sounds: we could say you need to try the application in the satellite network. There are issues with testing or trying using actual (real) satellite networks though:
– Satellite time is expensive and the equipment may not be easy to deploy
– It will be just about impossible to mimic your or your customers’ real locations
– If you find an issue which needs attention, getting it to the developers for a solution will be difficult (and if the developers say they’ve sorted it out it is likely to be very difficult to retest)
– You won’t be able to try out other satellite environments e.g. MEO or LEO without purchasing them
– You won’t be able to have a rainstorm appear just when you need it during your testing
Using Satellite Network Emulators
Because of the issues of “real network testing” in Satellite networks we’ve brought Satellite Network Emulation capabilities to our NE-ONE and INE Network Emulators.
People think of anything with the name Emulator in it as some sort of complex mathematical device which predicts behaviours. They may be complex, but only internally. Externally, we make them very straightforward. And, they don’t predict behaviour, you get to actually try out (“test”) your application using your real clients and servers just as though they were in the satellite network.
All you need to do is plug them in between a client device and the servers and set them for the satellite situation you want. You can even try out other options like LEO or NEO within seconds.
Plugging them in is easy because they have Ethernet ports, you don’t need any satellite equipment at all.
You can find out more here
Parts 2 and 3, concentrating on jitter, the effect of atmospheric conditions and choice of wavebands, will follow soon. | <urn:uuid:16793fdb-1400-4622-b11c-4ebeef4383c8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://itrinegy.com/satellite-communications-blog-part-1/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337404.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003070342-20221003100342-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.93459 | 1,687 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Books provide you with access to content from times long past. Without them, we would have little more than stories, presumptions and lore to go by. Books do their job dutifully, with some books even enduring thousands of years of use.
For libraries and archives, data is the only asset that really matters. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to consistently preserve all of the data that your library or archive stores because physical storage mediums such as paper and microfilm break down over time and are very susceptible to damage. What's more, these mediums are expensive and time consuming to reproduce. Unless you have a high-tech, airtight facility wherein nobody has physical access to your archives, this can make the outlook for long-term preservation seem dismal.
Integrated library systems that provide quick, convenient access to myriad resources are the way of the future. Indeed, the transition is already taking place. Digitization of library resources is the goal institutions are aiming for to maintain their status as centres of knowledge and information in the digital age.
The digitization of library systems and services is no small feat. It requires format transitions for a variety of items, from books to manuscripts, historical information to microfilm, newspaper collections and beyond. It also means the development and implementation of online databases for improved information sharing and distribution. Such a transition can come with quite the price tag.
However, developing a fully digitized, integrated library system doesn’t have to break the budget. Here are some steps you can take to digitize your library on a budget.
A simple truth about digital technology is that it is transforming the ways that library systems and services operate. Not only is technology itself advancing, but the expectations of users are also changing; today, people expect to be able to access all manner of information digitally.
Analog documents – books, newspapers, microfilm, microfiche, town records, historic information – are still important, but there is a recognized need to have them digitized in order to improve access and availability. And documents are not the only things being affected by the digital age. Increasingly, libraries and other informational institutions are rethinking the ways they provide services to their clientele. Below are some of the bigger transformations library systems and services are experiencing in the age of digital media. | <urn:uuid:041f2ea4-5aa9-4447-8568-bbea0628655a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.mesltd.ca/topic/digitizing-library | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.950735 | 470 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The regressive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for women with up to 100 million people expected to fall into extreme poverty. Global remittances from job losses for migrant workers are expected to fall by 19.7 percent to around US$445 billion, compared to US$554 billion in 2019. Many of these migrant workers are women and Mckinsey reports that women’s jobs are 1.8 times more vulnerable to this crisis than men’s jobs. Women make up 39 percent of global employment but account for 54 percent of overall job losses. There has never been a more important time to address women’s economic participation. McKinsey Global Institute reports that improving women’s economic empowerment in Indonesia can boost the economy by USD 135 billion each year.
In Indonesia , the fourth largest nation in the world, the pandemic has exposed women’s vulnerability to economic shocks and has deepened pre-existing gender inequality. Female employees working hours have reduced by 50 %, compared with 35% for males. Women’s burdens have intensified with many women having to juggle their professional responsibilities with household chores and increased parental responsibilities. A recent survey showed that 82% of Indonesian women, who depend on income from family businesses, saw substantial declines in income.
Indonesian women play a critical role as owners and entrepreneurs in micro and small businesses. Approximately 99 percent of all businesses in Indonesia are micro, small and medium enterprises. About one third of these are owned by women.
For International Women’s Day, as part of Amplifying Her Voice a panel of Indonesian women leaders discussed how to support women-owned micro enterprises through the pandemic; how can they have adapted and sustained their businesses; how digital platforms helped; and what are the policy enablers and support that they need? The Panel was moderated by Anna Winoto, a long time human development leader in the public sector; and comprised: Stella Tambunan, the CEO of YCAB Ventures and Chief Financial Officer of YCAB Foundation, a social impact investing and microlending enterprise for women-led ultra-micro businesses; Vitasari Anggraeni, from Pulse Lab Jakarta, a joint data innovation facility of the United Nations and the Government of Indonesia that has assessed coping mechanisms of women-owned micro enterprises and small businesses; Brigitta Ratih Aryanti, Head of Government Relations and Public Policy at GoPay, who focuses on building a cashless society and increasing access to finance for all; and Hanna Keraf, Co-founder of Du’Anyam, a social enterprise that aims to improve maternal health by providing alternative livelihood and employment to subsistence farmers.
Yenny Wahid, a prominent public figure who champions tolerance, peace, and prosperity in Indonesia, and advises the Indonesian Government on anti-terrorism and anti-radicalism, delivered the Keynote Address. She is an active proponent for leveraging technologies for economic empowerment, especially for grassroots communities. She emphasized the benefits of empowering women economically, beyond income dimensions and impacting on peace, security, and access to justice. She highlighted the need to use digital tools to build economies of scale from such initiatives, “Digital will enable a multiplier effect on women’s economic empowerment and unlock the potential of women entrepreneurs and women-owned micro- and small businesses and will be key to a strong national economic recovery”.
More than 300,000 micro and small businesses (MSB) in Indonesia made the shift to digital platforms during the pandemic. A 2017 study on women’s digital literacy in Indonesia, found that teaching women how to create content and share information on digital media can open more opportunities for economic and professional growth, as well as improved social status, bargaining positions and influence on village policies by providing rural women training in digital media. The UN reported that younger and women-owned businesses deployed a wider range of digital solutions, and messaging apps (WhatsApp) and social networks (Instagram, Facebook or Twitter) were a popular means to reach additional customers. Digital solutions also helped business owners manage work and home responsibilities including setting up digital platforms to extend customer reach and resolve delivery problems during lockdowns; changing the scope of the business to cater to local customer preferences; improving service to other platform users including drivers to remain competitive; and using other digital platforms to direct more customers to their platform.
Dedicated access to smartphones was key. Not all MSB women owners had access, and sometimes they shared their smartphones with their children or husband. Digital literacy was also an issue and training was critical to achieve the benefits of digitalization, including digital literacy and financial management for MSBs. Technology facilitators were also needed to facilitate the process of adopting and using digital platforms. Women MSB owners were more likely to rely on these technology facilitators from within their immediate network. Digital payments were also a necessary element.
The discussion highlighted several important lessons. First of all, the principle of equity must underpin all efforts to digitize and scale women-owned micro and small businesses. There are huge disparities in access and capacities for digital uptake, whereby women, poor and remote communities are at a greater disadvantage. Secondly, the human elements of digitization cannot be ignored. Human agents and facilitators are necessary enablers for shifting behaviors. Finally, trust and partnerships are key to increasing the uptake of digital tools and platforms. The users have to trust in the integrity, reliability and security of the system. Partnerships across government, private sector and civil society are needed to expand the benefits of digitization to more women, more micro and small businesses.
Women typically invest a higher proportion of their earnings in their families and communities than men. With even a few years of primary education, women have better economic prospects, fewer and healthier children, and better chances of sending their own children to school. GSMA has estimated that there are 1.1 billion unconnected women in low- and middle-income economies in Asia Pacific. Digital technologies can help equip them for the industries that will thrive in the automation age. Women are agents of change in their families, communities, and countries. Increasing the voice and participation of women in the economy is essential for advancing issues of importance to women on national agendas, with benefits for both women and men. Women’s equal participation is vital to stability, helps prevent conflict, and promotes sustainable, inclusive development.
~With guest contributor, Anna Winoto | <urn:uuid:2690772e-e5f9-40b6-b2f9-30aa092c9533> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://coruzant.com/op-ed/blockchainging/going-digital-indonesian-women-micro-entrepreneurs-surviving-the-pandemic/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.956336 | 1,311 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Granular Aluminum Superinductors Could Enhance Qubit Performance
(PhysicsWorld) Researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have built a high impedance inductor, or “superinductor”, from granular aluminium. The superinductor can be directly incorporated into superconducting qubit circuits to produce robust quantum systems.
Creating a superinductor is often laborious. Past approaches used arrays of hundreds of superconducting devices called Josephson junctions to build up a cumulatively large inductance. As a simpler alternative, the research team turned to granular aluminium (grAl), a superconducting material containing a mixture of pure, nanoscale aluminium grains and amorphous aluminum oxide.
The successful use of grAl as a material for qubit circuits could solve many of the problems currently limiting the scaling-up of superconducting quantum processors. Beyond quantum information, grAl superinductors could also be used to make inductance-based photon detectors and high impedance resonators, opening the door for a new generation of superconducting devices. | <urn:uuid:67a1c2ea-cf14-4f66-ab5e-dcac5920f9d7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.insidequantumtechnology.com/news-archive/granular-aluminum-superinductors-enhance-qubit-performance/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.852673 | 224 | 2.875 | 3 |
Researchers combine artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing and supercomputers to develop better, and more reasoned, information extraction and classification methods WordNet is a lexical database for the English language.
It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short definitions and usage examples, and records a number of relations among these synonym sets or their members. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin developed a method to incorporate information from WordNet into informational retrieval systems. How do search engines generate lists of relevant links? The outcome is the result of two powerful forces in the evolution of information retrieval: artificial intelligence — especially natural language processing — and crowdsourcing.
Determine Relationships between Words
Computer algorithms interpret the relationship between the words we type and the vast number of possible web pages based on the frequency of linguistic connections in the billions of texts on which the system has been trained. But that is not the only source of information. The semantic relationships get strengthened by professional annotators who hand-tune results — and the algorithms that generate them — for topics of importance, and by web searchers (us) who, in our clicks, tell the algorithms which connections are the best ones.
Despite the incredible, world-changing success of this model, it has its flaws. Search engine results are often not as “smart” as we’d like them to be, lacking a true understanding of language and human logic. Beyond that, they sometimes replicate and deepen the biases embedded in our searches, rather than bringing us new information or insight. Matthew Lease, an associate professor in the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), believes there may be better ways to harness the dual power of computers and human minds to create more intelligent information retrieval (IR) systems. […] | <urn:uuid:5507ec42-95c8-492a-931a-117b1718d96e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://swisscognitive.ch/2017/08/09/the-future-of-search-engines/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.918647 | 370 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Websites use several ways of tracking your activity across the internet. The most popular and accepted form of this is cookies. The small text files are created every time you visit a website, and it stores information on your browsing habits.
It might seem nefarious (and for the most part, it isn’t), but they have a useful function. The information stored in them is what enables you to access a website without having to log in. Cookies also remember things like products you viewed or where you are.
But cookies aren’t always used for good. There has been much debate whether they still have a purpose, as they can pose a threat to your data. The Firefox browser has a new tool that deletes cookies automatically.
Here are the details
Browsers like Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Mozilla’s Firefox have been taking a harder stance on protecting your online privacy. By not blindly allowing websites to track your behavior, many browsers have added cookie protections or more user options.
Mozilla has now taken that one step further with its Firefox browser by adding a major privacy enhancement. With a recently rolled out update, Firefox makes removing all cookies and supercookies from your machine easier.
In a blog post, Mozilla explained that cookies could be fully removed for any or specific websites. As part of Firefox Strict Mode, it builds on its existing Total Cookie Protection.
Here’s how it works
When you visit a website, the cookie is stored on your machine. It can include inane data like the time you logged on, but some sites embed trackers into it. This is a real threat, as it can follow you around the internet, collecting more information on you.
By updating Firefox to version 91, the new Enhanced Cookie Clearing function destroys all traces of a website in your browser. Mozilla promises that the new ability also removes third-party cookies that usually remain after deletion. These are often referred to as supercookies.
By going to Settings > Privacy and Security > Cookies and Site Data > Manage Data, you’ll see a cookie jar for each website you have visited. When you click on a website in the list, you have the option to remove all cookies or just selected ones.
How to update your browser
To update your Firefox browser to the latest version:
- Open the desktop browser
- Click the three lines in the upper right-hand corner
- At the bottom of the menu, click Help
- Then click About Firefox
This will show the current version you have. If the update is available to you, it will automatically start downloading. You must restart your browser afterward for the changes to take effect.
To Enable Enhanced Cookie Clearing, you need to have Strict Tracking Protection enabled. To do this, you need to click the three lines in the upper right-hand corner, click Settings and then Privacy & Security. By default, the browser will be set to Standard, but you must select Strict for the security update to be effective. | <urn:uuid:0204793e-2eee-4acc-a18d-10115c205182> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/firefox-eliminates-cookies/802908/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335350.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929100506-20220929130506-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.912095 | 628 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Network monitoring is the use of a methodical approach to overseeing the functioning of a computer network by trained professionals using management software tools. They identify and address hardware and software issues that affect the performance of the computers and network components and ensure they maintain peak performance. Monitoring the network 24 hours a day can prevent switch failures, server outages, and other hardware issues and software maladies.
Benefits of Network Monitoring Systems
Network monitoring systems ensure continued availability and protection of the entire network and makes sure it remains online and operating properly. Network administrators and systems are usually required to monitor large scale university or corporate IT networks to keep them safely processing vital data. Network monitoring systems can detect and report device or connection failures. They also measure the host’s CPU utilization, network bandwidth, utilization of the links, and many other operational aspects. If issues are detected, the system sends alerts to system administrators.
Monitoring Improves Network Security
Network monitoring systems help protect critical business data by regularly providing important background information on all network traffic. This makes dubious network traffic and questionable file activity sent over the port easier to identify. There are network monitoring systems designed to monitor web server availability and instantly detect problems anywhere in a global pool of web servers.
Monitoring Systems Help Identify Trends
Network forensics and network monitoring used together can help to identify trends and threats not otherwise recognized. Problems taking place only at peak times or intermittently are often difficult to identify when they are taking place. Ongoing network monitoring enables administrators to use logs as a roadmap to identify key network health and performance trends. In organizations where an Information Technology Infrastructure Library framework has been adopted for best practices, it’s possible to compare a performance baseline with ongoing network logs to detect potentially larger issues and help administrators keep the IT infrastructure running properly.
Benefits Network Configuration
Configuration errors cause most network problems. Seemingly minor configuration issues often lead to significant network downtime. To prevent this, network monitoring can detect duplicate IPs and problems with device routing. It can then completely track the resolution so the network administrator can verify all necessary future changes and prevent unnecessary ones.
Network Monitoring Assists Future Planning
Network monitoring can also be instrumental in forward thinking network plans. It can help the administrators of the IT infrastructure quickly adapt to significant business growth or the rapid addition of more employees, by making them aware of in-use resources and the need for upgrades to prevent bandwidth bottlenecks and other issues that can strain a network.
Disaster Recovery with Network Monitoring
Network monitoring can help IT departments develop effective disaster recovery and business continuity plans and quickly get the network back up and running by providing impact analysis and strategies. Network monitoring systems can help identify gaps between current setups and needed ones and ensure scheduled backups to a network server from desktop computers, laptop computers and wireless devices are saved in the cloud or an off-site location. This will allow for all systems to be quickly back up and running after a disaster.
For more information about network monitoring, or to consult an IT professional, contact tekRESCUE, located in San Marcos, TX. | <urn:uuid:e8df0a89-7115-4dab-8ac2-a58d32607015> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://mytekrescue.com/network-monitoring-why-its-important/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337723.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006025949-20221006055949-00530.warc.gz | en | 0.896317 | 627 | 2.625 | 3 |
Now Streaming On-Demand
Wi-Fi Fundamentals: Making Sense of Wireless Alphabet Soup
Everyday, more and more data is transmitted and received across Wi-Fi networks – and users are demanding more speed and reliability. Wi-Fi has become a way of life for both indoor (offices, schools, warehouses), as well as outdoor areas (amusement parks, campuses, stadiums).
In order to achieve high performing Wi-Fi, you have to take into account bandwidth, applications, capacity, other network constraints, RSSI (Signal), SNR (Noise) and all the rest of the alphabet soup. Since every environment is different, network engineers are challenged with documenting and translating these considerations into a well designed network plan.
The good news is that — with the right Wi-Fi tools, a floor plan, and detailed business requirements — it is easy to have a highly accurate network that will serve your business, employees and customers as well.
Join us as we discuss the fundamentals of Wi-Fi and why a good design is the foundation of your network.
- What are the fundamentals of Wi-Fi
- Why is a good design important
- Understanding your network and the tools available
- Best practices for designing and troubleshooting your network | <urn:uuid:7801c198-519f-4ce9-b41d-797bafc46bbb> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ekahau.com/webinars/wi-fi-fundamentals-making-sense-of-wireless-alphabet-soup/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335355.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929131813-20220929161813-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.945495 | 262 | 2.8125 | 3 |
I've got three computers now (Asus Eee PC, OLPC, and Dell M1330) that have flash disks instead of moving disks. In addition, my desktop has numerous flash chips to store the BIOS, network card ROM, video ROM, disk controller ROM, and so forth. It's time we look at the security risks of flash.
What we call "flash memory" is a type of memory that retains its contents after your turn the power off, as opposed to normal computer memory that loses its contents. In most cases, it's slower than normal memory, so it's more like a hard-disk than it is like normal memory. (NOR flash is fast but low capacity and is often used for BIOS ROMs, whereas NAND flash is slow buy high capacity, and is used for things like USB flash drives).
The major feature we are concerned about from a security point of view is that you cannot infinitely rewrite it. With normally memory and normal hard-disks, you can rewrite the contents trillions of times without concern. With flash memory, after rewriting data a few hundred thousand times, the block goes bad. It's quite easy to intentionally write a program that would continuously overwrite a block of flash until it failed.
At my previous employer, we found vulnerabilities in Cisco routers that would potentially allow us to create a worm. As part of our threat modeling, we considered what would happen if such a worm were to intentionally destroy the flash in a Cisco router. These routers boot from flash, so all the worm had to do was continuously overwrite the boot sector, then the router would no longer be able to boot.
The flash in many (if not most) Cisco routers is soldered in. Therefore, destroying the flash would "brick" the device. In other routers, the flash is socketed and can be replaced by the user.
Think of a hypothetical worm that infected the backbone routers and destroyed their flash chips. In one scenario, all those routers have soldered flash. It would take weeks or months for Cisco to send replacement motherboards to all those customers. In another scenario, all those routers have socketed flash, and the customers woul.d have spare flash modules on hand. In this scenario, they just simply install a (patched) copy of IOS on the flash modules, plug them in, and be back up and running within hours.
It's not just backbone ISPs that should take this threat into account, but anybody where the network is critical to operation. Financial networks (like the New York Stock Exchange) and the power grid are two examples that come to mind.
We therefore suggest that a element of critical infrastructure protection is to (1) require devices to have socketable flash, (2) for owners to have replaceable flash modules on hand, and (3) a way for owners to get the system back up and running after replacing the flash module.
Besides boot flash, mass storage flash has its own particular quirks. Take, for example, the notebook computers I mention above. A standard operating system continuously writes to a hard disk in the background. Windows frequently writes to the registry, and is constantly swapping memory to the disk. Linux is constantly updating /var/log files, and is constantly updating the atime record (last time you accessed a file). Thus, if you tried to boot Windows or Linux from a normal flash chip, you would quickly destroy the chip.
There is an obvious solution to this problem called "wear leveling". You create an extra layer between the operating system and the flash drive. Every time you rewrite a block of data, you instead write a new physical block. Thus, a logical disk location is different than the true physical location. This means all the blocks on the flask drive are overwritten equally, rather than any particular block being overwritten many times.
There are two ways of doing wear leveling: in the hardware, or in the software. You can now buy replacement IDE/SATA hard drives that replace your disks that have this wear leveling built-in. These are often called "solid state drives" or "SSDs". A good example is my Dell M1330, or Apple's new MacBook Air.
Whereas Windows is stuck with NTFS/FAT file systems that require to you solve wear-leveling in hardware, Linux can boot from special file systems that do wear-leveling in software. One popular flash file system is JFFS2. My Eee PC ($300 laptop) uses an SSD with hardware leveling, therefore, it boots using ext3 file system, and I can boot it with Windows if I wanted. My OLPC ($200 laptop) uses a cheaper flash chip without wear leveling. Therefore, it boots Linux with JFFS2, and I cannot install Windows on it.
The problem with either JFFS2 or SSDs is that a hacker can still attack the system and destroy the underlying flash and brick the system.
Besides boot flash or bulk storage, a hacker could also destroy the flash on your video card, network card, disk controller, and so forth. In some cases, the flash is only for optional features (like "network boot"), so destroying the flash won't impact most users. In other cases, the flash is a required part of the system. In order to boot from a SATA controller, the flash ROM must install its drivers at boot time.
Most desktops have a switch on the motherboard that would prevent a virus from destroying the BIOS flash, but such switches do not exist on laptops. There are likewise no switches protecting the other flash chips on the system whose destruction will prevent the system from booting. Again, we would suggest that for critical systems (such as servers), companies examine how well the flash is protected from destruction, and whether they can easily replace it in the field.
While destroying flash is easy, subverting is more fun. Errata Security conducted an experiment where we wrote a bit of malware under Windows that would subvert the flash of a network card. This flash would then subvert the boot process to in turn subvert a driver loaded from the hard disk, thus leaving a memory resident piece of code that could not be found on the hard disk. Re-installing the operating system did not remove the malware. We could also move the card to a new machine and infect that machine.
Such "flash rootkits" would therefore allow an attacker to take permanent control of a machine. Since the problem isn't addressed by security products, it's likely that the hackers can gain control without being detected, and if detected, would force the victim to replace the hardware completely.
There are some complications to subverting flash. Flash used for BIOSs are meant to be easily read and hard to write. Writing to flash often requires weird techniques. A typical example is that to switch the flash to write mode, you have to read from specific locations in the flash in a specific order to tell the chip you want to write, then do strange things to write data. Sometimes if you do all the correct things, the write operations will actually fail, so you have to try again until you get it right.
Luckily (for hackers), most systems do a raw pass through to the flash chips. A vendor of network cards, for example, wants to be able to choose different flash vendors, depending upon whoever has the cheapest chips at the moment. That means hackers don't need to worry about the quirks of a hundred different network chips - just the quirks of a few flash vendors. There is an open source project for flashing BIOSes that already contains the necessary code that a hacker could use to destroy/subvert almost any flash chip in any sort of addon card.
Most people don't have to worry about these threats, of course. Few hackers want to destroy the average person's systems. However, we would like to reiterate our belief that those responsible for protecting critical infrastructure take flash threats seriously. We believe they need to be able to respond a widespread infection that destroys the boot flash on critical devices. | <urn:uuid:b6aa576e-68b7-4ef0-945d-8b1da7cbc75a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.erratasec.com/2008/01/hacking-flash-memory.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930212504-20221001002504-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.944861 | 1,644 | 2.625 | 3 |
Today In History May 11
1752 1st US fire insurance policy issued in Philadelphia
Property protection was unquestionably not an obscure idea in the eighteenth century: England’s acclaimed safety net provider Lloyd’s of London had been conceived in 1686. Be that as it may, it took until the mid-1700s for the American provinces to become prosperous and complex enough to build up the idea. It occurred in Philadelphia, at the time perhaps the biggest city in North America, with 15,000 inhabitants.
The city was spooky by the dread of flames. Much like London during the 1600s, houses right now were made on the whole out of wood. More awful yet, the settlements that developed into urban areas were constructed near one another. This was initially accomplished for security reasons, however as urban communities developed, designers manufactured homes near one another for similar reasons they do today to fit whatever number homes as could reasonably be expected on their advancement plots. Albeit quite a bit of Philadephia was worked with wide lanes and block or stone structures, fires were as yet a worry.
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin and a few other driving residents of the town established The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, displayed after a London firm. The primary fire insurance agency in America, it was organized as a shared insurance agency, and Franklin promoted it in The Pennsylvania Gazette (which he possessed). Like current back up plans, the organization conveyed examiners to assess properties applying for protection, and dismissed those that didn’t fulfill its guidelines; rates depended on a hazard appraisal of the property. The Contributorship gave seven-year term approaches, and claims were paid out of a capital save finance.
1850 Work starts on 1st brick building in San Francisco
The main block working in San Francisco was raised in September 1849 by William Heath Davis, on the northwest corner of Montgomery and California boulevards.
While the structure was being raised, ambitious residents of Benicia, an adversary city around then, made a suggestion to ship all the blocks and material to Benicia and erect the structure there free. A fine site was additionally tossed in liberated from cost.
Davis declined, yet the severe competition between San Francisco and Benicia proceeded with warm, and peppered with expanding desire.
The block building was later rented to the U.S. Government for a Custom House in June 1850 at a lease of $3000 every month. The structure was decimated in the enormous fire of 1857.
1858 Minnesota admitted as 32nd US state
The Ojibwe and the Dakota were among the Native individuals who initially made this land their home, and white settlement of the territory started in 1820 with the foundation of Fort Snelling. In 1849, Minnesota turned into a U.S. region.
The structure of railways and trenches brought a land blast during the 1850s, and Minnesota’s populace expand from just 6,000 out of 1850 to more than 150,000 by 1857. Mostly a place where there is little ranchers, Minnesota upheld the Union in the Civil War and provided enormous amounts of wheat toward the Northern armed forces. Initially settled by vagrants of British, German, and Irish extraction, Minnesota saw a significant deluge of Scandinavian migrants during the nineteenth century. Minnesota’s “Twin Cities” Minneapolis and St. Paul became out of Fort Snelling, the focal point of early U.S. settlement.
1907 Bank of San Francisco incorporated
It was November 1914 when the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco first opened its leased office in the rear of the old Merchants National Bank. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 required the foundation of 12 Federal Reserve Banks all through the country so as to make an increasingly steady and secure money related framework. However, how did San Francisco become the central command of the enormous Twelfth Federal Reserve District? The Gold Rush, the 1906 Earthquake, San Francisco’s characteristic resources, and monetary frenzies that make the Great Recession of the 21st century resemble a blip these added to San Francisco’s development as the top possibility to fill in as area central station.
The Canton Bank of San Francisco was joined in 1907 to help the Chinese people group with money related assets to help reconstruct the territory following the 1906 San Francisco tremor and the staggering fire that followed.
Look Tin Eli, a businessman and the significant power behind the thought and association of the bank, collaborated with Lew Hing. After a year, Canton Bank of San Francisco was the chief bank for in excess of 100,000 Chinese in the United States and Mexico. In any case, in 1923, the Canton Bank was in a difficult situation, and it was shut by the administrator of banks in July 1926.
In spite of the fact that the first Canton Bank shut, a few others were shaped to help and offer money related types of assistance to the Chinese people group in California. As per the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, the Bank of Canton, Ltd., worked by an organization of the outside bank, opened in 1924 and gave up its permit in 1935. The Bank of Canton of California, which opened in 1937, was at first settled to address the issues of San Francisco’s Chinese people group, which couldn’t get credit through standard banks. The bank, perceiving the unique connection among Chinatown and the city, invested in being a functioning and included individual from the two networks. The holding organization of United Commercial Bank gained Bank of Canton of California in 2002. | <urn:uuid:d63d4de1-f10c-4f24-95f9-8c15c1f2b998> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://areflect.com/2020/05/11/today-in-history-may-11/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337287.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002052710-20221002082710-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.971936 | 1,140 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Unfortunately, supply chain attacks are on the rise. The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity this year predicted a four-fold increase over the next year. This is because malicious actors have realized they can cause great damage to organizations that have a good security posture by coming in through their back door unnoticed.
The IT supply chain
In a general sense, a supply chain is a system of resources involved in supplying a product or service. When it comes to the technology used to deliver this product or service, businesses rely on third-party software vendors. This can be any kind of software that they don’t have control over, that is not developed in-house, but that they need to acquire and use to deliver their service or product to their customers or clients.
Threat actors have turned to targeting third party software vendors. When organizations install these third-party applications or run a software update or a patch for the third-party application, they grant permissions to the application. They give the application access to sensitive data and critical digital assets.
Rather than waste their time trying to infiltrate potentially lucrative organizations or government agencies that have a good security posture, cyber criminals have become smarter. By targeting third-party software vendors who don’t, or can’t, invest the same resources into cybersecurity as larger organizations, they are able to exploit the trust between an organization and a third-party vendor. By employing this strategy, called a supply chain attack, malicious actors can then infiltrate many organizations, extorting them all for what they are worth.
How supply chain attacks work
When an organization is installing a vendor’s software, it provides it with a trusted digital signature. This signature is like a stamp as the software is familiar to the organization. Little does it know that hiding within the vendor software is malicious code, previously injected by malicious actors without the knowledge of the vendor. Supply chain attacks are how malicious actors can gain access to otherwise secure organizations.
It could be an installation of vendor software or an update, but this legitimate process gains the malicious code access to restricted parts of the organization’s IT system. This is known as an attack vector. Later, and it could be weeks later, this bit of malicious code can be activated by malicious actors remotely.
Because this code has the same access privileges as the vendor’s software, it will have access to whatever data or whatever part of the IT infrastructure the vendor’s software does. The malicious actor, with access to the organization’s network and data, can perform various attacks such as a mass ransomware attack. The attack can be something even more sinister than this. Many malicious actors try to do their dirty work quietly, stealing without being noticed.
There are other ways malicious actors can infiltrate through the IT supply chain. One is through open-source code.
Open-source code is packaged computer programming code that is developed with the intention of distributing it for free. These code packages can be enhanced or modified or included and built upon so as not to have to reinvent the wheel.
Most applications today include some form of open-source code. Because open-source code is free, it doesn’t have much security around it. Malicious actors are already working hard to compromise open-source code.
The second way is via a foreign threat. In China, for example, the government has strict control over its citizens and companies. Since a lot of software originates from countries like China or other countries where software development is low-cost, this adds another layer of supply chain attack risk to organizations.
Protecting organizations from supply chain threats
The best way organizations can protect themselves from supply chain attacks and other cyber-attacks is to ensure every third-party vendor they use complies with strict cybersecurity standards.
Adherence should be checked regularly. Trusted vendors should be scrutinized based on the access their software needs and the data their software will have access to. The more sensitive the data, the more scrutiny required.
Each third-party assessment should be unique to the software being installed, and it should be conducted by a security expert. Third-party software that has not been checked should not be allowed to be installed.
Two-factor authentication should also be used by the vendor as this provides another hurdle malicious actors need to jump over to gain access.
Supply chain attacks are an escalating threat that can severely hurt a business’s reputation. Once attacked, some businesses never recover.
If you’d like to know more about risk management, security vulnerabilities, and the supply chain risk in your business, talk to the experts at Merit Technologies today. | <urn:uuid:a196549b-4b83-4a0f-a60e-2db97f32fdb6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://merittechnologies.com/insights/supply-chain-attacks-what-are-they/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003133425-20221003163425-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.952189 | 947 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Of all the cybersecurity challenges faced by businesses today, phishing is one of the most prevalent. A global survey of infosec professionals found that 57% of organisations experienced a successful phishing attack in 2020, making it one of the most common causes of data breaches.
It’s not just the scale of the problem – the impact of the breaches caused by phishing is also growing, both financially and reputationally. Among those successful attacks, 55% suffered a ransomware attack, and 35% suffered a financial loss. With the average cost of a data breach coming in at £2.83m, the risks have become too great to ignore. Enterprises now have a variety of tools to help defend against the threat. In this paper we’ll examine why some of the most common methods to protect against phishing are ineffective, and why it’s essential to consider a comprehensive Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution that can tackle the risk more effectively.
Phishing is one of the oldest forms of cyberattack, but has become increasingly sophisticated, and as a result, increasingly successful. In the past, phishing tended to rely on mass emails which were relatively easy for both email filters and users to recognise as malicious. Today, ‘spear phishing’ is increasingly used to target a specific business or individual.
These techniques often involve researching information about the user and the business beforehand, to increase the chances of a successful attack. Spoofed sites can be extremely hard to detect for the average employee, with some even going as far to forward login information to the legitimate site, so that the user will be logged in as normal and not suspect they’ve been the victim of an attack.
The availability of ‘phishing kits’ mean that this process can even be carried out by malicious actors with limited technical skills, allowing a much larger number of people to carry out sophisticated attacks than ever before. This has led to the rapid growth in the frequency and effectiveness of such attacks in recent years, with an FBI report finding that the number of attacks had doubled between 2019 and 2020.
The limited impact of some measures
To deal with phishing, many businesses opt for a variety of different technologies to meet the challenge. However, these approaches have significant shortcomings which still leave enterprises vulnerable to attacks.
The first line of defence most organisations typically adopt to deal with phishing is an email filter. Yet no matter how stringent the filter is, there will always be a percentage of phishing emails that get through, which can still be significant given the sheer scale of the problem.
A variety of methods exist which are used to bypass filters. Spear-phishing attacks, targeting specific individuals at an organisation, are often missed by filters, which mainly focus on emails sent in large volumes. Hijacked mail servers are also often used, which can be difficult to detect. Individual devices and accounts can even be compromised, where the phishing email will genuinely be sent from a legitimate account, without the knowledge of the owner. Combined, these methods mean that no filter can fully protect from phishing emails – it only takes one to be successful, and the more successful attackers are at bypassing a filter, the more likely they are to be successful at convincing an employee.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is another common way in which businesses attempt to stop phishing attacks. However, due to a lack of full compatibility, MFA is often not an available solution for all applications, making it difficult to implement comprehensively, leaving areas of exposure. This problem is exacerbated by Shadow IT, where even if an app does support MFA, the IT department may be unaware that it is used by employees and cannot enforce the use of MFA to protect it. MFA is also extremely difficult to implement where there is shared access to single accounts.
An important consideration to note is that MFA does not actually protect login credentials from being stolen by phishing attacks – it only prevents that application from being accessed without additional factors of authentication. While the app will be secure as long as MFA is active, the huge problem of password reuse means that malicious actors will be able to use the compromised, legitimate username and password combination to attempt to gain access to other applications, perhaps even directory or email logins.
MFA also frequently suffers from poor adoption rates. Large enterprises use an average of 288 different cloud apps, which means employees spend a significant amount of time logging in to applications. Adding an extra, time-consuming step to this process means that employees often try to find workarounds or opt out where possible, particularly if they use their own device in a remote working environment, or are using an app without the knowledge or oversight of the IT department.
MFA also exacerbates the problem of users being locked out of accounts and needing assistance from the IT helpdesk. While resetting passwords is generally a straightforward task, a lost, damaged or stolen device used for MFA can make the problem far more complex to resolve, causing significantly more employee downtime.
In addition, not all MFA is completely secure. SMS messages sent to a smartphone, for example, are not encrypted and are sent in plain text, making it possible to intercept them via cloning, or SIM swapping, the latter where the attacker impersonates the victim and convinces their mobile telephone provider to port the number to a new device. This has led to several high-profile data breaches, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey suffering a successful attack via this method in 2019.
One of the most popular ways to address the threat of phishing is to educate employees on cybersecurity risks with training often used in conjunction with other technology methods to bolster security. According to the Information Commissioner’s Office, human error is the leading cause of data breaches, and cybersecurity training attempts to address this. However, by still leaving the responsibility of managing passwords and the associated vulnerabilities with employees, the problem unfortunately persists.
Research from My1Login found that even extensive cybersecurity training has little discernible impact on user behaviour. With respect to using personal passwords for business applications, employees who reported receiving ‘a little’ training actually used them more often (63%) than those with no training at all (61%). Even respondents who reported having ‘a lot’ of training had only a slightly lower figure at 57%.
The reuse of passwords was affected slightly more by training, but figures still remained extremely high – while 91% of employees with no training reuse passwords at work, 85% of those who have received training still continue this practice. Some highly insecure practices, such as writing down passwords, showed no difference between the trained and untrained groups at all.
No matter how educated employees are about cybersecurity risks, the effects on employee behaviour are often negligible. With the average employee using over 12 apps per day and the average enterprise using 288 in total, requiring users to memorise separate, high-entropy passwords for each one is simply unworkable, no matter how extensive the training. To effectively secure an organisation, the responsibility of cybersecurity cannot rest solely with the end user.
Personal password managers
Personal password managers, or PPMs, are sometimes rolled out to attempt to address the vulnerabilities inherent in using passwords for user authentication. However, they are completely ill-suited to address the challenges of phishing attacks.
PPMs still leave employees with the responsibility of creating and storing their passwords, which means they still have visibility of their credentials, and can still input them into phishing sites. While PPMs can generate strong passwords to protect against the risks posed by weak and reused passwords, if they can still be visible and entered into cloned sites, they cannot effectively protect against phishing. This lack of centralised management and oversight means the business does not fully control user access and cannot accurately monitor threats.
In addition, PPMs lack the functionality associated with IAM solutions to adapt to an enterprise environment. Shared accounts and granular user permissions for privileged access are often unsupported, requiring employees to share and create passwords in an insecure manner. These changes in user behaviour often lead to poor uptake rates among employees, and lax security practices persist even after their implementation. Personal password managers can even create additional security risks, enabling employees to retain, and sometimes solely own, access to corporate account credentials after they leave the organisation.
How IAM solves the phishing problem
The most effective way to protect against phishing is to remove passwords altogether. One of the most important facets of an Identity and Access Management solution is its ability to deliver passwordless authentication, where open security standards such as SAML or OIDC are used to provide Single Sign-On (SSO). The user’s identity is federated from the corporate directory to the IAM solution, which acts as the Identity Provider (IdP), enabling transmission of a secure token to the Service Provider (SP) to authenticate the user. With no password that can be entered into a spoofed site, phishing becomes impossible.
Passwordless authentication relies on a relationship of trust between the IdP and the SP, so no matter how convincing a spoofed site may look, the token will only grant access to the legitimate application. These tokens are securely encrypted, and only valid for the single session for which the user gains access.
Crucially, passwordless authentication also enhances, rather than inhibits, the user experience for employees. Authentication takes place immediately on accessing the app without the user having to input any credentials, meaning the user saves time and does not require any additional steps to access applications, ensuring extremely high adoption rates.
Secure Web Authentication
While passwordless authentication is extremely secure, many cloud apps currently lack support for the security protocols it requires, and it is frequently incompatible with legacy apps, virtualised environments and mainframes. For these applications, which require the use of passwords to authenticate users, Secure Web Authentication can instead be deployed, providing the same protection against phishing attacks through secure password forwarding and vaulting.
With an SSO solution that uses Secure Web Authentication for password-based login forms, high-entropy passwords can be generated for the user and automatically entered into forms when the user accesses the app. Not only does this result in no change in user behaviour and thus a very high adoption rate, it also enables passwords to not be disclosed to the user. If the user does not know their passwords, they cannot be phished, again making such attacks impossible.
Secure Web Authentication also provides functionality such as supporting shared accounts, and allowing the secure sharing of passwords between employees. Crucially, they ensure that the business remains in control of user access, and take the responsibility of managing and creating passwords away from the end user, removing the inherent vulnerability of password-based authentication to phishing attacks.
While passwordless and Secure Web Authentication solve the issue of employees entering in passwords to cloned sites, it is also imperative that all apps used in the enterprise are protected. This task is made far more difficult by Shadow IT – the use of applications by users without the knowledge or approval of the IT department. According to McAfee, Shadow IT cloud usage is at least ten times greater than known cloud usage, and IT departments can only implement an IAM solution to cover apps they are aware of. With some applications left unprotected, these can remain as attack vectors for phishing, where usernames and passwords are still used without the protection offered by Secure Web Authentication.
IAM solutions solve this problem by allowing businesses to gain full visibility and control over which apps are being used by employees, and how they are accessed. Some IAM solutions can automatically detect cloud apps being used and inform the IT department, who can then integrate the app to the IAM solution with a single click, requiring the use of token-based authentication or secure web authentication to access it. This ensures that all applications are protected from phishing attacks, and the IAM solution provides maximum cost-effectiveness.
Identity Lifecycle Management
A common source of data breaches is former employees who retain access to the network long after they have left the business. Having access to these credentials can pose vulnerabilities out of the visibility or control of IT departments, providing a significant attack vector for any malicious actors.
Since employees frequently reuse passwords, these same credentials can be entered into an unsecure site, or phished from the user at their next job, or from their personal account. Malicious actors will then often make use of a technique known as ‘credential stuffing’ – compromised sets of usernames and passwords, frequently available for purchase on the dark web, are formed into large databases which are used to attack password-based authentication systems. Unlike brute force attacks, the credentials entered are all genuine combinations in use, making them far more effective and dangerous.
Identity and Access Management will also include Identity Lifecycle Management functionality to control the employee onboarding and offboarding process. This puts the business firmly in control of user access, with automatic user provisioning and deprovisioning ensuring that when an employee leaves the business, their access to all applications on the network will be revoked immediately.
While there are a number of ways that organisations currently attempt to tackle phishing, only solving the root of the problem can fully protect businesses from the reputational and financial risks involved. Replacing passwords with token-based authentication, or removing the responsibility of users to manage them, allows the business to remain fully in control of authentication and access throughout the network. By denying these attack vectors, phishing attacks will be rendered ineffective. | <urn:uuid:9e1df6ce-6777-4094-85cb-fed8d719feb6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.my1login.com/resources/white-papers/cs-how-iam-offers-the-best-protection-against-phishing-attacks | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003133425-20221003163425-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.952653 | 2,790 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) provides a standard way for applications to request and manage directory information. A simplified subset of the much more elaborate X.500 Directory Access Protocol, LDAP is more appropriate for many of today's applications, on both the client and server sides, because it makes fewer demands on system resources and supports TCP/IP. (It uses TCP, not UDP).
LDAP implementations use a client/server architecture to publish user information (such as user accounts) on the server and provide access to that directory information from LDAP-enabled clients.
WS_FTP Server offers two ways to connect to a Microsoft Active Directory for authentication. You can use the LDAP feature, or the Active Directory plug-in, which also lets you use Windows file permissions. Either method can be selected when you create a host.
WS_FTP Server supports standard implementations of LDAP, including Microsoft's Active Directory, OpenLDAP, and Novell's eDirectory. WS_FTP Server provides the following capabilities for interacting with an LDAP database:
For more information, see Configuring an LDAP Database. | <urn:uuid:7b4099a2-642f-4d7b-b03f-429ac492fc28> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://docs.ipswitch.com/WS_FTP_Server80/Help/Server/23712.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337731.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006061224-20221006091224-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.841775 | 232 | 2.6875 | 3 |
In this Cisco CCNA training tutorial, you’ll learn about the different Spanning Tree versions. There have been a few different versions over time, which have improved on the previous versions. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial.
Cisco STP Spanning Tree Versions Video Tutorial
When I was first learning about this from other sources, it was super confusing, but there is actually a simple way to explain it. It is by breaking it down into the open standards and into the Cisco proprietary versions.
Starting off with the open standards, the first original implementation of Spanning Tree was 802.1D. That uses one Spanning Tree for all of the different VLANs in the LAN, just one instance for everything.
That was improved with version 802.1w, which is Rapid Spanning Tree. It improved Spanning Tree by significantly improving the convergence time.
With 802.1D it can take up to 50 seconds for an interface to make sure that there are no loops there and transition into the forwarding state. With Rapid Spanning Tree, that gets down to typically a few seconds. Rapid Spanning Tree also uses one Spanning Tree instance for all VLANs in the LAN.
The latest of the industry standards is 802.1s, which is Multiple Spanning Tree. It enables grouping and mapping VLANs into different Spanning Tree instances, which allows you to do load balancing.
To summarise, 802.1D, the original implementation, got very slow convergence time and it doesn’t support any load balancing. 802.1w came out after that, which improved the convergence time, but also did not support load balancing.
The latest one, 802.1s, builds on Rapid Spanning Tree by keeping the improved convergence time and it enables load balancing as well.
MSTP Load Balancing Example
Let’s have a look and see how the load balancing works. The Access Layer switches in our example here have got PCs which are attached in multiple different VLANs.
We’re going to make CD1, the Core Distribution switch one, the Root Bridge for VLANs 10 to 19. The traffic for those VLANs is going to be forwarded on the link to CD1 and blocked on the link to CD2. We’re looking at it from the point of view of our Access Layer switch, Access 3.
When we configure this, traffic for VLANs 10 to 19 are going to go up the uplink to CD1. CD2 is going to be made the Root Bridge for VLANs 20 to 29. The traffic for those VLANs are going to go up the link to CD2, and it will be blocked on CD1.
Half of my traffic goes in the uplink to CD1, half the traffic goes in the uplink to CD2. If either one of those uplinks fails, then all traffic will flow over to using the one link.
With MSTP Multiple Spanning Tree, we’re going to have two Spanning Tree instances running, one for each group of VLANs. That’s how it allows us to do load balancing.
Next up, we’ll look at the Cisco proprietary versions. The first one is PVST+. This came out around the same time as 802.1D, but it included Cisco’s enhancements. The main enhancement is it uses a separate Spanning Tree instance for every VLAN.
Per VLAN Spanning Tree+ allows you to do load balancing the same as Multiple Spanning Tree does. But because this came out about the same time as the original 802.1D, it’s got the same issues with having a very long convergence time.
PVST+ is the default on Cisco switches. Therefore, you’ve got a separate Spanning Tree instance for every single VLAN and it’s got slow convergence time.
The next Cisco version was Rapid Per VLAN Spanning Tree+. This came out at around the same time as 802.1w which, if you remember from the open standards was the second implementation which had a faster convergence time.
RPVST+ also significantly improves the convergence time over PVST+. Like PVST+, it uses a separate Spanning Tree instance for every VLAN.
MST, the industry standard, you can group multiple VLANs into the same Spanning Tree instance. But with the Cisco versions, PVST+ and RPVST+, they use a separate Spanning Tree instance for every single individual VLAN.
PVST+ and RPVST+ Load Balancing Example
Looking at the load balancing with PVST+ or Rapid PVST+ using the same example, CD1 is going to be made the Root Bridge for VLANs 10 to 19. CD2 is the Root Bridge for VLANs 20 to 29. VLANs 10 to 19 go over the left-hand path up to CD1 and VLANs 20 to 29 will go over the right-hand path to CD2.
So far, it’s looking exactly the same as MST. The difference is with MST, we grouped the VLANs. We had one group going up the left-hand side and another group going up the right-hand side. So, we had two Spanning Tree instances.
With PVST+ and Rapid PVST+, you can’t group the VLANs. You have a separate instance for each one. Rather than having two total instances like we had with MST, here we’re going to have 20 separate instances, one for each individual VLAN.
The Cisco versions PVST+ and Rapid PVST+ put a bit more load on the switch because it has to calculate Spanning Tree instances at the VLAN level rather than being able to do it at the group level.
So those are the different versions of Spanning Tree. For which versions will be supported on your switch, it depends on the particular model of switch that you’re using. PVST+ will always be supported. That will be the default.
It will usually also support Rapid PVST+ as well and possibly depending on the model of switch, it may also support MST, the open standard Multiple Spanning Tree.
PVST+ Port Roles
PVST+, which is the default on Cisco switches, will assign the Root, Designated, or Alternate role to ports. The Alternate ports are your Blocking ports with PVST+.
Spanning-Tree Protocol Types: https://www.learncisco.net/courses/icnd-2/vlans-and-spanning-tree/stp-protocol-types.html
Understanding and Configuring Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) on Catalyst Switches: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/lan-switching/spanning-tree-protocol/5234-5.html
Types of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP): https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/types-of-spanning-tree-protocol-stp/ | <urn:uuid:2265829c-e8bb-4225-b044-00f9e230675b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.flackbox.com/cisco-stp-spanning-tree-versions | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337731.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006061224-20221006091224-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.905205 | 1,515 | 2.578125 | 3 |
It can happen that we arrive at a point where the storage is not sufficient or reached the maximum level on the Linux Servers.
In this case we need to add a new physical disk ,create a physical volume and extend the existing logical volumes assigned on the Linux based application.
There are many ways of doing this job.
In this article we will have a look at one step to accomplish this activity.
Before assigning the new physical disk to the application we need to check the below values.
Open Putty session ssh to the Linux server and run the below commands in order.
a. fdisk –l
This Fdisk command line utility is very useful in terms of creating space for new partitions, organising space for new drives, re-organizing an old drives and copying or moving data to new disks. It allows us to create a maximum of four new primary partition and number of logical (extended) partitions, based on size of the hard disk we have in our system.
In our case we use the above command to View all Disk Partitions their size and their name in Linux system
This reports information about physical volumes.
pvs produces formatted output about physical volumes.
In our case we use this to check the current physical volume size.
vgs command provides volume group information in a configurable form, displaying one line per volume group. The vgs command provides a great deal of format control, and is useful for scripting.
We are using this to display properties of LVM volume groups
To get the VG name and LVNAME
df displays the amount of disk space available on the file system containing each file name argument. If no file name is given, the space available on all currently mounted file systems is shown.
In our case why we are using this is to check the current free space on the disks currently assigned.
Also we get the current disk VG and LV names ,so that we run the LV extend on them after assigning the new disk in the next steps.
Now we need to follow the below steps after assigning the new disk
a. fdisk –l
Now after assigning the new disk we need to Compare the output from previous step fdisk output to find out the new disk name.
After identifying the new disk name we need to create the Physical Volume.
b. pvcreate /dev/sd<New Disk>
After we get the new disk name from the previous output we should run the above command with the new disk name.
Here we are actually choosing the newly assigned physical volumes that will be used to create the LVM.
We can create the physical volumes on the linux system using pvcreate command.
c. lvextend –lvresize +200GB /dev/VGNAME/LVNAME
lvresize can be used for both operations (shrinking and/or extending) The lvresize will resize only the virtual volumes.
In our case we are using this command utility to the newly added space to resize the existing LVs.
There are few other options to extend the logical volume. By using the above command syntax we are reserving additional 200 GB space on this physical disk.
This 200 GB free space can be extended any time online to any LV’s without need for a reboot or bringing down the application if we run out of space for the file system in future.
So It is always important to include the plus (+) signs while resizing a logical volume.
If we don’t do this then we are setting a fixed size for the LV instead of resizing it.
d. Finally after all the above steps are done we can run pvs
After running PV’s we can Compare the output from previous step output of PVS;
After the comparison the we need to extend new volume group by the below command.
Its very important to note that you need to understand how the LV’s , PV’s & VG’s are created and assigned on the Linux application.
Also do this only if you have worked and having knowledge on the Linux systems.
If you are not sure on this its always better to perform this action with Linux Admin.
Thanks & Regards
MVP – Office Services & Servers | <urn:uuid:d3dc3bb2-f917-466f-9e3b-a3435f699e53> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ezcloudinfo.com/2016/07/10/extending-the-existing-storage-on-linux-applications/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334596.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925193816-20220925223816-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.843194 | 919 | 3.09375 | 3 |
People take it for granted that computer hardware should be universal, while applications should be specific to particular tasks. It seems obvious that this makes sense, since hardware is expensive to prototype but cheap to mass-produce—while software modules can be cost-effectively refined and customized.
At what point, though, do the cost curves cross to make specialized hardware more cost-effective than a special-purpose application on a general-purpose machine? As hardware gets softer with technology such as the FPGA (field-programmable gate array) and software gets more modular with architectures such as Web services, its interesting to think about implementing compute-intensive, relatively stable portions of an application in silicon rather than in software.
Chunks of specialized hardware, side by side, make it easy to do things simultaneously. Tracy Kidder made this point in “The Soul of a New Machine,” his 1981 saga of the genesis of a minicomputer. “I wondered,” Kidder wrote, “why they had to struggle to fit Eagles CPU onto seven boards when elsewhere engineers were packing entire CPUs onto single chips. The general answer was that a multiboard CPU simultaneously performs many operations that a single-chip CPU can do only sequentially.”
Two decades later, single-chip CPUs are doing many more things concurrently than they used to. Thats what makes an AMD Athlon, for example, so interesting to explore. Even so, compilers and operating systems still have to work really hard to avoid wasting time while independent tasks wait for each other, or while the same thing gets done with independent data values several times in succession.
The challenge of predicting parallelism is what has made Intels Itanium odyssey so perilous. Itaniums Explicitly Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing design depends on devising compilers that identify instruction dependencies in advance. EPIC tries to steer between Very Long Instruction Word computing, with cycle-by-cycle planning thats specific to particular hardware, and traditional compilation techniques that leave it up to hardware to achieve concurrency at run-time.
The EPIC approach makes for bulky code, averaging almost 43 bits per instruction compared with a mainstream CPUs 32-bit instructions, and that bulk drives up the cost of hardware resources such as main memory and cache. Its the reason why the latest (and probably last) single-core Itanium 2 processors, unveiled July 21, have as much as 9MB of on-chip cache fed by a 667MHz front-side bus moving data at speeds up to 10.6G bps between the CPU and the main memory. The dual-core Itanium 2 processors expected in volume next year will have a staggering 24MB of on-chip cache—and theyll need it.
Does the hardware burden of all that generality make you wonder about the alternative of identifying tasks that can be made parallel in an application—and building cheap hardware modules to match? If youve ever looked at that option, youve hit a barrier of programmer productivity. Even VHDL—whose name proclaims its “very high-level” design language, representing in hundreds of lines what used to take hundreds of pages of schematics—still typically requires 10 to 100 times the number of lines required to express the same function in C.
Its therefore interesting to consider the possible impact of something such as Mitrion-c, a C-like language for generating FPGA specifications that will appear in September in tools from Mitrionics. As with Java, which achieves portability by compiling to a virtual machine thats readily implemented on varying hardware, Mitrion-c compiles its code into an instance of a virtual processor thats then implemented in FPGA form.
“The language helps you find the parallelism in the program,” said Mitrionics CEO Anders Dellson while showing me the companys visual tools as they simulated the hardware implementation and execution of an algorithm. His productivity target, moreover, is high—on the order of 1,000 lines of generated VHDL per line of Mitrion-c with at least a tenfold reduction in development time.
The next time someone says, “Thats the hard part of the problem,” maybe you should take that description literally. Perhaps using softer hardware, rather than writing harder software, will be the cheapest way to get something done.
Technology Editor Peter Coffee can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:05f9858d-1d60-4fcf-864a-655374cd45b4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.eweek.com/networking/new-tools-make-hardware-softer/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334596.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925193816-20220925223816-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.939488 | 920 | 3.0625 | 3 |
You may have heard the term “DDoS” repeated in the news recently and wondered what exactly that meant. The term “DDoS” means a “Distributed Denial of Service” attack. What this means in non-technical terms is that someone is taking a large amount of compromised or vulnerable devices and directing them to send traffic to your network to try to overwhelm it.
What are DDos Attacks?
These attacks can range in size from small to REALLY BIG. Within the last few years, hackers have weaponized things such as DVRs and internet cameras to attack IT infrastructure. You may be asking yourself how would a DVR attack your network? As people connect more devices, sensors and things to the internet the manufacturers have to make sure that these devices are patched and have strong security in place to prevent issues. What we are witnessing is that manufacturers are failing to address these bare minimum security standards and devices are being used in large botnets, a network of private computers infected with malicious software, to attack IT infrastructure. As an example the most recent DDoS that took down a large DNS provider was caused by hacked cameras and DVRs that came from the same manufacturer. The manufacturer failed to address these critical security issues and a hacking group used these devices to disrupt a large number of sites and services including Twitter, Spotify and Reddit.
How to Defend Your Network?
In order to be able to safeguard your network from a small to medium sized DDoS, you need to either purchase a service that can mitigate the DDoS traffic from your network or you need to buy connectivity large enough to sustain the volume of traffic being sent to your network. With the ever evolving size of DDoS attacks, it has become virtually impossible to protect your small business’ network from the large scale attacks on your own. Most businesses large and small will have to purchase services such as Akamai and Arbor that will help mitigate the traffic before it ever makes it to your network.
In some extreme cases, however, the DDoS can be so large that it can take an entire region offline because of the amount of traffic that is being generated even if you purchase a mitigation service. In order to mitigate these large scale attacks, business may have to talk with their ISPs/vendors/partners in order to purchase additional throughput and help to identify where the malicious traffic is coming from. This process can take hours or days in some cases to finally mitigate the DDoS attack.
Protecting your network from a DDoS attack is not something just anyone can do by themselves. It takes experts in DDoS mitigation to help protect your network and even then nothing is guaranteed in regards to preventing large-scale attacks from getting to your network. Words of advice, don’t try to mitigate a DDoS on your own. Modern Managed IT is here to help! Reach out to us to hear about our plans and how we can help make sure a DDoS attack never makes it to your network. | <urn:uuid:92295bba-13d6-480d-a311-727aee00dc91> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.modernmanagedit.com/what-are-ddos-attacks-and-how-to-defend-your-network/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334596.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925193816-20220925223816-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.971281 | 612 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Types of Malware
Malware, also known as "malicious software," can be classified several ways in order to distinguish the unique types of malware from each other. Distinguishing and classifying different types of malware from each other is important to better understanding how they can infect computers and devices, the threat level they pose and how to protect against them.
Kaspersky Lab classifies the entire range of malicious software or potentially unwanted objects that are detected by Kaspersky’s antivirus engine – classifying the malware items according to their activity on users’ computers. The classification system used by Kaspersky is also used by a number of other antivirus vendors as the basis for their classifications.
The malware "classification tree"
Kaspersky’s classification system gives each detected object a clear description and a specific location in the ‘classification tree’ shown below. In the ‘classification tree’ diagram:
- The types of behaviour that pose the least threat are shown in the lower area of the diagram.
- The types of behaviour that pose a greater threat are displayed in the upper part of the diagram.
Malware types with multiple functions
Individual malware programs often include several malicious functions and propagation routines – and, without some additional classification rules, this could lead to confusion.
For example, a specific malicious program may be capable of being spread via an email attachment and also as files via P2P networks. The program may also have the ability to harvest email addresses from an infected computer, without the consent of the user. With this range of functions, the program could be correctly classified as an Email-Worm, a P2P-Worm or a Trojan-Mailfinder. To avoid this confusion, Kaspersky applies a set of rules that can unambiguously categorise a malicious program as having a particular behaviour, regardless of the program functions:
- The ‘classification tree’ shows that each behaviour has been assigned its own threat level.
- In the ‘classification tree’ the behaviours that pose a higher risk outrank those behaviours that represent a lower risk.
- So… in our example, the Email-Worm behaviour represents a higher level of threat than either the P2P-Worm or Trojan-Mailfinder behaviour – and thus, our example malicious program would be classified as an Email-Worm.
Multiple functions with equal threat levels
- If a malicious program has two or more functions that all have equal threat levels – such as Trojan-Ransom, Trojan-ArcBomb, Trojan-Clicker, Trojan-DDoS, Trojan-Downloader, Trojan-Dropper, Trojan-IM, Trojan-Notifier, Trojan-Proxy, Trojan-SMS, Trojan-Spy, Trojan-Mailfinder, Trojan-GameThief, Trojan-PSW or Trojan-Banker – the program is classified as a Trojan.
- If a malicious program has two or more functions with equal threat levels – such as IM-Worm, P2P-Worm or IRC-Worm – the program is classified as a Worm.
Protect your devices and data against all classes of malware
Discover more about the threats… and how Kaspersky can defend you against them:
Types of MalwareKaspersky
Over the years, malicious software – or malware – has developed into an... | <urn:uuid:e5774b4a-587d-4dc5-a893-710d0c230169> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/malware-classifications | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334987.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927033539-20220927063539-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.89748 | 699 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Packing is, in essence, the last stage before shipping. Packing departments are responsible for preparing picked material located by the picking department and labeling it for outgoing shipments.
This involves cutting open boxes to pack products inside them safely for transport, so they do not break during transit.
A packing department might also be charged with re-boxing items damaged by the selectors at the beginning of their process.
In this blog post, you will find details of packing department operations.
What is packing?
Packing is the process of protecting the products from damages and environmental factors during shipping. If packed properly, your product will arrive at its destination in good condition.
Types of packing
Usually, three types of packing take place in the packing department.
- The first layer of packing happens in Primary packing. It protects and preserves the finished product. It also provides information about the products to the customer.
- Secondary packing appears outside of the primary packing. It gives extra protection to the products. In addition, it helps to identify the product quickly in the warehouse.
- Tertiary packing or final packing helps to handle, transport, and store the products. This packing is usually done with the cartoon box.
Packing department responsibilities
Same as the other department in the organization packing department also has some responsibilities. They are as follows.
- Take care of the cleanliness of packing materials.
- Find out the defective products, if any, and dispose of them.
- Do proper weighing and labeling of the products.
- Maintain clean and proper space for packing.
- Maintain documents for inventories and delivered items.
Packing department flow chart
How do you improve your product packaging in the packing department?
If you are an employee of a company and working in the packing department, it is necessary to improve your packing system. Here are a few tips to improve product packaging.
- Determine who your customer is. According to the customer (male or female), you need to design your product packaging. At the same time, designing a package, you need to keep some points in mind. That is the information to be expected by your customer when looking for a product.
- Select the proper color and shape of the packaging element for your product.
- If your product is glass items or liquid, ensure that your packing materials are good enough to protect the products.
- The design on the packaging should tell about the product, and it should not display misleading information.
- Your packaging must be easy to open. Otherwise, sometimes it affects the product inside, and the product loses its likelihood.
- Specify proper direction about the opening of the package like ‘tear here’ or ‘twist here.’
- The first way of an impression of a product is the packaging. Hence give proper budget and attention to that.
Importance of packing
Product packing helps the manufacturer as well as the customer.
- Product packing helps the client to identify the product inside it. As a result, your packaging gives you a different identity and differentiates you from your competitors.
- Packaging helps to protect the product from dust, insects, and breakage. Some products like biscuits and juices need to be packed tightly to protect them from environmental facts.
- It helps to carry and store the products easily.
- It helps to promote the products by advertising them. That means your packing itself helps the customer to know about your product.
- Packing some materials may be useful for re-use.
- Good packing reduces the losses of handling issues to reduce the marketing cost.
Different packaging methods used by the packing department of various industries
Packaging methods differ from industry to industry. The most common packaging products are cartoon boxes, wrappers, envelopes, bottles, containers, etc.
But it is essential to decide which packaging suits your product. Here are some packaging methods
- Plastic packaging: This is the most commonly used packing method. Some products need airtight containers to avoid air and dust environmental effects. For that kind of product, plastic packaging is a good option. This packing makes it easy to carry the products as it is very lightweight. For example, water, oils, milk, and yogurt products use plastic packaging.
- Pharma packaging: Pharmaceutical companies practice pharma packaging for medicines. Pharma packaging provides safety to the drugs and helps identify the pills while handling and distributing.
- Anti-corrosive packaging: It protects products from corrosion. Generally, this method is used for exported goods for long distances.
- Flexible packaging: Usually, food products use flexible packaging to retain their taste and flavor.
What are the materials generally used for packing?
Many materials are used for packing goods depending on the product type, but it is common to use plastic, glass, steel, paper (paperboard), and wood. Aluminum is also often used because of its strong properties like lightweight and resistance to corrosion.
It’s always best to ask an expert in packaging before substituting one material with another due to dangerous hazardous risks.
Packing Department in Pharma Industries
In the pharma industry, the packing department plays a significant role. Packing in the pharma industry protects products and provides presentation, identification, usage, and information about the product.
Functions of packing in pharma
- Provides protection: The primary purpose of the packing is to protect the product from leaking, breaking, and spoiling.
- Helps to identify the product: The packing helps to identify the product.
- Provides information: The primary packing of the product offers a complete information about the product, such as its usage, dosage, contents of the product, manufacturing date, expiring date, how to handle it, cautions, etc.
- Promotes the product: Packing helps to promote the product and attracts people.
Pharma industries do packaging tests also, which include the following tests.
- Drop test
- Vibration test
- Shock test
- Inclined impact test
- Revolving drum test
Pharma industries use the following material for packing the products.
It is crucial to understand the different departments when you work in an organization. This blog post has explained what the packing department does and how they help keep your company running smoothly. | <urn:uuid:05e05f0d-b721-44c4-942c-4312472ac3af> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.erp-information.com/packing-department.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337322.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002115028-20221002145028-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.92812 | 1,318 | 3.203125 | 3 |
What Is Robotic Process Automation & Intelligent Automation
Robotic Process Automation or RPA means the application of technology that enables computer software to partially or fully automate human activities that are manual, repetitive and rules based. The frequently used term ‘robot’ is slightly misleading…in simplest terms, RPA is automation software, not shiny robots. Bots interpret, trigger responses and communicate with other systems in order to perform a vast variety of repetitive tasks. Bots transact in any IT application or website in the same way a human would, click by click, once “trained” on what steps to follow.
Intelligent Automation (IA) is an emerging set of new technologies that combines fundamental process redesign with advanced automation techniques utilizing Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Artificial Intelligence. It is a suite of business-process improvements and next-generation tools that assists the knowledge worker by removing repetitive, replicable, and routine tasks. And it can radically improve customer journeys by simplifying interactions and speeding up processes.
What Can We Do for You?
End-to-End Robotic Process Automation Implementation
With all sound propositions, business leaders are advised to develop a structured framework as the building blocks with clear, tangible benefits and correctly defined expectations before implementing Robotic Process Automation initiatives…
RPA Assessment & Process Suitability
The goal of Process Review Mapping and Assessment, is to evaluate the extent of activities suitable for automation and document the end-to-end processes in sufficient detail to build an RPA pilot. As part of this Robotic Process Automation Assessment, we consider what other transformation opportunities are available for eliminating, simplifying and standardizing before, in lieu of or in addition to automating…
RPA Business Case & Automation Roadmap
RPA programs are characterized by rapid Return on Investment (ROI), especially after the initial launch, once stakeholder engagement and education begin to drive a robust pipeline of additional RPA projects. It is essential to develop an RPA Business Case to define your RPA vision and objectives, quantify and estimate expected costs, savings, value, ROI and timelines…
Proof of Concept
Following the Assessment and Business case phases, we build and implement the pilot robot(s), delivering capabilities in successive iterations to facilitate testing, troubleshooting and change management activities. We monitor, measure and report the outcomes and results of the POCs / pilots to ensure that the automation is achieving the expected benefits…
Building An RPA Center of Excellence (CoE) & An Operating Model
The RPA journey is best viewed strategically versus tactically. Most companies establish a Center of Excellence (CoE) to oversee the RPA project pipeline, project prioritization, solution development, project delivery, training, standards, governance, business sponsorship, engagement, and value realization. At Chazey, we recommend building your own RPA and automation expertise internally…
Bots Development & Management
For the development of each robot, Chazey Partners will follow our proven and tested 6-step approach. We work with an identified subject matter expert (SME) to ensure all steps are adequately and appropriately documented for developing each automation. We will then deliver the automation capabilities in successive iterations to facilitate testing, troubleshooting and change management activities……
Our RPA Software Partners
5 Core Pillars to Launch, Scale and Maintain Your RPA
Best practice and experience supports the assertion that implementing a well-planned RPA/IA Center of Excellence (CoE) will help drive digital transformation. But what exactly is an RPA/IA CoE? When should an organization start evaluating the need to establish one? And how does one go about implementing it? | <urn:uuid:d434c5fe-4ae7-465e-be94-273ce8e9221b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://chazeypartners.com/robotic-process-automation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337537.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005042446-20221005072446-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.881282 | 774 | 2.625 | 3 |
When it comes to cybersecurity, there are some crazy words out there associated with it – honeypot, phishing, and zombie are just a few quick examples.
It’s easiest to just ignore buzzwords, but in today’s increasingly digital landscape, understanding what they mean is crucial for protecting yourself and your company. Here are 20 cybersecurity buzzwords everyone should know:
- Backup – To protect digital data, a consistently updated copy of files should be stored safely offline, in case a system is hacked and data is encrypted or lost.
- Blackhat Hacker – A type of hacker. A blackhat hacker is an individual that uses their skills to cause damage like breaking into a computer system and stealing confidential information.
- Botnet – Computer systems that have been infected by malware. The malware then allows the hacker to connect infected computers creating a network. This network, instructed by the hacker, can be used to carry out malicious attacks.
- Brute Force Attack – Hacking technique used to break into a computer system by guessing passwords, either manually or with technological assistance.
- Command-and-control Server – Application used by hackers that controls all the computer systems in their botnet.
- DDoS – Form of cyber attack, DDoS stands for distributed denial of service. The goal of this type of attack is to cause a service, like a website, to be unusable by visitors. This is done by bombarding the website with hostile traffic.
- Encryption – Algorithmic technique utilized to change the contents of a file into something unreadable by anyone outside a specific chain of communication.
- Firewall – Defensive computer technology, software or hardware-based, created and installed to keep hackers and malware out. The firewall filters interactions with a computer, allowing or denying entry, to keep systems secure.
- Honeypot – Cybersecurity strategy used by organizations to attract hackers in an attempt to learn the best ways to protect against them. Typically, the organization’s administrator sets up a server to look like a legitimate computer on the network. The goal is to entice hackers to pay attention to breaking into this server instead of actual high-value computers or information.
- Phishing – Hacking technique used to gather sensitive data like passwords, credit card numbers, or bank account information. Phishing utilizes a disguised email, seemingly from a legitimate source, to trick the recipient into replying with the desired information or clicking on a dangerous link.
- Malware – General term describing all kinds of malicious software. The term malware can be used when referring to ransomware, trojan horses, viruses, and worms.
- Ransomware – Type of malware that prevents access to computer files. When a computer is infected with ransomware, the malicious software will encrypt files and request a ransom for decryption.
- Spoofing – Hacking method used to fool individuals into giving out sensitive data. A common example is domain spoofing, where a fake website is designed to trick visitors into providing personal information.
- Trojan Horse – Type of malware used by a hacker to gain remote access to a computer. Via remote access, the hacker can then download files or watch a user’s keystrokes.
- Updates – It’s nearly impossible for developers to eliminate all vulnerabilities from a software program. When vulnerabilities are found by users, developers, or hackers, software providers will release product updates, also known as patches, to fix the problem.
- Virus – Malware used to cause damage on personal computers, aimed at changing, erasing, or modifying data.
- Vulnerability – A weakness in computer software that can be leveraged by a hacker to launch an attack. The most common vulnerability is an outdated software system.
- Worm – Malware that clones itself to spread infection to connected computers. This type of malware vigorously hunts out weak systems that it can exploit, making spreading faster and easier.
- Whitehat Hacker – A type of hacker. Whitehat hackers use their skills for good, helping organizations test their cybersecurity measures and find vulnerabilities.
- Zombie – Computer system that has been infected by malware and is now part of a hacker’s botnet.
There are many cybersecurity terms beyond these 20, and there will surely be more created in the future. However, this list will give you a broad idea of important cybersecurity terms, what they mean, and how they relate to the safety of digital data. | <urn:uuid:900be84e-695e-47c4-991d-7cdb6d1d9078> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://measuredinsurance.com/blog/cybersecurity-buzzwords/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337537.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005042446-20221005072446-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.903346 | 906 | 3.234375 | 3 |
A recent article on Yahoo describes a temporary location that was set up late December in New York to help demonstrate to everyday people what very little privacy they have when it comes to technology. We are surrounded by technology everywhere you turn, and oftentimes we don’t really consider the risks of using this technology. At the end, we’ll give you a few technology privacy tips to help reduce the virtual threats of living in today’s modern world.
The Glass Room – Privacy Shock
Several artists participated in the Glass Room project. One of the displays entitled “Forgot Your Password?” consisted of volumes of bound lists to the tune of 4.7 million LinkedIn passwords from the well-known 2012 data breach.
Another collection demonstrated the vast use of tracking technology, including a badge which shows the activity of employees within an office environment, church facial recognition software, and even a large screen displaying metadata collected from the smartphones and tablets of people just outside as they walked by.
The point was that our devices may share more information than we think, and for some, this information may put us at risk for things like hacking and identity theft. Putting good technology privacy tips into practice can help reduce our risks of being targeted.
7 Technology Privacy Tips
- Avoid online tracking plugins on your browser.
- Take a look at your social media accounts and change your privacy settings to something you’re comfortable with.
- Read your agreements when you download apps and understand what information you’re making available.
- On smartphones and portable devices, shut off the location services when not in use.
- If possible, opt to use personal hot-spots over public WiFi when out in public. If you do use personal WiFi, be sure your computer is properly encrypted and that you avoid the use of highly sensitive information, like online shopping or logging into accounts.
- Change your passwords often and use a password vault program.
- Avoid giving personal information at the checkout at the stores or use false information if you have to.
There are many more technology privacy tips available which can be put into good practice, and some of them can be found on the Glass Room Tips and Resources page. | <urn:uuid:18dbb04e-b794-49ba-96a6-12c0e99b73bc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ccsipro.com/blog/1976-2/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337537.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005042446-20221005072446-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.914839 | 449 | 2.59375 | 3 |
WORM (write once, read many), is a storage system concept. Developers designed it to protect information that an organization does not want to be destroyed or altered in any way. With WORM-compliant storage, you can transfer information to a storage device or cloud storage, but, once you transfer the information, it cannot be changed.
WORM compliance also requires a second form of storage (at minimum) as a backup if a drive is stolen or destroyed. Because WORM compliance demands that data be unalterable, in cases where access is necessary, that access is restricted to read-only. Keep reading to learn what is WORM compliance and how you can use WORM storage solutions.
Table of Contents
Legal Requirements and WORM Archiving
SEC Rule 17a-4 f
WORM archiving is closely tied to a variety of legal requirements. SEC Rule 17a-4(f) sets regulations about brokers and dealers. They must have a storage system that is unalterable, both in that it cannot be rewritten, and it cannot be erased. Users must be able to easily access and read the data. Organizations often use WORM storage to adhere to this regulation.
Another regulation that ties in strongly to the concept behind WORM storage is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which focuses on privacy and protecting patients’ medical records. It gives patients full control of their medical records and sets clear guidelines about who can access the records, as well as the penalties if someone unauthorized accesses or shares medical information about a patient. Many organizations, and especially healthcare professionals, use the WORM storage to ensure HIPAA adherence. One of HIPAA’s requirements is that certain parts of medical records are stored for a certain amount of time. WORM storage can be applied to ensure retention requirements are followed, meaning that no one can erase the information until a specified time.
The WORM compliance also plays a role in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The PCI DSS is designed to protect credit card information and ensure strong security for financial transactions. A central part of the PCI DSS is designed to prevent individuals from tampering with credit card data. By using WORM storage to maintain the information, access to credit card and financial information is preventable.
Many experts are currently emphasizing the importance of using cloud-based WORM-compliant storage. The cloud, which is now used in a variety of data contexts, was designed to make data accessible but not easy to lose. Rather than being stored on a hard drive, data storage is a service. Thanks to the cloud, if your computer crashes or gets stolen, you can still access all of your information, because it is stored in an area that is not connected to one single device. Being able to get to your files, photos, videos, and other information from almost any device is a standard in today’s business and professional world.
The main concern with WORM-compliant storage is data loss. The only way to ensure you will not lose data is if you have at least two copies, one of which is stored in a completely different area. Using the cloud is the ideal way to avoid accidental data loss because you will be able to access the information from the WORM storage area on another device. Because WORM storage data often includes extremely important information — such as medical records or credit card information — it is vital to ensure that these types of critical data will not be lost.
WORM-Compliant Cloud Storage Providers
Amazon S3 and S3 Glacier
Not all cloud providers are offering WORM-compliant cloud storage, so research is crucial before deciding where an organization will store its data. For instance, Amazon S3 Glacier added a feature to its cloud a few years ago, where a user can lock information so it cannot be overwritten or deleted until a certain time has passed—called the Vault Lock Policy. The main Amazon S3 storage class is also compliant to WORM. The feature is called object lock. You can specify certain controls and the retention period before locking the information, and once locked, Amazon S3 and Amazon S3 Glacier will enforce the controls and preferences that you set.
Further reading Smart Guide to Amazon S3 Glacier
How to use cold storage - like Amazon S3 Glacier - cost-effectively and efficiently? Find out in our whitepaper:
Azure Blob Storage
In June 2018, Microsoft announced the immutable storage for its Azure Blob Storage to meet the legal requirements regarding retaining information that are listed above. Now Azure users can store their data in a WORM-compliant state where Blobs can be created and read, but not modified or deleted.
WORM-compliant storage for Azure Blobs enables time-based retention policy support as well as legal hold policy support — when the retention interval is unknown you can set the directions to keep the data immutable until the legal hold is cleared. WORM compliance policies are supported in all Azure public regions and apply to all Blob tiers.
Further reading Microsoft Azure Blob and Managed Backup for your BaaS Offering
Another provider that offers a WORM storage option is Wasabi. The company refers to its WORM storage solution as an immutability feature. Wasabi ensures that information on its cloud cannot be altered by anyone, and Wasabi programmers cannot influence the system without extensive testing.
WORM-Compliant Cloud Storage Software
There are also many WORM-compliant cloud storage software options available. One such cloud storage solution is Archive360, which works with the Microsoft cloud. It offers WORM storage capabilities, including the ability to set a specific period that information should be retained. Companies can transfer information from Office 365 to Archive360, and WORM-compliant storage is ensured.
HubStor, another WORM-compliant cloud storage solution, also works with the Microsoft cloud. It provides a platform that has complete WORM capabilities.
SnapLock by NetApp
SnapLock by NetApp is WORM-compliant and functions along with application software, providing users with a way to store information so that it cannot be changed, similar to Archive360 and HubStor.
The concept of WORM storage is vital to maintaining the privacy of important data, from health records to financial information. When paired with cloud storage providers, the WORM compliance concept becomes more advanced and more effective in protecting sensitive information. | <urn:uuid:e6a2d77b-eb74-4358-a882-b07082647b40> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.msp360.com/resources/blog/worm-compliance-explained/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337537.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005042446-20221005072446-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.926716 | 1,344 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Climate change has been the cause of immeasurable damage over the last few decades, and there is no end in sight. In addition to the tragic loss of lives, natural disasters have impacted at least some part of the infrastructure in every region of the country. To halt the devastation, the federal government has allocated massive amounts of funding for repair, remediation, and sustainability projects.
Cleaning up, repairing, and replacing public assets after weather-related disasters is costly, and launching sustainability projects for protection against future disasters is often even more costly. But, with new funding available, there now exists a plan to reverse what has become the norm. The projects about to launch will require public-private sector collaboration throughout America.
The Massachusetts Port Authority recently announced plans to make the state’s port infrastructure carbon neutral by 2031. That objective calls for an investment of $1 billion over the next 10 years of project phasing. In the first three years, funding is allocated for projects that target a reduction in emissions from port equipment on the ground and from airport-operated public transportation. That effort will also include projects that deliver on-site sources of renewable energy, install electric ground support equipment, and replace airfield lights with energy-efficient LED bulbs.
In Washington, D.C., city planning officials and the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency received $20 million to fund a project that will deliver more sustainable power infrastructure. The city will develop a microgrid and dedicate it to supplying a nearby hospital campus and five other critical health-care/public safety facilities with renewable energy so that, in the event of an extreme and unpredictable weather event, there will be a resource to maintain power and protect citizens.
Vehicle electrification is becoming a common feature of most long-term plans to neutralize carbon emissions. The federal government is aggressively supportive, and the most recent iteration of that is the new Carbon Reduction Program — a $6.4 billion pool of funding through the Federal Highway Administration. The program is designed to support the deployment of alternative fuel vehicles by providing state and local officials with the funding they need to purchase zero-emission vehicles. These funds also may be used to support projects relating to reducing congestion and electrifying port system fleets and equipment.
State officials in California recently announced that $1.5 billion will be available beginning in 2023 for electrification-related purchases. This funding will be allocated to school districts throughout the state to replace nonelectric school buses with electric buses and implement charging infrastructure.
In New York, $1 billion will be available in 2023 for school districts and transit authorities to electrify their fleets. The state also will support statewide buildout of bus and passenger electric charging infrastructure.
Several states have outlined plans for fleet electrification in their budgets for the 2023 fiscal year. Pennsylvania’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is in the midst of early design work on transit electrification projects. The SEPTA planning includes funding for the electrification of a regional trolley system. The initiative is backed by over $1 billion in funding and will unfold over the course of several years.
In addition to fleet electrification, another SEPTA initiative will focus on installing LED lights across all city-owned streets. When completed, the city-lighting infrastructure will lessen the draw on nonrenewable energy and promote a shift toward carbon neutrality. It also will significantly reduce the cost for power.
Citizens throughout the country, in recent decades, have watched the destruction and danger created by wildfires in California. The last few years have included some of the most devastating wildfires in the state’s recorded history. To change this trend, the governor’s budget includes $1.5 billion for a Wildfire and Forest Resilience Package. The plan includes $88 million for prescribed burning programs — essentially, projects to mitigate wildfire effects by professional pre-burning cycles. The plan also directs the state fire marshal’s office to develop a proposal requesting professional services on “a prescribed fire training center,” and this project is scheduled to go out to bid in 2023.
The state of Texas leads the nation in flood fatalities, and a $29 billion project has been designed to mitigate that climate-related threat to human health and safety. Through coordination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, state leaders and Texas communities near the city of Galveston are working on a massive “Ike Dike” plan to mitigate storm surge hazards. State lawmakers are working to secure funding for the estimated $29 billion project. The plan will center on a massive sustainability effort to install gate towers across the mouth of Galveston Bay that spans Galveston Island’s west end — one of the city’s most densely populated areas. The objective will be to protect 10 miles of seawall against intensified Gulf storm surges.
We are continually reminded that we must strive to mitigate the effects of weather-related disasters. As increasingly severe wildfires ravage communities in the West and the rise in sea level threatens communities along America’s coastlines, it is likely that every level of government will continue to direct a steady stream of funding for efforts to mitigate hazards associated with climate change. There will also be an abundance of funding for projects that promise sustainability and the protection of citizens.
Another federal agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced an additional $1 billion in funding for the next wave of sustainability innovations. State and local governments can access the funding as early as summer 2022. The resulting projects and initiatives will require both public and private-sector innovation and expertise.
The staggering flow of new funding — in the billions — is connected to one common goal: ensuring the country and its citizens can survive, endure, repair, and mitigate weather-related disasters in the future. | <urn:uuid:a3e89aa6-fa6f-45b0-ac2a-65653d7da34c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.missioncriticalmagazine.com/articles/94274-weather-related-disasters-create-the-need-for-public-private-sector-services | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337836.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006124156-20221006154156-00130.warc.gz | en | 0.948475 | 1,196 | 2.921875 | 3 |
For the last two quarters as a Microsoft Solutions Associate, I’ve had the privilege of partnering with Poly to talk about how their audio and video conferencing options work well with our Microsoft customers’ licensing needs to create a comprehensive solution for their environments. Recently, we had a conversation about how this fits into the K–12 space, and it got me thinking.
When I started my Masters Degree in Education, my favorite course was Technology in Education. I learned how far technology has come since my elementary school days using a floppy disk on our computer lab’s Macintosh computers. With the wealth of options available to engage students, personalize instruction, and connect teachers to the best available resources for their curriculum, it’s no surprise that Microsoft Education has taken a collaborative approach with their program.
Connect with the World
In that course, one of my favorite tools was Skype in the Classroom. Skype in the Classroom is a free program for educators to help support ISTE Education Standards, and connect students to the world around them. Features include Mystery Skype, which is a game that pairs classrooms from around the globe, prompting students to figure out where the other classroom is located by providing each other with specific clues and roles outlined in the OneNote Notebook. Students can keep a Skype in the Classroom Passport to keep track of the different places they’ve “traveled” to with their Mystery Skype journeys.
They can embark on virtual field trips and explore the geysers of Yellowstone National Park with the National Parks Service, travel back to Ancient China in the Shan Xi Museum, or even visit the Sea Turtle Rehab at the South Carolina Aquarium. These virtual field trips provide access to students who might never have the opportunity to visit these places, enhance learning, and let students make the most of their educational experiences using just a microphone and a webcam.
Classes can work together with students around the world to become great global citizens through Skype Collaboration by increasing diversity, working towards universal goals to protect and preserve our planet, and addressing social issues such as hunger and poverty. They can also explore the solar system or appreciate the indigenous art of India and Australia.
Enhance Student Learning
Last but not least, students and educators can make use of the vast array of Skype lessons to enhance classroom learning and teacher training. There are available lessons in everything from professional musicians and authors to scientists and politicians. Teachers can learn how to round out lessons in Minecraft or create an inclusive environment within the classroom for students with difficulties, such as dyslexia.
By utilizing Microsoft Teams in conjunction with Skype in the Classroom, teachers can build assignment, assessment, and grading into one comprehensive tool with their Skype in the Classroom OneNote to capture the full experience.
Check out the Connected Community for more blogs about technology in the education space. | <urn:uuid:730f1bad-d580-4eff-ab13-7a93cdb26fcc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.connection.com/fostering-digital-citizenship-with-skype-in-the-classroom/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030331677.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924151538-20220924181538-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.950881 | 581 | 2.65625 | 3 |
More and more companies and private individuals have been looking for better ways to keep their data secure in recent years. No one is truly safe, with huge companies like Facebook, Ticketfly, and T-Mobile suffering from devastating data breaches in 2018. With data breaches happening so frequently, many individuals are understandably worried about exposing their data and suffering from financial loss and must turn to multi factor authentication.
Key cybersecurity measures like enabling a firewall, installing antivirus software, and using encryption technology can only do so much against cybercriminals. Hackers have been using more sophisticated software to steal corporate and private data, so you should do everything you can to keep your data secure. One way of doing this is by enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) as an extra security measure.
In this post, we’ll be looking at everything you need to know about MFA.
How MFA Improves the Security of Your Accounts
In a nutshell, MFA is a security system that necessitates more than one way of authenticating a user. Usually, it combines two or more types of authentication credentials: something a user knows, something they physically have, and something they are.
The MFA creates an extra layer of security to make it harder for hackers or an unauthorized person to access your account. Since there is more than one way of accessing an account, any hacker who’s able to get through the first tier of security (like cracking your password) will be stopped in their tracks as they won’t have access to the other security factors you’ve enabled.
The Different Types of MFA
Below we’ve detailed the different types of MFA you can enable to keep your data secure.
This pertains to physical items that a user possesses to authenticate their login process. These could be a key fob, smartphones, USB drives, security tokens, or the phone’s SIM Card. For example, you might receive a notification on your phone asking if you’re authenticating the login of one of your accounts on a new device. One-time passwords (OTPs) also fall in this category since this is usually sent to your email or phone number.
What falls in this authentication factor category are passwords, PINs, or answers to secret questions. Whatever a user can recall and remember is considered a knowledge factor. This is usually the first level of security you’ll encounter when you try accessing your account.
To put it simply, anything that falls under this category is a part of a user’s body that can be used for authentication purposes. ‘Are Selfies the Next Best Security Tool?’ by HP highlights how companies have begun using facial recognition to improve the security of their products and services. For instance, numerous phone manufacturers like Apple and Huawei have installed facial recognition systems to map out a unique detailed depth map of your face — serving as a biological trait that can be used to confirm a login. Others that fit in this category are iris scans, voice verification, and palm scans.
Is MFA Perfect?
As with all security methods, nothing is 100% prone to vulnerabilities. In ‘The Security Downside of SMS-based Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)’ by George Mutune, he mentioned the security flaws of popular methods like SMS-based MFA. SIM swap attacks to SS7 network vulnerabilities, SMS-based MFA is far from being the perfect MFA method.
A Medium article by Stuart Schechter also illustrates the risks of enabling MFA. For one, you can permanently lose access to your account if you fail to answer a question on your chosen secondary MFA method. Another risk of enabling MFA is that it can make you careless since you now have the notion that your accounts are 100% secure. This can make you vulnerable to trusting unknown publishers and phishing scams.
Regardless, it’s still recommended to enable MFA on all your accounts — be sure to be on the lookout for security vulnerabilities that may compromise your data. If you want to learn more tips on how to practice cybersecurity, head on over to our article ‘Top 20 Cybersecurity Practices that Employees Need to Adopt’. | <urn:uuid:ae765e1b-9f4c-46c1-9ab2-6f81544d1462> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cyberexperts.com/a-guide-to-multi-factor-authentication-mfa/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030331677.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924151538-20220924181538-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.923961 | 876 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Israeli-based Security researcher Aviv Raff (opens in new tab) has discovered a weakness in Skype's way of rendering internal and external HTML pages that makes it particularly vulnerable to hackers.
Skype runs HTML pages in a non locked local zone mode which means that whoever is able to inject malicious code in one page rendered in the local zone could potentially execute code on the user's computer.
A proof of concept was made public by Raff and a fellow researcher Miroslav Lucinskij with more information available in a Skype security bulletin (opens in new tab) entitled "Skype Cross Zone Scripting Vulnerability".
Arstechnica (opens in new tab) reports that although this would require malware authors to find a trusted site which can be infected via a cross-zone scripting error, it is not particularly difficult to find such sites.
Computerworld (opens in new tab) mentions Security researcher and Penetration tester Petko Petkov (opens in new tab) who pointed to how easy it was to build an attack, "When a given resource executes within the Local Zone context, all sorts of things are possible like, including but not only, reading/writing files from the local disc and launching executables through the WSH primitives."
The vulnerability affects all versions of Windows-based Skype including the most up to date 3.6 and gave it a score of 10, the highest rating allowed.
The only way to make sure that your computer is not compromised is not to search for videos within Skype for a foreseeable future. | <urn:uuid:2093b973-8ae6-4fe2-ae3a-9dc7eaf98eae> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/2008/01/22/skypes-vulnerability-could-hit-you-hotspots/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334620.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925225000-20220926015000-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.93005 | 313 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Using the Devices feature, you can create devices, assign interfaces to each device and attach IP addresses to the interfaces.
A Device is any item that can have an IP address linked to it. A device can, for example, be a computer, a router, a firewall, a phone or a virtual machine. A device has one or more interfaces and each device can have any number of IP addresses linked to it.
It is common to assign multiple properties to devices. As a default, a device in Micetro only has one property - the device name. However, you can create any number of properties for the devices. To create a property for a device, use the Define Custom Properties feature. For more information on this feature, refer to Custom Properties.
When you add a Device, you start by entering the basic Device information and then you create the relevant interface(s) and optionally link one or more IP Addresses to each interface.
To add a new device:
From the menu bar, select. A dialog box is displayed where you enter the name of the device. The information you enter is based on the properties that have been defined for the device.
Enter the name and click Add to create the device.
Once the device has been created, the Device Properties tab displays. Use this tab to manage interfaces for the device and link IP addresses to the device.
To Add an interface click the Add button in the Interfaces section and enter the required information for the interface. The Name field is mandatory.
The Hardware Address field contains the MAC address for the interface. This field is not required. However, if you enter a Hardware Address it must be a valid MAC address and it must be unique – no other device can have an interface with the same Hardware Address.
To add an IP Address to the device, you must first create an interface as the IP Address is attached to an interface on the device. Once an interface has been created, click the Add button in the IP Address section and enter the required information for the IP Address.
When you delete a Device, all information about the device is deleted, including the interfaces defined for the device, and all IP addresses linked to the device are unlinked from the device.
To remove a Device:
Locate the device you want to remove and open the Device Properties window.
Click the Delete button in the Device Details section.
Click OK in the confirmation box that appears. The device and its associated data is removed.
You can quickly find the device you want to work with using the Find Device command.
To search for a device:
From the menu bar, select. The Device Search dialog box displays.
Enter the search criteria for the device you want to find.
To add a new search criterion, click the button with the + sign next to the search entry field
To remove a search criterion, click the button with the - sign next to the criterion you want to remove
Click OK to start the search. If the search result only contains one device, the Device Properties window displays. If multiple devices are found, the search result is displayed in the Device List window.
The Device List tab is displayed when you choosefrom the menu bar. The tab is also used to display search results when there is more than one device that matches the search criteria.
The Device List tab shows all relevant info for the Devices found.
The tab contains a Quick Filter entry field that allows you to refine the search results. As you type in the field, results that are not applicable are removed. The Quick Filter searches within the entries that are displayed in the Device List tab.
Clicking the button with the + sign in the top left of the tab will expand the search panel. Using the search panel, you can search for devices based on multiple criteria. A search performed using the search panel will search the entire device list.
To add a new search criterion, click the button with the + sign next to the search entry field.
To remove a search criterion, click the button with the - sign next to the criterion you want to remove. | <urn:uuid:6e69e87c-7d6d-47dd-9b2b-5bef64414255> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.menandmice.com/docs/10.3/guides/user-manual/devices | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334992.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927064738-20220927094738-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.867767 | 841 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Even if you’ve never worked in the medical field, you’ve undoubtedly come into contact with the set of laws known as HIPAA. You know, it’s that set of forms you fill out when you go see a new doctor or fill a prescription. Most of the time you just skim it, sign it, and move on without taking the time to really read and absorb what it says. So, just how well do you know HIPAA laws and what to expect if you commit a HIPAA violation?
The History of HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – better known as HIPAA – is a law designed towards enforcing healthcare reform. It was introduced in Congress and signed into law by former United States president Bill Clinton in 1996 and outlines several codes and regulations regarding healthcare and the information associated with it. Over the years, sections of the HIPAA law have been made clearer including the penalties of HIPAA violations and who can be held accountable under the law.
HIPAA violations aren’t necessarily restricted to data leaks and hackers stealing information. There are many ways that companies and individuals can knowingly and unknowingly be in HIPAA violation. The most common violations include failing to promptly release information to patients upon their request, missing patient signatures, improper disposal of patient records, employee snooping, and utilizing unprotected storage of patient healthcare information. Other violations are less obvious and can occur without the knowledge of the violator. For example, just telling friends and family members about patients inside a hospital violates HIPAA laws. Other less obvious violations include not logging off devices that contain private patient information, discussing information in public areas, sending information via email, and releasing information about minors without parental consent.
The HIPAA Violation Structure and Who’s Liable
According to revisions of the HIPAA law made in 2005 and 2009, a tiered penalty structure was created to define the penalties involved with violations and outline who was to be held liable. Companies or individuals who violate HIPAA laws by obtaining private information under false pretenses face fines and jail time. If private information is obtained with the intent to sell, transfer, use for commercial gain, or cause malicious harm, the violator is slammed with fines of up to $250,000 and 10 years in jail. The following is the penalty structure as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services:
|Violation Type||Penalty Fee||Identical Violations within 1 yr|
|Individual was not aware||$100 – $50,000 fine per violation||$1,500,000 max fine annually|
|Reasonable cause and not willful neglect||$1,000 – $50,000 fine per violation||$1,500,000 max fine annually|
|Willful neglect, corrected within 30 days||$10,000 – $50,000 fine per violation||$1,500,000 max fine annually|
|Willful neglect, not corrected||$50,000 fine per violation||$1,500,000 max fine annually|
It’s highly doubtful any small to medium sized business has that type of money laying around to spend on government fines. The most frightening thing about this penalty system are the guidelines set in place of those to be held responsible. According to a section in the HIPAA law, healthcare plans, healthcare clearinghouses, providers who submit claims electronically, medicare prescription drug card sponsors, and any employee, director, or officer of covered entities can be held responsible for violating HIPAA. Individuals that are not directly responsible can even be charged with conspiracy or aiding or abetting, even if they don’t have specific knowledge of the actions taken that caused the violation!
What Can You Do?
Luckily, Hill Country Tech Guys are here to make sure you don’t experience the penalties of a HIPAA violation. By allowing them to manage your technology, they can implement systems that reduce workflow and keep you current with all HIPAA regulations. Make sure you contact them today before you’re found noncompliant! | <urn:uuid:3f02779a-5453-43c1-b0a9-b225f950cdc8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://hctechguys.com/what-to-expect-if-your-business-is-guilty-of-a-hipaa-violation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.942044 | 836 | 2.515625 | 3 |
You may have come across the term SSL, or Secure Socket Layer, whilst surfing the Internet. And you’ve probably seen a little yellow or green lock in the address bar, when shopping online or signing into one of your online accounts. But what is it for and why do you need it?
What is an SSL Certificate?
An SSL Certificate (Secure Socket Layer), also called a Digital Certificate, ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remains private and secure. It does this by creating a secure link between the website and visitors’ browsers that prevents hackers from being able to steal private information such as credit card numbers, names, addresses and passwords.
Why do you need an SSL Certificate?
If you sell products or services on your website and accept credit cards payments, you need an SSL Certificate to ensure that no-one can steal that data. Even if you don’t sell online, but offer online accounts where people have to login, it’s advisable to have an SSL Certificate installed on your server. This will prevent sensitive data being hijacked, creating an encrypted connection between your web server and your visitors’ browsers.
Secure connections become very important when you’re gathering information from your site’s visitors through a web form. By placing the form in a secure directory, the form data will be encrypted, protecting the data and your visitors’ personal information.
SSL also provides peace of mind to web site visitors. When an SSL-enabled connection is established in a web browser, the user will see a lock icon in their browser, indicating that any data transferred between the web site and their browser is secure. Most web users demand this protection when shopping online or submitting sensitive personal data.
Why is an SSL Certificate recommended?
With booming online sales and the proliferation of online services, credit card fraud and identity theft are on the rise. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy and many will not submit their private details on the web unless they know that the information they provide is securely transmitted and not accessible for hackers to access.
How many domains can I secure with an SSL Certificate?
The majority of SSL Certificates will only secure one domain or sub-domain. For example, an SSL issued to my.yourdomain.com will not secure the whole of yourdomain.com, rather just the my.yourdomain.com sub-domain.
You can of course get an SSL certificate to secure the whole domain and there are even special certificates available to secure multi-domains. These certificates are known as wildcards.
What types of encryption are available?
There are different types of encryption available, some as low as 40 bits and ranging up to 256 bits. These determine the strength of the security between the browser and the server. The higher the encryption, the harder it is for a hacker to decode.
Not sure which SSL certificate is right for you?
Contact firstname.lastname@example.org or visit our SSL page at: http://www.nativespace.co.uk/ssl-certificates.html | <urn:uuid:c3200695-cd77-42db-8c7b-350696ef4a0e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.nativespace.com/what-is-an-ssl-certificate/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.917988 | 628 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Data provides the most valuable insights when you have something to compare it to. For instance, it’s good to know that your marketing efforts roped in 100 new clients this year, but that doesn’t tell you what you should do next year. If it’s a 40% decline from last year, clearly you need to make some changes. And, if it’s a 40% increment, you know that you’re heading in the right direction.
However, data comparisons aren’t useful if data is corrupt, irrelevant, or inconsistent. That’s where data standardization steps in. It is the process of ensuring that your data can be compared to other data sets.
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at what data standardization is and why it is important. Plus, we’ll share a step-by-step guide to help you standardize your data.
What is Data Standardization and Why It is Necessary
Data standardization helps ensure that data is internally consistent. It makes certain that each data type has the same content and format. Standardization comes handy when you have to track data that isn’t easy to compare otherwise.
Lack of standardization yields bad data, which has many undesirable outcomes such as sending poor emails, emailing to bad addresses, inaccurate reporting, poor resource allocation, or losing customers altogether.
For example, holding companies with independent subsidiaries, franchisees, business units, global offices, and external partners receive inconsistent financial data that must be standardized before it is used.
By bringing data into a common format, data standardization allows for collaborative research, large-scale analytics, and the sharing of sophisticated tools and methodologies. It is a crucial part of ensuring data quality.
Data Integration: Normalization vs Standardization
Standardization is useful when we have to compare measurements that have different units. It is performed to bring the structure to a common format. On the other hand, normalization is a technique used in designing databases. It is performed to remove redundancy of data.
Without normalization, a database may encompass data that’s present in one or more different tables for no apparent reason. As a result, it could be bad for security reasons, disk space consumption, speed of queries, efficiency of database updates, and perhaps, data integrity. Thus, normalization breaks down a database logically into smaller, more manageable tables.
When to Standardize Your Data
Data standardization is commonly used for source-to-target mapping. It can be further divided into two use-cases:
- Simple mapping from external sources: You should standardize data when onboarding it from systems that are external to your organization, and mapping its keys and values to an output schema.
- Simple mapping from internal sources: Standardization is also used when handling internal datasets that are based on inconsistent definitions and transforming them into one reliable dataset for the whole company.
Data standardization process explained. Source: Astera
For example, customer names may be represented in thousands of semi-structured forms. By using standardization, you can parse the different components of a customer name (such as first name, middle name, last name, initials, titles, etc) and then rearrange those components into a canonical representation that other data services can manipulate.
The 4 Steps to Data Standardization
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to standardize data:
1. Ensure Your Data is Clean and Correct
The first step is to ensure that the data is correct, clean, complete, formatted, and verified before you perform any action on it. It guarantees the accuracy and integrity of the information as well as prevents bad data from entering your database.For example, you can clean data either before migration or at the initial entry point within your CRM system.
2. Identify the Points of Data Entry
The next step is to know what data you are gathering and how you are gathering it. For example, suppose you’re capturing data via a web form that can have open text fields or multiple-choice options. Knowing where and how this data is gathered helps determine whether normalization is required.
3. Translate Data into a Standardized List
You need to specify the type of data that needs normalization. Translating data into a standardized list can empower you with the ability to take actions that otherwise would be challenging. For example, you can normalize job titles, locations, and addresses entered in the webform.
4. Create the Normalization Matrix
A normalization matrix maps unclean data to your new standard data values. Consider starting with a value that is significant to your business, such as job title. Identify job levels for the different job title values, and then refine the title-to-level interpretations.
Data Standardization process in Astera Centerprise. Source: Astera
Once you define the normalization matrix, run it against your data. You need a data normalization program to compare the entry data to the final result.
How Data Standardization Tools Help Businesses
Often, data might require standardization on a field by field basis. This is done in terms of units of measure, dates, elements like color or size, and codes relevant to industry standards. Data standardization and integration tools expedite this by automating the process. They allow you to weave together data from multiple formats and sources for a consolidated view.
One such powerful tool is Astera Centerprise, which is an enterprise-grade ETL solution. It integrates data across numerous systems, supports data manipulation with a comprehensive set of in-built transformations, and helps move data to a data repository, all in a completely code-free, drag-and-drop manner. You can easily examine your source data and get detailed information about its structure, quality, and integrity. You can also define custom data quality rules to validate incoming data and identify missing or invalid records.
Data standardization allows you to analyze and use data in a consistent manner. Usually, when data is created and stored in the source system, it’s structured in a specific way that is often unknown to the user. Also, datasets that might be semantically related may be stored and represented differently. This makes it difficult for a user to aggregate or compare the datasets. | <urn:uuid:e1f4c6f2-709c-4ee4-a83c-799a2756919a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://dataintegrationinfo.com/data-standardization-for-etl/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337595.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005073953-20221005103953-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.897784 | 1,307 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The Internet of things (IoT) is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles, connected devices and smart devises, buildings and other items, embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interactionThe worldwide IOT market spend will grow from $592 billion in 2014 to $1.3 trillion in 2019 according to IDC, while the installed base of IoT endpoints will grow from 9.7 billion in 2014 to 30 billion in 2020 where 40% of all data in the world will be data resulting from machines to machines communication (M2M).Gartner survey shows that 43 % of Organizations are using or plan to implement the Internet of things in 2016. Gartner predicts $2.5M per minute in IoT spending and 1M new IoT devices sold every hour by 2021. Industrial IOT (Internet of Things) market is estimated at $60 trillion by 2030. By 2020, IoT will save consumers and businesses $1 trillion a year in maintenance, services and consumables.By 2022, a blockchain-based business will be worth $10B, Blockchain being a digital platform that records and verifies transactions in a tamper and revision-proof way that is public to all.By 2019, Global Business Intelligence market will exceed $ 23 billion and Global Predictive Analytics market will reach $ 3.6 billion by 2020, driven by the growing need to replace uncertainty in business forecasting with probability and the increasing popularity of prediction as a key towards improved decision making. Predictive analytics is the branch of the advanced analytics which is used to make predictions about unknown future events. Predictive analytics uses many techniques from data mining, statistics, modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze current data to make predictions about future. It is about the increased need & desire among businesses to gain greater value from their data. Over 80% of data/information that businesses generate and collect is unstructured or semi-structured data that need special treatment using Big Data Analytics.Big Data investments will account for over $46 Billion in 2016 reaching $72 Billion by the end of 2020. A new brand of analysts called “data scientists” are introducing data science courses into degrees ranging from computer science to business. Data Scientists usually require a mix of skills like mathematics, statistics, computer science, algorithmic, machine learning and most importantly business knowledge. If Data Scientists are lacking business knowledge, they will definitely fail. They also need to communicate the findings to C-Level management to be able to take the right strategic decisions.Data science needs to be a fundamental component of any digital transformation effort. All Sectors will have to hire and educate a significant number of Data Scientists. Let’s take the example of the Energy Sector where the Digital Transformation is playing a crucial role to reach Global and European Energy targets:Europe predicts to spend 50 b€ on Digital Transformation with 330 b€ of annual economic benefits expected by 2020. 87% of CFOs agree that growth requires faster data analysis and 50% of Networked enterprises are more likely to increase their market-share.With the 2020 energy climate package and the 2050 energy roadmap, Europe has engaged early in the transformation of its Energy system. As the Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes between 1760 and1840, the digital revolution will be the disruptive transformation of the 21st century to a new economy, a new society and a new era of low-emission energy. Many large Energy players will appoint Chief Digital Officers to drive the digital transformation of their processes and create new businesses.
Four recommendations to boost Customer Centric Energy innovations will heavily require the Digital Transformation roadmap to be adopted:
1.Accelerate Customer innovations by making the Data available for Market participants
2.Build massive Energy Services as downloadable Apps through Energy Exchange Platforms B2B, B2C and C2C
3.Full Customer participation by making customer usability as simple as one click
4.Build the pan-European Energy Union of Customer Services by extending to cross-border Energy Management
With the enablement of IOT, BI, Predictive Analytics and Data Science and the proven business models, we predict that 90% of Commercial and Industrial Customers and 70% of Residential Customers will be adopting Smart Energy technologies by 2025. | <urn:uuid:85914ad6-9153-4bc2-af8c-9d79fe3195ea> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.ciocoverage.com/internet-of-things-iot-big-data-business-intelligence-data-science-digital-transformation-hype-or-reality-facts-and-figures/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337595.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005073953-20221005103953-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.906375 | 888 | 2.578125 | 3 |
We are not about to be taken over by machines, at least not yet. But considering how they have creeped into everything from how we communicate, live, work, and play, it won’t be long before machines become a large part of everyday existence.
In part, we have businesses who adopted artificially intelligent systems to thank for this. Statistics show us that:
These stats are based facts. Analysis of how businesses, that are currently using artificial intelligence, can give us a better idea of its implications. Let’s look at them in detail.
Data has always been a valuable commodity for businesses. For enterprises, this data can be information on employees. For consumer services, this can be information about customers.
However, until AI and machine learning came to be, this data was largely unstructured which basically made it impossible to gain any value from it. Sure, a business might know what items are being sold faster than others, but the “why” remained a mystery.
Long story short, a lot of marketing potential usually went down the drain.
Today, artificially intelligent systems are not only helping consumer based businesses structure data better, but they are also making sense of it. The data that is gathered is helping them connect with customers faster and improve how they engage with them. For example, some businesses today are using AI to:
● Personalize shopping experiences
Using AI to gain customer preferences online is helping brands convert more visitors into buyers. The North Face, a retail brand, is a good example of this. It uses an AI tool in its website that asked shoppers a series of questions like where and why they would like to use the coats they are looking to purchase (e.g Commuting in Boston, Yosemite in spring).
● Gain Consumer Trust
Some retailers often use fake product reviews to win customers. It works for a while, but when products turn up being everything that these reviews are not, it hurts the image of online stores that stock these items.
To combat this practice, ecommerce brand Amazon used artificial intelligence to preserve its image. It uses a machine learning system, created in-house, to push verified customer purchase recommendations and reviews that have been marked as useful to the top.
How many times have you tried to call customer service for queries only to be put on hold or redirected? How long does it take you to place your order when there is a long line at the counter? Speeding up the purchase process is a start, but customers often have multiple orders or queries at a time which can delay the whole process.
Factors like long waiting times have always been a problem for businesses and the people they serve. To make services more accessible, some businesses have started investing in AI tools that bridge this gap.
Chatbots, digital personal assistants which combine AI capabilities like machine learning and NLP (Natural Language Processing), are an example of these tools. Here are a few ways chatbots are allowing businesses to make services more accessible:
● Instant customer service with virtual assistants
Messenger bots improve main attributes of customer service; they respond instantly, are always available and knowledgeable. The last is thanks to machine learning capabilities that allow them to learn from interactions and retain this knowledge.
● Instant services in Line
Most people would rather skip the line and order ahead. And some businesses in the food industry are using chatbots to provide them this benefit.
“My Starbucks Barista,” a new feature yet to be launched from Starbucks, will allow customers to speak to a virtual AI assistant via voice command to order drinks as they wait in line.
A Messenger chatbot from 1-800flowers.com for example, allows users to order items when to wherever they want all without talking to an actual customer representative.
Enterprises strive to be more competitive and anything that can provide them insights needed to do this is worth its weight in gold. Data is an example, but traditional computations were largely ineffective in detecting useful patterns that might help in improving business processes. That is, until AI came into the picture.
Artificial intelligence now gives businesses the opportunity to expand analytical capacities to gain meaningful insights from vast amounts of data in computer databases and the web. Here are a few examples that show how:
● Monitoring productivity
It’s incredibly hard for employers to track how productive employees are during any given time. Lately, some businesses are using AI powered digital assistants to do this for them. Consider the “Howdy” feature in Slack that automatically sends questions like these (e.g related to progress in projects) to your workforce and collects their answers on your behalf in the form of a report.
● Streamlining business tasks
AI can help reduce labor intensive processes and factors like human error that can cause inefficiencies in work processes. To illustrate, consider how a Japanese insurance firm replaced 34 of its employees with artificially intelligent systems earlier this year. These systems, based on IBM’s Watson Explorer, can analyse customer data (like medical histories, images and video files) to calculate payouts to policyholders.
● Consumer based businesses are turning to AI tools to gain insights in consumer behavior, use it to connect with them and provide them personalized shopping experiences.
● Some businesses are using AI powered digital assistants to improve in-store experiences.
● AI provides businesses the chance to identify patterns from mountains of data and gain meaningful insights to improve business processes.
Considering how businesses are currently using AI, it holds a lot of potential in improving customer and corporate relationships. | <urn:uuid:c1f34b43-ccbb-4376-bfc1-51b7fe4815e1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.colocationamerica.com/blog/business-using-artificial-intelligence | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030333455.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924182740-20220924212740-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.95396 | 1,135 | 2.890625 | 3 |
How AI-Driven Anti-Virus Tools Add Power to Cybersecurity Methods
Traditional anti-virus tools rely on signature-based solutions to help agencies defend against cyberthreats. During a typical workday, the tools scan disks multiple times for signs of possible compromise and regularly connect with update servers to download new signatures of emerging threats.
The challenge? With IT environments rapidly expanding and ransomware methods constantly evolving, signatures can’t be developed quickly enough to keep pace at scale. In addition, Cameron notes, “some solutions allow the execution to occur to determine if it’s good or bad, but this can modify the operating system, and bad things can happen.”
The Cylance AI that was acquired by BlackBerry takes a different approach. “We don’t allow ransomware to execute,” says Cameron. “Instead, AI intercepts that call at the kernel level. We don’t use signatures because they’re reactive.
“What we do is analyze potentially malicious resource calls using a math model that we’ve trained by feeding it billions of files. This allows the AI to extract the features of a file at a DNA level,” he adds.
If the tool detects a problem, no execution occurs. Instead, the issue is reported, and IT teams can investigate it while it’s quarantined on a machine.
Teams can dive further to determine which threat indicators were recorded and examine why the file is attempting to stop specific services or inject specific services. Cylance AI offers more than 100 human-readable threat indictors to streamline this process.
Humans Are Smart, but AI Makes Them Smarter
Cameron puts it succinctly: “The math is smarter than humans. A phenomenal human analyst can know between 150 and 200 features in a file. We have the ability to look at 2.7 million features in 100 milliseconds or less to determine if something is good or bad.”
The Cylance AI model is currently in its seventh generation, and Cameron notes that new models are only deployed when exhaustive testing proves they’re more accurate than the current version.
“It takes a lot of files to achieve this level of machine learning,” he says. “It’s a huge training phase, but it allows the solution to make intelligent inferences about unknown files, which in turn protects against everything from traditional ransomware to emerging zero-day attacks.”
This inferential approach also makes it possible to protect against fileless attacks.
“It’s important to cover not just malicious binaries, but also fileless attacks,” says Cameron. “These could be a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet trying to trick users into executing something in the background, which could then go out, and execute and pull down ransomware.”
Cylance AI offers protection for both memory space attacks and techniques that exploit legitimate network and system services. “We have script control,” he says. “This includes active scripts, PowerShell and macros, along with two new scripts for .NET and Python. We’re constantly adding support for new scripting languages.”
Cylance AI Is Cloud-Based, but not Cloud-Dependent
Cameron also notes that while Cylance AI is cloud-based, it’s not cloud-dependent.
“The AI model and its endpoint agent run locally on every system under protection,” he says. “So we don’t need a connection to the cloud to detect malware and prevent it from executing.”
Once a cloud connection is re-established, the agent checks in with the BlackBerry dashboard to update its status and changes to security policies.
In addition, agencies can configure the solution however it best suits their needs. “You have the ability to group your machines by servers, laptops, etc.” says Cameron. “It’s completely flexible. All admin functions and analytics are centrally managed in the cloud-based console.”
“This includes analytics about malware detection, threat indicators, how machines were affected and much more,” he adds. “You can quickly pull up whatever data you need for root cause analysis.”
Bottom line? Ransomware risks are rising. AI-driven tools make it possible to outpace and outsmart attackers with proactive, prevention-first, endpoint protection.
Brought to you by: | <urn:uuid:a36a5274-211c-43f3-b3a9-17c3cbdf0ee7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2021/10/smart-defense-how-artificial-intelligence-can-reduce-ransomware-risks | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334644.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926020051-20220926050051-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.931938 | 929 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Few people on the planet know more about building computers for Artificial Intelligence than Rob Ober. As the top technology exec at Nvidia’s Accelerated Computing Group, he’s the chief platform architect behind Tesla, the most powerful GPU on the market for Machine Learning, which is the most widespread type of AI today.
GPUs, or Graphics Processing Units, take their name from their original purpose, but their applications today stretch far beyond that. Supercomputer designers have found them ideal for offloading huge chunks of workloads from CPUs in the systems they build; they’ve also proven to be super-efficient processors for a Machine Learning approach called Deep Learning. That’s the type of AI Google uses to serve targeted ads and Amazon Alexa taps into for instantaneous answers to voice queries.
Creating algorithms that enable computers to learn by observation and iteration is undoubtedly complex; also incredibly complex is designing computer systems to execute those instructions and data center infrastructure to power and cool those systems. Ober has seen this firsthand working with Nvidia’s hyper-scale customers on their data center systems for deep learning.
“We’ve been working with a lot of the hyper-scales – really all of the hyper-scales – in the large data centers,” he said in an interview with Data Center Knowledge. “It’s a really hard engineering problem to build a system for GPUs for deep learning training. It’s really, really hard. Even the big guys like Facebook and Microsoft struggled.”
Big Basin, Facebook's latest AI server. Each of the eight heat sinks hides a GPU. (Photo: Facebook)
It Takes a Lot of Power to Train an AI
Training is one type of computing workload involved in deep learning (or rather a category of workloads, since the field is evolving, and there are several different approaches to training). Its purpose is to teach a deep neural network -- a network of computing nodes aiming to mimic the way neurons interact in the human brain -- a new capability from existing data. For example, a neural net can learn to recognize dogs in photos by repeatedly “looking” at various images that have dogs in them, where dogs are tagged as dogs.
The other category of workloads is inference, which is where a neural net applies its knowledge to new data (e.g. recognizes a dog in an image it hasn’t seen before).
Nvidia makes GPUs for both categories, but training is the part that’s especially difficult in the data center, because hardware for training requires extremely dense clusters of GPUs, or interconnected servers with up to eight GPUs per server. One such cabinet can easily require 30kW or more -- power density most data centers outside of the supercomputer realm aren’t designed to support. Even though that’s the low end of the range, about 20 such cabinets need as much power as the Dallas Cowboys jumbotron at the AT&T stadium, the world’s largest 1080p video display, which contains 30 million lightbulbs.
“We put real stresses on a lot of data center infrastructure,” Ober said about Nvidia’s GPUs. “With deep learning training you typically want to make as dense a compute pool as possible, and that becomes incredibly power-dense, and that’s a real challenge.” Another problem is controlling the voltage in these clusters. GPU computing, by its nature, produces lots of power transients (sudden spikes in voltage), “and those are difficult to deal with.”
Interconnecting the nodes is another big challenge. “Depending on where your training data comes from it can be an incredible load on the data center network,” Ober said. “You can be creating a real intense hot spot.” Power density and networking are probably the two biggest design challenges in data center systems for deep learning, according to him.
Tesla P100, Nvidia's most powerful GPU (Image: Nvidia)
Cooling the Artificial Brain
Hyper-scale data center operators – the likes of Facebook and Microsoft – mostly address the power density challenge by spreading their deep learning clusters over many racks, although some “dabble” in liquid cooling or liquid-assist, Ober said. Liquid cooling is when chilled water is delivered directly to the chips on the motherboard (a common approach to cooling supercomputers), while liquid-assist cooling is when chilled water is brought to a heat exchanger attached to an IT cabinet to cool air that is then pushed through the servers.
Not everybody that needs to support high-density deep learning hardware has the luxury of hundreds of thousands of square feet of data center space, and those who don’t, such as the few data center providers that have chosen to specialize in high density, have gone the liquid-assist route. Recently, these providers have seen a spike in demand for their services, driven to a large extent by the growing interest in machine learning.
Both startups and large companies are looking for ways to leverage the technology that is widely predicted to drive the next big wave of innovation, but most of them don’t have the infrastructure necessary to support this development work. “Right now the GPU-enabled workloads are the ones where we’re seeing the largest amount of growth, and it’s definitely the enterprise sector,” Chris Orlando, co-founder of high-density data center provider ScaleMatrix, said in an interview. “The enterprise data center is not equipped for this.”
That spike in growth started only recently. Orlando said his company has seen a hockey stick-shaped growth trajectory with the knee somewhere around the middle of last year. Other applications driving the spike have been computing for life sciences and genomics (one of the biggest customers at ScaleMatrix’s flagship data center outside of San Diego, a hub for that types of research, is the genomics powerhouse J. Craig Venter Institute), geospacial research, and big data analytics. In Houston, its second data center location, most of the demand comes from the oil and gas industry whose exploration work requires some high-octane computing power.
Another major ScaleMatrix customer in San Diego is Cirrascale, a hardware maker and cloud provider that specializes in infrastructure for Deep Learning. Read our feature on Cirrascale here.
Inside ScaleMatrix's data center in San Diego (Photo: ScaleMatrix)
Each ScaleMatrix cabinet can support up to 52kW by bringing chilled water from a central plant to cool air in the fully enclosed cabinet. The custom-designed system’s chilled-water loop is on top of the cabinet, where hot exhaust air from the servers rises to get cooled and pushed back over the motherboards. Seeing growing enterprise demand for high-density computing, the company recently started selling this technology to companies interested in deploying it in-house.
Colovore, a data center provider in Silicon Valley, also specializes in high-density colocation. It is using the more typical rear-door heat exchanger to provide up to 20kW per rack in the current first phase, and 35kW in the upcoming second phase. At least one of its customers is interested in pushing beyond 35kW, so the company is exploring the possibility of a supercomputer-like system that brings chilled water directly to the motherboards.
Today a “large percentage” of Colovore’s data center capacity is supporting GPU clusters for machine learning, Sean Holzknecht, the company’s co-founder and president, said in an interview. Like ScaleMatrix, Colovore is in a good location for what it does. Silicon Valley is a hotbed for companies that are pushing the envelope in machine learning, self-driving cars, and bioinformatics, and there’s no shortage of demand for the boutique provider's high-density data center space.
Read our feature on Colovore and its niche play in Silicon Valley here.
A look beneath the floor tiles at Colovore displays the infrastructure to support water cooled doors. (Photo: Colovore)
Demand for AI Hardware Surging
And demand for the kind of infrastructure Colovore and ScaleMatrix provide is likely to continue growing. Machine learning is only in the early innings, and few companies outside of the large cloud platforms, the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alibaba, are using the technology in production. Much of the current activity in the field today consists of development, but that work still requires a lot of GPU horsepower.
Nvidia says demand for AI hardware is surging, a lot of it driven by enterprise cloud giants like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure, who offer both machine learning-enhanced cloud services and raw GPU power for rent. There’s hunger for the most powerful cloud GPU instances available. “The cloud vendors who currently have GPU instances are seeing unbelievable consumption and traction,” Nvidia’s Ober said. “It really is telling that people are drifting to the largest instances they can get.” | <urn:uuid:dfc6b155-fa69-48f1-bbfb-bf39b2c7f069> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/03/27/deep-learning-driving-up-data-center-power-density/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335004.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927100008-20220927130008-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.936637 | 1,888 | 2.734375 | 3 |
2004 was the year that spyware became mainstream. Every computer user has been told that any issues with performance or their computer not functioning is due to the vile junk – as opposed to in days of old where poor performance could simply be blamed on “an old computer” that needed reformatting.
The change isn’t just visible in consumers’ frustrated faces, but also in the eyes of security officials everywhere. While many companies have Antispyware (A/S) software, there is no simple solution to spyware.
The problem stems from the fact that most spyware installations are due in equal parts to operating system insecurity and poor user choices. The single greatest fear for most security experts – besides a massive security attack against a nation’s infrastructure – is that the safety of users will be in their own hands.
But this is the exact problem with spyware: the vast majority is software that users, in some way or another, actually choose to install.
The installation of spyware happens in 3 key ways: exploiting Operating System vulnerabilities, exploiting bad user habits and being installed as part of another application. Each of these is difficult to address in and of itself. OS issues are ultimately the responsibility of the OS manufacturer – Microsoft. Applications installed behind another application are ultimately based on misinformation by application providers – something that isn’t easily solved. And bad user decisions – such as choosing to install an application because a popup window says their computer is insecure or could be faster – are difficult to deal with without some kind of central authority.
It is into this uncertain, difficult to maintain and nearly impossible to judge landscape that today’s Antispyware applications are entering. Until mid-2004, the most common Antispyware applications were created by smaller development companies who had realized the issues and come up with solutions largely on their own. Products such as Spybot, HijackThis and AdAware largely fall into this space: small products dealing with issues in a relatively simple manner.
After the summer of 2004, though, we began to see a larger number of security companies entering into the arena. Companies such as Symantec, Norton, CA and Microsoft have all taken stabs at the issue, with varying degrees of success.
As was mentioned earlier, this is largely due to the core issues surrounding dealing with spyware. It isn’t enough to simply block a known list of applications, as is the case with Antivirus because sometimes users do in fact want these applications installed. The problem then is that it also isn’t enough to simply tell a user that each application is being installed – because users may not know enough to know which ones should or shouldn’t be installed.
The solution is both elegant and maddeningly complex. Any successful Antispyware application must approach the issue from three angles simultaneously. First, it must have a “complete” – in as much as that is possible – database of applications (both valid and malicious – so that users can be presented with proper information.
Second, it must detect patterns that malicious and spyware applications use to do harm to a user’s computer. This could come in the form of monitoring the register, personal settings, Internet Explorer settings, attempts to access core Windows settings, etc.
And, finally, there needs to be a feedback loop between users and the manufacturer of the software. At the end of the day, the best way to determine if users want software – and to determine how effective a given Antispyware application is being – is by knowing what choices users are making.
Until recently, no single product did a passable job at employing each of these methods. The most common scenarios Antispyware vendors took were a combination of databases and system protection. The only feedback most application vendors allowed was through literal “feedback forms” – which only the most advanced of users would take advantage of.
Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Giant Company Software, though, changed all of that. By taking a larger scale view, Microsoft has released a software product, which is strong enough at detecting spyware – even though there are some false positives in its current incarnation – has a solid system, settings and Internet Explorer protection system and includes “SpyNet” capabilities.
SpyNet is the missing “feedback loop” that Antispyware applications need. It allows users to notify Microsoft and other user management nodes of application installations and changes that happen on their system. For example, in the case of false positives, Microsoft would quickly become aware of why users weren’t uninstalling their VPN software – as an example of a typical false positive that Microsoft’s Windows Antispyware application detects – and would, hopefully, be able to take appropriate action.
Whether SpyNet and Microsoft manage to properly deal with the spyware threat remains to be seen. At the worst though, other application vendors should be able to build on the approach Microsoft has taken. Perhaps, even, by creating a central application tracking system. Such a system would allow for accurate information on millions of applications, accurate tracking and interpretation of user behavior and should – in an ideal world – allow Antispyware vendors to update and modify their systems to respond to the latest threats in days instead of weeks.
At the end of the day, this is a new software arena and one where significant work still needs to be done. It is doubtful that any of this second generation of software will be able to completely deal with the issue. Further innovations, research and customer feedback must be gathered so that users remain protected, productive and safe in their computer use.
Our hope is that this will happen in 2005, in spite of no major signals that a complete solution – that users will trust and that will not be overly expensive – will be available in this timeframe. However, considering the speed with which the OS and security companies have responded to the spyware threat it is certainly possible that just such a solution will be found. And I, for one, look forward to the day where computer usage is a safe and friendly practice once again. | <urn:uuid:3a21f6e7-832c-42e5-913e-91ff01281279> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://it-observer.com/spying-spyware.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335276.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928180732-20220928210732-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.958356 | 1,271 | 2.609375 | 3 |
An effective organization of consequence, whether public or private, attempts to strike a balance between its mission (usually but not always profit) and its responsibilities to employees, the community, the government (laws and regulations), and society at large. This is accomplished through “corporate governance,” or what was once known as “business ethics.”
Most experts believe that to be truly effective, corporate governance must start at the top with a set of policies called entity-level controls.
What Are Entity-Level Controls?
From the standpoint of risk, audit and accounting professionals, entity-level controls are directed at the highest echelons of an organization.
Entity-level controls are policies, rules, procedures and standards of behavior that apply to members of the board of directors, senior company officers, top management, and rank-and-file employees. It’s a well-established fact that the behavior of upper management tends to “set the tone” for the subsequent behavior of everyone else down an organization's chain of command. This is why entity-level controls are often called “tone at the top controls.”
Direct and Indirect Controls
Entity-level control procedures fall into two categories; direct and indirect. Direct entity-level controls are those that exist to prevent purposeful or inadvertent material misstatements on financial statements, in legal proceedings or through press releases, and in interviews or marketing material. Indirect entity-level controls are broader in scope and pertain to things like internal communication, employee interaction and other aspects of business that affect the overall atmosphere of a company.
A proper approach to corporate governance will incorporate both direct and indirect controls into the entity-level control risk management process.
Examples of common entity-level controls will include the following:
- Mission statement
- Statement of values
- Code of ethics
- Code of conduct
- Audit (testing) and audit reporting requirements
- Employee handbook or rulebook
- Training manuals
- Internal complaint procedure
- Continuing education requirements
- Employee review process
Why Are Entity-Level Controls Important?
The most important intangible benefit of maintaining a robust entity-level control regime is that it sets standards of ethics, good behavior and sound business habits that are enforced from the top down.
A solid set of sound policies and sensible procedures that are applied equitably to everyone from the chairman of the board of directors down to a newly hired intern demonstrate to the entire organization (as well as the outside world) that misbehavior — especially fraudulent and unfair practice — is not tolerated or taken lightly. This is an important internal safeguard against the loss of valuable goodwill through reputational risk.
There are, of course, important tangible benefits as well. Some of them contribute directly to the bottom line. Some (but not all) are as follows.
- Errors are avoided.
- Stringent controls are proven to cut down on incidental (accidental) errors. This is especially important in financial and regulatory reporting.
- Errors due to malfeasance, criminal activity or poor work habits can also be limited by a diligently implemented entity-level control risk management process.
- Risk is mitigated.
- Entity-level control risk assessment is a fundamental aspect of auditing, accounting and risk systems. A solid risk assessment means better risk management.
- Human resources is managed.
- Good entity-level controls are personnel driven.
- The clear definition of roles and responsibilities in written and inspected controls can facilitate effective personnel management.
- Overall efficiency is increased.
- Clear and well-communicated controls save both time and money and will result in a more efficient business.
COSO: The Entity-Level Control Gold Standard
James Tredway Jr. and the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) did the accounting and business world a great service in 1992 when they created the integrated principles known as the "COSO Framework." Many companies consider the COSO Framework the gold standard for guidance in establishing and implementing internal controls to avoid and control risk. As you may know, the framework emphasizes entity-level controls as a critical step in establishing transparency and setting an operational tone.
Even businesses that don’t adhere precisely to the framework and every aspect of the famous “COSO Cube” must acknowledge the critical nature of its five components:
- Control environment
- Risk assessment and management
- Control activities
- Monitoring (auditing and testing)
Neglect of any of the five elements can end up being a costly mistake made even more painful because it can so easily be avoided.
The Value of a Comprehensive, High-Quality Questionnaire/Checklist
It should be no secret that a comprehensive controls checklist is itself a critical internal control. In fact, a good questionnaire-based checklist ought to be first on any list for any category of controls. A questionnaire serves to start you off right and keep you on track throughout the design and implementation of a control strategy.
The value of a top-quality, well-designed questionnaire is that it helps establish a systematic routine of accuracy and avoids costly oversights and duplication of effort.
Put simply, the consistent use of accounting checklists, templates and questionnaires is an audit and accounting best practice that shouldn’t be ignored or avoided.
The KnowledgeLeader Entity-Level Control Environment Questionnaire
Our Entity-Level Control Environment Questionnaire is designed to harmonize perfectly with the COSO Framework while not requiring strict adherence to every aspect of the COSO Cube. Many COSO elements are provided, but the tool is 100% customizable to the needs of the professionals who are using it.
Our questionnaire covers more than 65 critical entity-level controls. It gives the COSO attributes that are addressed by the control and then asks more than a dozen questions about each. Although it includes almost 850 questions, each control and the associated questions can be addressed (or ignored) independently, even as they work seamlessly with the whole document.
Our subscribers have full access to this valuable tool and use it to meet three primary objectives that create a beneficial control environment.
- Adequate, Effective Policies
Codes of conduct, rule books and other written standards that document acceptable business practices and help avoid conflict.
Officers, directors, employees, partners and associates are all made aware of what is expected of them, what’s acceptable, and what is not.
As has been much discussed in this article, the “tone at the top” shapes the business environment all the way down.
We encourage you to visit our Entity-Level Control topic area to learn more about the related content we have to offer. | <urn:uuid:c1c916f3-b819-40fd-a6ac-cdd6b84f64a4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.knowledgeleader.com/blog/entity-level-controls-importance-setting-tone | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335276.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928180732-20220928210732-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.914284 | 1,383 | 2.578125 | 3 |
High above the field at the recent Super Bowl, a tiny robot was hanging in tension. Fixed on wires and capable of skyrocketing and nosediving in three dimensions, the robot is also a video camera called SkyCam, now a staple in sports broadcasting. A new iteration of this technology wants to become the staple of another industry, but instead of hauling a camera and capturing football kickoffs, this version will carry and stack bricks.
Developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, CU-Brick is a cable-driven robot capable of building precise and intricate structures, piece by piece. Demonstration projects show the robot whizzing through the air and cleanly stacking bricks along the base of a wall. Its creators see the technology as a potential game-changing innovation for the construction industry, increasing the speed, accuracy, and safety of construction projects. | <urn:uuid:a817f1f9-7946-417e-9a0d-a05914b6eea3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybercoastal.com/aerial-robot-revolutionizing-construction/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335424.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930020521-20220930050521-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.934435 | 182 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Identity data is the collection of data about an individual person, such as their name, address, bank account number, health records, and other highly sensitive information.
It is primarily governments and health care industries that collect identity data. However, it comes from companies, like banks, third-party payment processors, and clinic software programs. Additional sources include retail companies online or social media platforms that request an individual sign in to an account.
With the rise of smartphones and related devices and the tendency of people to use a small number of passwords for all their accounts, the onus is on companies collecting this data to keep it safe.
Common attributes include an individual’s name, national identity number, phone number, and address. Additional attributes are transaction history, medical history, bank account and bank balance, age, and place of birth.
This data is used by governments and health care workers to identify a citizen or patient and provide the best, personalized service and care. Companies use this data with cross-device identity markers to be sure that the user of a device or account is the device or account owner.
Companies also save your identity information and preferences to provide personalized service and drafting marketing campaigns.
Finally, companies use the data to prevent fraud.
The best test of the quality of individual data is the update frequency and the consistency of the dataset. You can also collect some historical data to test against newer data or against the rate of conversions.
Identity data is one of the most important big data fields and the security concerns are paramount. And despite the fact that many companies devote a meager portion of their yearly budgets to identity management systems, the field is exploding and the solutions to fraud detection and customer lifetime value flourishing.
Identity data demands the highest possible levels of security, but that’s not the only thing that makes protecting it different. In addition to enforcing corporate and regulatory policies that satisfy security mandates, administrators must also consider the customer’s perspective.
TL1’s dataset – ‘TL1mkt Identity Graph for Identity ResolutionWORLDWIDE3.3B Identity Linkages’ provides Individual Data, Social Data, Identity Data and Consumer Lifestyle Data that can be used in Online and Social Media Performance Tracking, Trend Forecasting and
TL1’s dataset – ‘TL1-GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK ENRICHMENT ON LINE AND OFF LINE DATA-‘ provides Consumer Lifestyle Data, , App Data and Identity Data that can be used in
Throtle’s dataset – ‘Throtle – Identity Data Onboarding USA Consumers (250M+ individuals, 130M+ households)’ provides Identity Data, Demographic Data, and Individual Data that can be used in and Online and Social Media Performance Tracking | <urn:uuid:ae431f24-76f6-44d8-af0c-9c403f8f4350> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.data-hunters.com/category/individual-data/identity-data/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335424.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930020521-20220930050521-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.895568 | 571 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The Lower East Side
The Lower East Side is an area of Manhattan roughly bounded by Houston Street on the north and Canal Street on the South, and by Bowery on the west and the East River on the east. From the mid 1800s into the 1900s it was a busy community of immigrants, many of them Jewish. Many immigrants arrived between 1880 and the early 1920s, moving into increasingly crowded conditions. From 1881 through 1914, approximately two million Jews immigrated to the U.S. from Europe. About 75% of them settled in New York City, most of those on the Lower East Side. In 1900-1910 almost 500,000 residents of the Lower East Side were Jewish, making this the largest Jewish community in the world. The next two largest Jewish communities in the U.S. were in Chicago and Philadelphia, each with less than 20% the number in New York. Most of their descendants have now moved out, but many cultural and architectural influences remain.
Imperial Russia had defined the Черта Оседлости or the Pale of Settlement after its conquest and absorption of parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 1700s. From 1791 to 1917, Jews now within the Russian Empire were restricted to living in this area that included much of today's Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova. Even within this region, they were prohibited from living in some cities.
There had been anti-Jewish riots and massacres in Europe since the Middle Ages. Then Czar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881, and the Russian government blamed the Jews. This triggered a wave of over 200 massacres of Jews within the next few years in the Russian Empire. These attacks came to be called pogroms from the Russian word погром, derived from громить, meaning "to destroy." The pogroms continued into the early 20th century. One estimate is that 1,326 pogroms in Ukraine between 1881 and 1920 killed between 70,000 and 250,000 Jews and left half a million homeless. Relatives who had already made their way to the United States raised money to buy transport for those still in the old villages.
Over 75,000 of the Jewish residents of the Lower East Side were from Romania, where antisemitic laws, violence, low crop yields, and economic depression drove 30% of the Jewish population of Romania to emigrate to the U.S. Many of them settled in New York, and of those, many went to the growing "Romanian quarter" within the Lower East Side. This was bounded by Houston and Grand streets to its north and south, and Allen and Ludlow to its west and east, so about five blocks north to south and two blocks west to east. This was the most densely populated area of the Lower East Side, the most densely populated are in the entire world, with up to 7,000 people per block in crowded tenement buildings.
The Jewish immigrants who arrived during the mid to late 1800s through the early 1900s were predominantly from Eastern Europe. They were of Ashkenazi rather than Shephardic descent.
The Romans banned the Jews from Jerusalem in the 130s CE. They migrated out into the Roman Empire, through the Italian peninsula and into southern Europe where Jewish communities had already existed since pre-Christian times. Of course, large numbers were already living in Greece. Jewish communities existed throughout today's France by the 500s. Then Charlesmagne's expansion of his empire around 800 brought stability that allowed more Jewish settlement north of the Alps.
The Shephardim became a distinct community in the Iberian peninsula, today's Spain and Portugal, around 1000 CE. They spoke a Judaeo-Spanish language, derived from Old Spanish with additions from other Romance languages, Hebrew, and Aramaic. They lived there until they were expelled in 1492. They returned eastward and settled throughout the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic empire that welcomed them when they were driven out of Christian Spain.
The Ashkenazim also became a distinct Jewish community around 1000 CE. However, they lived throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Yiddish appeared, a Germanic language written in Hebrew script. It had loan words in Romance languages, and picked up Slavic components as the Ashkenazim gradually moved east.
The Jews who stayed behind in France and Germany were segregated, but made efforts to become part of the local society. The Ashkenazim who moved further east were more segregated, by the surrounding culture and also by themselves. The self-segregation and local anti-semitism tended to intensify each other.
The Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to the Lower East Side were strict Orthodox, largely from Romania, Poland, Lithuania, and other areas within Imperial Russia at the time. They were moving from the shtetl, the small exclusively Jewish village, to the crowded tenements of this district of a large American city.
A tenement building has multi-family rented accommodations. As defined legally in New York State in 1867, a tenement was a building occupied by more than three independent families, each doing their own cooking and sharing the halls, stairways, and toilets.
The lots were 20 to 25 feet wide along the street and 100 feet deep. Most tenement buildings filled over 90% of that space. Typical buildings had 18 rooms on each of five or six floors. Tenements built in the early through mid 1800s had windowless rooms, some of which served as passageways to rooms further from the stairs. Only the two rooms at the front had windows. The other rooms had no ventilation.
The Tenement House Act of 1867 prohibited cellar apartments below street level. The completion of the Croton Aqueduct had brought running water to wealthier citizens. This reduced the use of wells, raising the water table and flooding cellars. The 1867 act also required fire escapes and one toilet for every 20 residents.
The Tenement House Act of 1879, called the Old Law, required that every inhabitable room have a window opening to the exterior, and the building could cover no more than 65% of the lot. The New York City Board of Health didn't enforce the Old Law, and a compromise became the de-facto standard. This was the "dumbbell tenement", which touched its neighbors at the front and back and was slightly narrower through its middle. The shallow notch at each side formed a narrow air shaft between it and the adjacent building.
Typical Old Law Tenements had four apartments of three or four rooms each on every floor above street level. There were two shared toilets on each staircase landing.
Many of the families worked in their homes. There were fabric and clothing companies in the area. A lot of labor was done in tenement apartments, sewing new pieces and also mending and cleaning work.
There are still some reminders of the area being the Romanian quarter. This art gallery on Stanton Street bears the Roman name for today's Romania, Dacia.
The Roman control of its province of Dacia led to modern Romanian being a Latin-based language isolated in Eastern Europe. It is surrounded by neighbors speaking Slavic languages, plus the Hungarians speaking their non-Indo-European Magyar language.
Meanwhile, the Jewish population of the Lower East Side continues shrinking. Most businesses focused on the Orthodox community have closed. | <urn:uuid:99e23d85-0a53-43d4-a2c2-a11208ad1855> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/usa/new-york-jewish-les/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335609.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001101652-20221001131652-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.98158 | 1,545 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Artificial intelligence is known widely by its initials ‘AI’, is human intelligence programmed into machines giving them the capacity to think and act logically. Computers can store, process and retrieve huge amounts of data in a very short time. Coupled with intelligence, machines do an effective job of finding patterns in variables and predicting and modeling functions accurately. Hence AI has found great application in problem-solving and learning. The technology is taking over industries such as transport through the advancement of self-driving cars, security through speech and facial recognition and now education through tutoring. AI is taking over the classroom at an alarming rate, let us explore the many different ways it is doing so.
The use of AI tutors
AI tutoring systems already exist and they are improving so fast. They have two great advantages over human teachers; they do not get tired and they can be accessed from anywhere. As long as the student is set, all they need to do is turn on their computers and start learning. Artificial intelligence tutors function by providing accurate answers to questions and help students learn to speak languages through chatbot such as Duolingo.
Dramatic presentation of AI tutor (Medium.com)
AI tutors can be partners of human teachers too, like sidekicks, they help them plan lessons and monitor the progress of their students. One great example is the iTalk2Learn online learning system that uses machine learning to assist teachers to compile personal lesson plans. Another great example of an AI sidekick tutor is the Thirdspace Learning online platform that identifies where students are having problems grasping concepts in maths and alerts the teacher before the problem grows.
The biggest hurdle to individual student improvement in the classroom is the generalization of learning. Different students have different capacities and styles of grasping concepts. When subjected to the convectional learning practice of lecturing and note-taking, up to half of the class may fall back creating two unfair categories known as fast learners and slow learners. The fact is there is no such thing as a slow learner. This has been evident through students who perform poorly in class theoretical subjects but do well in practical fields when they step into the outside world.
AI can easily track and keep an accurate account of how every student learns and custom-tailor learning programs for each one of them. AI software can also help students check their work for originality before submission through a free plagiarism checker for students. They can be confident that their work is in good quality with the use of machine learning assistance. Examples of adaptive programs that help in individualized learning are educative games that work well with playful students and animations for visual and imaginative students.
One of the greatest advancements in the use of AI in the classroom is in emotional monitoring. This is achieved through machine reading of facial expressions, gestures, and movements of students to derive important information such as involvement during lessons and distractions. These AI emotional monitoring systems are used to recognize and analyze how students respond to different methods of teaching so that the tutor can focus on the most effective ones. They also analyze class dynamics so that teachers can easily manage their students. They will identify which students readily collaborate and which students like to work alone and give recommendations for group formations for class projects.
The application of Emotional intelligence in class is not an easy task for teachers. Most of them do not want to get involved in the personal lives of their students because it complicates the learning process and creates biases. Emotionally intelligent Machines are fair observers and executors and that’s why they are better placed to handle emotions in the classroom.
Attendance roll marking
Facial recognition software was developed primarily for security functions. The technology has now been improved upon and adopted by learning institutions to mark class attendance. This AI technology eliminates the need for students to manually sign attendance registers; an activity that is usually compromised when students sign in for their friends. Now all one has to do is walk into class and a Facial Recognition camera will pick up on their face and sign them up for the day.
FR Technology for students (nyclu.org)
Attendance roll marking is also achieved through fingerprint scanning. Students place their finger on a fingerprint slot machine that adds data on their attendance record every time they show up or do not show up in class. This data is accurate and it qualifies to be processed and used for grading purposes. It is also easy to identify intruders that may access educational institutions with the motive of committing crimes such as theft, vandalization of school property and even mass shooting.
Automation of grading
Teachers dedicate a lot of their time in grading students from their assignments, contributions in class and occasional tests. Marking exams and giving grades to a whole lecture hall of students especially in colleges can be a tedious job. With AI platforms such as BakPax, teachers can now automate grading for multiple-choice questions and fill-in-the-blank tests. An entire exam, done by thousands of students across the country can be marked and graded in a matter of days.
Hopefully, AI will be able to read and interpret ideas to grade essays and written exams in the near future. As grading software keeps advancing, teachers will find more time to interact with their students and focus on in-class activates and maybe even set aside time for personal development.
AI is improving the lives of the learners and their experiences in the classroom, no doubt. Students are more engaged and are taking in concepts much faster. Teachers too are finding it easier to focus on teaching and leave all other activities that can be automated to their machine counterparts. There has been concern however of AI replacing human teachers in the long run. As to how AI will affect careers in teaching is a matter that needs to be witnessed, it is difficult to make accurate predictions currently. If the benefits of using AI in the classroom far outweigh the disadvantages, then the technology, for all intents and purposes, needs to be embraced. | <urn:uuid:ab90c738-86a0-4eb3-bb32-657ddc621d02> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.crayondata.com/artificial-intelligence-in-classrooms-how-is-taking-over/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337339.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002181356-20221002211356-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.964855 | 1,222 | 3.25 | 3 |
A Trojan (horse) in computer-terms is a type of malware that does not replicate itself.
The name is based on the mythological tale of Greek warriors who hid inside a giant wooden horse that was suppose to be a "present" to the city of Troy. After dark, the Greek warriors opened the previously impenetrable gates of Troy to let in the rest of their army and sacked the city.
So, the name is very fitting, because computer Trojans often disguise themselves as something useful or at least innocent. Once they are inside, however, they often download or install other malware on the user’s computer.
Definitions on what is a Trojan horse differ greatly, but the common factors are that Trojans:
- do not self-replicate
- come disguised as harmless
- open your system to more harm
Coming disguised as harmless can be interpreted in many ways. It is not uncommon for Trojans to be offered as cracks or keygens, something which I personally would not call harmless, but users could download these files as something they feels is useful.
Opening your system to more harm is also a wide field of possibilities because there are many types of Trojans -- most of them named after their main function. Please note that it is not uncommon for Trojans to have multiple functions and the definition of Trojans is not narrowed down and is open to discussion, so the list will never be complete.
- Password stealers: these are usually targeting a certain kind of password. Considered the most harmful are
- banker Trojans, which try to steal your banking credentials in order to book money from your account. Other common types are
- Gamethief: steals account information for online games
- Trojan-IM: steals account information for instant messaging programs
- Key-loggers: these simply steal anything you type. As you can imagine it takes a lot of work to find the information you are looking for in a log produced and sent by this type of Trojan.
- Destructive Trojans: beside the kind that simply destructs for the sake of being a nuisance there are a few kinds that have a purpose
- Ransom Trojan: these alter, encrypt or pack your files in a way that makes it unable for the user to have access to his own files. On receipt of payment the criminal promises to send a program to the victim to restore the data or restore the computer’s normal performance.
- security software disabler: these Trojans are constructed to take out as many security programs as possible, leaving the user without a firewall, AV, HIPS or any kind of protection. The ultimate goal usually is to make the user vulnerable to the net level of the attack.
- Backdoor aka RAT (Remote Access Trojan) : arguably the most widespread type of Trojan, although often combined with other functions or other types of malware. Backdoor trojans leave the computer open to be controlled by someone else for different functions.
- DDoS attack: In order to conduct a successful DDoS attack, malicious users often infect a large number of computers with this type of Trojan in advance (for example, as part of a mass spam mailing.) As a result, all the infected computers will attack the target machine/server/site at the signal given by the controller. Large groups of computers under control in this way are often referred to as botnets.
- Trojan Clicker: used to perform online actions in order to boost hit-counts.
- Proxy Trojan: the victims computer is turned into a proxy, so the operator can perform online business anonymously.
- Mailfinder Trojans: these harvest email-addresses from the infected computer in any way they can and send the list of addresses to the operator.
- Dropper: this type of trojan installs other malware on the infected computer. Usually they’re an executable file that contain other files compressed inside its body. Generally speaking one distraction to keep the user occupied and one or more malicious programs, which it will secretly install and run.
- Trojan FakeAV installs a fake AV that asks payment for the removal of threats only the fake AV detects. These so-called "rogues" use intentional false positives to convince users that their systems have been compromised. Then they try to sell you their software, claiming it will remove these threats. In extreme cases the false threats are actually the very trojans that advertise or even directly install the rogue.
- Trojan Spy: this detection often refers to specialized software to spy on a certain victim. The specialization can range for example from one country to one particular person. The more specialized these spies are, the harder they will be to find, especially by signature based scanners.
- Trojan-ArcBomb: these are usually aimed to cripple or slow down mailservers. The Trojans aim to slow down or crash a computer by packing enormous (amounts of) files in a relatively small package. When the package is opened, the volume increase is so enormous that the server has to dedicate a large portion of its CPU time and drive space to handling the Trojan. The bombs use the given that packing files with many repetitions or large numbers of equal files can be compressed into much smaller packages.
- Trojan SMS: usually aimed at mobile devices these Trojans sent text messages to premium rate numbers and thus earning money for the creator for the Trojan.
Long after Helen of Troy, the war against Trojans has rekindled in a different manner. Famous computer Trojans are Beast, which made the client-server model very popular. The server being on the infected computer and the client on the operator. Its many features and the ease of use for the client made it very popular. Another Backdoor that was very popular and well-known is Sub7. Zeus on the other hand started as a banker Trojan, originally aimed at a limited group of people, but years later the various Zeus' botnets are estimated to include millions of compromised computers. A more recent giant is the ZeroAccess Rootkit, held responsible for a botnet spread estimated to have been present on millions systems.
Power in numbers
In this day and age of commercial malware the power is in the numbers. Even if only a small percentage of users falls for the tricks and schemes used by malware writers (and phishing the like) there is still an enormous amount of money to be stolen. Valid email addresses get sold by the thousands. A botnet controller can be hired to use his bots to take down any site or server. The fee will depend on how many bots it takes to get the job done. And the money the malware writers and operators make is only a small portion of the cost as business week showed us a year ago.
How does Malwarebytes Anti-Malware help you?
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware detects all known Trojans and more, since 80 % of Trojan detection is done by heuristics. | <urn:uuid:358a79b6-b5ad-4bf2-8419-1e55f25e059b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2013/06/what-are-trojans | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337473.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004023206-20221004053206-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.944006 | 1,469 | 3.125 | 3 |
Any Network that is well designed should satisfy the characteristics listed below:
- Network uptime: Any network should be designed to be up all the time, this means that you have to understand your network and what failures may affect the network operation and provide all means of redundancy to ensure virtually 100% uptime of your network. This is usually a trade off between the criticality of the applications running over the network and the budget.
- Network reliability: Administrators have to make sure that at any given time the network is capable of delivering packets to their destinations in a timely fashion with an acceptable delay and jitter profile. The good designer must understand his traffic, its characteristics and the acceptable performance to keep the network running smoothly.
- Network security: The network should be as hard as possible for an attacker to disturb and the administrators must have a plan to stop or mitigate different types of attacks real time.
- Network management: network management is one of the most critical parts of any network design. Network administrators must be able to reach and monitor all network devices all the time specially in crisis times.
- Network Troubleshooting: problems must be easy to troubleshoot and correct. The network must be fully documented,standardized and follow the best practices as much as possible.
- Network scalability: The network should be able to adapt to growth and business scalability needs without having to make dramatic changes.
These characteristics listed above are some of the characteristics that must be addressed by any good network design. | <urn:uuid:f96b2648-ceaf-45a8-996d-48a18ff6ba58> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.networkers-online.com/blog/2008/08/network-design-evaluation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337625.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005105356-20221005135356-00531.warc.gz | en | 0.946878 | 305 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Have you ever noticed the copper cable plugged into your computer? Or to put it specifically, the crystal connector in your computer? That’s what we called RJ45 connector. What is RJ45 connector? It’s a common component used to connect computers into Ethernet-based local area networks (LAN). But how much do you know about this simple connector? Let’s get together to make sense what it looks like and how to terminate Ethernet cable with it.
RJ45 connector is the most common twisted-pair connector for Ethernet cables and networks. The letter “RJ” represents “registered jack” which is a standardized physical network interface for connecting telecommunications or data equipment. RJ45 connector features eight pins for wires to interface, and eight positions, spaced about 1mm apart, into which individual wires are inserted using special cable crimping tools. This type of connector is so-called 8P8C (Eight Position, Eight Contact).
Several other types of connectors closely resemble RJ45, and someone may easily feel confused about them. For example, the RJ11 connector used with telephone cables is one of such connectors. But this connector only uses six positions rather than eight positions, which make them less popular than RJ45 connectors.
As we all know, when linking RJ45 connector to a cable, there are two wiring standards that define how the RJ45 pinouts to arrange the individual eight wires—the T568A and T568B. With regard to the two standards, there are two different connectivity forms. If both ends of the patch cords are wired on the basis of one standard, it is a straight through connection. If not, it is a crossover connection. Both the standards can be used for straight through cable. Here is an illustration for the color code of RJ45 connectors when they are deployed in different connections.
No matter with the standard T-568A or T-568B, once the color order on one end is defined, so does the other end, which means the color order is same on both ends. Take T568A straight through connection for example. The color order of one modular plug is green/white, green, orange/white, blue, blue/white, orange, brown/white and brown. The color order of another modular plug must be corresponding with it (showing as the following picture).
So does the standard T568B. Look at the following picture.
This connection is different from the straight through one, for the color order is different on both ends. It’s no need to spend time remembering how many color orders there may be in this connection. Because you can get a crossover connection by wiring one end using T-568A standard and the other end using T-568B standard. Just like the following picture shows. Or remembering the color coding by simply switching the green set of wires in place with the orange set of wires. Put it in simple terms, switch the green (G) with the orange (O), and switch the green/white with the orange/white.
If you have experience to install or maintain cables in LANs, you may know how important to terminate Cat5e, Cat6 or Cat6a copper cables with RJ45 connectors. Mastering this skill sometimes can save time as well as money in Ethernet cable installations. Here is a simple tutorial.
Step one. Trim the end of the Ethernet cable with a crimping tool. Strip off about one inch of the jacket, leaving the twisted pairs outside.
Step two. Separate the 4 twisted wire pairs and unwind each pair. Flatten the wires as much as possible to make preparation for proper individual insertion into the connector.
Step three. Make clear on which standard you are based, then carefully place the wires in order according to that standard.
Step four. Hold the RJ45 connector and carefully insert the prepared wires into the connector, pushing them through the connector until the wire ends come out of the connector’s pin side. Make sure the color order is correct. If not, remove the wires from the connector and do it again.
Step five. Carefully cut the wire ends using crimping tool. Make sure the ends are as flush with the connector’s surface as possible to ensure a good plug-in connection.
This post introduces the basics and color code of RJ45 in different connections as well as how to terminate Ethernet cable with it. As Ethernet systems provide flexible and effective ways to transmit voice and data media, RJ45 connectors, as a key part of Ethernet connectivity, are becoming more popular. Therefore, having a good command of knowledge about it is beneficial.
Related Article: Introduction to Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON) | <urn:uuid:8a1e5b81-fdca-483d-a0ee-0ad3ee84b168> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | http://www.fiber-optic-components.com/rj45-connector-used-in-ethernet-connectivity.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00731.warc.gz | en | 0.915172 | 968 | 3.296875 | 3 |
A company’s business data is among its most critical assets, which is the reason why enterprises are heavily investing in data management infrastructures and services, such as databases, data warehouses, data mining services, business intelligence, reporting and more. In recent years, the importance of data assets has been rising due to the emergence of data-driven enterprises. Such enterprises process and use factual data in order to drive their operations and decisions. Likewise, there has also been an emergence of new data management infrastructures, which are associated with various Big Data services and provide enterprises with exceptional opportunities to derive business value out of arbitrarily large volumes of data. In most cases, such Big Data infrastructures and services co-exist with the legacy data management infrastructures such as data warehouses and data mining tools. The latter infrastructures still play a significant role in enterprise data management. Hence, modern businesses must be able to understand the value of both legacy and emerging data management infrastructures in order to make proper choices about their business data architectures and services.
Nowadays, most enterprises deploy some sort of conventional enterprise data management infrastructure, such as:
The combination of data warehouses and data mining tools is, for many enterprises, the preferred way for identifying patterns that drive their decisions and operations. Despite the advent of Big Data, enterprises are still very keen on maintaining data warehouses, as these ensure that data is structured and processed in easy and reliable ways.
Enterprises are increasingly adopting and implementing Big Data as it has the ability to process large and complex data sets, which are almost impossible to be processed by conventional data management infrastructures and their tools. Typical examples of such data includes web logs, sensor data, data from social media and social networking platforms, call detail records, genomics data, large scale e-commerce data, as well as various types of multimedia data such as collection of medical images, movie databases and more.
Big Data are in several cases unstructured or poorly structured, while featuring high velocity and veracity, which makes their collection, processing and management very challenging. Big Data tools such as distributed filesystems (e.g., Apache HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System)) and streaming engine (e.g., Apache Spark and Apache Storm) provide the means for dealing with high volume and high velocity datasets. This is where the conventional tools fail. Enterprises are therefore deploying such tools in order to benefit from Big Data, without abandoning their conventional infrastructure.
The advent of Big Data has also given rise to the concept of a “Data Lake” which is a storage repository that can hold vast amounts of data in raw data format including structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. A Data Lake accommodates data of varying structures, which it is able to resolve at the application delivery level i.e. when the data structuring requirements are known. Some people consider Data Lakes as a re-creation of data warehouses in the Big Data era. While there is truth in this argument, it should be underlined that data lakes are significantly different from warehouses, in terms of the ways they structure and manage data. The main difference is that data warehouses deal with structured data only, while data lakes store raw data and transform it to some structure when it is time to use the data (e.g., as part of an application). Also data lakes are closely affiliated to Big Data technologies as in most cases they leverage tools and techniques from the Hadoop/Big Data ecosystem. Finally, data lakes provide some agility in terms of their processing, as data schemas can flexibly change, while data warehouses adhere to given schemas in order to benefit from well-structured data.
With so many different solutions and infrastructures for managing data, enterprises are challenged to create data management architectures that are responsive and scale in a cost-effective way. Modern enterprise data architectures should combine the merits of warehouses for processing structured data, with Big Data infrastructures’ capabilities for scalable processing of large volumes of data, including data volumes of low business value (e.g., raw social media streams) in a scalable way.
There are several architectural patterns that strive to combine data lakes with data warehouses. Some of these employ data warehouses as the primary means for data analytics, which are complemented with a data lake infrastructure for data of lower business value. In this case, the business value of the collected data is assessed, prior to deciding to move them from the data lake to the warehouse. However, there are also architecture patterns that work the other way around: They deploy a data lake as the central repository of information and selectively move data that are deemed to have the highest business value in a complementary warehouse. No matter the selected pattern, enterprises need to take into account cost/benefit considerations, as each of the present architecture comes with certain costs and requires considerable effort for its deployment. Hence, data lakes and data warehouses are likely to co-exist in a data management architecture: The former will deal with large volumes of raw data and their transformations, while the latter will deal with data mining over well-structured data.
Overall, firms are offered with remarkable data management opportunities to assist them in their effort to improve decision making and to increase the efficiency of their business processes. The selection of a proper data management infrastructure therefore becomes a key to a business’s competitiveness. Aside from the technology factor, the ever important organizational (e.g., organizational obstacles) and management (e.g., data administration and governance) factors should not be underestimated. Hence data management is an area where optimal decisions can make a real difference and yield improved business results.
Quantum Computing for Business – Hype or Opportunity?
Why is Data Fabric gaining traction in Enterprise Data Management?
The Potential of Big Data in the Telecom Infrastructure Industry
Achieving Operational Excellence through Digital Transformation
Unbiased Human Centric AI Systems: The Basics you Need to Know
Significance of Customer Involvement in Agile Methodology
The emerging role of Autonomic Systems for Advanced IT Service Management
How Metaverse could change the business landscape
We're here to help!
No obligation quotes in 48 hours. Teams setup within 2 weeks.
If you are a Service Provider looking to register, please fill out this Information Request and someone will get in touch.
Outsource with Confidence to high quality Service Providers.
If you are a Service Provider looking to register, please fill out
this Information Request and someone will get in
Enter your email id and we'll send a link to reset your password to the address
we have for your account.
The IT Exchange service provider network is exclusive and by-invite. There is
no cost to get on-board;
if you are competent in your areas of focus, then you are welcome. As a part of this exclusive | <urn:uuid:6e21fa2c-60c2-46cc-9185-859ec31b19cd> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itexchangeweb.com/blog/fishing-in-the-big-data-lake/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334802.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926051040-20220926081040-00731.warc.gz | en | 0.935285 | 1,415 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.