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DHCP vs Static IP: Which One Is Better?
Nowadays, most networking devices such as routers or network switches use IP protocol as the standard to communicate over the network. In the IP protocol, each device on a network has a unique identifier that is called IP address. The easiest method of achieving this was configuring a fixed IP address or static IP address. Since there are limitations to static IP, some administrators seek to use dynamic IP instead. DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is a protocol for assigning dynamic IP addresses to devices that are connected to the network. So DHCP vs static IP, what's the difference?
What Is a Static IP Address?
A static IP address is an address that is permanently assigned to your network devices by your ISP, and does not change even if your device reboots. Static IP addresses typically have two versions: IPv4 and IPv6. A static IP address is usually assigned to a server hosting websites and provides email, VPN and FTP services. In static IP addressing, each device on the network has its own address with no overlap and you'll have to configure the static IP addresses manually. When new devices are connected to a network, you would have to select the "manual" configuration option and input the IP address, the subnet mask, the default gateway and the DNS server.
A typical example of using static IP address is web server. From the Window on your computer, go to START -> RUN -> type "cmd" -> OK. Then type "ping www.google.com" on the Command Window, the interface will pop up as you can see below. The four-byte number 220.127.116.11 is the current IP for www.google.com. If it is a static IP, you would be able to connect Google at any time by using this static IP address in the web browser if you want to visit Google.
What Is DHCP?
What is in contrast with the static IP address is the dynamic IP address. Static vs dynamic IP topic is hotly debated among many IT technicians. Dynamic IP address is an address that keeps on changing. To create dynamic IP addresses, the network must have a DHCP server configured and operating. The DHCP server assigns a vacant IP address to all devices connected to the network. DHCP is a way of dynamically and automatically assigning IP addresses to network devices on a physical network. It provides an automated way to distribute and update IP addresses and other configuration information over a network. To know how DHCP works, read this article: DHCP and DNS: What Are They, What’s Their Difference?
DHCP vs Static IP: Which One Is Better?
Proper IP addressing is essential for establishing communications among devices on a network. Then DHCP vs static IP, which one is better? This part will discuss it.
Static IP addresses allow network devices to retain the same IP address all the time, A network administrator must keep track of each statically assigned device to avoid using that IP address again. Since static IP address requires manual configurations, it can create network issues if you use it without a good understanding of TCP/IP.
While DHCP is a protocol for automating the task of assigning IP addresses. DHCP is advantageous for network administrators because it removes the repetitive task of assigning multiple IP addresses to each device on the network. It might only take a minute but when you are configuring hundreds of network devices, it really gets annoying. Wireless access points also utilize DHCP so that administrators would not need to configure their devices by themselves. For wireless access points, PoE network switches, which support dynamic binding by users' definition, are commonly used to allocate IP addresses for each device that is connected together. Besides, what makes DHCP appealing is that it is cheaper than static IP addresses with less maintenance required. You can easily find their advantages and disadvantages from the following table.
|DHCP||DHCP does not need any manual configuration to connect to local devices or gain access to the Web.||Since DHCP is a "hands-off" technology, there is a danger that someone may implant an unauthorized DHCP server, making it possible to invade the network for illegal purposes or result in random access to the network without explicit permission.|
|Static IP||The address does not change over time unless it is changed manually - good for web servers, and email servers.||It's more expensive than a dynamic IP address because ISP often charges an additional fee for static IP addresses. Also, it requires additional security and manual configuration, which adds complexity when large numbers of devices are connected.|
After comparing DHCP vs static IP, it is undoubtedly that DHCP is the more popular option for most users as they are easier and cheaper to deploy. Having a static IP and guessing which IP address is available is really bothersome and time-consuming, especially for those who are not familiar with the process. However, static IP is still in demand and useful if you host a website from home, have a file server in your network, use networked printers, or if you use a remote access program. Because a static IP address never changes so that other devices can always know exactly how to contact a device that utilizes a static IP.
Related Article: IPv4 vs IPv6: What’s the Difference? | <urn:uuid:ae8106ef-1434-4210-a468-dd3f7bc225d6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.fs.com/blog/dhcp-vs-static-ip-differences.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337398.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003035124-20221003065124-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.93063 | 1,084 | 3.1875 | 3 |
NOTE: The image used for the post is from an article on Wired, I used it as I think it cool: https://www.wired.com/2014/11/hacker-lexicon-whats-dark-web/
One of the things that I find interesting is the number of times I get asked about the “Dark Web,” in just normal conversation. Many times, it comes in conversation when you say you work on anything related to security and computers, or just chatting about hacking. I spend time chatting about it and hopefully answer the questions, but if not thought I would post about it. There are many posts out there about this but wanted to create a simple one that hopefully helps explains it.
Firstly, there are three levels to the internet, “Surface Web,” “Deep Web” and “Dark Web.” Each one is different and is in use for specific things. Here is one of the most common images you will find on the internet for the levels of the internet:
There are more levels than three; there are five. These five are: “Clearnet,” “Surface Web,” “Bergie Web,” “Deep Web,” “Darknet,” “Private Web” and “Marianas Web.” Each level serves a very specific purpose, but more importantly once you want to access the “Deep Web” onwards, you need to use a Proxy service, “Darknet” requires TOR like services, “Private Web” you need a Closed Shell System, with “Marianas Web” apparently requiring “Polymetric Falcihgol Derivation” to get in. Now, some if this has always been up for debate as to what is real on the internet and if they are real. So, what does each level contain?
This the normal basic level of the internet, the primary entry point for most of us. It includes websites filled with data which is indexed by search engines. All the standard normal websites you access each day reside here. Interestingly this level does not contain that much information; it is contained deeper inside the internet.
The deep web contains most of the internet data. It is not a secret place and is accessible by knowing the URL to get too. Most of the information here is related to personal information such as medical and financial records. Most of these sites require access control as search engines do not index this information.
The Dark Web contains much of the content you should not be visiting. To access this part of the internet, you will need software such as TOR or I2P. This software connects you to an overlay network. This network masks your IP address behind layers of other IP addresses with no way to trace to you. Most of the websites here relate to Violence, Weapons, Illicit Social, Hacking, Illicit links, Illicit Pornography, Extremism, Illicit Finance, Illicit Drugs as well as Crypto Services.
This place based on the research, may or may not exist. However, based on the most common consensus this is the place where the most secure data is. The most common “Marianas Web” would be the military networks where the most secure data resides. If you are bored one day maybe read some of the conspiracy theories on this, it does make some fun reading. One of those rumors is that we can access the “Marianas Web” with the help of “Polymeric Falcighol Derivation,” which requires Quantum Computers. So, unless you have one you use, this is probably not available to anyone. No-one knows if this exists at all but sounds cool though.
All in all, you need to understand is that the “Dark Web” is not a place you wake up one day and say I am going there. It requires some thought process, understanding that most Internet Providers are looking for people using TOR like services which are the most common entry point. If you do want to access the “Dark Web,” then use one of the many tutorials out there that can guide you on getting set up to access and then where to start. A downside if the “Dark Web” is that it does not use normal websites addresses that we use each day, but they are normally something like this http://yuxv6qujajqvmypv.onion, notice the “.onion” extension, that requires access to the onion network through TOR or I2P. These addresses change frequently making it even harder to access the sites. Think twice before wandering into the unknown space that is known for many things that you may not want to know about. | <urn:uuid:a32bc7aa-ccef-438d-9517-1f218e664234> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://helloitsliam.com/2018/08/31/surface-deep-and-dark-webs-whats-the-difference/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337398.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003035124-20221003065124-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.952857 | 1,015 | 2.671875 | 3 |
In a recent blog post, Felix Krause revealed a method for phishing Apple ID passwords on iOS that would be quite indistinguishable from a real iOS password request. This got us thinking about the ramifications—how else could this tactic be used in the Apple ecosystem, and what kind of damage could it do?
In the case of Krause's iOS phishing scam, by using simple code any app could easily simulate a standard iOS password request, and most users wouldn't think anything was amiss. Looking at Krause's example above, I have to admit that this is something I might fall victim to, although I might wonder why the request was showing up within the context of a third-party app.
However, I don't see this particular phish as a huge risk. iOS apps can only be downloaded through the App Store, and although I would never say that it's impossible to get a phishing app into the App Store, it certainly would not be an easy thing to do. Not only would the hacker have to sneak this code past the review, they'd also have to create a decoy app that would be compelling enough to download—something that is increasingly difficult even for legitimate developers in the crowded iOS App Store. I view this as possible, but unlikely.
Of course, there are many other cases where the App Store screening process wouldn't come into play, and that could be equally convincing, if not more so.
For example, consider macOS instead of iOS. Unlike on iOS, Mac users can download apps from anywhere, and frequently do. That's how Mac users end up infected with things like malware, adware, and unethical junk software. Thus, there's no review process a hacker would have to submit to.
Suppose you're using your Mac, and suddenly the Mail app opens and shows a password request because of a failure with your iCloud account. It might look something like the image below. What would you do?
Would you enter your iCloud account password there? After all, it will reliably cite a correct iCloud account address. If you did enter your password in this case, sorry to tell you, you'd be pwned.
Okay, maybe that's not the most convincing password request if you're a Mac expert and know what these things are supposed to look like. (I can hear the criticisms now.) However, there are a couple important things to keep in mind.
First, this would trick a LOT of people. Sure, maybe not Mac aficionados, but most people are not, and shouldn't have to be, experts in what every single macOS dialog looks like.
Second, this was the result of a four-line AppleScript I threw together in all of five minutes, with three of those lines involved in getting the email address associated with the user's iCloud account. It would be entirely possible to make this far more convincing. Even just using AppleScript, it would be possible to use different techniques, and at least one that I can think of, for which I've seen a proof-of-concept, would be highly convincing.
Worse, it would be easy to mimic a real macOS authentication dialog, pixel-for-pixel, without too much effort in an app compiled in Xcode.
In fact, a similar event happened earlier this year, when Handbrake was hacked to install the Proton malware. The malicious copy of Handbrake ended up requesting the login password in such a way that even experts fell for it, such as a developer for the well-respected Panic, Inc.
We have become accustomed to such password requests as a part of our daily life, so when we see them, we tend to just enter the password without thinking about it. After all, Macs don't get malware, right? Fortunately for Mac users, the actual incidences of this kind of harmful malware have been few, but that works in the hackers' favor, since we've become inured to these requests and don't treat them with the suspicion that they deserve.
So, what can be done about this kind of thing? Unfortunately, there is no one thing that Apple could do to solve this problem. An app will always be able to display a pixel-perfect simulation of any official macOS or iOS password request.
Worse, even a web developer could do the same, by combining screenshots from the target system and a web form. The code could detect the system and display an appropriate "window" for macOS, iOS, Windows, or Android. Slip something like that in as an overlay on top of a hacked legitimate site and you could fool a lot of folks.
Although Apple could direct the user at all times to a known, good location to enter passwords, that's not always reasonable. Consider, for example, the horrible user experience Apple has foisted on Mac users with the new User-Approved Kernel Extension Loading process in macOS High Sierra. Although this is not the same as a password request, it's a good example of how forcing the user to a location for security reasons could go horribly wrong, resulting in a bad user experience that may not actually be significantly more secure.
Instead of seeking fixes for something that can't be fixed, we need to focus on changing our own behaviors. Every password request should always be viewed with suspicion, no matter the source. If Mail pops open and a window appears asking for a password, that doesn't mean it's actually Mail doing the asking.
Treating these password requests with suspicion means, in some cases, canceling and entering the password in a known, good location. For example, if an iCloud password is being requested, you should manually go to the iCloud pane in System Preferences to enter it.
Unfortunately, this is not always possible, as in the case of an installer asking for a password or an app asking for a password to install a helper tool. In the case of Handbrake, it is not normal for Handbrake to ask for a password, so seeing a password request in that context is a red flag. Although I must admit that I might have fallen for the fake Handbrake password request, if I were being more careful, I would check the developer's website or product documentation to see if that is normal for Handbrake.
If the request comes up while you're using your web browser, try moving the current web browser window around on the screen. If the "window" moves along with it, it's not actually a window. It's an element overlaid on top of the web page meant to look like a window, and that will mean it's a fake.
It would also be possible to test these password requests by knowingly entering an incorrect password. Phishing malware or websites can't know what your password is until you enter it, so they can't know you entered the wrong password intentionally, and will simply accept what you typed. If, on the other hand, the bad password is rejected, it's likely that the password request is legitimate.
With a little caution and attention paid to the context of password requests, you can avoid most, or even all, phishing attempts. The important thing is to be consistent, and not to get sloppy because you're in a rush. | <urn:uuid:fe82f87c-31cc-4b74-b7ec-c956ec9bb126> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2017/10/a-new-kind-of-apple-phishing-scam | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337668.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005203530-20221005233530-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.961255 | 1,478 | 2.5625 | 3 |
In the past year, several high-profile leaders have discussed the threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI), including entrepreneur Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking. While some have mocked the warnings about dangers that seem like Skynet from the Terminator films, recently more thought has gone into the impact of intelligent automation on the workforce.
In cybersecurity, skilled labor shortages have created a need for scaling up the workforce in the face of nonstop threats and attacks. That coupled with the copious amounts of readily available machine-readable data have led to decades of machine learning research. There's significant interest in deploying machine learning into production.
I'd argue that some of the fear is baseless. The hype is quite far-fetched, because generalized AI exists only in fiction or as a Mechanical Turk type of product. We won't have Terminators building themselves to eliminate humanity anytime soon.
But let's explore a plausible future of a cybersecurity world filled with "intelligent automation," which I would describe as the complement of systems (computers, data models, and algorithms) that work under human direction to automate parts of the workflow. In doing so, we see the concept may be drearier than we had imagined.
Foundations for Automation
In cyber defense, automation has been a long time coming. It includes the MITRE CVE effort, which enabled machine-to-machine observation linkages (vulnerability scans, IDS hits) and allowed products utilizing the OASIS OpenC2 and other standards to interoperate nearly seamlessly. Tools including McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator and those offered by companies such as Phantom Cyber achieve automation typically through specific integrations.
In machine learning, the rise of big data and faster processing has opened new doors. Historically in cybersecurity, research using machine learning focused on getting big results out of as little data as possible. Countless malware classification papers, for example, and IDS systems focused on as few bytes as possible to achieve some high true positive score, but they typically fell flat on their faces in the real world. The rise of big data in cybersecurity could enable a more holistic approach and more accurate results in the real world. At least, I hope so.
What the Future Might Hold
With standards, interoperability, machine learning, and expert judgment and experience now converging, a significant amount of cyber-defense operations is ripe for automation. This includes automation of human knowledge and pattern recognition, which is basically expert judgment built over years of experience. Given the workforce gaps we face, I expect this to get addressed by the market in the coming decade.
Let's assume that all sorts of magic — technological and organizational — happens, that machine learning pans out, and cyber-defense automation gains significant traction. Algorithms will consume a wide variety of data from operational security tools, network and systems performance technologies, and even outside events. During an intrusion, the cyber-defense team will work together via a unified platform to isolate adversaries and prevent future intrusions. Networks will be blocked, software will be patched, and access controls will change in an instant. They will be able to rely partly on algorithms and agents (some personalized) to review statuses and delegate tasks to cyber-defense agents.
What is the role of people in that automated utopia? With machine learning algorithms doing the bulk of the detection work, and even response work, where do the various team members fit in?
I can imagine a scenario where lower tiers of security ops teams do basic alert and event classification work that ultimately trains and updates machine learning models. This layer of the staff, greatly reduced in number but significantly more effective (no fatigue, for example), will exist simply to keep detection algorithms up to date. One layer above would be used to augment those algorithms when they fail to develop firm enough judgments, with team members reviewing evidence to make final decisions.
The upper-escalation tiers, which typically are researchers or a "master layer," will hunt for adversaries, gather evidence, and help create new detection models. This will enable them to scale operations in time and space across their organizations and ultimately arm the next tier with "ninja"-level skills, even if they lack the years of experience typically needed to spot threats.
In some environments, people will remain in the loop to approve and deny actions that machines propose and then complete. These individuals will exist to avert catastrophes (remember War Games?), or even to accept blame, if you're feeling particularly sanguine. But, let's face it, this will be pretty dull work. People probably will be relegated to inspecting the results of automated responses and dealing with legacy systems that can't integrate with the automation framework. Overtime might go down, but workers will be slaves to a machine, which would be demoralizing.
This vision is somewhat dystopian. A career path that demands creativity and insight and rewards it with a great paycheck is likely to see a drop in demand and an entry-level workforce relegated to working while chained to algorithms.
Preparing for an Automated Tomorrow
To avoid that version of the future, companies need to work with their cyber-defense teams. Regardless of automation and machine-assisted decision-making, you still rely on a team of people to execute plans. To keep a satisfied team, it pays to invest in a vision and reality wherein the team uses algorithms to amplify their abilities, not replace them. Machines and algorithms are fallible, just as people are, but humans must do more than just act as backstops for misbehaving technology; their creativity and intuition, which must be developed and nurtured, needs to drive the human-algorithm partnership. | <urn:uuid:3166dc71-01da-401d-8180-544765024fc4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.darkreading.com/careers-and-people/how-to-keep-blue-teams-happy-in-an-automated-security-world | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925070216-20220925100216-00345.warc.gz | en | 0.946796 | 1,151 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Tired of living with painful arthritic knees, 54-year-old Deborah Brown’s interest was piqued when she saw a recruitment flyer for a clinical trial on an innovative pain treatment at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
“My knees feel like bone on bone,” said Brown, who works at a blood donation center. “It’s a shooting pain and it has been getting worse.”
That joint pain that Brown and other osteoarthritis patients experience has been traced to a part of the brain called the primary motor cortex.
Hyochol “Brian” Ahn, PhD, ANP-BC, the study’s principal investigator and an associate professor with Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth, believes he can stop knee pain by administering tiny electrical charges to this area in the brain.
“This study has the potential to significantly improve the self-management of pain, decrease public health expenditures, and improve the quality of life for older adults,” said Ahn, the Theodore J. and Mary E. Trumble Professor in Aging Research at Cizik School of Nursing.
Ahn said the brain is an electrochemical organ that processes pain and that his team is trying to desensitize the areas tied to knee pain.
Study participants wear a cap powered with three AAA batteries that relays a weak current between a positive and negative electrode. There are 15, 20-minute sessions over a three-week period.
To see if the brain stimulation works, participants are asked to rate their pain on a scale of 1 to 100 before and after the treatment to complete a questionnaire.
Researchers will also review medical images of the brains of participants for possible changes.
Knee pain sufferer Deborah Brown is helping UTHealth’s Hyochol “Brian” Ahn, PhD, ANP-BC, and his colleague Lindsey Park evaluate an innovative pain relief treatment. Image is credited to Maricruz Kwon/UTHealth.
To establish the validity of the experiment, Ahn is creating a control group comprised of volunteers who do not receive enough brain stimulation to make a difference. “They’re our baseline and their scores will be compared to the people receiving full treatment,” Ahn said.
“Knee osteoarthritis pain is one of the most common pain conditions among people more than 45 years of age, and pharmacological interventions do not adequately address this common condition,” Ahn said.
The clinical trial, Self-Administered Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Pain in Older Adults With Knee Osteoarthritis: A Phase II Randomized Sham-Controlled Trial, runs through July 31, 2022, and is designed to test the efficacy of the device.
The study is funded by National Institutes of Health (R15NR018050) and Ahn hopes to recruit 120 volunteers.
To be eligible, volunteers must be 50 to 85 years of age, have no serious medical conditions (e.g., brain tumor, seizure, or stroke) and be able to attend four sessions in the Texas Medical Center. For more information, call 713-500-2179.
Said Brown, “I feel a little tingling when I wear the cap. I hope it works. I’m tired of the pain pills.”
The management of chronic pain syndromes is currently a challenging task, since only 40-60% of patients experience a favorable outcome from pharmacological treatments1. Several studies have shown that the majority of currently available treatments including antidepressants, opioids and topical anesthetics have limited long-term effectiveness and are often associated with moderate, or in some cases, severe adverse effects2.
One of the main reasons for the lack of efficacy is that current pharmacological approaches have limited or no effect on the mechanisms underlying chronic pain3–5. For instance, central sensitization is one of the main neural mechanisms associated with chronic pain. Opioid analgesics may increase, rather than decrease, central sensitization6.
Over the years, alternative therapies such as acupuncture, mirror therapy and thermotherapy, as well as different procedures (i.e. Botox injections) have been performed in an attempt to decrease pain levels. However, behavioral therapies have limited effects on brain plasticity and treatment effectiveness in chronic pain patients. In this context, recent alternative approaches such as neuromodulation techniques have been used not only to alleviate pain but also to revert maladaptive plasticity and may also be used to enhance the effects of behavioral therapies6.
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has significantly advanced in the past 15 years as a treatment tool7–9. TDCS has a theoretical advantage when compared with traditional chronic pain treatments since it directly affects central neural targets, thus having a potential stronger effect on central sensitization10. On the other hand, its effects may take longer to appear (i.e., only after 5-10 sessions, may subjects notice pain decrease)11.
The accepted neural mechanism of tDCS is the modulation of spontaneous neuronal firing: decrease or increase according to the polarity of stimulation that results in a change in neural excitability. Cathodal stimulation generally results in reduced excitability (“inhibition”) and anodal stimulation generally results in increased excitability of neurons in the area underneath the tDCS scalp electrodes12.
The final effect of tDCS depends on parameters of stimulation and also ongoing neural activity12. Although all the mechanisms and neural circuits involved with tDCS are not completely known, tDCS of the motor cortex contralateral to the site of pain has been suggested to activate inhibitory systems, thus reducing overactivation of thalamic nuclei2,13.
Several preliminary studies have demonstrated initial efficacy of tDCS for pain control7,8,14. The effects of tDCS on pain control are not limited to cortical structures only as its effects can be seen in the thalamus and also on descending pain control mechanisms15–17.
Due to its relatively low cost, ease of use and safety profile, tDCS may be a suitable alternative treatment for pain in different disorders18. However, as the field moves towards larger clinical trials, new questions arise regarding its effectiveness, safety, methodology and specifically optimal approaches. In this review, we will discuss the current knowledge of tDCS and possible mechanism to enhance its effects for the treatment of chronic pain.
tDCS CURRENT EVIDENCE
The efficacy of tDCS treating chronic pain, including neuropathic pain, has been investigated through multiple clinical trials in the past years8,9,11,19–28. In this manuscript, we have reviewed the meta-analyses published in the past 5 years through a PubMed (table 1) database search that estimated the effect sizes of tDCS treatment for pain. Table 1 presents summarized characteristics of the six included meta-analyses in chronic pain conditions, including the subgroups analysis of each one. We excluded two meta-analyses due to methodological discrepancies related to mean effect size calculation29,30. Only the comparison between active and sham groups was included in this analysis.
Meta-analysis of tDCS in chronic pain.
|Author/Date||Clinical Condition||Sample Size||Total Sample Size||Clinical Condition||Group 1||Group 2||Effect Size||P Value|
|Zhu et al.; 201733||Fibromyalgia||6 studies||168||pain intensity||Anodal tDCS over M1||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain was −0.59 (95% CI: −0.90 to −0.27)**||p = 0.0002|
|2 studies*||48||pain intensity||Cathodal tDCS over M1||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain was −0.17 (95% CI: −0.74 to 0.40)**||p > 0.05|
|2 studies*||48||pain intensity||Anodal tDCS over DLPFC||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain was −0.32 (95% CI: −0.89 to 0.26)**||p = 0.28.|
|Shirahige et al.;201634||Migraine||6 studies||130||pain intensity||active NIBS (TMS and tDCS; M1 and DLPFC)||sham NIBS||pooled SMD for pain was −0.61 (95% CI: −1.35 to 0.13)**||p = 0.11|
|3 studies||78||pain intensity||Cathodal tDCS over visual cortex and anodal tDCS over M1||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain was −0.91; (95% CI: −1.79 to −0.03)**||p = 0.04|
|Hou et al.; 201632||Fibromyalgia||16 studies||572||pain intensity||active NIBS (TMS and tDCS; M1 and DLPFC)||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain 0.66 (95% CI: 0.44 to 0.88)||p > 0.001|
|5 studies*||179||pain intensity||tDCS over M1 and DLPFC||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain 0.56 (95% CI: 0.26 to 0.87)||p > 0.001|
|Mehta et al.; 201521||SCI pain||5 studies||83||pain intensity||anodal tDCS over M1||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain 0.51 (95% CI: 0.11 to 0.90)||p=0.012|
|Boldt et al.;201431||SCI pain||2 studies||57||pain intensity||anodal tDCS over M1 area||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain −1.90 (95% CI: −3.48 to −0.33)||p = 0.018|
|O’Connell et al.;201428||Chronic Pain||10 studies||183||pain intensity||anodal tDCS over M1||sham tDCS||pooled SMD for pain −0.18, (95% CI −0.46 to 0.09)||p = 0.19|
tDCS: transcranial direct current stimulation; NIBS: non-invasive brain stimulation; TMS: transcranial magnetic stimulation; SMD: standardized mean difference; M1: primary motor area; DLPFC: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; SO: supraorbital area; VMC: visual motor cortex; SCI: spinal cord injury; ABM: abdutor digiti minimi.*Subgroups analysis with different sample sizes in the same study (different tDCS montages).**The negative results favor active tDCS compared to sham for relieving pain.
p= p value; bold p values represents significant ones.
These meta-analyses included from 231 to 16 clinical trials32 with moderate sample sizes (up to 572 subjects included in the largest meta-analysis); however, for the majority of studies, the sample sizes were relatively small including around 50 subjects31,33.
Five meta-analyses presented statistically significant results, with the effect size ranging from 0.51 to 1.924,31–34. From these, only one study evaluated the effects of tDCS in overall chronic pain, showing a small effect size and no significant diference35.
Most of the studies estimated the effects of tDCS in specific chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia, migraine, low back pain and spinal cord injury pain. The majority of these meta-analyses have positive results24,31–34.
Another point to be considered is the large variability between the tDCS protocols, such as differences in electrode placement (M1 or DLPFC) and polarity of the stimulation (anodal or cathodal) that can contribute to the significant heterogeneity between the tDCS trials. Most of the tDCS studies used anodal stimulation over the primary motor cortex (M1 area:C3/C4 – International 10-20 system for the electroencephalography (EEG) electrode) of the hemisphere contralateral to the location of pain (Table 1).
Other montages have been tested including anodal/cathodal over the left dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex (DLPFC) for fibromyalgia and migraine33,34; and primary visual cortex (V1) for migraine36–38. In most of the studies, the cathode was placed over the contralateral supraorbital region.
The majority of clinical trials included in the meta-analyses used protocols with five and 10 consecutive 20-min tDCS sessions (mostly with an intensity of 2mA with an electrode size of 35 cm2). The analgesic after-effect has been demonstrated to be cumulative and last for 2-6 weeks8,19,39,40. Moreover, in the last 2 years, there was a clear trend towards increasing session duration and number of sessions (15 to 20) with a positive impact in pain improvement after the end of the treatment and in the follow up sessions11,23.
Even though positive results of tDCS on chronic pain have been shown in several studies, to date, clinical recommendation has only been given for two pain conditions: fibromyalgia [level B of evidence (probable efficacy)] and lower limb pain due to spinal cord injury [level C of evidence (possible efficacy)]23.
Therefore, the need for more clinical trials evaluating the effects of tDCS in chronic pain is evident. A better understanding of tDCS mechanism and the standardization of the main parameters are critical for achieving clinical meaningful effects on reducing pain levels. Besides that, so far most of the tDCS clinical trials are phase II studies which have typically small sample sizes and show small to moderate effects on pain levels. There is still a need for phase III pivotal clinical trials evaluating tDCS effects in a larger sample size; however, these studies should take into consideration all the parameters and different population aspects discussed here.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Canada and other international agencies consider tDCS as a non-significant-risk therapy, meaning it is a technique without reasonable expectation of any Serious Adverse Effect9,18.
A recent review updated the evidence on the safety of tDCS based on the published serious adverse effects seen in human trials and brain damage seen in animal tests. There was no record of serious adverse effects related to repetitive tDCS across more than 32,000 sessions over 1000 subjects using a conventional tDCS protocol: 40 min, 4 milliamperes, 7.2 Coulombs.
In animal models, the finding of brain injury by direct current stimulation occurred at intensities over an order of magnitude above that used in conventional tDCS trials18. In addition, there have been hundreds of more subjects treated with tDCS that were not analyzed due to unpublished pilot research41.
Overall, tDCS is a safe technique with adequate tolerability and acceptability. Safety has been tested in several research centers and in different protocols42–45 which stated that the adverse effects experienced by subjects were mild and slowly disappeared after the tDCS session ended.
The latest systematic review published to date reinforced that the most common adverse effects are: mild tingling, burning sensation, itching, transient headaches and skin redness46. Recently, authors investigated whether adverse effects become more prevalent and dangerous with increased exposure to tDCS and a larger number of treated subjects.
For this analysis, 158 studies (total 4130 participants) were reviewed, taking into consideration tDCS exposure (cumulative charge), revealing that there was no evidence in regards of tDCS as a trigger of maladaptive plasticity or a negative influence for cognitive function18,47–50. Moreover, higher cumulative currents were not related to serious adverse effects; however, both erythema and paresthesia were more likely to occur in active conditions as compared to sham46.
These findings reinforce the notion that tDCS is overall safe and well tolerable in healthy subjects and patients with different conditions18,47–50. In the specific case of chronic pain, several sessions of tDCS have proven to be safe in fibromyalgia, spinal cord injury, low back pain and phantom limb pain (PLP)7,35,43,51,52.
Considering other diagnoses, this technique had no severe harm in epileptic subjects53,54, or in stroke patients regardless of those with large vessel occlusion55. Only transient adverse effects, such mild headache, have been reported. Nevertheless, additional monitoring is required when including these at-risk populations55.
Pre-existing implants such as metal in the head or neck (e.g., plates or pins) as well as any electronic medical devices in the head or neck (e.g., cochlear implants, vagus nerve stimulator) remain as exclusion criteria for most of clinical trials using tDCS. However, theory based on modeling and limited clinical experience does not show an increase in serious adverse effects in participants with pre-existing implants18.
Regarding special populations such as children, tDCS treatment for several conditions including: cerebral palsy, encephalitis, and epilepsy have been investigated with no report of serious adverse effects18. Nevertheless, there is relatively limited tDCS experience across pediatric populations compared to adults, and extra caution is required. On the other hand, in elderly populations, tDCS proved to be safe and there were no reports of severe adverse events in over 40 studies with more than 600 older adults with a variety of diagnoses18.
Notwithstanding, the safety of tDCS has been demonstrated primarily for short-term use. So far, to our knowledge, in chronic pain, Castillo-Saavedra et al. tested the longest protocol regimen with 30 consecutive sessions but with a small sample size11. This study also showed no evidence of moderate nor severe adverse effects. Further data collection is required to understand the effects of continued tDCS over longer periods56.
So far, the chronic use of tDCS did not lead to any serious adverse event and some examples to the literature can confirm it: a) a patient with schizophrenia that received two 30 minutes sessions daily over a 3-year period57; b) depressive patients that received multiple courses of tDCS (>100 sessions in total)58 and c) the longest acute treatment trial to date that delivered about six weeks of tDCS, with up to 30 sessions.59,60.
In summary, the increasing amount of literature on tDCS reinforces its safety and the unlikelihood of it causing serious adverse effects. However, it is important to keep investigating and collecting data on this matter in order to better understand tDCS effects over long term brain plasticity and the manipulation of physical properties of neural tissue.
This manuscript reviewed the main aspects of tDCS in chronic pain. TDCS has become a potential candidate for the treatment of chronic pain; however, there is a lack of confirmatory pivotal clinical trials and most pilot-feasibility trials show a small to moderate effect size reducing pain. Besides that, the results of these trials are heterogeneous due to large variability within protocols and parameters as well as between chronic pain subjects. Further work needs to be done to develop optimized protocols to increase its effects sizes. Recent literature describes the advantages of combining tDCS with behavioral therapies such as exercise and mirror therapy. This combination strategy offers a unique perspective combining a top-down strategy (tDCS) with a bottom up intervention (for instance, mirror therapy). The initial clinical trials testing combined interventions as compared to single interventions show positive results. Besides that, the clinical effects of tDCS in chronic pain varies significantly depending on the specific parameters of stimulation, including polarity, size and position of electrodes and number of sessions. In addition, specific population characteristics, such as presence or absence of neurophysiological markers can be a good strategy to enhance tDCS effects and identify better responders. Therefore, choosing optimum doses, patients and the best combination therapies is required to reach clinically significant results, especially in chronic pain. To date, it is still not possible to conclude whether tDCS is associated with a meaningful clinical effect for the treatment of chronic pain. Hence, further studies should explore these mechanisms and better define the optimal protocols to enhance tDCS’ effects.
Press Office – UT Houston | <urn:uuid:00bae0a8-c1eb-4aa9-ad50-b7570a10b36b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://debuglies.com/2019/12/31/a-portable-transcranial-direct-current-stimulation-headset-may-provide-relief-for-those-with-joint-pain/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927225413-20220928015413-00345.warc.gz | en | 0.919824 | 4,313 | 2.75 | 3 |
In every industry, the risk of cyber attack is growing.
In 2015, a team of researchers forecasted that the maximum number of records that could be exposed in breaches – 200 million – would increase by 50% from then to 2020. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of records exposed in 2018 was nearly 447 million – well over 50%. By 2021, damages from cybersecurity breaches will cost organizations $6 trillion a year. In 2017, breaches cost global companies an average of $3.6 million, according to the Ponemon Institute.
It’s clear that this threat is sufficiently large to rank as one of an organization’s most prominent risks. To this end, corporations have entire cybersecurity risk programs in place to attempt to identify and mitigate as much risk as possible.
The foundation of accurate cybersecurity risk analysis begins with knowing what is out there. If you can’t identify the threats, you can’t assess their probabilities – and if you can’t assess their probabilities, your organization may be exposed by a critical vulnerability that won’t make itself known until it’s too late.
Cybersecurity threats may vary in specific from entity to entity, but in general, there are several common dangers that may be flying under the radar – and may be some you haven’t seen coming until now.
A Company’s Frontline Defense Isn’t Keeping Up the Pace
Technology is advancing at a more rapid rate than at any other point in human history: concepts such as cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and Internet of Things (IoT) provide unprecedented advantages, but also introduce distinct vulnerabilities.
This rapid pace requires that cybersecurity technicians stay up to speed on the latest threats and mitigation techniques, but this often doesn’t occur. In a recent survey of IT professionals conducted by (ISC)^2, 43% indicated that their organization fails to provide adequate ongoing security training.
Unfortunately, leadership in companies large and small have traditionally been reluctant to invest in security training. The primary reason is mainly psychological; decision-makers tend to view IT investment in general as an expense that should be limited as much as possible, rather than as a hedge against the greater cost of failure.
Part of the reason why this phenomenon exists is due to how budgets are structured. IT investment adds to operational cost. Decision-makers – especially those in the MBA generation – are trained to reduce operational costs as much as possible in the name of greater efficiency and higher short-term profit margins. This mindset can cause executives to not look at IT investments as what they are: the price of mitigating greater costs.
Increases in IT security budgets also aren’t pegged to the increase of a company’s exposure, which isn’t static but fluctuates (and, in today’s world of increasingly-sophisticated threats, often increases).
The truth is, of course, that investing in cybersecurity may not make a company more money – a myopic view – it can keep a company from losing more money.
Another threat closely related to the above is how decision-makers tend to view probabilities. Research shows that decision-makers often overlook the potential cost of a negative event – like a data breach – in favor of its relatively-low probability (i.e. “It hasn’t happened before, or it probably won’t happen, so we don’t have to worry as much about it.”). These are called tail risks, risks that have disproportionate costs to their probabilities. In other words, they may not happen as frequently, but when they do, the consequences are often catastrophic.
There’s also a significant shortfall in cybersecurity professionals that is inducing more vulnerability into organizations that already are stressed to their maximum capacity. Across the globe, there are 2.93 million fewer workers than are needed. In North America, that number, in 2018, was just under 500,000.
Nearly a quarter of respondents in the aforementioned (ISC)^2 survey said they had a “significant shortage” in cybersecurity staff. Only 3% said they had “too many” workers. Overall, 63% of companies reported having fewer workers than they needed. And 59% said they were at “extreme or moderate risk” due to their shortage. (Yet, 43% said they were either going to not hire any new workers or even decrease the number of security personnel on their rosters.)
A combination of less training, inadequate budgets, and fewer workers all contribute to a major threat to security that many organizations fail to appreciate.
Threats from Beyond Borders Are Difficult to Assess – and Are Increasing
Many cybersecurity professionals correctly identify autonomous individuals and entities as a key threat – the stereotypical hacker or a team within a criminal organization. However, one significant and overlooked vector is the threat posed by other nations and foreign non-state actors.
China, Russia, and Iran are at the forefront of countries that leverage hacking in a state-endorsed effort to gain access to proprietary technology and data. In 2017, China implemented a law requiring any firm operating in China to store their data on servers physically located within the country, creating a significant risk of the information being accessed inappropriately. China also takes advantage of academic partnerships that American universities enjoy with numerous companies to access confidential data, tainting what should be the purest area of technological sharing and innovation.
In recent years, Russia has noticeably increased its demand to review the source code for any foreign technology being sold or used within its borders. Finally, Iran contains numerous dedicated hacking groups with defined targets, such as the aerospace industry, energy companies, and defense firms.
More disturbing than the source of these attacks are the pathways they use to acquire this data – including one surprising method. A Romanian source recently revealed to Business Insider that when large companies sell outdated (but still functional) servers, the information isn’t always completely wiped. The source in question explained that he’d been able to procure an almost complete database from a Dutch public health insurance system; all of the codes, software, and procedures for traffic lights and railway signaling for several European cities; and an up-to-date employee directory (including access codes and passwords) for a major European aerospace manufacturer from salvaged equipment.
A common technique used by foreign actors in general, whether private or state-sponsored, is to use legitimate front companies to purchase or partner with other businesses and exploit the access afforded by these relationships. Software supply chain attacks have significantly increased in recent years, with seven significant events occurring in 2017, compared to only four between 2014 and 2016. FedEx and Maersk suffered approximately $600 million in losses from a single such attack.
The threat from across borders can be particularly difficult to assess due to distance, language barriers, a lack of knowledge about the local environment, and other factors. It is, nonetheless, something that has to be taken into consideration by a cybersecurity program – and yet often isn’t.
The Biggest Under-the-Radar Risk Is How You Assess Risks
While identifying risks is the foundation of cybersecurity, appropriately analyzing them is arguably more important. Many commonly used methods of risk analysis can actually obscure and increase risk rather than expose and mitigate it. In other words, many organizations are vulnerable to the biggest under-the-radar threat of them all: a broken risk management system.
Qualitative and pseudo-quantitative methods often create what Doug Hubbard calls the “analysis placebo effect,”(add footnote) where tactics are perceived to be improvements but offer no tangible benefits. This can increase vulnerabilities by instilling a false sense of confidence, and psychologists have shown that this can occur even when the tactics themselves increase estimate errors. Two months before a massive cyber attack rocked Atlanta in 2018, a risk assessment revealed various vulnerabilities, but the fix actions to address these fell short of actually resolving the city’s exposure—although officials were confident they had adequately addressed the risk.
Techniques such as heat maps, risk matrices, and soft scoring often fail to inform an organization regarding which risks they should address and how they should do so. Experts indicate that “risk matrices should not be used for decisions of any consequence,<fn>Thomas, Philip & Bratvold, Reidar & Bickel, J. (2013). The Risk of Using Risk Matrices. SPE Economics & Management. 6. 10.2118/166269-MS.</fn>” and they can be even “worse than useless.<fn>Anthony (Tony) Cox, L. (2008), What’s Wrong with Risk Matrices?. Risk Analysis, 28: 497-512. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01030.x</fn>” Studies have repeatedly shown, in numerous venues, that collecting too much data, collaborating beyond a certain point, and relying on structured, qualitative decision analyses consistently produce worse results than if these actions had been avoided.
It’s easy to assume that many aspects of cybersecurity are inestimable, but we believe that anything can be measured. If it can be measured, it can be assessed and addressed appropriately. A quantitative model that circumvents overconfidence commonly seen with qualitative measures, uses properly-calibrated expert assessments, knows what information is most valuable and what isn’t, and is built on a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary framework can provide actionable data to guide appropriate decisions.
Bottom line: not all cybersecurity threats are readily apparent, and the most dangerous ones can easily be ones you underestimate, or don’t see coming at all. Knowing which factors to measure and how to quantify them can help you identify the most pressing vulnerabilities, which is the cornerstone of effective cybersecurity practices
For more information on how to create a more effective cybersecurity system based on quantitative methods, check out our How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk webinar. | <urn:uuid:14a987bd-8153-4fdc-9a3e-74efb717ed11> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://hubbardresearch.com/top-cybersecurity-threats-you-may-not-see-coming/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00345.warc.gz | en | 0.955433 | 2,059 | 2.796875 | 3 |
In 1972, we marveled at the beauty of our planet in a photo taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on its way to the moon. Dubbed the “Blue Marble,” the iconic image depicted a blue-and-white globe floating in the blackness of space. On Thursday, we were treated to a different view of Island Earth, one with the undeniable stamp of humanity on it.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) unveiled what’s being called the “Black Marble” — high-resolution photos taken of the dark side of the earth. That planet differs from the one captured by the camera of the astronauts because it shows how the human race transforms the earth by illuminating it at night.
The NASA-NOAA photo was also more difficult to create than the one snapped by the astronauts. The photo and an accompanying animation are composites from data gathered by a satellite operated by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership over nine days in April and 13 days in October.
The photos are available for viewing and download at NASA’s Earth at Night 2012 page.
To get a clear shot of every parcel of land on the planet’s surface, the satellite had to circle the earth 312 times and collect 2.5TB of data.
Clouds Get In The Way
Composite photography is used to create a cloud-free view of the Earth, explained Chris Elvidge, a physical scientist at the NOAA who has been studying day-night band data for more than 20 years.
“There are always clouds in any image that you collect over the earth. There are very few areas that are cloud-free,” he told TechNewsWorld. “We have a cloud detection algorithm, and we combined that with low-light imaging so over time we can accumulate enough cloud-free images to make a seamless mosaic that is a cloud-free view of the Earth at night,” he observed.
Elvidge’s group has been working on producing night photos of the Earth since 1994, but the tools used to create this latest batch of night images have allowed the scientists to hugely improve on past efforts with better spatial resolution and dynamic range.
The new instrumentation is so sensitive that it will detect terrain features on nights where there is no moonlight present, Elvidge explained. Because the new tools are an order of magnitude stronger than the old ones, they’re detecting terrain illuminated by “sky glow.”
Sky glow is created by a chemical reaction in the upper atmosphere that’s faintly visible at night. “Sky glow is much, much dimmer than moonlight,” Elvidge said. “How to filter out features lit by sky glow will be one of our biggest challenges as we go forward to improve our products.”
The military has been taking photos of the Earth at night for some time now, but this is the first time this quality of data has been available to civilians, according to Steve Miller, a senior research scientist and deputy director at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University.
Nighttime photos offer a wealth of information unavailable in photos taken during daylight hours.
“What we’re seeing here is the human footprint on the nighttime side,” he told TechNewsWorld. “We’re seeing centers of population. We’re seeing how these areas correlate to economic activity, fossil fuel emissions, light pollution and emerging demographics.”
In daylilght, “there are only a few things in terms of man-made items that you can bring out,” he said. “We can see quite a bit more in terms of human activity at night.”
Research Avenues Opened
When NASA releases the data behind the Black Marble photos, it will be a boon for researchers, according to Erle C. Ellis, associate professor for geography and environmental systems at the 00000University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
“It’s a breakthrough for us,” he told TechNewsWorld. “The nighttime products we have are pretty poor quality compared to this new one. There’s no real way to observe human activity from space. You can only see secondary effects. For example, if a forest disappears, you don’t know if someone cut it down or it burned down.”
Because the data behind these photos is of a higher quality than has been available in the past, it will be easier to unravel the sources of light in the photos, he added. That will create a mine of riches for researchers.
“You can bet they’ll be a lot of research projects built on this,” he said. | <urn:uuid:7c268034-3b05-4306-adec-7c34c77573b0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/nasa-shares-earths-nighttime-glamour-shots-76788.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337404.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003070342-20221003100342-00345.warc.gz | en | 0.939034 | 1,003 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Read time: 8 minutes
A Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) helps users to exchange data securely and provides data confidentiality, data integrity and end user authentication. PKI uses public-private keypair received from a trusted Certificate Authority. The certificate authority issues public key certificates that can be used to encrypt data or for digital signatures. A public key certificate is used to associate an identity with a public key. The entity that creates this association is known as the issuer of the certificate and the identity to whom the certificate has been issued is known as the subject of the certificate.When a user visits a secure website, the website sends an SSL/TLS certificate to the user’s browser. The user’s browser validates if the issuer of this certificate exists in its list of trusted Root Certificate Authorities. If the browser cannot find a match, it checks if any of the trusted Root Certificate Authority has signed the issuing CA certificate. The browser continues to validate the issuer of the certificate until it finds a trusted Root certificate, or it reaches the end of the trust chain. This chain of trust helps to prove that the certificate comes from a trusted source and the website the user is visiting is a secure website.
A certificate chain is a chain of digital certificates, starting with an end entity certificate, one or more intermediate certificates and a root certificate.
Basic Entities in the chain of trust
There are three basic entities in the certificate chain of trust: Root CA Certificate, Intermediate CA Certificate, and end entity certificate.
- Root CA Certificate:The Root CA certificate is a self-signed X.509 certificate. This certificate acts as a trust anchor, used by all the relying parties as the starting point for path validation. The Root CA private key is used to sign the Intermediate CA certificates. If this certificate and its private key is compromised, then the entire certificate chain breaks down and all the certificates signed by this private key will be affected. Hence the Root CA private key must be securely generated and protected at all times. To protect Root CA certificates, intermediate CAs are placed between Root CA and end entities and Root CA never issues certificates to end entities directly. The operating systems, web browsers and custom applications come pre-installed with more than 100 trusted root CA certificates.
- Intermediate CA Certificates:The intermediate CA certificate sits between the Root CA certificate and the end entity certificate. There can be one or more intermediate CA certificates in the chain of trust. The intermediate CA certificate signs the end entity certificates. This provides an additional layer of security to the Root CA as it can be securely kept offline most of the times.
- End Entity Certificates:The end entity certificate is the server certificate that is issued to the website domain. When this server certificate is installed on the web server, the URL is changed to HTTPS. This indicates that the website is secure and uses encrypted connection. To receive a digital certificate, an end entity sends a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to the Issuing CA (Intermediate CA). The CSR contains details about the end entity. The Issuing CA verifies that the information provided is correct and issues the certificate to the end entity.
Types of Trust Models
Hierarchical Trust Model
In the PKI hierarchical trust model, there is an offline Root CA and multiple online Issuing CAs. The multiple Issuing CAs are for high availability and load balancing. This is the most common chain validation process, and it moves in reverse. In this case the validation starts by checking the end entity certificate information against the intermediate certificate that issued the certificate and then checks the intermediate certificate information against the root certificate that issues this certificate.
Web of Trust Model
The web of trust model is an alternative to the hierarchical trust model. It is a decentralized trust model where users manage the trust at the individual key level. There is no certificate authority or a trusted root. Decentralized control of each key pair is the main difference from the hierarchical trust model. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) uses this trust model.
Certificate Path Validation
Path validation is the process of verifying the integrity of the certificate chain, from the end entity to the Root CA. There are some certificate fields and extensions that are used in path validation. These fields are used to define the identity of the certificate and the links between certificates.
- Issuer Distinguished NameThe name of the issuer that signed the certificate.
- Subject Distinguished NameThe identity of the certificate holder.
- Public KeyThe public key of the asymmetric keypair.
- Authority Key Identifier (AKI)The certificate extension that contains the key identifier that is derived from the public key in the issuer certificate.
- Subject Key Identifier (SKI)The certificate extension that contains the key identifier that is derived from the public key in the subject certificate.
The subject of higher-level certificate is the issuer of the lower-level certificate in the chain. The client searches at different locations to find the certificate that matches the issuer DN in its own certificate. The Distinguished Name (DN) is used to find the certificates and the AKI and SKI values are used to determine if it is a correct certificate. If a certificate authority generates a new keypair, then the SKI value within the certificate should change. The DN of the certificate authority does not change during the rekey process. So, the AKI and SKI values ensure that correct certificate is selected to build the chain. When a client finds multiple trusted certification chains during the certificate chain building process, the best certification chain is selected by calculating each chain’s score. This score is based on the quantity and the quality of the information that the certificate path provides. If the score is the same for multiple chains, then the shortest chain is selected.
Cross certification is the process of interconnecting two PKIs to build certificate chains. The two CAs involved in cross certification sign each other’s CA certificate to establish the relationship in both directions. After the two certificate authorities have established the trust, entities within the separate PKIs can interact with each other depending on the policies mentioned in the certificates.
- Microsoft Certificate StoreMicrosoft operating system has built-in certificate stores for trust anchors. Microsoft uses the windows update service to publish trusted root certificates to the certificate stores. The Microsoft Root CA program validates and manages the eligibility for publication of root certificates.
- MAC OSX and SafariMAC OSX implements a certificate store. MACOSX certificate store is a combination of a certificate store and a password manager. By default, the system has two key chains known as login and system keychains. The user can create more key chains.
- Firefox and other Mozilla based browsersMozilla includes a PKCS#11 module that contains trusted root certificates. The user cannot update this certificate store. A user can load additional trusted root CA certificates into the user database.
- OpenSSLOpenSSL stores trusted root CA certificates in unencrypted pem files. File system security is very important to protect these files.
- JAVA: For JAVA, the trusted root CA certificates are stored in encrypted form at
<JAVA path>/lib/security/cacerts.The user can update this certificate store.
The certificate chain of trust is a list of certificates from end entity to the trust anchors. It enables the receiver to verify that the sender and all intermediate certificates are trustworthy. By using certificate fields and extension values, Path validation verifies the integrity of the certificate chain, from the end entity to the Root CA. There are different certificate stores that are used to store trusted root certificates. Encryption Consulting is a customer-focused cyber security consulting firm providing services to various clients on implementing and managing PKI in their environments. To see how we can help your organization, visit our website at www.encryptionconsulting.com. | <urn:uuid:dd86b29d-239e-4541-b563-616b180bd9ab> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.encryptionconsulting.com/what-is-the-certificate-chain-of-trust/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338001.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007080917-20221007110917-00345.warc.gz | en | 0.892928 | 1,621 | 3.796875 | 4 |
The U.S. Air Force has launched a Lockheed Martin-built satellite into orbit for the militaryâs terrestrial and space weather program.
The 19th defense meteorological satellite lifted off from the United Launch Alliance-built Atlas V launch vehicle on April 3 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the Air Force said Thursday.
Col. Scott Larrimore, director of the Space and Missile Systems Center’s defense weather systems directorate, said the spacecraft is intended to help fulfill the weather support requirements of operational commanders for the next 10 years.
The satellite contains two Northrop Grumman-built sensors, namely the Operational Linescan System for visible and infrared cloud data collection and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder for weather forecasting functions.
Aerojet Rocketdyne also developed the upper-stage engine, helium pressurization tanks and Centaur monopropellant upper-stage thrusters for roll, pitch, yaw control and upper stage settling burns. | <urn:uuid:a62454e7-cfb4-4a3c-b4ed-8de803a618a1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://executivegov.com/2014/04/air-force-launches-defense-meteorological-satellite-scott-larrimore-comments/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.875499 | 203 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Despite the frantic rush of new technologies, some things really don't change much over the years. Batteries are one example of this. Even with all our advances in electrical engineering, the rechargeable batteries in your Uninterruptible Power Supply are still using the same basic chemical processes as batteries a hundred years ago. So, one of these days, the battery in your UPS system is going to die. In most modern UPS systems, this is indicated with a loud beeping sound. If your battery is beeping, it's already long past time to replace it. The beeping battery your hear is already unreliable.
In fact, we recently had to rush a same-day air shipment to a client because of this. We were glad to help, but if they had contacted us a few weeks ago for a replacement, they would have saved a ton on shipping costs.
To get the best performance out of your UPS, it's important to stay on top of its maintenance and replace the batteries before they wear out. Let's look at some of factors that go into this.
Common Questions Associated With UPS Battery Replacement
1 - How long will a UPS battery last?
Generally speaking, a UPS battery will last roughly as long as any other modern rechargeable battery: around 3 years. Past the 3-year point, you're likely to start seeing reduced capacity and other issues that will only grow as the months pass. However, there are many factors that will ultimately determine its lifespan.
2 - What are the biggest factors that reduce a battery's life?
If you want to extend the life of your Tripp lite UPS battery or APC UPS battery (or any other rechargeable), be aware of these matters:
- Temperature: The ideal temperature for a rechargeable battery is roughly 77F. (Or 25C if you're metric-minded.) Significant deviations in either direction can damage the battery, although heat is worse. If stored at 92F, your battery's lifespan would be reduced by half! A climate-control system can help a lot here.
- Frequency of discharge: While modern batteries can hold a charge for long periods with little harm, whenever they are discharged and recharged, their maximum capacity drops a few percent. Every time you use your UPS, its active life decreases, and this is an unavoidable part of dealing with chemical batteries.
- Maintenance issues: The same problems that can befall a car battery, such as corroded connectors or frayed wires, can also affect UPS batteries. You should be doing regular maintenance checks on your UPS battery to ensure no physical problems have occurred. You might also consider load/voltage monitors to watch for unusual behavior.
3 - How can I know the lifespan of a particular UPS battery?
If you are in doubt, contact the manufacturer of your UPS. They'll have the most detailed information about the performance of their batteries.
However, we strongly recommend keeping track of this yourself. Include pertinent information about your UPS - such as its date of purchase and warranty info - in your overall network hardware map. Once the battery is over three years old, unless it's truly never been used, it's probably time to think about a replacement.
Don't Forget To Recycle!
Finally, we'd be remiss in an article about UPS replacement batteries if we didn't mention that they are extremely toxic and must be disposed of with care. All of the US - and most of the rest of the world - have environmental regulations covering the disposal of batteries. Failure to follow local disposal laws could bring serious legal liability, not to mention damaging the environment. If you don't have proper disposal processes in place already, contact a local network vendor or specialist. Hardware vendors will have contacts for disposal or recycling of batteries and can usually handle it for a nominal fee, or possibly include disposal as part of upgrades.
And, of course, if you have any other questions about protecting your network, feel free to ask us anything you want to know! | <urn:uuid:7bf36420-4092-48d0-994a-f63723b6ad33> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://info.hummingbirdnetworks.com/blog/evil-beeping-battery-a-ups-battery-replacement-can-save-your-business | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.963797 | 814 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The HTTP/2 protocol is a recently ratified standard that delivers significant performance benefits over HTTP 1.1. HTTP/2 achieves these performance improvements with a range of features including
- HTTP header compression
- Use of server push
- Request multiplexing
All the latest releases of major browser platforms, including browsers on mobile platforms, now include HTTP/2 support with applications and webservers increasingly providing support for the new protocol. The significance for the end user of HTTP/2 is in reduced latency which leads to a much better user experience when compared to HTTP 1.1.
HTTP/2 is an evolution of the SPDY protocol which was developed by Google and was in extensive use. SPDY is now deprecated with the industry (including Google) adopting the HTTP/2 standard. KEMP are embracing HTTP/2 to deliver an enhanced quality of experience for end users with the introduction of a HTTP/2 proxy (Layer 7) for HTTP/2 connections between clients and servers.
How HTTP/2 makes a difference
Web pages contain multiple assets (sometimes hundreds) including images, CSS files and scripts. When transferring each of these assets between a server and a client a header is included that contains elements such as cookies and referrer information that means that each request has a header payload of up to 1500 bytes. Because of their size, multiple TCP packets are required to deliver these requests and the TCP slow start mechanism will limit the acknowledgement rate for packets. Header compression reduces the size of these headers so that a request can be completely satisfied within the TCP slow start phase and possible fit into a single packet.
With server push, a HTTP/2 server can anticipate the assets a client may request and proactively push these assets to the client. The impact of this is that a client can avoid the overhead of making a request to the server as the required asset has already been transferred by the server. This approach has significant benefits on high-latency connections where most of the client wait time is generated by request and response delays rather than bandwidth.
HTTP 1.1 allowed a browser to send multiple requests via a single connection which reduced the overhead of establishing a connection for each element on a web page. However, this approach was sub-optimal as a large request in a connection could block other requests in the same connection. Multiplexing of requests allows processing of requests and replies in parallel and avoids the request blocking issue.
HTTP/2 and TLS Security
HTTP/2 supports the use of TLS for authentication and encryption of client/server connections. Although TLS is not mandatory in HTTP/2, all the major browsers enforce TLS usage on HTTP/2 connections making secured connections the de facto implementation. | <urn:uuid:b102e4f0-3c6f-488e-9a11-c6fe0594a0d0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://kemptechnologies.com/blog/http2-delivering-applications-faster/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.922826 | 557 | 2.734375 | 3 |
This blog post explains the importance of performing secure data erasure on loose drives. Permanent and certified erasure gives you complete peace of mind as your data cannot be recovered using a data recovery software or even in a laboratory setting.
Loose drives are any data storage drives outside the computers or their peripherals, like printers. With the growing demand for data storage in the cloud, data centers are expanding their capacities through high volume loose drives. During IT Asset refresh cycles, data centers discard bulk/loose drives that are sometimes sold in secondary market. However, if these drives are not wiped properly before discarding, they become a source of data theft and leakage. A secure wiping tool can ensure safe data destruction/erasure before IT asset resale or reuse. Investing in third-party recyclers or IT asset disposition companies (ITADs), disposing of bulk loose drives from data centers or computer peripherals is an innocuous option.
Let’s understand the different kinds of loose drives and the ideal practices for data destruction from them:
At data centers, usually, the physical assets comprise servers, computer hard drives, processors, or data storage drives, with massive storage capacities of petabytes. Large data centers have thousands of network-attached storage units that also consist of loose drives. With technological advancements and to meet growing data storage needs, these storage units need more space to store data. So, data centers resell old devices to maintain the cycle of constant upgradation of the servers.
Printers in offices store data in its hard drive. Important documents related to business strategies, financial plans, and human resources information remain stored in the printers after usage. As a result, possibilities are high that confidential data can easily be misplaced via a printer. You may refer our article on how a printer can cause confidential data leakage. Once the loose drives in printers are removed from their original device, data destruction requires a combined hardware and the software solution, depending upon the condition of the drive. If the drive has no bad sectors or damage, then a software-based drive erasure tool like BitRaser is ideal to sanitize it .You may learn to wipe the printer drive through our KB.
Another key source of loose drives stems from the recyclers, who earn revenue out of processed electronic equipment. They pull out loose drives from second hand devices, like the personal computers and replace it with a refurbished drive. Such companies are also responsible for generating bulk volumes of loose drives.
With a trustworthy data erasure solution IT Asset recyclers can achieve the competence and advantage of secure data wiping from the loose drives. To better understand the market gap due to growing demand for second hand devices, we will take a look at some studies conducted by industry veterans.
Ideally, secure erasure of loose drives in their host enclosure reduces the burden of maintaining unwanted laptops, hard drives, computer systems, chassis, and so on. Many IT Asset managers perform deletion or formatting of the storage devices, instead of using a reliable data wiping solution to secure erase the data. If the loose drivers of such storage devices fall into the wrong hands, it can jeopardize the customer privacy, pose an uncanny risk of brand reputation loss, and may also result in high regulatory fines from data security regulatory bodies.
According to a residual data study on second hand devices conducted by Stellar, 7 out of 10 storage devices are vulnerable to data breach and privacy risk. For this study, the data recovery giant procured a total of 311 storage devices, including hard drives, memory cards, and mobile phones, from diverse locations of India. These second hand devices were purchased from businesses and direct consumers through online portals or resellers. Over 71 percent of the 311 devices evaluated contained Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and other business data. Nearly 222 devices studied were disposed of in the secondary market without suitable data erasure.
In another study by ComputerWorld, a New York-based computer forensics company, 40 percent of the HDDs purchased on eBay contained PII. The company conducted the study on HDDs – from 40GB to 300GB capacity – bought from the markets in the United States and Canada. As per the study, personal and confidential documents, including financial information (36%), emails (21%), photos (13%), and corporate documents (11%) were found on the drives. Also, the drives contained 11 percent of the web browsing history of the users and 4 percent of DNS server information, along with some miscellaneous data.
Such reports are proof that it is equally vital to erase loose drives as much as the other storage drives at the end-of-life. So, be it the loose drives extracted from a laptop, IT server, CCTV, printer, or any other equipment, choosing a certified data erasure software, like BitRaser, is paramount.
Loose drives need to be extracted from the device for seamless data erasure through a reliable data erasure solution. We recommend using BitRaser Drive Eraser software to securely erase data from all kinds of loose drives. This software is tested and approved by NIST for erasing SSD and HDD. It supports 24 International Erasure Standards, including DoD 3 and 7 Passes, NIST, etc. Moreover, users can generate customized certificates and audit trails and save it in PDF, CSV, and XML formats.
Please read and follow the step-by-step guide to permanently erase data from loose drives in a secure manner (in internet enabled facility) and generate tamper proof reports of erasure for future audit trail needs. In case you need to wipe data on loose drives at facility without internet, you may refer to this link. | <urn:uuid:09c67571-00f6-429b-b1f4-71634397046e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.bitraser.com/blog/loose-drives-data-erasure-guide/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334528.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925101046-20220925131046-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.92569 | 1,154 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Recently Google, NASA, and the Universities Space Research Association joined the short list of organizations with access to quantum computing. Is the tough-to-crack math of today's encryption imperiled by the computers of tomorrow?
In the movie Sneakers, a scientist creates a device that can break even the strongest encryption. One of the protagonists delivers Hollywood's best five-second explanation of cryptography, stating: "Cryptography systems are based on mathematical problems so complex they cannot be solved without a key." This prompts his co-conspirator to realize that the scientist must have figured out a way to solve those problems without a key. Ominously, Robert Redford's character observes that the device isn't a code breaker, it's the code breaker. No more secrets. Naturally the device was fiction, but the statement about the foundations of cryptography was and remains true.
That was in 1992. Fast-forward a couple decades, and encryption is no less dependent on computational infeasibility (ignoring quantum key exchange, which is an entirely different thing), but the keys have gotten bigger. For every single bit added to the key size, the time to crack it might as much as double, making sufficiently large keys effectively impossible to break. In the present day, cracking a 512-bit RSA key costs less than buying a code signing certificate and can be accomplished in a few daysa point on the trajectory driving security best practices to recommend ever larger key sizes, such as 1,024 bits, 2,048 bits, and beyond. But what if there came a day when no RSA key sizes were big enough to offer an acceptable level of security?
Recently it was announced that Google and the Universities Space Research Association are collaborating to buy and operate a quantum computer from D-Wave Systems, to be hosted at NASA's Ames Research Center. A quantum computer isn't just a powerful computer, it's a fundamentally different kind of computer that taps into astounding properties of reality manifesting on a microscopic level. Generally speaking, a quantum computer arranges tiny physical systems called quantum bits, or qubits, to be "entangled" with one another. Entanglement, unlike cryptography, has no casual five-second explanation. Hopefully it's both comprehensible and accurate to say that the universe considers all of an entangled system's possible evolutions simultaneously before the system collapses randomly into one of its most likely states, and in this way, entangled systems can be used to (probabilistically) solve some intimidatingly complex mathematical problems that even a classical supercomputer couldn't put a dent in. Problems, perhaps, like cryptographic ones.
In 1994, then-Bell Labs scientist Peter Shor formulated an algorithm for factoring integers that could run in polynomial time on a quantum computer, compared to sub-exponential time for the best known algorithm on a classical computer. "Polynomial time" means that the amount of time needed to solve the problem grows in a way that keeps pace with the size of the problem, at least when compared with higher time complexities, where the required run time quickly becomes absurd. As an example, an exponential-time algorithm might require eight times more computation for each three bits added to the size of the input number, while the amount of computation needed to complete a polynomial-time algorithm might increase by eight times only when the bit count is doubled. If a given problem could be equivalently solved using either a polynomial-time algorithm or an exponential-time algorithm, the polynomial-time algorithm could be used to solve the problem for far larger numbers than could the exponential-time algorithm.
Substitute "key" for "number" above, and you're talking about an algorithm that could make infeasible code-breaking feasible. Using Shor's algorithm, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could factor any public RSA key, enabling the computer's operator to reconstruct the matching private key, and by extension, decrypt and sign exactly like the key's legitimate owner. Did Google, NASA, and the USRA just gain access to such a computer?
D-Wave Systems, Inc.'s 128-qubit quantum processor.
News coverage is clear that a computer was indeed purchasedwith a $10 million price tag to suggest that the buyers believe in what D-Wave has builtand recent research establishes that D-Wave's quantum computer is actually demonstrating quantum behavior, but can it break RSA? Scientific skepticism of the company's computers seems to be becoming more nuanced, but there are still prominent critics such as Scott Aaronson of MIT who argues that the exhibited quantum behavior won't actually allow the machine to outperform a classical computer. It's also been mentioned that the computer would require multiple qubits for each bit in an integer to be factored, which means that the D-Wave computer couldn't possibly factor a 2,048-bit number even after it's been upgraded to sport 2,048 qubits. And the whole discussion may be moot if, as Joe Fitzsimons of the National University of Singapore previously pointed out, the particulars of the D-Wave computer mean its capabilities fall short of a universal quantum computer and thereby preclude it altogether from running Shor's algorithm.
But note the specificity of these criticisms. The obstacles in quantum computing, and particularly in implementing Shor's algorithm, are in practice rather than principle, and even if D-Wave's present-day quantum computer isn't the solution, a plethora of particle-scale manipulations has been developed and is continually being added to. Inexorably, increasingly sophisticated nanotechnology will cross the ever-lowering threshold of commercial exploitability, and quantum computing will become an unqualified reality, first for the wealthiest organizations, then for the people who hack into those organizations, and eventually, maybe for everyone. Then what?
It's impossible to overstate that the very notion of security depends on integer factorization remaining difficult. Eventually, quantum computing will make factorization easy for the people we don't want to have our secrets, and then much of what's based on present-day public key cryptography will be left in shambles. If the speed with which we've migrated away from MD5 is any indication, we should already be seriously thinking about post-quantum cryptography, in anticipation of the day when a press release announcing the purchase of a powerful-enough quantum computer hits the wires. Unless, of course, we're willing to live in a world with no more secrets. | <urn:uuid:e2600d7a-4541-4f1f-bc5e-f56dfd1da9d2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2013/06/The-Fall-of-Contemporary-Crypto-Quantum-Computing-s-Challenge-to-Cyber-Security | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334915.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926175816-20220926205816-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.948125 | 1,313 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Published 2 Years Ago on Saturday, Nov 07 2020 By Mounir Jamil
As governments around the world rush to deploy digital tools against Covid-19, it is evident that several of the assumptions around internet rights and governance are being overlooked. While privacy risks have garnered significant attention, we must not lose sight of other fundamental issues that govern the functioning of the internet. Regulators around the world are reevaluating rules related to bandwidth and net neutrality amid the pandemic.
The Cellular Operators Association of India requested that the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) allow telecom operators to zero-rate websites that contain content related to Covid-19. Such websites are India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, World Health Organization (WHO), and few other dashboards that are run by private entities.
Another milestone can be seen in India’s major video streaming services with companies having reduced their bit rate to a standardized definition after a request from the (COAI). This led to the overall burden reduction on India’s internet infrastructure.
Some complications arise here. While it is critical for governments to prioritize information during the times of a pandemic, there are other non-government websites that people use to access and share reliable information. More deliberation is needed to pinpoint the list of websites that the COAI will allow to be zero-rated.
Another issue relates to the period of time the zero-rating will apply. This is crucial because there is no set date for when the pandemic will be over, so how long will this policy apply and how might it evolve?
Telcos argue that the enforcement of net neutrality should be industry led and there is no need for a multi-stakeholder governance since ensuring net neutrality is a part of telcos license conditions.
While it is widely considered that India has the strongest net neutrality policies, the debate is far from over. And as we continue battling an ongoing pandemic, we wonder how net neutrality will impact citizens.
The world of foldable phones keeps welcoming more additions to its roster. And it makes sense. The foldable phones are selling well even with their pricy asking point. Huawei’s latest foldable is the Huawei P50 Pocket. While it does many things right, it also has its shortcomings. We will take a deeper look at it. […]
Stay tuned with our weekly newsletter on all telecom and tech related news.
© Copyright 2022, All Rights Reserved | <urn:uuid:f253e40d-d224-4aa4-b685-f787870bc635> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://insidetelecom.com/net-neutrality-complications-amid-the-pandemic/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.935208 | 529 | 2.59375 | 3 |
In data centers, HVAC systems manage the environment and must be designed to operate along with other data center mechanisms such as computing hardware, cabling, data storage, fire protection, physical security systems and power.
There are many different types of heating systems in the HVAC structure. Central heating is generally used in cold climates to heat private houses and public buildings. These systems contain a boiler, furnace, or heat pump to heat water, steam, or air in a main location such as a furnace room in a home or a mechanical room in a large building.
Another element in the HVAC arrangement is ventilation, which is the process of replenishing oxygen in any space to maintain temperature or remove unwanted elements, such as moisture, heat, dust, bacteria, or carbon dioxide. Ventilation involves exchanging the air inside the building with air from the outside and the circulation of air within the building.
The last element in the HVAC system is air conditioning, which removes heat by radiation, convection, and heat pump systems. An air conditioning system provides cooling, ventilation, and humidity control for houses or buildings. | <urn:uuid:d5580dc7-576b-49d0-8097-5c34e7f90a0e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cyrusone.com/resources/tools/hvac/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335350.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929100506-20220929130506-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.94333 | 228 | 3.578125 | 4 |
In 2020, Neustar published a report, Cyber Threats & Trends Report, which states that Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have increased by 151% in 2020 compared to 2019. DDoS attacks are considered one of the main cybersecurity issues.
The attacks become more and more organized and intelligent. Experts say that, with network development, crime is surely expected to continue to grow in 2021 and businesses will have to invest more in digital security to fend off DDoS attacks.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, internet usage has increased significantly. With longer screen time, cybercriminals have amplified the volume of their assaults. To establish efficient cybersecurity strategies, you need to know how to identify those cyber attacks.
A DDoS attack is defined as a cyber attack by “Distributed Denial-of-Service".
A DDoS is an attempt to disrupt the online traffic of a server, a service or a given network by overwhelming it with a huge amount of traffic from multiple sources, which will eventually limit or disable the functions of the network.
According to the National Cyber Security Center, DDoS attacks are one of the criminals' favourite tools these days. These types of attacks are normally cheap, easy to get hands-on on the marketplace and effective.
To carry out a DDoS cyber attack, hackers rely on a network of online machines. These can be computers, servers, or IoT (Internet of Things) devices. The hacker infects all of these computing devices with malicious software: "malware".
These machines become what we call "bots", or "zombies". The hacker controls them remotely as a single group, or "botnet". All they have to do is give this botnet a target IP address and all the machines will execute the attack by sending out tens of thousands of internet requests.
The targeted site or server will not be able to convert all the amount of traffic, and that is what is the so-called "denial of service". The DDoS attack succeeds when the online service is unstable or unavailable.
E-commerce sites and online casinos are prime targets for this cyber threat. One of the most famous DDoS attacks dates back to February 2000. The attack led by the cyber hacker Mafiaboy, or Michael Calce, affected the online platforms of Amazon, eBay, E-Trade, and ZDNet.
There are different types of DDoS attacks. The damage of the attack will depend on what layer of OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) is targeted.
The OSI includes 7 layers, some dedicated to applications, others to communication. These network connection layers are the breeding ground for various DDoS attacks, which must be mastered to establish a reliable cyber risk map.
There are 3 main types of DDoS attacks.
Attacks targeting the application layers of the server are often referred to as "Layer 7 DDoS attacks". These include cyber attacks targeting vulnerabilities within applications.
These slow-and-low attacks are HTTP GET or POST requests, where HTTP floods in the form of a botnet will saturate the target server's bandwidth capabilities and damage it.
It is particularly difficult to mitigate because the victim has difficulty differentiating between malicious and normal traffic.
Among the best-known protocol attacks are the SYN flood, Smurf DDoS and Ping Flood. These kinds of attacks will exploit the vulnerabilities of actual server resources, such as firewalls and load balancers.
These cyber attacks, also known as "connection table exhaustion attacks", target layers 3 and 4 of the OSI model. They are based on the so-called "communication" layers, which allow computers to connect to each other in a network.
To understand the SYN Flood attack, you have to keep in mind that in order to connect to a network, two computers exploit TCP negotiation. This process is known as a three-way handshake.
In an SYN flood, the attacking computer sends numerous "initial connection requests". This causes the victim machine to respond to all these connection requests via SYN/ACK packets. Since the initiated connection is never finalized, the server will be overloaded.
This heavy TCP negotiation process exhausts the network's resources, until damaging or shutting down the system. In that way, SYN flood exploits weaknesses in TCP connection.
Ping flood is an attempt to overwhelm the target with Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo-request packets that consist of both incoming and outgoing messages.
The low ability to respond to the high amount of requests on the device also called ping traffic, causes a disruption to the normal traffic.
A Smurf DDoS attack is a similar attempt as the Ping flood. The difference is that a Smurf attack is a DNS amplification, exploiting the vulnerabilities in the Internet Protocol (IP) and ICMP, which can result in more damage.
The most common of the 3 types of DDoS attacks are volume-based attacks. The goal is to utilize as many computers and internet connections to saturate the bandwidth and to flood a website with traffic. A common example is a UDP flood.
In the case of the UDP flood, the hackers use the UDP (User Datagram Protocol) connection protocol. This allows data to be transferred from one machine to another without negotiating a connection, which is the opposite of TCP transmission. The victim of this attack receives a large number of UDP packets, whose origin it cannot identify. It then sends "destination unreachable" messages by the hundreds, which overloads its resources and ultimately blocks its system.
In reality, the hackers use more advanced systems today, something that is called mixed/blended/multi-vector attacks. For example, a cyberattack can start with a volume-based attack followed by an application-layer DDoS, just to distract the victim from the “real” attack. These hacking techniques are more complex and frequent and can be very dangerous without a proper defense system.
To ensure the protection of your network against the various types of DDoS attacks, you must be able to identify the signs that characterize them. You also need to know what are the effective measures to reduce the impact.
There are several classic symptoms of a DDoS attack. The challenge is to distinguish a legitimate traffic spike from an abnormal network slowness. IT departments should therefore rely on their traffic analysis to identify the worrying signs:
● unusual traffic patterns;
● flows of traffic from a single IP address or range of IP addresses;
● a spike in requests to a single web page;
● unexplained traffic from machines with identical behaviors, possibly running on the same type of browsers.
We talk more about mitigating a DDoS attack rather than removing it, as it is still difficult to distinguish legitimate traffic from hacked traffic. It is therefore in the best interest of an organization that is a victim of a DDoS attack to refer to a business continuity plan (BCP). The challenge is to continue to process legitimate traffic while stopping the traffic created by the hackers.
The other major challenge in stopping a DDoS attack is its complexity. Some hackers do not hesitate to carry out a "multi-vector" attack. This combines different categories of DDoS attacks and targets several layers of the OSI model. Mitigating a multi-vector DDoS attack, therefore, requires the intersection of various techniques: multi-layer strategies.
So, let's look into how to protect yourself from DDoS attacks.
A web application firewall (WAF) is defined as a tool that filters requests that are supposed to destabilize layer 7 of a network connection.
It acts as a reverse proxy, preventing hackers from targeting your IP addresses. This firewall relies on rules that identify DDoS, to protect a given server from illegitimate traffic.
The firewalls and routers are the basic protections that should always be configured and updated.
To protect from DDoS attacks, server owners can also choose to limit the rate of requests they accept during certain periods.
This strategy is not sufficient to stop multi-vector DDoS attacks. However, it does have the merit of mitigating their impact and preventing joint cyberattacks, such as data theft.
The logical consequence of limiting the request rate is to limit server performance. A lack of efficiency hardly meets the needs of online businesses, whose productivity is synonymous with revenue. Moreover, this strategy does not completely prevent the risk of server overload.
To get around this problem, many companies provide an alternate website to which legitimate traffic is redirected in case of an attack.
Most anti-DDoS cybersecurity professionals offer their customers the use of an Anycast network. This is also referred to as a "vacuum" tool.
This is a network of free servers to mop up malicious traffic and free up the expression of legitimate traffic. It often relies on different data centers, distributed in several locations. Indeed, the larger the Anycast network, the faster the DDoS attack is mitigated.
Faced with a DDoS attack, the victim network can choose to send all the website traffic into a black hole.
This system hardly makes the difference between legitimate and malicious network traffic. This is why this technique akin to self-sabotage.
DDoS attacks are not easy to deal with and can be very problematic when they occur. It is often more useful to invest in a security system beforehand than trying to mitigate a DDoS attack.
A DDoS attack is defined as a “Distributed Denial-of-Service" attack. It aims at rendering a service, a server or an online platform inaccessible. This type of cyber attack consists in saturating the bandwidth of the victim server, or exhausting its system resources to make it unable to handle legitimate traffic.
The sole purpose of DDoS is to prevent legitimate traffic from reaching a victim server. The DDoS attack does not enable hackers to take over the target server or steal data from it, although these objectives may characterize joint cyber attacks.
Most of the time, a DDoS attack is characterized primarily by an abnormal increase in traffic on a network or server. The victim system will be overloaded with requests of various kinds, depending on the type of DDoS attack.
related to cyber risk quantification | <urn:uuid:8063377c-2ea8-4b2f-b8ff-ab5ca9cc1065> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.c-risk.com/en/blog/ddos-attack/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930181143-20220930211143-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.940462 | 2,092 | 2.875 | 3 |
Some applications are just riskier than others. They’re more likely to host malware or be the perfect place to launch a social engineering attack.
We analyzed billions of DNS query data available through our DNS security tool and conducted research to identify the 100 most risky applications for businesses. Here’s an overview of the top 25, as well as the main application categories and historical security risks that led us to placing them in our AppAware feature.
Messaging applications can be a playground for threat actors—especially in public-facing messaging applications. These scammers are known to create fake identities and privately message users with links to domains that house malware or invite them into a phishing scam.
While it is known there is a lot of malware hosted on Discord’s CDN (content delivery network)—upwards of 17,000 malicious URLs were discovered in 2021—there is still a need to take into account for all of the externally-hosted malware that leverages Discord.
Disqus is no stranger to data breaches, having experienced a breach in 2017 and handling it incredibly well. But the potential risk is still there. Used to host the comment sections on so many websites, it’s easy for scammers to propagate phishing domains through Disqus. Spammer accounts don’t get taken down, so as long as they remove their comments quickly on each site they comment on, they can continue to spread malicious activity.
Hijacked Facebook accounts and data breaches have been a problem since Facebook’s inception. But Messenger can pose a particular risk because it is easy to spread targeted phishing attacks to individuals privately, tricking them into thinking the threat actor is another person. And this messaging tool is not even encrypted—Facebook postponed all plans for end-to-end encryption for Messenger until 2023. In a late January phishing attack, hackers gained control of Facebook accounts in Finland through the use of Facebook messenger. There seems to be a never-ending trail of hijacked Facebook accounts, all leading to figure hijacked accounts that can cause major problems for anyone with a Facebook account linked to a company profile.
ICQ is an old platform—and it has been the subject of many data breaches going all the way back to the early 2000s. Part of this is because accounts were easily hacked. The application ICQ provides convenience for end users, but back in 2017 it was reported that it was a favorite of cybercriminals to use for the proliferation of phishing attacks. To this day, it’s still a popular place for threat actors to congregate because criminal chatrooms as easily hidden as ICQ does not have a traditional search function. Links are shared directly and new rooms can be removed and created rapidly, making them hard to track.
There have been privacy concerns over this South Korean app, and related apps like Kakao Map, for a long time. But one major concern is malware known as PhoneSpy that specifically targets this messaging app.
Kik is another popular app that cybercriminals use for communication. On top of that, apps related to Kik have been known to store passwords in plain text.
While this app has end-to-end encryption (unlike other messaging apps on this list) and is generally considered safer than its peers, it has its dangers. In one early 2021 report, Signal may allow threat actors to spy on you. Additionally, a story about how the FBI can hack Signal accounts raised the question of “Who else can hack these accounts?”
Even business-oriented messaging applications aren’t always safe. Slack has been used repeatedly to spread malware, including when cyberattackers abused the platform to spread the malware Ryuk.
Arguably the riskiest of the messaging apps, Snapchat is used by threat actors to implement phishing schemes (like a fake 2FA scam from mid-2021) and to sell stolen information. At DNSFilter, it’s the most-blocked social media tool on our network—nearly 10% of all Snapchat DNS queries are blocked.
This application has over 500 million currently active users. Unfortunately, just over the last few weeks, reports of Telegram’s usage by threat actors has increased in 2022—particularly as a place to sell stolen information. Credit cards are posted for sale often, costing between $15 to $1500 per card. The platform is also used to spread malware. One malware variant actually searches for existing Telegram folders on a device and sends conversations back to the servers of the threat actor.
Tencent was founded in 1998 and has a host of products, including this messaging app. The company itself has been found to be linked to multiple malware campaigns, including a DDoS botnet (ABCbot) that targeted Tencent and other cloud service providers after the shell script is triggered.
Browser vulnerabilities can sometimes be used to infiltrate other apps. This happened in spring 2021 to WeChat: A Chrome exploit led to the abuse of WeChat where users were sent malicious links. Due to security concerns over the application in 2020, WeChat was banned by the Australian military and the US Army as well. Though, the US ban has since been rescinded.
The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a two-way communication protocol that is heavily used in IT. Windows operating systems include it by default and Azure virtual machines (VMs) also use it as the default method for communication. This makes it an ideal tool for exploitation by threat actors—an attack vector that grew 768% between the beginning and end of 2020. But it’s often the third-party remote access tools that are the riskiest, with threat actors using relatively simple brute force password attacks as the main means of compromise:
RDP software is inherently insecure. RemotePC is one of the most popular RDP applications available. For teams that aren’t using RemotePC, it’s important to block this tool.
TeamViewer is a particularly vulnerable application for a number of reasons. Its involvement as an entrypoint in an attack on a water treatment plant last year led to the FBI sending out an alert. It’s commonly used by organizations as a part of their IT stack, but it is easily compromised by hackers—such as in this VMWare attack where a TeamViewer account lacking MFA was used as the entrypoint. Additionally, its name is exploited for malvertising campaigns, leading to unsuspecting users downloading malware when they are seeking to install the original TeamViewer application.
According to Crowdstrike’s 2021 Threat Hunting reporting, RDP is used most often for lateral movement within an organization. TeamViewer is the top non-native RDP tool used by cybercriminals.
LogMeIn is now GoTo, but the software is still the same. Phishing attacks have been launched using LogMeIn where threat actors impersonated company employees. It has also been used to spread malware through Point of Sale systems.
Allowing filesharing apps to be used at your organization is a potentially big risk. While business-oriented filesharing apps like DropBox seem secure, they can be leveraged for command-and-control communications, spreading malware, or downloading trojans. And of course, torrent sites like The Pirate Bay have always operated with users understanding that the likelihood of encountering some type of threat is higher on these sites.
This is an example of a filesharing application that is known for spreading adware.
It’s been four years since a poisoned BitTorrent client infected over 400,000 computers with cryptomining software in under a day, but it still remains a risky application. Just last year, BitTorrent again ultimately led to a cryptomining scheme as modified, free copies of Microsoft and Adobe programs shared on the platform infected users. It’s difficult to know if what you’re downloading has or hasn’t been tampered with.
Dropbox is used in typosquatting attacks and malvertising. But aside from scams, Dropbox can be directly leveraged by threat actors. These attacks don’t always make big headlines, but check out Dropbox’s community forums for users asking for help after their Dropbox files were impacted by a ransomware attack.
While not inherently malicious, FileFactory can sometimes be responsible for trojans, malware, and other viruses and wind up being flagged on lists like VirusTotal.
Back in 2020, there was a warning that Citrix’s enterprise-level ShareFile could result in a data breach because of a number of vulnerabilities. This is a popular tool for threat actors to mimic and use in phishing attacks.
It’s no surprise that The Pirate Bay continues to be risky in 2022. From fake movies injecting code that can steal crypto to adware programs and trojans to pirated games spreading cryptojacking, the threat to your business is huge.
Some consider VPNs as old school, and in this work-from-home age, they’re not 100% safe. Just this year, a VPN service was being used by cybercriminals to spread ransomware and malware. The group was taken down in a joint effort by Europol, the FBI, and the National Crime Agency (NCA). Ransomware gangs have taken advantage of zero-day vulnerabilities in multiple VPNs over the last year, but they’re also used to bypass filtering meant to protect end users—and that is a massive security issue.
While Hide.me might be good for end users, it can be a problem in a corporate environment. Hide.me advertises their ability to “Bypass Internet Censorship” which in many cases boils down to bypassing filtering and could result in inadvertently visiting malware sites.
This is just a snapshot of the risky applications we’ve identified at DNSFilter. For the full list, you can sign up for a free trial of AppAware. | <urn:uuid:5e8fc223-f299-481e-a8e9-87e434faf0ce> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.dnsfilter.com/blog/100-risky-applications-mitigate-vulnerabilities-appaware | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930181143-20220930211143-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.951082 | 2,040 | 2.59375 | 3 |
With the Internet's widespread growth, South Africa has become quite dependent on it for economic affairs. This sharing of self-generated data is a boon to all business transactions and even social interactions.
The increased dependence on the digital world raises significant concerns about cyber security.
Cybercrime is a global problem that has affected South Africa, both in the private sector and in government. Financial losses have been in the billions and could continue to increase if stricter measures are not put in place.
The main target of the African continent is mainly South Africa due to its high connectivity rate, wealth, and GDP per capita.
As per a 2014 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on cyber-crime, South Africa lost 0.14% of its GDP to cyber-crime.
According to the SNAI, cyber-crime costs the country over 1 billion rands ($64 billion) a year. Nearly half of these losses were due to debit card fraud. South Africa stands in 11th place (434 complaints) in terms of the most affected countries in the world.
With the rising number of cybercrimes, the government implements refined compliance regulations to safeguard its citizens and business entities. Multiple regulatory compliances have been introduced to reduce the sensitive information leakages and subsequent attacks.
Cyber Security Regulatory Compliances in South Africa
The journey towards enacting cyber security compliance started long back. South Africa rightly envisaged the importance of the Internet and its pros and cons. In 2012, the South African Cabinet adopted the National Cyber Security Policy Framework (NCPF) to draw a centralized approach to ensuring the country's cyber security.
The NCPF addresses disputes among:
- different agencies,
- legal frameworks,
- inadequate public awareness, and
- a lack of capacity, skills, and resources.
The NCPF sets out security guidelines in South Africa for the government to develop comprehensive cyber-security policies and strategies.
There are multiple compliance frameworks South Africa adheres to:
In South Africa, data security comes under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
On July 1, 2021, the material implementation of the most critical provisions of POPIA was enforced. This legislation promotes the protection of personal data processed by public and private bodies.
It outlines the:
- rights of data subjects,
- regulates the cross-border flow of personal data, and
- introduces mandatory data breach reporting and notification obligations.
It also has the power to levy penalties for breaking the law.
The safeguarding condition in the POPIA act dictates that a person must guarantee the confidentiality of personal data. It requires this to prevent loss, damage, or unauthorized access or destruction of personal data.
POPIA puts South Africa up to the standards with international data protection laws. This is achieved by regulating the processing of personal data of individuals and entities.
If there is reason to believe that personal data has been breached in relation to POPIA, the responsible party must notify the data controller.
In case of a data breach the business may also be subject to a:
- administrative penalty, or
- sanction, civil action, and a class-action lawsuit
The GDPR is a far-reaching law implemented on May 25, 2018. It obliges companies to safeguard the personal data and privacy of EU citizens residing in EU member states and regulates the export of their data outside of the EU.
In principle, the law affects all Europe companies with a digital presence.
Any company conducting business in Europe must be GDPR compliant if:
- it collects personal data from someone who lives in the EU, or
- has a third party share such data with the company.
If it doesn't comply, it might risk penalties or fines of 20 million euros or 4% of its annual turnover.
The GDPR requires businesses to have clear evidence that the data subject has consented to data collection. They need to review the existing database and obtain consent from people who have never explicitly consented. If they don't get permission, they need to remove the data immediately.
A South African company needs to implement data protection through a composite data policy. They must also have a data breach notification system in place (no later than 72 hours after the breach) and appoint a data protection officer responsible for ensuring compliance.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard for organizations. Especially for those that manage branded credit cards from major card schemes.
PCI DSS is a standard that all organizations in South Africa and online merchants. They must follow when storing, processing, and transmitting their customers' credit card information.
PCI DSS compliance is one of the most stringent and coveted security standards in the industry today. With six goals, 12 requirements, and over 300 sub-requirements, it helps organizations reduce and minimize the risk of their payment systems and cardholders' data being compromised.
PCI Certification encompasses several well-known best practices, such as:
- Installing firewalls
- Encrypting data transmissions
- Using antivirus software
In addition, organizations should also restrict access to cardholders' data and network resources. PCI compliance is divided into four levels. This is based on the annual number of credit or debit card transactions in business processes.
PCI compliance is a global benchmark that assures the customers about safety.
The cost of a breach, both monetary and reputational, should be enough to convince any business owner to take data security seriously. PCI is a must-have for any organization in South Africa dealing with financial transactions to ensure safety, security, and trust.
SOX (Sarbanes Oxley Act) is a law passed by the United States Congress. It requires publicly traded companies to undergo rigorous financial reporting audits and internal controls. These audits do not necessarily mean that a company has flaws in its accounting processes.
On July 30, 2002, the law was passed after scathing financial scandals involving Enron, Worldcom, Tyco International, and other high-profile companies.
SOX was developed to implement accounting and disclosure requirements to increase transparency in corporate governance.
SOX applies to:
- All US-based publicly held companies.
- All international companies that have US registered debt or equity securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
It requires companies to have these controls audited annually by an external company. An IT-SOX independent auditor must review controls, policies, and procedures during the audit.
A SOX IT audit examines the following high-level internal control elements:
- IT Security -both at the logical and physical level
- Overall Access Control
- Hardware and Software changes
- Data backup Planning (DRP)
Compliance Specialist in South Africa To Look For
With the growing digital dependency, the regulatory complexities are rising exponentially. It demands a significant amount of productive time for the organizations.
A single non-compliance, whether in the case of POPI or GDPR, can attract heavy monetary penalties or even sanctions and prison sentences.
In these cases, an expert can help these companies to sail through the tedious journey and save them both time and money.
Based on multiple years of valuable cyber-security experience, Appknox understands the pain points and the subsequent intricacies associated with different risk responses.
Appknox's automated security assessment has resolved security issues like data privacy and compliance flaws for 300+ enterprises, including the Fortune 500.
We will help you sail through the Assessment and Certification audits seamlessly with our extensive expertise.
Thanks to the rapid adoption of the newest technologies, South Africa is rising in the global market. Though it's great news for a young nation, it needs to go miles. To rise above the pressing challenges, it has to strive for regulatory compliance to ensure trust and safety for businesses. With these well-placed efforts, South Africa will pave the way for massive future growth and expansion in the global market. | <urn:uuid:f543fb1a-9931-49fc-a86d-ab1e47ac1c9c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.appknox.com/blog/cybersecurity-compliance-and-regulations-in-south-africa | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337524.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004184523-20221004214523-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.929475 | 1,647 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Most of us don’t give a second thought to the router that manages our home internet. We assume it’s working fine, just like the day we installed it, which is why hackers can break into your network and wreak havoc without you even realizing it.
It may have happened already. Tap or click here for a free test to see if your router has been hacked. Remember, every device in your network as at stake.
The problem with the Internet of Things is there is no security standard. So, we purchase cameras, speakers, thermostats and more, thinking these gadgets are locked down at the get-go. Tap or click here for a recent FBI warning and steps to protect your so-called smart devices.
Now that you know why you need to pay attention to your router, let’s get started.
1. Regular or automatic updates
When a router gets an update, you probably won’t know about it. Newer routers can download them automatically, and nearly every router has options to update the firmware manually, so if it’s not an automatic process, you’ll need to check for them every three months.
To get to your router admin page, you’ll need the device’s IP address and admin password. These may be written on the user guide for your router brand, but some sites can help you find them if you don’t have this information. Tap or click here for a list of default passwords for 548 router brands.
Once you’ve opened your router’s admin page, find a section called “Advanced” or “Management” to look for firmware updates. Download any updates. If there is an option in your router’s settings that enables automatic updates, turn it on.
2. Stronger encryption
Most routers include encryption by default. If you’re required to enter a password to connect, you already have it set up. But don’t move on just yet — there are different types of Wi-Fi encryptions, and some are much weaker than others. Don’t forget, many routers ship with options for outdated encryption settings.
The most popular Wi-Fi security right now is Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) encryption. This standard is over a decade old. If you’re shopping for a new router, be sure it supports WPA3. This is the latest wireless standard available. Tap or click here to learn more about the benefits of WPA3.
To check your encryption settings, go to the router’s admin menu. You should be able to find encryption under the “Wireless” or “Security” menu. If you still have an older router, select one that starts with “WPA3.”
If your router is not WPA3 compatible, “WPA2-PSK AES” is the next most secure option. If you have older gadgets on your Wi-Fi network, you might have to select “WPA2-PSK AES + WPA-PSK TKIP” to get them working.
This hybrid setting keeps the benefits of WPA2 while leaving compatibility for older, less secure devices. If your main network is securely encrypted, they’ll be safe to use.
Most importantly, never choose “Open,” which means no security at all. The same goes for WEP, which is a highly outdated standard that’s easily hacked.
3. A built-in firewall
One of the best security tools built into your router is the firewall. Nearly every router from the last decade includes one in some form or another.
Not every router labels its firewall the same. You usually find this feature under your router’s advanced settings like “NAT filtering,” “port forwarding,” “port filtering” or “services blocking.”
These settings let you tweak your network’s incoming and outgoing data ports and protect them from outsiders. But be extremely careful with these settings; your default firewall is usually enough, and misconfiguring your ports can knock you off the web or make it easier for hackers to break in.
If you do make a mistake in this area, call your internet provider. A trained technician will know the optimal port settings for your service.
4. Optimized Quad9 DNS settings
Check out the Quad9 Domain Name System service, maintained by cybersecurity advocates at IBM and The Global Cyber Alliance. Once set as your DNS service, every time you click on a web link, Quad9 will check the site against IBM X-Force’s threat intelligence database of over 40 billion analyzed webpages and images.
I have a whole write-up about it on my site, including the step-by-step instructions for your Windows PC or Mac. Tap or click here to start using this free powerful security tool.
5. No remote access
Have you ever had a technician take over your computer while you were on the phone with them? If so, you’re already familiar with “remote administration,” which is commonly used in tech support.
Scammers and hackers find remote access an easy path to access home networks. Remote desktop management is one of the pillars of several security flaws found in Windows. Tap or click here to learn more about a frightening remote access bug that affected Windows users.
When it comes to your router, you’re better off disabling these settings altogether. You can usually find this in your router settings under the “Remote Administration” heading.
Even if you do all this, you still need to take steps to lock down your Internet of Things devices. I have several tips for doing this on my site. Tap or click here to change one setting and stop hackers from taking over your smart home devices.
BONUS TIP: Fix your crappy Wi-Fi
There are plenty of reasons your Wi-Fi keeps slowing down (and at the worst times, too, it seems). It could be signal congestion, physical location, firmware issues, hardware limitations or maybe your space is just too big for your router to cover.
If you want to boost your home Wi-Fi to stop constant video buffering or slow webpage loading, tap or click here for my do-it-yourself guide that should help you speed things up.
What digital lifestyle questions do you have? Call Kim’s national radio show and tap or click here to find it on your local radio station. You can listen to or watch The Kim Komando Show on your phone, tablet, television or computer. Or tap or click here for Kim’s free podcasts. | <urn:uuid:d31498de-fafd-4df2-b6bd-fb7fe4cefeb9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.komando.com/kims-column/critical-security-router-settings/704066/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337723.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006025949-20221006055949-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.9088 | 1,400 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Securing a sustainable future for the Nice Fen relies upon, in lots of respects, upon restoration derived from managing water ranges. Wendy Pressure from OTT HydroMet explains how a monitoring programme helps to attain the bold targets which were set for this nationally vital fen panorama.
Strolling by the Nice Fen, watching Chinese language water deer grazing within the distance, while a raven calls close by and a pair of buzzards hover within the rising warmth, guests could possibly be forgiven for considering that they’re surrounded by a pure setting untouched by human palms. Nonetheless, as Henry Stanier, Wildlife Belief Monitoring and Analysis Officer, explains; “Nothing could possibly be farther from the reality; human exercise, largely pushed by agriculture, has centered totally on water ranges, and this has had a profound impact on the native ecology.”
In 2001, 5 organisations got here collectively to set out a imaginative and prescient for the Nice Fen, with the goal of offering a extra sustainable future for the realm. In lots of respects, this work focuses on restoration by managing water ranges, so a community of monitoring wells has been established.
The realm can also be the main target of a habitat restoration undertaking involving the native Wildlife Belief, Pure England, the Atmosphere Company, Huntingdonshire District Council and the Center Degree Commissioners. Two nationally vital nature reserves are situated there: Holme Fen and Woodwalton Fen.
The Nice Fen covers 14 sq. miles of land that’s being restored to wild fen over a 50-100 12 months timescale, creating an enormous nature restoration community, offering a Dwelling Panorama for fenland species together with threatened fen wildlife, comparable to bitterns and otters. A mosaic of various wetland habitats has been established to assist all kinds of wildlife, comparable to dragonflies, butterflies and amphibians. This habitat can also be appropriate for flowers and different crops, a few of that are discovered virtually nowhere else within the UK, such because the Fen violet and the Fen woodrush.
In 1630 a gaggle of rich landowners, headed by the Earl of Bedford, got down to drain the fens for agriculture and to minimise winter flooding. Most of the native individuals had been fiercely against the draining, believing it could deprive them of their conventional technique of livelihood from wildfowling, fishing and reed reducing, and a gaggle referred to as the ‘Fen Tigers’ vandalised the dykes, ditches, sluices and reedbeds. However, by the top of the seventeenth Century the drainage undertaking was full.
This drainage trigger extra issues, comparable to peat shrinkage, and extra drainage initiatives adopted. Within the 1800s, acutely aware of the probably shrinking impact of draining the peaty soil round Whittlesea Mere, William Wells, and different rich landowners, instigated the burial of a measurement publish at Holme Fen, which was anchored within the bedrock and reduce off on the soil floor. Immediately, round 4 metres of the publish is exhibiting above floor, recording the bottom subsidence since 1852. The bottom stage at Holme Submit is now 2.75 metres beneath sea stage – one of many lowest land factors in Nice Britain.
A number of points have arisen on account of the drainage. Firstly, there was a big impact in native ecology and biodiversity with the loss of a giant space of wetland. Additionally, as the bottom stage subsided it grew to become much less sustainable to pump water up into the primary drain. The lack of peat has develop into a serious concern, as a result of, as a carbon sink, peat is vastly necessary within the struggle towards international warming.
Peat types in waterlogged, acidic situations when layers of partially decomposed mosses and different lavatory crops accumulate. The method may be very gradual; it may possibly take as much as 1,000 years to kind only one meter of peat. However, round 60% of the world’s wetlands are made from peat. The crops which kind peat seize carbon dioxide from the ambiance and in consequence, giant portions of carbon are trapped within the peat. Nonetheless, if the peat is drained, it decomposes a lot sooner; releasing the saved carbon. Peat burning has the identical impact, however a lot sooner.
It has been estimated that the discount of peat loss within the Nice Fen, coupled with the capturing of carbon by vegetation is saving 325,000 tonnes of CO2 from being launched annually.
The undertaking can also be a great instance of pure flood administration (NFM) as a result of it offers additional water storage after heavy rainfall, which slows water stream and helps to guard surrounding cities, villages and farmland from the chance of flooding.
Water stage administration
The drainage of the fens incurred widespread ecological hurt, however the resolution is considerably extra sophisticated than merely elevating water ranges to create wetlands. Henry Stanier explains: “There are a variety of things that affect the restoration course of. Firstly, the geology of the realm is sort of a layer cake, and every layer has completely different hydrological properties. Secondly, the Nice Fen consists of numerous business farms, so you will need to perceive and handle their groundwater standing. Thirdly, the floor water requirement varies in keeping with the time of 12 months, because of the wants of all kinds of natural world, together with breeding birds. Fourthly, together with numerous companions, we’re conducting quite a few analysis applications, most of that are affected by water stage. For instance, we have now trial plots with raised water ranges, through which we’re investigating the efficiency of various plant species. These embrace Sphagnum or ‘lavatory moss’ which shops water, prevents the decay of useless plant materials and finally types peat, and we’re additionally trialling the wetland cropping potential of Glyceria fluitans, a sturdy perennial aquatic candy grass.”
Water stage monitoring
Working with a workforce of over 60 volunteers Henry delivers a monitoring program for the undertaking space, which is at the moment round 3,700 Hectares. 40 wells have been put in in strategic areas, every to a depth of round 5 metres. 37 of those have OTT Orpheus Mini water stage loggers, which file groundwater stage each hour, each day of the 12 months. Henry collects the information from these loggers a couple of times per 12 months, or extra steadily the place the information is of higher significance.
Three of the wells have been fitted with OTT ecoLog water stage loggers. These units have the flexibility to transmit each saved and reside information to a safe web site which Henry can entry with any internet-enabled system at any time, and from wherever. “It is a super benefit,” he explains. “With such a big space to cowl, discipline visits might be time-consuming and subsequently pricey, so we set up the OTT ecoLogs within the wells of biggest curiosity, in order that we are able to, for instance, view the consequences on groundwater ranges once we switch floor water into an space.”
Henry’s workforce operates numerous trial plots by the dipwells; investigating how the vegetation is altering. His workforce additionally correlates groundwater ranges with vegetation progress, in an effort to higher perceive optimum rising situations.
The Nice Fen space consists of numerous business farms, which function each drainage and irrigation processes, so the groundwater monitoring program additionally helps to grasp the consequences of those actions. As well as, new farms are often acquired and integrated into the Nice Fen, so the monitoring work helps to handle the restoration of this land from agriculture to fenland.
Henry says: “Fenland restoration relies upon closely on a deep understanding of the geology and the water desk, and the consequences of water standing on the native ecology. The water stage monitoring that we undertake offers the information that underpins the science that informs the necessary administration selections which can be made. The standard and reliability of the OTT water stage loggers is subsequently very important, and we stay up for increasing our community of displays because the undertaking continues to develop.” | <urn:uuid:022d914c-ccb1-4090-896d-468950923f17> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blingeach.com/groundwater-monitoring-underpins-administration-of-the-nice-fen/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338073.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007112411-20221007142411-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.945163 | 1,690 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The benefits of grid computing for your business can be significant. However, it’s not for everyone; and like any other new concept, there are many pitfalls to avoid when implementing it.
This article provides some grid computing basics; and points out some common mistakes that can derail your implementation efforts, along with suggestions for remedying them.
For those of you not quite up to speed on the subject, here’s a brief overview of grid technology:
At the centre of any grid is the concept of pooling various resources such as computing, storage, archiving and application software — and eventually also knowledge — and using those resources for several different purposes in a shared fashion.
In its simplest form, called grid computing, a grid is used for either compute- or data-intensive applications. When an application is run, you do not know which server, storage array or archive is involved. This is much like switching on a light or turning on your oven — you draw the required electricity from the power grid, but you do not know where it comes from. Nor do you care, as long as the grid supplies you with the power you need at acceptable rates.
The virtualisation of computing resources has four important effects:
1. Grids are ideal infrastructures to support the ‘anywhere, anyhow, anytime’ usage pattern.
2. By sharing resources not only technical but also human resources, you can more effectively utilise them and reduce the total costs of your IT operations. The better means you have of achieving this virtualization — of managing many systems as one — the more cost-effective your operations will be.
3. You can improve the availability of your applications, because you have given up the one-to-one correspondence between an application and a server. When one server in a grid breaks down, all applications that were running on it are seamlessly moved to some other server in the grid.
4. You can improve the quality of your IT services, because you can ensure timely availability of the required capabilities and capacities. To achieve this, a layer of middleware manages and monitors all the applications and hardware resources, including the network that links the different components together.
Grids are, in general, classified according to whether they are built within a single data centre, across an entire enterprise, or shared by several different enterprises or even larger communities. Grids can also be classified as special-purpose or general-purpose.
According to the Gartner Hype Cycle, which estimates the maturity and the visibility of emerging technologies, internal grids are already climbing up the slope to the plateau of productivity, whereas general-purpose grids are still on the initial rise towards the peak of inflated expectations.
Introducing grid into the business
When moving in this direction, you can start small in the IT department with, for instance, a server consolidation, which may be considered the first step towards grid computing.
It should be remembered, however, that although grid technologies are still emerging and maturing, introducing a grid is not primarily a technical challenge. Grid computing will strongly affect your business on all levels: personnel, organizational, technical, and cultural.
Virtualisation of resources of all kinds is at the heart of grid computing. To achieve this, a paradigm shift in thinking is required at all levels: from ‘my resources’, ‘my services’ and ‘my knowledge’, to resources, services and knowledge as utilities which are not directly owned by some organizational unit.
The idea of owning something needs to be given up. As this very often goes along with a certain loss of power, which is implicitly expressed by the ownership or control of significant installations, this is not an easy task to perform.
Organizational boundaries need to be traversed and bridged within the enterprise and maybe even between different organizations, if your company is closely partnering with others or tightly integrated into a supply chain. Because of this horizontal orientation, cultural, cooperational and coordinational aspects are particularly important and will make the difference between the success or failure of your project.
Business drivers, common mistakes and how to avoid them
Introducing grid computing is clearly a strategic issue. Executive management needs to carefully decide whether to introduce it or not, and if so, to what extent.
Once the strategic decision is taken, a holistic planning and implementation of the transition process is required to make the project a success.
Throughout the entire project, continuous and active executive sponsoring is absolutely vital.
From a business perspective, the main grid project drivers are the need to better support business agility, the need to lower total cost of ownership on both the system and staffing side, and the fear that the ever-increasing complexity of IT infrastructures will soon become unmanageable.
All this is in line with today’s general wisdom that IT is an internal enterprise business service, and the trends to integrate and consolidate, as well as to build, rely more and more on true, open standards.
Introducing grid computing is not easy. Overcoming cultural, organizational and human resources barriers makes it a challenging and fault-prone task. As well, a number of conceptual and technical challenges need to be mastered.
Here are some pitfalls to look out for, together with suggestions to overcome them:
• Failure to provide adequate executive management support and motivation. For a successful grid project, permanent, strong executive sponsorship and continuous motivation of all people involved is imperative.
• The belief that grid computing automatically solves managerial problems with the current infrastructure. Grid is not a panacea. Before you start, the house needs to be in order.
• The belief that introducing grid computing is just a technical challenge. In general, grid computing will strongly affect your business on all levels: personnel, organizational, technical, and cultural. Virtualisation of resources of all kinds is at the heart of grid computing. Organizational and staffing changes are unavoidable and at the heart of the transition process.
• The misconception that tailored grid solutions are available off-the-shelf and can be introduced overnight. Grid computing solutions are not of a “one size fits all” nature. How grid computing should be set up critically depends on your industry sector and your business processes.
• Failure to plan for storage and disaster recovery. Storage and disaster recovery should be an integral part of the effort to introduce grid computing.
• Underestimating security issues. Security considerations should be given highest priority, especially if the grid solution comprises Internet components.
• Beginning with the end in mind. Introducing grid computing must start with the careful analysis of business processes and applications in use. A preconceived notion of the final grid infrastructure can be dangerous.
Benefits of grid computing
If you avoid common mistakes, the benefits of grid computing for your business can be immediate and tremendous.
You can address short-term IT needs on a just-in-time basis for activities which cannot be foreseen or planned a long time in advance.
You can temporarily create capabilities otherwise unfeasible, or capacities elsewhere not available, to reduce design times, design defects or time-to-market for your products.
You can grow yo | <urn:uuid:14e52ef5-ed99-4da6-9a1e-c5a2cef137de> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/gearing-up-for-grid/12226 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338073.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007112411-20221007142411-00545.warc.gz | en | 0.93196 | 1,466 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The integration of secure development best practices and methodologies into development and deployment processes is called SecDevOps. Meaning that SecDevOps aims to prevent security issues from appearing during the development process.
What is DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary to Agile software development; several DevOps aspects came from the Agile methodology.
How DevOps Works
The concept of DevOps practices and agility is nothing new for most companies and developers circling the sun. The most well-known frameworks (e.g., Scrum, XP, etc.) are applied in many development teams and benefits teams, companies, and customers. For example, evidence shows that agile methods cause better performances in comparison to the outdated waterfall method.
According to Puppet’s 2017 State of DevOps Report, high-performing DevOps organizations deploy code 46 times more frequently, with changes being one-fifth as likely to fail in comparison with their lower-performing counterparts.(newrelic.com)
The outdated waterfall method is the most significant contributor to project failure and security concerns for many companies. Another problem with traditional step-by-step programming is that products do not meet customers’ demands and need to be redesigned, taking time and money. So instead, development teams work closely with the customer through DevOps pipelines and continuous deployment and adjust fewer things at the end of the project.
SecDevOps – Putting Security in the Development Pipelines
The goal of DevOps is to create and integrate more features in a shorter time. The risk of this agility is that new versions’ security testing is only applied at the end of the project or after significant releases. Or in some cases, external security teams are hired to perform code reviews or penetration tests.
Since testing takes time and resources or seeking security professionals, developers often do not write their security tests for the software. That is why many companies release new software versions without prior even basic security practices being performed. Especially in the area of web applications, these untested versions become a prime target for hackers.
This lack of continuity in security activities contributes to the 30,000 websites that are hacked every day. So now, the question arises: How can companies leverage the potential of DevOps development while also creating secure software?
SecDevOps Moves Application Security to the Left
And the answer is… shifting security to the left, which is what SecDevOps focuses on. Everyone is responsible for security from the start, even if they adopt an incident response system.
Developers need to make decisions with secure coding practices in mind. They use threat models and have a test-driven environment that includes security test cases. Continuous integration and security testing need to be part of the process and product lifecycle.
A thorough understanding of how the application works to identify how it can be vulnerable is required by SecDevOps. This will give you an idea of protecting it from security threats and establishing proper security guidance. Meaning threat models are often used throughout the development lifecycle to accomplish this and prevent security flaws.
The SecDevOps approach helped the company speed up its development process while reducing code vulnerabilities by 40 to 50 percent.
Example SecDevOps Workflow
Developers use a version control management system to keep track of code changes and collaborate on projects. They can also separate tasks by using branches. To simplify it, it looks a lot like the following steps:
- The developer creates code following the security requirements and commits the changes to the version control system.
- Another dev team member receives a task to review the submitted code by analyzing the static code and checking for security issues or bugs.
- Submitting the code to the test environment and applying the security configurations.
- Running a dynamic automated security testing tool on the test environment app.
- Pushing the app from Test to Production environment.
- Running continuous security monitoring on Production for any active cyber threats.
Best practices for SecDevOps
On the one hand, higher agility leads to a higher production speed and more features in a shorter period. On the other hand, however, this might lead to complexity and security breaches.
On the other hand, security is necessary to protect a business but takes time to implement the agility enemy. So, how are companies able to combine the two?
We want to share a few practices to consider when integrating security and agility to create SecDevOps.
- Security policies and activities shouldn’t be seen as an additional layer put upon DevOps after every deployment but rather as a continuous practice that needs to be thought of from the very beginning of every development cycle.
- Development teams need to reconsider existing processes and practices. Every application or tool needs to be thoroughly checked, to whether it negatively impacts the companies’ security. Perhaps additional mechanisms need to be implemented to monitor the security status of a project.
- To fully implement a security mindset into every corner of the company, Executives have to make sure that a “Security Culture” is lived in every department of the organization.
- As it is neither sufficient to solely think of security at the beginning of the end of a development cycle, developers need to have it in the back of their minds at every point in time. However, this can be exhausting if multiple projects are handled, and the security needs to be checked manually. A simple solution is the implementation of an automated security testing software or SecDevOps tools.
For example, Crashtest Security offers an automated security scanner that continuously checks an application after deploying it to the test system. That way, developers can concentrate on creating features that create business value.
Top SecDevOps Benefits
We have already shown how companies can protect what they created using DevOps. Additionally to the support that comes with security, a few aspects are only possible by integrating SecDevOps. Below, we have put together three major benefits of implementing IT security.
- Enhanced Productivity: With an integrated security framework, developers are enabled to work more efficiently. Every product iteration is secured, and there has to be no worry to spend on security once the project is close to being finished. Additionally, suppose the entire IT infrastructure is safe. In that case, developers can work from anywhere with their computer without concern that a single computer can lead to a hacking attack (e.g., by entering a public Wi-Fi).
- Data Protection: After the employees, data is the most valuable asset for any company. Data is what leads to customer insights and higher business value. Losing access to business data (e.g., through a ransomware attack) can decrease productivity or freeze the entire IT infrastructure (as with the Sony example). In addition, it might lead to direct costs since most companies decide to pay the ransom. A loss of customer data can be even worse since a lack of customer trust has a high impact on sales in the long run.
- Cost savings: The benefits above already lead to (in-)direct cost savings. Additionally, implementing IT security saves money since the cost of fixing a vulnerability is ten times higher than the cost of securing the application in an earlier stage. As the EU issued the GDPR standards in 2018, companies also have to comply with the regulation to avoid high penalties and the public exposure of vulnerabilities that (probably) lead to decreasing sales.
If following the suggestions above, companies can enhance productivity and business value by implementing SecDevOps.
Read in our whitepaper how your company can quickly implement these other efficient security best practices! | <urn:uuid:81a1ca61-06c0-4d45-8340-0a151c37bf1a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://crashtest-security.com/secdevops-best-practices/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334579.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925132046-20220925162046-00745.warc.gz | en | 0.940712 | 1,562 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The progress of autonomous vehicle technology has largely run up against a very human buffer, with considerable concerns emerging about the ability of human passengers to safely regain control of the vehicle should they need to. For instance, research from the University of Southampton showed that it can take up to 25 seconds for people to regain control of the vehicle, which if it's traveling at any real speed is likely to be fatal.
The safety concerns are compounded by our generally poor reactions when we do attempt to regain control of the vehicle. Research from Stanford has shown that the transition from the car controlling things to the human driver doing so is often far from smooth, with the safe operation of the vehicle declining considerably during this transition period.
To make matters worse, a German study found that travelling in an autonomous vehicle tends to make people drowsy, and therefore less likely to be able to safely regain control should the need arise. You may be wondering why this is relevant on a blog about cybersecurity, but whereas each of these three studies were conducted in normal road conditions, there is a burgeoning risk of vehicles being hacked by external sources, and passengers needing to respond in some way to these external influences.
Hacking the car
The risks were ably demonstrated by a team from the cybersecurity company McAfee recently, when they broke into a Tesla car and manipulated it into traveling up to 50 miles per hour. The breach was performed via the car’s MobilEye EyeQ3 camera system, with the attackers able to alter a speed limit sign on the side of the road, thus altering the performance of the vehicle.
The MobilEye EyeQ3 camera system works by reading road signs and other street furniture and feeding that information to the autonomous vehicle so that it responds appropriately to its environment. That the system was capable of being distorted by something as fundamentally lo-tech as placing a tiny sticker onto the speed limit sign so that it appeared to read as 85 rather than 35 was sufficient to encourage the vehicle to whizz along at 85 miles per hour rather than the prescribed speed limit.
The stunt is part of a growing body of evidence highlighting how autonomous systems can be compromised and significantly imperil those passengers in them. For instance, researchers from Tencent were able to fool a Tesla Model S into switching lanes so that the vehicle was driving into oncoming traffic, simply by placing three stickers on the road to give the appearance of a line.
Similarly, researchers from UC Berkeley placed stickers onto a stop sign to trick an autonomous vehicle into thinking it was in fact a 45 miles per hour speed limit sign. These were all distinctly lo-tech approaches designed to manipulate the data inputs received by the vehicles, and they highlight how relatively straightforward it is for current technology to be manipulated such that they become incredibly unsafe.
To date, all of the researchers have been acting in a ‘white hat’ way, with the aim being to help manufacturers overcome these shortcomings. Should the shortcomings not be tackled, however, then there is an array of interconnected computers that present a highly enticing target for attackers.
The McAfee work was shared with Tesla last year so that both they and MobilEye can attempt to improve their systems, but with MobilEye themselves saying that the sign alteration would fool a human driver just as much as an automated vehicle, the indications are perhaps not good. After all, most human drivers would have the situational awareness to understand the low speed limits tend to occur in built up areas, and are typically surrounded by similar speed limits. To go from a low-speed zone to an extremely high-speed zone is therefore very unlikely, and human drivers would know this.
What’s more, many satnav systems today have built in speed limit checkers, so would alert the human driver to any breaches of the speed limit. The autonomous vehicle technology of today lacks all of this, and their inadequacies are compounded by MobilEye failing to accept that such sign manipulation is even a valid form of attack.
In response to the McAfee project, the company said that autonomous vehicles also pull in data from a range of sources, so don’t rely on sensing alone. They believe this provides adequate failsafes as the data from the sensors is cross-referenced with data from elsewhere to ensure no inconsistencies are experienced. While it’s a statement that makes sense, it doesn’t seem to have prevented researchers from placing vehicles into highly compromising situations.
Given these inherent risks, it seems unwise for any passenger in a Tesla taking their eyes from the road, which perhaps defeats the point of the technology in the first place. Given the considerable challenges involved in safely regaining control of the vehicle, and the high risk of something requiring passengers to do that, it seems security concerns represent a considerable speedbump for autonomous vendors to overcome if the technology is ever to reach the mainstream. | <urn:uuid:c3e5c82e-a0ae-47ba-aef6-7cf170c9ab3b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybernews.com/security/how-safe-is-your-car-from-hackers/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335124.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928051515-20220928081515-00745.warc.gz | en | 0.971666 | 988 | 3.015625 | 3 |
The load bank type you need will vary depending on the applications involved. Typically load banks fall into three categories:
Resistive: The most common type, a resistive load bank provides a simulated electrical load for generators and back up power systems. They work by mimicking the operational load that a power source would handle during actual use. When used as a controlled system test, the load simulates real-life resistive loads, such as incandescent lighting and heating loads, as well as the resistive or unity power factor component of magnetic (motors, transformers) loads.
It is important to note that, In many applications, resistive loads make up a small proportion of power consumption. In data centres, for example, it is generally only heating and lighting systems which use a resistive-only load. Alongside this, other aspects of the operation incur reactive loads; these create a lagging power factor (pf), typically around 0.8, which is not accounted for when undertaking a solely resistive test.
Resistive/reactive: Resistive/reactive load banks combine both resistive and reactive elements in one load bank package, which can also be switched to enable resistive only, inductive or lagging power factor testing. This type of system can be used to test the generator set fully at 100% nameplate kVA rating.
Resistive/reactive load banks provide a picture of how well an entire system will withstand changes in load pattern while experiencing the level of power that would typically be encountered under real operational conditions. The inductive loads used in resistive/reactive testing will show how a system will cope with a voltage drop in its regulator. This is particularly important in any application which requires generators to be operated in parallel (e. larger business infrastructures such as major telecoms or data centres) where a problem with one generator could prevent other system generators from working as they should.
In addition to the main categories of loadbank listed above, DC load load banks can be used to provide an accurate load for the discharge of batteries, both following amps and voltage, from 24VDC to 700VDC, with power from 10kW to 664kW. Containerised medium voltage load banks can be used to provide higher voltages up to up to 33kV in both resistive and resistive/reactive configurations.
Tomorrow’s focus: Where will the load bank test take place? | <urn:uuid:a0e544d5-2933-46e8-ade6-d737f19aad9e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://loadbanks.com/load-banks-day-2-of-5-what-type-of-load-bank-do-i-need/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335124.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928051515-20220928081515-00745.warc.gz | en | 0.928427 | 504 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Lesson 1 | Introduction to GDPR
Lesson 2 | Organizations Under GDPR
Lesson 3 | Data covered under GDPR
Lesson 4 | Data protection by design and default
Lesson 5 | Data subject rights under GDPR
Lesson 6 | Data protection impact assessments (DPIAs)
Lesson 7 | GDPR Recap
Haekka’s GDPR Primer is an introduction to GDPR. It covers things that all employees at companies should know about GDPR such as the types of entities covered under GDPR, the data governed by GDPR, and the rights that EU citizens have, and can exercise, on their personal data.
GDPR is a large regulation. This training pulls out the relevant topics with a particular focus on applying those topics to employees at technology companies. GDPR mandates certain obligations for companies that store or process EU citizen data and this training covers those to ensure employees have a high level understanding.
While this training is not required for all employees, it provides the required training for front line workers that may field or have to respond to data subject requests from EU citizens. | <urn:uuid:231fc6b4-dbcb-46d4-8526-9fcdbe87b7c1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.haekka.com/training-catalog/gdpr-primer-an-introduction-to-gdpr | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930212504-20221001002504-00745.warc.gz | en | 0.909515 | 229 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Mainframe computers are the computers that are utilized in large businesses to manage mission-critical applications such as bulk data processing, enterprise resource planning, and transaction processing. The performance of the systems is far higher than that of any other systems, and a significant amount of memory and processors are employed in the systems. The mainframe is a technology in which the requests that are received are processed quickly and then forwarded to the appropriate processor cards for processing. These systems are utilized by large IT corporations as well as Walmart, NASA, and other organizations. Mainframes will continue to be used soon and will not be phased out anytime soon. Many businesses rely on computers as a reliable source of information technology systems.
Components of Mainframe
The following are the most important components of mainframe environments:
Job Control Language (JCL) is an extension of the IBM mainframe and is used as the primary scripting language on the platform. JCL is an authoritative and extensible programming language that makes it easier to operate and customize remote computing resources for computers.
- Jobs that are submitted are executed at a later date and time
- Jobs that are submitted are executed right away
- There is no interaction between the available users
- Interaction between the related users might be flexible
- The debugging process is archived using snapshots
- Making use of a much more participatory approach to debugging
The United States Department of Defense convened a debate in May 1958, and three key committees were tasked with designing the new language. It was given the name Cobol in 1959, which stands for (COMmon Business Oriented Language), and it was first used in 1959. COBOL was first publicly declared in May 1961, and it has been in use ever since.
Users began writing Cobol programs in 1962, which is when the compiler was first designed, from the standpoint of the compiler. The improved version of the game was launched in 1965. In August 1968, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) authorized a standard version of a language, which was thereafter placed into use. The next official revision of the standard, known as ANSI-74 Cobol or Cobol-74, was established in 1974 and is still in use today.
How to improve mainframe performance?
Despite advances in computing technology, the mainframe remains the mission-critical backend system for business logic and transaction processing, which is at the heart of many organizations’ digital transformation efforts. In several industry surveys, it has been discovered that mainframe workloads are increasing year on year, as new business efforts such as DevOps, automation, and modernization enable the creation, delivery, and maintenance of applications across distributed, cloud, and mainframe systems.
For years, changing customer expectations and business requirements have spurred the need for expanded cross-platform application growth and processing capability. Apart from having to handle this increased complexity while also being requested to cut data center costs, new issues such as the coronavirus pandemic have prompted firms to operate on even tighter budgets while continuing to invest in digital transformation initiatives.
As workloads increase and businesses strive to innovate more aggressively, choosing to lower mainframe capacity to save money will only result in decreased application performance and disgruntled customers in the future. The cost of increasing mainframe capacity and supporting application growth, on the other hand, is a burden that most IT budgets cannot absorb at any time, let alone during a pandemic.
In the meantime, IBM is continuing to optimize the IBM Z mainframe to increase its operating efficiency, which is occurring in combination with new cloud-like pricing models that reduce expenses. Still, as more businesses add mainframe workloads, there is an increasing need to reduce capacity cost increases by making the most of available mainframe resources.
The mainframe performance and capacity management tools IT teams use to accomplish this are essential because they enable them to understand how existing capacity is being used and where adjustments are required to enable application and transaction growth without having to purchase additional capacity.
How do mainframe performance management technologies aid in the optimization of existing CPU MIPS on a mainframe?
Adoption of a competent mainframe performance and capacity management system that provides a graphical and data-driven technique for lowering or regulating MIPS usage is a critical first step toward improving the utilization of present mainframe resources.
When it comes to selecting the most appropriate tool, search for a solution that increases your ability to do the following:
- Determine which workloads are causing the high CPU usage and when they are occurring, as well as what is causing CPU spikes that are limiting processors and having negative effects on mainframe performance and budget.
- Predict future MIPS consumption per workload over time, based on expected application growth and changing business requirements – showing whether or not there is sufficient present capacity to manage application expansion without acquiring additional processing power.
- Investigate the applicability and potential benefits of deploying less expensive specialty processors, such as zIIPs, to perform the same tasks while reducing MIPS consumption, thus freeing up more expensive MIPS for critical workloads that must be executed on general processors.
- Determine the optimal configuration settings for distinct logical partitions (LPARs) and the impact of prospective changes to the settings for the appropriate allocation of CPU resources on the overall system performance. Design and track the placement and movement of LPARs on various CPC platforms to minimize resource consumption and limit MIPS growth.
- Investigate the efficacy of specifying MIPS capacity for z/OS LPARs to restrict MIPS consumption, as well as the potential negative repercussions of soft capping, which limits an LPAR’s ability to utilize CPU resources.
When an LPAR is seeking processor resources, it is important to accurately detect delays rather than real-time high CPU MIPS utilization, to avoid needlessly increasing MIPS capacity and instead optimize configuration choices and tuning.
Delegate zIIP with the task of processing
It is possible that the use of specialized hardware, such as IBM’s System z Integrated Information Processor, will result in a significant reduction in the processing load (and expenditure) placed on your mainframe’s Central Processing Unit (CPU). The offloading of up to 90 percent of the CPU cycles to zIIP may allow you to reduce elapsed time by 25 percent in the cases of Copy, SMS Compression, and Sort, among other operations. Apart from that, the implementation of zIIP demands a single investment in hardware and does not necessitate any ongoing licensing payments.
Reduce the amount of time that can be spent on batch processing
On mainframes, batch processing is just as significant as real-time online transaction processing (OLTP), which is typically done on a transactional basis. Many businesses rely significantly on batch runs when it comes to compiling operating statistics, generating client statements, or processing payroll for their staff.
Batch processing is preferred to Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) in certain instances because of its higher throughput. When compared to online transaction processing (OLTP), which involves many database queries for each transaction, batch processing only needs to read data once and keep it in memory.
As a result, when batch and OLTP processes are competing for CPU or storage resources, it is vital to give preference to OLTP. Because batch processing consumes resources, it is critical to optimize the JCL that controls it to maximize the amount of time that batch processing may be completed.
How do programmers assess mainframe performance in the absence of MIPS?
Monitoring tools are available in a variety of configurations, based on the machine you want to monitor and the component of performance you want to assess, such as CPU performance or storage space utilization.
Mainframe MIPS are imprecise, mainframers have created more accurate methods of determining the speed and performance of their systems, which are described below. Monitors, which are software-based tools, are used to conduct today’s measurements. There are several tools available for the z/OS, including Tivoli Omegamon XE, BMC MAINVIEW for z/OS, CA-SYSVIEW, ASG TMON, and RMF (which stands for Resource Management Facility). These Monitors collect samples at regular intervals to measure things such as processor activity, channel activity, and resource activity, among other things.
Performance measures are taken by DASD Monitors, including disk space consumption, the amount of free space available, and system performance. BMCS DASD Manager Plus and Tivoli Omegamon XE are two examples of DASD Monitors in use today.
Industries in which mainframes are still important
What is it about mainframe systems that keep corporations like IBM investing such large sums of money in research and development? Why are corporations retaining their mainframes and even increasing their investments in them?
The short answer is that they continue to be the only sort of hardware capable of efficiently processing the massive volume of transactions that is now a frequent feature of corporate operations in many industries. To summarize, mainframes are still an important resource in businesses such as the ones listed below:
Banking Department IBM Z mainframes are used by 44 of the top 50 banks in the world. Banks of all sizes and sorts are required to conduct massive amounts of transactions. Investment banks place a high priority on high-frequency trading because they must be able to react instantly to changes in the financial markets. Retail banking, which revolves around credit card transactions, ATM withdrawals, and online account updates, necessitates the processing of massive numbers of transactions by banks of all sizes. Mainframes enable banks to process data at a scale that is inaccessible to commodity servers in either scenario.
An example of a satisfied customer: Precisely Technology helps a financial services company save millions of dollars by offloading sorting to zIIP.
- Insurance Departments IBM z mainframes are used by all of the world’s top ten insurance companies. Insurance firms rely on data and a lot of it to survive and thrive. Data assist them in assessing risk, setting prices, and investing in the most appropriate markets. Insurers rely on mainframes to ensure that they can handle the massive amounts of data that drive their operations.
- Healthcare Departments Healthcare is another field in which data is now king – and, as a result, mainframes are becoming increasingly popular. Mainframes are responsible for the safe, compliant, high-volume, and highly accessible data storage and transactions that are essential to the operation of modern healthcare organizations.
- Government Offices Government agencies of various kinds, from the Internal Revenue Service to the National Weather Service, must store and analyze massive volumes of data. Mainframes are still assisting them in their endeavor.
- Aviation Offices You don’t have to be a pilot to recognize that flight networks are complex and constantly changing environments. The reason for this is that airlines – not to mention government authorities that monitor airlines and even aircraft manufacturers – rely on mainframes to ensure that people and planes reach their destinations in the most efficient manner possible.
- Retailers Mainframes are still in use by 23 of the top 25 major retailers in the United States. Traditional merchants have relied on the mainframe for many years to assist them in processing transactions and keeping track of inventory. This technology can be used by a variety of businesses, not just traditional brick-and-mortar establishments.
In addition to traditional merchants, online retailers can profit from the ability of current mainframe systems to manage massive amounts of transactions.
At their fundamental, mainframes are high-performance computers with vast amounts of memory and processors that conduct billions of basic calculations and transactions in real-time. The mainframe is crucial to business databases, transaction servers, and applications that demand high resiliency, security, and agility
Plus, mainframes’ modernization has expanded their capabilities while also making them more accessible to IT workers. The outcome is that mainframes are still in great demand, and mainframe markets are projected to rise over the next few years. Above, I have given all the necessary information on mainframe performance. | <urn:uuid:1c5ac723-5518-4f21-b011-a8ac1608ef4e> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itprc.com/mainframe-performance-management/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338213.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007143842-20221007173842-00745.warc.gz | en | 0.942265 | 2,486 | 3.234375 | 3 |
IBM has made significant progress in the search for a potential replacement for today's silicon chips.
A team of eight researchers has discovered how to place carbon nanotubes on a computer chip, and has managed to build carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNTFETs) with a density of one billion nanotubes per square centimetre – an arrangement 100 times more concentrated than has ever been managed before.
Carbon nanotubes share silicon's semiconductor nature and CNTFETs can transmit electrons very well when switched on, but have one special advantage. They have the potential to get significantly smaller than silicon chips.
The researchers developed a method through which the cylindrically arranged lattices of carbon atoms can be accurately positioned in individual trenches. More precisely, a series of technical procedures involving advanced chemistry are employed to encourage the nanotubes to arrange themselves.
The team is positive about the breakthrough but is so far refusing to claim that the process will be marketable. The researchers announced, "Carbon nanotubes have the potential in the development of high-speed and power-efficient logic applications. However, for such technologies to be viable, a high density of semiconducting nanotubes must be placed at precise locations on a substrate."
The particularly good news is that the new method is compatible with existing technologies. "This new placement technique is readily implemented, involving common chemicals and processes, and provides a platform for future CNTFET experimental studies," the paper said. "Furthermore, these results show that CNT placement via chemical self-assembly is a promising approach for developing a viable CNT logic technology compatible with existing semiconductor fabrication."
At IDF in September, Intel's senior fellow, Mark Bohr, predicted another decade of Moore's Law (opens in new tab) but admitted that the 5nm processors it intends to manufacture by the end of that period might not be made of silicon. The company is currently known to be experimenting with the carbon allotrope graphene.
Other potential alternative materials and methods include the involvement of arsenic, gallium, indium, spintronics and silicon photonics.
IBM's study, entitled "High-density integration of carbon nanotubes via chemical self-assembly," is published in yesterday's edition of Nature Nanotechnology (opens in new tab). | <urn:uuid:2157e95c-d71b-44ca-a8cc-f6d842f1e581> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/2012/10/29/ibm-makes-carbon-nanotube-computer-chip-breakthrough/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334596.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925193816-20220925223816-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.936291 | 475 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Technology is an inseparable part of human lives. Machines are the medium for humans to lighten the burden of work. Let’s understand how it applies in the healthcare industry.
Technology is an inseparable part of human lives. Machines are the medium for humans to lighten the burden of work. In this context, machine learning comes into play. This code is the path for humans to decide a roadmap for designing an application. One such application is health care. The article will address the application of AI in health care focussing on its complex needs. Let’s get started!
AI and Healthcare
Artificial Intelligence is applied to every aspect. It answers the needs of various industries pertaining to applications and results.Algorithms being fed in the systems are addressed to answer a set of questions for the Healthcare industry. This stage requires segmentation about the types of patients and their medical history. These records make it easy for the experts to design algorithms and prepare sets focusing on the particular treatment.
There may be cases where patients are diagnosed with multiple ailments. In this scenario, Electronic Health Records or EHRs come to the rescue of the authorities. It’s easy to access the medical history of patients to assist hospitals to decide a line of treatment for the patient. The fact of easing the efforts of consulting and other procedures can be done with Artificial Intelligence. Drug discoveries are made smooth with the consulting of experts and patient feedback.
AI and Healthcare Staff
In the technological era, AI and healthcare are closely associated. The essence of treatment lies in the fact of diagnosis and their treatments. AI can provide these suggestions with the records of the patients. However, AI has its limitations and human intervention is needed. The focus of Machine learning is mainly on applications of the medical courses. With these technologies, the medical staff can focus on real-life examples making work efficient. The introduction of Virtual reality has eased the learning and application of lessons.
AI and patient care go hand in hand as it designs the diet plans and allied aspects. These designs target the nutritional needs of the patients. It increases the probability of recovery and designs post-discharge plans. AI keeps a record of the follow-ups of the patient and notes the changes in medicines. The patient may be referred to various specialists to increase his rate of recovery. This record is maintained in the database directing the authorities in decision-making with expert opinions if needed.
Going on the right track
In the course of the treatment, AI alerts doctors with possible threats that may be faced. These warning signs assist doctors to prepare backup plans to face contingencies. These situations require clinical trials for the development of drugs to target specific diseases. In these plans, patient engagement is the key to understanding their feedback on the drugs. These feedbacks are a path to understand the level of drug-effectiveness and innovate if necessary. In these stages, the application of AI plays an important role to gather information about the patient journey.
The final word
Healthcare and AI have proven their importance in the patient engagement and monitoring journey. This blend has addressed the cure for innumerable diseases and increased the ratio of patient recovery to a great extent. Drug discoveries with AI have increased the pace of innovation and increased staff efficiency.
For more such updates and perspectives around Digital Innovation, IoT, Data Infrastructure, AI & Cybersecurity, go to AI-Techpark.com. | <urn:uuid:7d63653a-c20e-4be8-bb60-921e76f2a204> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ai-techpark.com/use-of-ai-in-healthtech/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.93704 | 697 | 3.40625 | 3 |
How We Got Cyber Smart addresses cyber safety, bullying and online safety for elementary school-aged children. It follows the adventures of two kids Olivia and Jack, as they navigate the online world and tells the story of how they became cyber smart and dealt with their online bully. It provides practical advice to parents and children in how to protect themselves online and look after their safety.
The information pulls from realistic online events as the author explains the dangers of the Internet in terms children will understand. It incorporates the challenge of cyber safety in today’s world and addresses this concern in the lives of two school-aged children and how their parents help navigate their online experiences. This book is a helpful tool for all parents, caregivers and teachers of school-aged children to help start the conversation about online safety and safe online habits.
More online safety and bullying information about how we got cyber smart can be found at howwegotcybersmart.com
By Lisa Rothfield-Kirschner
Lisa Rothfield Kirschner is the author of the celebrated book ‘How We Got Cyber Smart’. As a concerned mother of two young boys and Tech Communications professional, Lisa creates resources to help parents, caregivers and educators have conversations with primary school-aged children about staying safe online. Lisa’s focus is on making online safety learning accessible for younger children in non-threatening / frightening ways. Through the joy of reading and play, children will absorb essential lessons. Trusted adults can then reinforce these lessons through conversation. This passion also sees her regularly develop content for ySafe, Australia’s leading Cyber Safety education provider. Lisa is also a regular contributor to the Women In Security Magazine.
Review: “I am a 3rd grade teacher who was suddenly thrust into distance learning due to Covid-19 school closures. I wanted to find something to share with my students, since they will be navigating the online world more frequently now. We talk about being safe, kind, and responsible IN school and this book helps me carry over those expectations in a distance learning environment. The narrative straightforward advice for kids and caregivers is written in a manner that kids can relate to.“ | <urn:uuid:fead263f-b808-4a1b-910a-8210f350a78c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybermaterial.com/how-we-got-cyber-smart/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335530.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001035148-20221001065148-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.94458 | 440 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The Search for a Royalty-Free Video Codec
Recently, there have been some discussions in the news about the quest for a royalty-free video codec in key standards organizations. How did this quest get started and what exactly is a royalty-free video codec anyway?
For starters, a codec is short for “coder-decoder” that is capable of compressing and decompressing large media files containing music or video. Codecs make it possible to deliver music or video over cable networks, or the Internet for that matter, so that these media files do not consume enormous amounts of bandwidth while being transmitted.
A royalty-free video codec is one that is licensed or otherwise available free of charge for use in some or all applications, i.e., through some form of agreement by the owners of the underlying intellectual property rights that the technology can be licensed without a fee. As cable set-top boxes collectively represent a large application and use of codecs, a royalty-free codec could be an attractive option versus a royalty-bearing codec.
A royalty-bearing licensing model has sufficed for traditional pay TV service providers because a simple one-time license fee is generally built into the cost of the set-top box. However, in web- or cloud-based markets there is no singular device owned by the video provider to attach a license fee. Rather, the video service is typically provided via web browsers that are generally deployed for free. So, the hunt is on for a royalty-free codec that may be better suited in the Internet driven marketplace for video distribution.
Two key standards bodies, the IETF and the W3C, which are responsible for developing the specifications for the Internet and the World Wide Web, have been collaborating on the development of a new real-time communication standard called WebRTC. More specifically, the W3C has requested that the IETF recommend a video codec that will be mandatory to implement for this new standard and their preference is that it would be a royalty-free codec. Why? Because most standards that are developed for the World Wide Web are indeed royalty-free standards.
In response to this request from the W3C, the IETF has launched a project to identify a royalty-free codec.
It is worth noting that for the last decade, MPEG has been exploring the feasibility of a so-called “Type 1” standard for video coding. What is a Type 1 standard and how is it different from a royalty-free codec? A “Type 1” standard is a formal standard published by a standards organization for which patent holders are prepared to grant licenses free of charge whereas a royalty-free codec is not necessarily a formal standard; for example, an open source project. This move by MPEG was seen by some as especially compelling because MPEG traditionally develops high-performance standards that are typically royalty-bearing. More recently MPEG has actually launched a project to develop a Type 1 video coding standard, intended for Internet applications.
These separate but related efforts have sparked an intense competition as to what will be the preferred royalty-free video codec. Interestingly, amongst the codecs being considered in both MPEG and the IETF, the two candidates that appear most likely to succeed are the same two video codecs: VP8 and AVC!
Power in your Corner – Who’s backing which Codec?
VP8 is owned by Google, which has worked with MPEG LA to arrive at an agreement with most of the owners of essential patents so that Google can absorb licensing fees for these patents to help make VP8 royalty-free. VP8 is available from the WebM open-source project managed by Google.
The MPEG Type 1 AVC codec being considered differs from the current AVC codec that is widely deployed in set top boxes, which is not royalty-free. How are these AVC codecs different? It turns out that years ago, when AVC was first being developed, MPEG created the Constrained Baseline profile, which was expected to become a limited and royalty-free version of AVC. The result was not widely adopted for multiple reasons, including reasons related to the licensing issues for the underlying patents. The more widely deployed AVC codec is the High Profile for AVC (again, not royalty-free).
One of the major proponents of the royalty free Constrained Baseline AVC codec is Cisco. How far is it willing to go to win this race?
Last year, Cisco boldly announced that it would open source its AVC binary executable and that it would absorb the associated MPEG LA licensing fees so that AVC can be made available for use in the web for free. That was pretty exciting news, and clearly an indication of lengths Cisco is willing to go to help sway the outcome of this race in favor of AVC. More recently however, MPEG closely evaluated the visual quality produced by both the Constrained Baseline version of AVC and VP8. Based on the test results reported at the January 2014 MPEG meeting, MPEG has initiated the steps to formalize VP8 as a new addition to the MPEG-4 suite of standards. This action by MPEG is a credit to MPEG’s recognition that while it develops world-class standards from the ground-up, some technologies that are developed for specific applications could also be formalized as standards.
Ultimately, a final selection and corresponding announcement one way or the other by MPEG could carry leverage into the codec competition underway in the IETF. In the meantime, the quest for a royalty-free codec awaits a final outcome.
Dr. Arianne Hinds joined CableLabs in 2012 and is currently responsible for orchestrating the participation of CableLabs in industry consortia and standards developing organizations. She is an active participant in MPEG, and currently chairs the INCITS L3 Technical Committee, the parent committee overseeing the participation of the United States in both MPEG and JPEG. | <urn:uuid:b99c6a32-e49e-4fa9-b4c5-77189b7db53b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cablelabs.com/blog/royalty-free-video-codec | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337322.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002115028-20221002145028-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.949689 | 1,212 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Children are to receive jargon busting leaflets explaining how their personal data is shared with social media companies. David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab commented below.
David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab:
“We’ve seen that millennials can be unaware of the ways in which their personal data could be used by companies, and demystifying lengthy terms and conditions documents could go some way to solving that. However it is my view that people of all ages could benefit from this kind of education.
In this era of connected devices and social media we often share important information without a second thought and without fully realising the consequences should this data fall into the wrong hands.
It is important that the general public recognises the value of personal data – not just to ourselves but to would-be cybercriminals. New data protections laws are designed to make organisations more careful with our data, but regardless of this, it is important that, at an individual level, we know what information is being kept and how it’s being handled – which will also reduce the likelihood of it falling into the wrong hands. Being vigilant online – whether when using a work computer, home laptop, mobile or tablet device – needs to become second nature – like road safety. Undertaking simple steps, like regularly changing passwords, reviewing default settings on social media and using Internet security software across all devices can significantly help protect data.” | <urn:uuid:c0ac546f-0b10-435c-ac5f-a436b4626d9a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/expert-comments/children-receive-advice-explain-social-media-personal-data-rights/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.948982 | 299 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Cyberattacks have become commonplace in today’s world. Most of these attacks never reach the news cycle, and, outside of the circles that monitor these occurrences, few people even know about them. However, when an attack targets a city in the United States—and does so successfully and viciously—all eyes are quick to focus on it. One such attack happened just recently. The government of the city of Baltimore fell victim to a ransomware attack which caused massive damage not only to their infrastructure, but also to the city’s reputation. This blogpost will examine the Baltimore ransomware attack in detail in order to better understand how and why it happened as well as what can be done to protect you and your company from a similar attack.
Baltimore Ransomware: What Happened?
The incident that became known as the Baltimore ransomware attack occurred in May of 2019 when a ransomware called “RobbinHood” infiltrated Baltimore’s servers. Ransomwares are types of malware (software designed with an intention to cause damage to a computer infrastructure) used to extort money from victims by threatening to either block their access to a system or release private data to the public internet unless a ransom is paid. By encrypting the victims’ files, these attacks make it nearly impossible to recover the data without actually paying the culprits the sum they request.
In Baltimore, the initial attack resulted in most of the city government’s computer systems being taken offline. Hackers demanded payment of 13 bitcoin (over $76000) to restore their access to the internet. The note left by the hackers also threatened to increase the ransom within four days and permanently delete the data if their requirements were not met within ten days. The mayor of Baltimore refused to meet these demands. Whether or not this was a wise decision is yet to be determined.
The Consequences of the Baltimore Ransomware Attack
The attack had a significant negative impact on the Baltimore real estate market. Some 1,500 pending home sales were delayed when the system went down. Additionally, city officials had to introduce workarounds for people to be able to pay their water bills and traffic tickets, since the credit card system was knocked out as well. It is thought that the hackers may have leaked some private documents, and even phone lines were affected. Overall, every Baltimore city government department (except police, fire, and emergency response systems—either these were held to a higher security standard, or the attack was limited to avoid complete chaos in the city) was impacted by this cyberattack.
As of early June 2019, only a third of Baltimore’s government employees have had their computer access restored. The rest are still locked out. And, since baltimorecity.gov emails have been unavailable since the attack started, many employees resorted to creating gmail accounts to circumvent that part of the problem. The mass creation of gmail accounts triggered Google’s defense systems which blocked those accounts in order to prevent spam or fraud. Later, when they learned about the attack, Google unblocked the accounts; however, this obstacle added another issue to the hailstorm of problems that Baltimore was dealing with at the time.
In the end, the estimated cost of the Baltimore ransomware attack was over $18.2 million. Some think this number might increase before all systems are restored.
How Was the Attack Conducted?
The malware used in this attack is a fairly new piece of software called RobbinHood. While most ransomware relies on spam to distribute itself, RobbinHood uses various other methods like hacked remote desktops of Trojans.
When RobbinHood is initiated on an infected computer, it immediately disconnects the computer from the network. Then, it stops all services such as antivirus protection and access to mail servers and databases. After clearing logs and disabling Windows automatic repair, it starts encrypting the files on each system. RobbinHood also creates ransom notes and accompanying documents explaining what has happened on every affected machine.
At the outset of the attack, it was believed that the RobbinHood ransomware was used along with EternalBlue, a NSA-developed self-propagating tool which targets Microsoft windows operating systems. The EternalBlue code was leaked online in 2017 by an unknown person or group of people using the alias ShadowBrokers, and it has been used multiple times since then to execute extremely destructive cyberattacks all over the world. Russia’s NotPetya and North Korea’s WannaCry are two examples of attacks that ended up costing businesses and governments billions of dollars.
Baltimore Ransomware: Who is to Blame?
Baltimore City leaders were very quick to blame the NSA since EternalBlue, the tool which the NSA had managed to “lose,” was thought to be the distribution method for the RobbinHood malware. The NSA denied responsibility for the attack, claiming that Baltimore had more than two years to prepare for it by patching their servers. The NSA had warned Microsoft about the leak, and they had already patched the vulnerability exploited by the tool.
Later, it was discovered that the EternalBlue code was not actually contained in the Baltimore ransomware code, although there is still a possibility that it was used to help propagate the malware.
We still don’t know exactly who conducted this attack. It will also take some time before we can access and analyze all of the details of this cybercrime.
Baltimore’s Lack of IT security
Baltimore’s inadequate IT practices made them susceptible to this attack. The city did not have a centralized technology budget, and they chose not to spend money on cyberattack insurance.
More importantly, Microsoft released the security patch that would have blocked this attack back in 2017. The weakness exploited by the hackers only works on machines running Windows software that is two years out of date. The city of Baltimore should have never allowed their staff to be using this software in the first place. Baltimore should have been better prepared. Hopefully, they have learned from their mistakes—and we can too.
The Ever-Growing Need for Regular Backups
There is no reason not to have a proper backup system in place when running any kind of business, let alone a city’s entire governmental infrastructure. If the city of Baltimore had backed up their data safely, they could have restored all the lost data fairly quickly. Sure, there would still have been some system downtime, but the amount of time and money lost would not have come close to the impact this attack had.
Given today’s easy access to public clouds like AWS, it is easier than ever to have your data securely stored away. Systems like AWS GovCloud, a region designed specifically for those who need to meet special requirements and compliance standards are utilized heavily by various government agencies and departments for security purposes. Baltimore and other unprotected cities, states, and public agencies should be considering implementing these going forward.
The Best Ammo to Disrupt Ransomware: take regular backups and have a rapid DR plan in place
Ensuring that your organization has a cloud backup and cloud disaster recovery plan in place before ransomware hits are the only foolproof ways to keep control of your data without giving in to demands. Backup and disaster recovery also protect your organization from a host of other disaster scenarios such as human error, malicious insiders, weather, AWS region outage and bugs. N2WS Backup & Recovery provides Enterprise customers with flexible recovery along with the flexibility to perform both cross account and cross region backup which is essential in protecting your mission critical data. You can trial N2WS Backup & Recovery which is fully functional and free for 30-days.
Looking back at this costly, painful, and embarrassing mistake, it is quite clear that its cause is Baltimore’s failure to protect itself. This is shocking, considering that the cities of Atlanta and San Antonio were also recently hit with ransomware attacks—events that should have alerted all cities’ governments to their vulnerabilities. Regardless of Baltimore’s budgetary constraints, their IT staff should have patched their servers. They should now know to keep secure backups walled off in order to recover from any kind of attack.
Whether or not Baltimore has learned from its mistakes, we have all been provided with a reminder of what can happen when security is ignored. | <urn:uuid:2def8334-7291-4ad5-9dd7-6924caa746f4> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://n2ws.com/blog/aws-disaster-recovery/baltimore-ransomware-attack | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.97007 | 1,700 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Guide on How to Prevent Phishing
Phishing attacks (in which hackers send fake emails in an effort to trick users into clicking malicious links or giving away private information) have been around for decades. But they are constantly evolving, with new types of phishing attacks (such as spear phishing and clone phishing) targeting users.
It’s thus important to ensure that your strategy for combating phishing is constantly evolving, too. This article offers tips on how to prevent phishing. We’ll discuss how to detect phishing emails (or “phishes”), tools to help prevent phishes from reaching your end-users and best practices for educating users with the information they need to avoid falling victim to phishing attacks.
There’s no way to guarantee complete safety against phishing attacks. But by following the best practices described below, you can help minimize the risk that the end-users you support will fall for the phishes they receive.
For more information about phishing please refer to our guide on the topic:
Further reading Anti-Phishing Guide
How to Detect Phishing Emails
Even within phishing emails that look at first glance just like the real emails sent out by legitimate banks, application sites, and other sources, there are often clues that make it easy to identify the emails as phishes:
- The email asks for personal information, such as birthday information, a phone number, a social security number or mother's maiden name. Real messages should never ask for this kind of data.
- Misspelled words or bad grammar.
- They tell you you’ve won the lottery or some other contest, usually one you didn’t enter.
- The email asks you to make a donation for some heart-wrenching cause, to an organization with a name close to a real one, but slightly different.
- The email has a threatening tone or declaration of emergency. Phishes may say that an account has been hacked, that benefits are about to lapse, that you’ve been recorded through your webcam, or that there’s another threat already on your system. They often urge immediate action, in order to give the recipient less time to think.
- The email has attachments. (These may appear to be relatively innocuous, like PDFs or Word files, but they may, in fact, be applications that will plant malware.)
- The actual URL is different from the one shown. (A link may be underlined text or an image. Hovering over the link shows the actual URL that clicking on the link will take you to. If this doesn’t match the apparent sender of the message, it’s a prime indicator that the message is fake.)
How to Prevent Phishing
Anti-phishing systems scan for discrepancies between the apparent sender and actual sender, links that lead to known malicious sites, and malignant attachments. A good anti-spam system will block many phishes without having to scan the message for malicious content, simply because the apparent sender doesn’t match the actual sender, or because the actual sender is sending the same message to many users at the same time.
However, user training is still important even with a phishing scanner in place. Hackers are constantly trying to find new ways to get past filters. For example, they will set up new domains every day, and take down domains once the security vendors have identified them as fake. This constant change makes it difficult for security vendors to keep their signature files up to date.
Check out these marketing templates that we created to help MSPs sell Microsoft 365 as a managed service:
Deploying Internet Security Software
One important concept in security software is to have multiple layers. An antivirus app on the end user's system is not enough. A corporate firewall is not enough. An email filtering appliance is not enough. Any one of these systems may be bypassed by a new, sophisticated attack. The best approach is to use several layers of security, to keep them updated, and to train users regularly on new types of attacks.
Many firewalls (which may also be called UTMs or unified threat management systems) scan incoming email and look for security threats. The critical step for using a firewall to help combat phishing is to ensure that its anti-phishing functions are enabled and to keep it updated so that new types of phishing threats are covered as soon as the security vendor detects them.
Your email system, whether it is hosted by a vendor like Google or runs on an internal email server such as Microsoft Exchange or Linux Sendmail, has the capability to use spam filters that detect many types of email that pose a threat. This includes phishes, as well as emails with viruses and unsolicited commercial emails.
These filters can also be used as separate appliances in conjunction with a hosted or internal email server. Under this approach, the mail is routed to the anti-spam system first, then on to the email server. Many vendors claim catch rates of 99% or higher for spam, but the more critical measurement is false positives. If users have to check their spam folder regularly for legitimate emails that have been erroneously blocked, they will not only waste a lot of time but will also have the opportunity to open phishing emails that have been blocked for good reason.
Install an antivirus solution, schedule signature updates, and monitor the antivirus status on all equipment.
Good antivirus software is necessary. It will not only block phishes but stop other types of malicious content as well.
Further reading Top Antivirus Solutions for Managed Service Providers
If a user does click on a link in a phish that is intended to take them to a site that will install malware or just make them think they’re logging into a legitimate bank or application web site, the web filter will block them from reaching the site if it has been identified as a malicious site.
One thing to train users on regarding this topic is that they should trust the web filter. It doesn’t do much good to have the web filter ID a site as malicious if the end user bypasses the filter because they think it’s legitimate.
Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, adds a level of verification to user logins. Rather than simply requiring a username and password, 2FA sends a text message or another second factor to which the user must respond correctly before being able to log in. If a hacker has a user’s login username, and even their password, they will still not be able to enter a website because they won’t be able to get the second factor right.
Like all other security solutions, 2FA can be bypassed by clever hackers, so it’s not a set-and-forget function; it is simply another technique to add an additional layer of security.
Further reading Two-Factor Authentication: Solutions, Methods, Best Practices
In addition to having virus protection software on your computer, it is crucial to use a password manager to manage your online credentials.
Rather than having a user type in a password each time they visit a site, a password manager stores the passwords in a secure database. When the user goes to the login page for a given website, the password manager will fill in the username and password. Since the password manager stores the login information for each site separately, a site whose URL is close to that of the correct site, but not an exact match, will not have login information stored. This gives the user another clue that something is wrong.
Phishing Prevention Best Practices
The single most important anti-phishing practice is to assume that all security solutions are temporary. As happened to the Maginot Line, eventually hackers will go around existing security systems. The systems must, therefore, be updated regularly and supplemented with additional tools regularly.
Here are some best practices and tips on how to prevent phishing:
- Encrypt all sensitive company information. This should occur at several levels – encryption of database records, encryption of files on your systems, encryption of all data stored in the cloud, ensuring that service providers encrypt company data that they are storing on their systems, and ensuring that data stored by partners or vendors is also encrypted. Many of the recent highly publicized leaks have occurred because a third party stored a password file that wasn’t encrypted, or placed data in the cloud without properly encrypting it.
- Make sure all traffic that flows between your company and other websites is encrypted with SSL or TLS. Make sure that your SSL certificate is up-to-date and that it uses a high number of bits (at least 1024, although 2048 or more is suggested), as well as with 256-bit encryption).
- If you’re taking payments from customers via the web, use something like Elavon’s secure hosted payments to protect your customer’s data. Make sure your provider has up-to-date PCI DSS and ISO 27001 certifications from independent auditors.
- Require encryption for employees who telecommute. This is another attack vector that can be secured via encryption: Don’t just secure your internal systems, but make sure that any user who connects from outside the system is secure while accessing your system.
- Keep all systems current with the latest security patches and updates. As hackers and their attacks are constantly evolving, so to must your security systems.
- Be cautious about your employees accessing your network via public wifi connections. Wifi set up at airports, coffee houses, or retail establishments may not be encrypted, making it easier for hackers to intercept web traffic or emails and trace login information, passwords or certificates that are used to access your network.
- Beware of shortened links. Shortened links do not show a website’s real name and hence, they can be more easily used to trick the recipient into clicking them. Users should be trained to be skeptical of shortened links.
- Verify the target site’s SSL credentials.
- Make sure your endpoint security software stops malicious pop-ups. Pop-ups may be initiated by ads from a third-party site and can redirect a user to a different site, or capture personal information using iframe technology.
- Verify the target site’s SSL credentials.
- Check read up on the evolution of malware. Since hackers are constantly refining their techniques, it behooves the security manager to do the same. Sites include ones that cover security in general, like www.darkreading.com and security vendor sites like www.symantec.com and www.fortinet.com.
Employee Education on Phishing Prevention
The education of employees is a critical element of phishing prevention. Employees should be aware of the dangers of clicking on a dangerous link in an email. It is critical to educate all employees and do it regularly.
Unfortunately, many upper-level employees may believe themselves to be too important to attend training, too smart to fall for hacker’s tricks. Those employees also tend to have access to sensitive data or banking sites. This is why many spear-phishing attacks target these employees specifically. Some examples of the millions of dollars that other companies have lost in these types of attacks may go a long way toward gaining their attention.
Phishing awareness education should be:
- Short and engaging. The old KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) principle works here – regular emails that cover one or two new threats are better than a quarterly 10-pager.
- Regularly delivered. Consider the turnover. Phishing awareness training should be part of the employee's orientation program. (Most experts recommend that you administer phishing protection training every two months.)
- Progression tracked. Show what you’re doing to protect corporate systems and how threats are continuing to evolve.
- Relevant to the modern-day. Don’t use articles from ten years ago. There are enough fresh examples.
There are some more best practices of employee education on phishing prevention:
- Teach your employees what a phishing email looks like, how to spot fakes and what to do when they get one.
- Tell your employees to come forward and report possible attacks when they think they’ve received one.
- Periodically make your employees aware of successful phishing attacks that have happened in your industry.
- Perform phishing attack simulation. Create a third-party email address and send out emails from time to time to see if you can catch anyone clicking on links when they shouldn’t.
- Don’t leave out upper management. They need to be just as ready as the rest of your company and (as noted above) they are often specifically targeted by spear phishes and clone phishes.
- Print out the list of things to look for and have your employees keep it at their desks somewhere where it will be easy to see.
Phishes and other types of malware can be stopped, but you can’t put up a wall and assume it’ll be secure for the foreseeable future. Just as hackers are constantly working to bypass security systems, your security systems and techniques must constantly evolve to counter the new threats. | <urn:uuid:ae127870-64fc-4bf9-8a00-d4b590a8a323> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.msp360.com/resources/blog/how-to-prevent-phishing/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030331677.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924151538-20220924181538-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.936737 | 2,744 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Traditionally Windows file sharing has been limited to creating shares on local servers, setting permissions and accessing files over local area networks or VPN’s. Windows File Sharing has many benefits including speed of access, simplicity, unlimited storage capacities, integration with active directory and the ability to deploy mapped drives to 1000’s of machines instantly using login scripts or group policies. For this reason, the majority of enterprises continue to maintain significant investments in a Windows file sharing infrastructure including servers, high speed networks, Storage Area Networks and Network Storage devices. These devices provide the reliability, speed and redundancy enterprises demand for a highly efficient workforce.
Sharing files using Windows active directory is easy. It’s important first to plan the directory structure. Companies typically create root folders which in turn become shares that can be mapped to various departments (for example: Finance, Projects, Executive, HR). In the past companies would map different drive letters to each department. This is no longer necessary since Microsoft shipped the addition of the “Access Based Enumeration” feature as noted below.
It’s also important to plan for future growth by allocating sufficient disk space for file. It is best practice to locate files on a separate drive letter from the Operating System Drives to prevent future issues with drive space or an operating system failure from corrupting files. Larger organizations typically store files on Network Attached Storage appliances with failover and backup built in and utilize DFS namespace to redirect users to redundant back end file servers.
Windows File Server shares can be created using Server Manager or by right mouse clicking on any folder and choosing “Sharing” on the sharing tab to create a share that can be mapped by PC’s. Microsoft has a great article here on how to create a file share using Server Manager here. For our purposes we will create a share using the manual process so we can have complete control on permissions, share name and share permissions.
Creating a Windows File Share (Easy)
Once you have created the folder structure, right mouse click on the folder and choose properties, then choose share to create the share and set permissions:
Typically, you would add the various groups for whom you wish to have access to your folder structure. With the simplified interface the actual share creation and permission details are set for you. Using the Advanced Share interface, we can see the actual permission applied to both the share and NTFS.
Creating a Windows File Share (Advanced)
There are 2 components when sharing folders in Windows. First the actual Share name and permission on the share and the underlying NTFS permissions. In the early days of Windows file systems (fat and fat32) did not allow setting of permissions so Microsoft allowed administrators to set permissions on the share itself rather than the folder structure underneath. Fortunately, NTFS has been around for many years and it’s no longer necessary or advisable to set permissions at the fileshare level and you’ll see that when you use the easy share interface permissions at the share level are set to the special group “Everyone” and full control.
So it’s clear that we should always set the permission on the share to “Everyone” with full control when using the advanced sharing option to get around this legacy feature and only use NTFS permissions to apply security. One additional note on File Shares and Naming – to make the share hidden (not broadcast it on the network for browsing), append a $ sign to the end of the name. For example: Finance$ can be used to hide the share from appearing when users browse the network. To map a drive to it users need to know the name – for example \\server\finance$.
Next, we need to set permissions on folders using NTFS security. If we look at the security permissions for the shared folder we created in our example we will see the user groups we chose have been granted permissions on that shared folder:
From this interface we can add additional users and groups or disable inheritance so that we can apply custom permission on this folder only. This interface is also where we go to take ownership of files and folders. In the easy share wizard security results, we can see both groups we added have “Full Control” for all files and folders. While Full Control makes sense for Administrators, it’s not advisable for regular user groups. By granting regular users Full Control we have also granted them the “Take Ownership” right which will cause issues down road. Files “Owned” by one user can become unavailable to other users resulting in support requests and the need to have the administrator “Take Ownership” so these files are again available to everyone with rights to the share. In our example we will want to set the “Domain Users” group to all rights except for “Full Control” using the security tab properties on the folder. This simple step will prevent file ownership troubleshooting issues in the future.
Microsoft has a built in utility on Windows to clean-up ownership issues called “takeown”. We advise customers to cleanup existing ownership issues prior to deploying MyWorkDrive. This command will take ownership of the folder or drive, and all files and sub-folders in the folder or drive.
Open an elevated command prompt (administrator).
To grant ownership to administrators group:
takeown /F “full path of folder or drive” /A /R /D Y
Another option to cleanup ownership permissions is to use the icacls command.
To grant ownership to administrators group:
icacls “full path of folder or drive” /setowner “Administrators” /T /C
Access Based Enumeration using Windows File Sharing
Access-based enumeration (ABE) displays only the files and folders that a user has permissions to access. If a user does not have Read (or equivalent) permissions for a folder, Windows hides the folder from the user’s view. This feature is active only when viewing files and folders in a shared folder; it is not active when viewing files and folders in the local file system. By utilizing this feature and setting the proper permissions, network administrators can reduce the numbers of shares needed and use ABE to only display files and folders the user have permissions to when accessed over UNC paths.
ABE does require CPU cycles to calculate files and folders to display so it’s important to properly size servers to handle the required load based on the number of users access file shares and the number of files and folders to display.
DFS Namespaces is a role in Windows Server that enables you to group shared folders located on different servers into one or more logically structured namespaces. This makes it possible to give users a virtual view of shared folders, where a single path leads to files located on multiple servers. The advantage of DFS is that drives can be mapped to one DFS Name space and automatically redirect to the then current live file share. This makes migrating to new file servers in the future very simple since a new file server can be redirected to at any time.
Backup and Retention
The first line of defense for any organization are effective, tested and redundant backups. In addition to scheduling backups on an hourly, daily, weekly or other intervals IT administrators can take advantage of the “Volume Shadow Copy” service built into Windows Server. By enabling hourly snapshots, file and folders can be rolled back to previous versions instantly without having to go to backup systems. Volume Copy Snapshots are not a backup strategy in of themselves but they can provide and additional level of protection.
Backup and retention is also of great concern to protect from data loss, corruption and to comply with legal requirements. Typically, most businesses must retain up to 7 years of backups that can easily be restored in the future. For this reason, businesses are reluctant to store their files in database driven file systems either locally or in the cloud including Document Management Systems (DMS) and Enterprise File Sync & Share (EFSS) systems. With traditional NTFS based Windows file sharing archive backups can be stored on backup hard disks making restoration as simple as copying over files – even several years later. With DMS or EFSS systems the restoration of archive data is significantly more complex. Restoration requires backing up and restoring entire operating systems, reinstallation of SQL databases in use at that time (which may no longer be available), restoring backups of SQL data and reintegration of servers back into active directory. Cloud based EFSS or systems require 3rd party backup subscriptions which must be maintained indefinitely to prevent loss and removal of backup file data by the cloud vendor.
Secure File Share Remote Access
Businesses of all types are turning to MyWorkDrive to support Remote Work while retaining the speed and simplicity of traditional Windows file sharing using our hybrid cloud add-on. With MyWorkDrive IT departments simply setup MyWorkDrive Windows server software, point to existing Windows file shares and in minutes Secure File Sharing remote access functionality is made available to users without VPN including:
Web File Manager browser access to file shares
Office Online document editing ( with files stored on the local file servers )
Mapped Drive from Anywhere without VPN
Mobile App File Access and Editing using Microsoft Office Mobile Apps
Public and Private file sharing
Two Factor Security (2FA)
Single Sign On
Traditional Windows File Sharing at gigabit speed continues to be available in parallel to MyWorkDrive. Users simply leverage file sharing using traditional methods on the local area network and use MyWorkDrive when cloud functionality or remote access is needed. For IT Departments, No SQL databases need to be maintained or licensed making file backup and restoration simple – NTFS based file shares remain in place.
Sharing and collaborating on files to users outside of the company is essential to a productive workforce. With MyWorkDrive internal files can be made public effortlessly with our OneDrive integration. By leveraging our OneDrive integration businesses can protect sensitive data by transferring public files as needed to OneDrive without opening up internal systems to outside parties or enabling insecure file sharing links that can expose company servers to data breaches.
With MyWorkDrive businesses of all types are able to add cloud capabilities to Windows file shares while protecting and controlling their data to future proof their file server infrastructure investments. | <urn:uuid:f1aefc35-bb9d-495f-8e50-ec192702562c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.myworkdrive.com/file-sharing/windows/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.909133 | 2,116 | 2.65625 | 3 |
With more than 100 million physical items already in its collections and new digital material coming in by the terabyte, the Library of Congress is developing standards, specifications and tools to help ensure that this material remains accessible to future generations.
We are warned to be careful about what we put online because data on the Internet lives forever. But keeping random copies of files on servers, routers and databases is not the same as preservation, said Martha Anderson, director of program management for the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation program. Digital data can be ephemeral. “That is the paradox,” she said.
Web sites can disappear in a matter of days or change repeatedly in a matter of hours. Files can become lost or corrupted, formats and hardware change, and physical media such as tapes and disks deteriorate far more quickly than anticipated.
So Congress charged the LOC in 2000 with preserving the nation’s digital heritage and at the same time making sure that its collection of 29 million books and 105 million other items gathered over the last 200 years remains available for the next 200 years. Toward that end, NDIIP has developed specifications and tools for the transfer of large digital files; worked with government, academia and industry on best practices for digitizing and preserving data; established programs to use delivery platforms such as Flickr to make LOC content available; and partnered with the private sector to harvest content from the Web for archiving.
Across the board: The LOC’s Office of Strategic Initiatives is preserving everything from books to Dictabelt recordings.
The challenges of wedding a physical past to a digital future are varied.
“The biggest difference is the element of time,” Anderson said. “Some physical artifacts can be put on a shelf and left for many years. Books from the 18th century are fine, for example. This is not so much the case with sound recordings and film.”
The technology changes and the media deteriorate. Finding playback equipment for a wax cylinder, an old movie or a Dictabelt can be difficult. And when they are available, the cylinder, film or belt might not be playable.
“The whole domain is looking to digital to carry this forward,” Anderson said.
But digital conversion is time-consuming, and each type of material requires its own technology and special handling. Although the library has been working since the 1990s on digitizing its collections and has made millions of files available online, Anderson estimates that only about 1 percent of the library’s holdings have been digitized.
And digital data can be tricky to handle. “Some formats are fairly stable,” Anderson said. Text and image files have not changed a lot in recent years, and there are plenty of PDF, TIFF and JPEG files that can be easily opened today. But sound and video formats tend to change more quickly. And the physical environment for storing and accessing files changes rapidly. “Servers and digital storage are a challenge. These turn over every three to five years and everything is moved off to another server.”
To accomplish its digital mission, the library takes advantage of work being done in industry and academia to establish standardized environments and tools rather than developing everything itself. Among the initiatives NDIIP is participating in are:
- Development of the BagIt protocol for large data transfers.
- A collaborative Web site for federal partners developing guidelines for digitizing records.
- The National Digital Newspaper Program, in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities, to digitize and preserve regional newspapers.
- State-of-the-art facilities at the library’s Packard Campus for preserving the world’s largest collection of audiovisual works.
- Partnering with universities and the Internet Archive to harvest and preserve more than 69 terabytes of content from the Web.
- Supporting standards development for digital content, including Office Open XML, PDF/A and JPEG2000.
- Development of open-source tools for receiving, archiving and accessing data in digital repositories.
It is not the technology that poses the greatest challenge to digital preservation, Anderson said. “The biggest challenge is social, getting organizations to understand the value of digital materials.”
Most organizations focus on day-to-day operations without concern for preservation. “We would like to make preservation a part of regular operations and workflow,” she said. Part of the problem is the complexity of the tasks. “It is very complicated even to archive your own e-mail at home,” so preservation has not yet become a part of everyone’s digital environment.
Another challenge in establishing long-term programs for digital preservation is the speed of change in the digital environment. “Our job as we saw it in 2001 was much simpler than we see it today,” Anderson said.
When Congress gave the library the job of digital preservation, there was no Wikipedia, Google Maps, Flickr or Facebook. Today, those tools and others like them have changed the way digital content is created and distributed.
“We worked for nine months to gather video from the Internet,” Anderson said. “During that nine months, YouTube came onto the scene and changed everything.” | <urn:uuid:0ccc8787-afb7-49b0-919c-21d0f984eec1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://gcn.com/2009/10/library-of-congress-preservation-program-works-with-millions-of-items-terabytes-of-data-in-a-full/287625/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335573.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001070422-20221001100422-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.933938 | 1,085 | 2.984375 | 3 |
The Conficker worm has been making headlines for several months, thanks to periodic refresh cycles that have shifted both its attack vectors and its behavior once inside a system. Part of what makes the worm unique is that it takes advantage of a security flaw Microsoft had actually patched several months prior; any system with the MS08-67 security update was immune to Conficker.A's initial attack. It's been theorized that the worm initially latched on to a relatively small group of enterprise computers with long patch update cycles; researchers are now combing through data from the earliest stages of the worm's existence, attempting to find the system or group of simultaneously infected systems that represent a digital Patient Zero.
The University of Michigan is using data from a series of darknet monitoring sensors first put in place by the Department of Homeland Security six years ago. When Conficker scans for potential victims—specifically, people who haven't patched MS08-67—it does so in a particular way that can be (and presumably was) picked up when the worm first activated. Finding that first querying signal into the depths of cyberspace requires the analysis of a vast amount of information—PC World reports the team expects to search some 50TB of data to discover what it's looking for.
The only reason it's possible to do this kind of analysis on Conficker is because the worm did not include code aimed at blocking the DHS' sensor network. Jon Oberheide told PC World that Conficker's oversight was an unexpected break. "We were kind of surprised that it did this completely random scan, and didn't blacklist our particular sensors," Oberheide said. "If they'd done a little bit of research, they could have discovered our [network]."
This revelation is itself surprising. When the Bush Administration first proposed the installation of Internet-monitoring sensors, the issue caused a fair amount of digital churn between the usual suspects. Regardless of whether one is for or against the Department of Homeland Security monitoring Internet traffic, hopefully we can all agree that the network should at least be effective if we're going to have one. The entire premise of a "darknet" sensor network rests on the idea that the monitoring takes place from an invisible, unknown location. If a "little bit of research" is all it takes to obfuscate the DHS darknet, it might be time for a few coats of black plaint, a new sheet, and a better duck blind.
The analysis project, if successful, could yield a wealth of valuable data on how a worm was able to spread from a small group of compromised systems into the wider Internet. Epidemiologists might also learn something valuable from the spread pattern—it's been generally observed that digital propagation patterns map well to real-life infections/epidemics in at least some cases. Understanding Conficker's infection history could help us understand and model the phenomenon known as herd immunity. In Conficker's case, herd immunity did not protect the wider Internet from attack. Understanding why it didn't could help security white hats design systems that resist the spread of "disease" more effectively. | <urn:uuid:a2399286-eecf-4afc-b1b5-170aa3d71ced> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/researchers-hunting-for-confickers-patient-zero/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.957602 | 630 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Tutorial by:Kevin J
There are many different problems that can occur when a RF signal is transmitted. The signal travels in a straight line and cannot negotiate around objects to arrive at a client radio. Because of this attenuation or loss can occur. The ideal scenario is a direct line of sight with no obstructions to cause a change to the transmission. This is just not possible for all clients as buildings have rooms with thick walls, heavy doors, stair wells, etc. If you can understand the different behaviors you can deploy a wireless network that can overcome the hurdles presented by reflection, refraction, absorbsion, scattering, multipath and diffraction.
Reflection happens when a signal hits a smooth flat object and bounces off the surface or reflects. Example: A bank shot in basketball. The ball reflects off the backboard to the basket
Refraction is when a signal passes through an object with a different density and bends the signal in another direction. A good example of refraction is a glass of water. The water refracts or bend the light to make an object appear in a different position.
Absorption occurs when an object completely takes in the signal and retains some or all of it. The effect is a loss of signal or in some cases a complete loss signal. A good example of absorption is a sponge. If you place a sponge on a spill it will absorb the spill
Scattering is caused by the signal hitting and uneven surface and reflects in many different directions. The reflection results in loss of amplitude and the single transmission is now several weaker transmissions.
Multipath occurs when two signals arrive at the same time. This happens by all of the different behaviors mentioned above. Say your laptop transmits signal one and it reflects off a wall. Then it transmits signal two which has a direct line of sight an travels directly to the receiver. Because of the reflection of signal one the signals both one and two arrive at the same time. The worst effecet of Multipath is data corruption. To combat multipath, MIMO has been implemented with 802.11 n and the effect of multipath has been reduced.
Diffraction the partial bending of a signal as it encounters an object. The entire signal doesn’t strike the object so half the signal continues on the original path while the othe half gets reflected onto another path. For example a traffic jam. One car has stalled in the middle lane. IT doesn’t affect the other lane in the fact that they do not have to change path they can continue on but the drivers in the middle lane have to change path to get around the stalled car.
At Aruba, we believe that the most dynamic customer experiences happen at the Edge. Our mission is to deliver innovative solutions that harness data at the Edge to drive powerful business outcomes.
© Copyright 2021 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LPAll Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:2895d331-d1cc-4904-93e0-172bbf093309> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://community.arubanetworks.com/blogs/archive-user1/2020/10/19/rf-behaviors?CommunityKey=a2332bbb-d2b4-467d-a356-ab71d38546b7 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.927839 | 592 | 3.5625 | 4 |
What motivates people to commit crimes is something that has vexed academics and policymakers alike for several decades. Economist Gary Becker famously proposed his notion of the "rational criminal" in the 1960s. Such an individual will logically think through the potential fruits of their labor and offset this with the possible costs should they be caught and punished.
Of course, just as the rational economic actor has largely given way to a more nuanced perspective espoused by behavioral economics, our understanding of the modern criminal is equally sophisticated. This is especially true in the world of cybercrime. For instance, a few years ago, a research by Arizona State University was conducted to try and shed light on the motivations behind ethical hacking.
For such individuals, the payoff isn’t a direct financial one, but they do nonetheless undergo some of the same analyses as those outlined by Becker, albeit with the payoffs often being of a social or ethical nature.
Attack and defense
Of course, in many criminal instances, measures are taken to both stop crimes from taking place by organizations and to increase the chances of getting away with it by the criminals.
"A cybercriminal with greater skills or more advanced technology has a better chance of circumventing the target’s security measures, but the intended victim’s countermeasures make it less likely that the cybercriminal will succeed," say the authors of a new paper that assesses the risks and payoffs for modern cybercriminals.
The researchers construct a model that attempts to illustrate the processes through which the criminal attempts to go about their work, the victim tries to stop them, and the social planner establishes punishments and deterrents.
It's a dance in which the social planner usually moves first, as they set the penalties should the criminals be caught. The potential victim then moves second by implementing various measures to protect themselves from cyberattacks, or at least to be able to identify the attacker should one occur. Last, but not least, the cybercriminal makes their move in deciding whether to launch their attack, how to do so, and what measures to use to avoid detection.
The model suggests that strict punishments for cybercrime don't actually do much good. Indeed, far from deterring criminals, they actually seem to increase the amount of effort the criminals put into avoiding detection.
This somewhat counter-intuitive finding arises from the fact that the criminal will be basing their decision in large part on the likelihood that they will be caught. Therefore, if the punishment for detection is increased, then they will exert extra effort to ensure they don't get caught, which also makes the reward that much more likely.
"Thus, as criminal penalties increase, cybercriminals use more sophisticated programming, and the cybercrime is more likely to succeed," the researchers explain. "Because of this, increased fines can lead to reduced social welfare, especially when the victim’s loss is large."
What's more, a larger penalty for cybercrime may also induce the potential victim to reduce their own efforts to limit the chances of hacks occurring. In other words, making punishments more severe can have the counter-intuitive consequences of making criminals work more effectively and victims less effectively to ensure the crimes succeed.
Indeed, the researchers believe there are certain circumstances in which the cybercriminal will not be deterred regardless of the size of the punishment they face. This scenario unfolds when the benefits to the criminal are huge but the loss to the victim is relatively small.
"When deterrence is impossible, the fine should be as large as possible when the loss to the victim is relatively small, but the fine should be 0 when the loss to the victim is above some threshold," the researchers explain. "The reason is that when the loss to the victim is small, the large penalty keeps her from investing too much in self-protection, but when the loss is larger, the penalty of 0 keeps the offender from trying so hard to succeed."
So if large punishments don't really deter cyber criminals, what can lawmakers do? One option would be to fine the victims so that they have a greater incentive to keep the criminals out and ensure their systems are secure.
This incentive for the victim to bolster their defenses can work effectively in deterring the cybercriminal as it makes the chances of a successful attack that bit smaller. The researchers argue that while in most crimes, punishing the victim would be seen as unfair and unjust, this is often not the case for victims of cybercrime. This is because the actual victim is usually the customer whose data is stolen.
"Deterrence occurs when the loss to the victim and the associated externality are large and the benefit to the cybercriminal is relatively small," the researchers explain.
With cybercrime on the rise during the Covid-19 pandemic, the findings from the paper perhaps provide some food for thought for lawmakers seeking to provide an effective deterrent. | <urn:uuid:ff8cbddc-309d-4d52-9bab-998fdc9a6969> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybernews.com/editorial/strict-punishments-for-cybercrime-are-useless-here-is-why/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.967027 | 996 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Go (golang) is a statically typed and compiled programming language designed by Google. Over the years, it has become a language of choice for developers to build concurrency backend applications while maintaining high performance at scale.
This course teaches you all the prerequisites to understand which kind of vulnerability can be found inside Go code. You will learn how to find low-hanging fruit bugs manually and automatically using different Go auditing tools. You will discover how to use existing Go fuzzing coverage-guided frameworks, triage/debug crashes, and improve your code coverage. Finally, you will discover how to build custom Go fuzzers and implement advanced fuzzing techniques to find in-depth bugs on popular Go packages.
Along this training, students will deal with a lot of hands-on exercises allowing them to internalize concepts and techniques taught in class.
This course is suitable for people that are new to Go. All the theory and concepts about Go security and Go fuzz testing will be explained during the course. | <urn:uuid:fc8ac3b1-b9b0-47e2-859d-aa18d77c69fe> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://fuzzinglabs.com/go-security-training/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.918764 | 204 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Artificial intelligence – more specifically, the machine learning (ML) subset of AI - has a number of privacy problems.
Not only does ML require vast amounts of data for the training process, but the derived system is also provided with access to even greater volumes of data as part of the inference processing while in operation. These AI systems need to access and “consume” huge amounts of data in order to exist and, in many use cases, the data involved is private: faces, medical records, financial data, location information, biometrics, personal records, and communications.
Preserving privacy and security in these systems is a great challenge. The problem grows in sensitivity as the public becomes more aware of the consequences of their privacy being violated and misused. Regulations are continually evolving to restrict organizations and penalize offenders who fail to respect users’ rights. British Airways was, for example, recently fined $228 million by the European Union for privacy violations.
There is currently a fine line that AI developers must walk to create useful systems to benefit society and yet avoid violating privacy rights.
For example, AI systems are an excellent candidate to help law enforcement rescue abducted and exploited children by identifying them in social media posts. Such a system would be relentless in scouring all posts and matching images to missing persons, even taking into account the likely changes of years passing by, something impossible for humans to accomplish accurately or at scale. However, such a system would need to do facial recognition analysis on every picture posted in a social network. That could identify and ultimately contribute to tracking everyone, even bystanders in the background of images. Sounds creepy and you may likely object. This is where privacy regulations and ethics must define what is allowable. Bringing home kidnapped kids or those who are forced into sex trafficking is very worthwhile but still requires adherence to privacy fundamentals, so greater harms aren’t inevitably created.
To accomplish such a noble feat, a system would need to be trained to recognize the faces of children. For accuracy, it would require a training database with millions of children’s faces. To follow the laws in some jurisdictions, the parents of each child in the training data set would need to approve the use of their child’s image as part of the learning process. No such approved database currently exists and it would be a tremendous undertaking to build one. It would probably take many decades to coordinate such an effort, leaving the promise of an efficient AI solution for finding kidnapped or exploited children just a hopeful concept for the foreseeable future.
Such is the dilemma of AI and privacy. This type of conflict arises when AI systems are in training and also when they are put to work to process real data.
Take that same facial recognition system and connect it to both a federal citizen registry and millions of surveillance cameras. Now, the government could identify and track people wherever they go, regardless if they have committed a crime, which is very Orwellian.
But innovation is coming to help - federated learning, differential privacy, and homomorphic encryption are technologies that can assist in navigating such challenges. However, they are just tools and not complete solutions. They can help in specific usages but always come with drawbacks and limitations, many of which can be significant.
- Federated learning (aka collaborative learning) makes possible the training of algorithms without local data sets being exchanged or centralized. It’s all about compartmentalization, which is great for privacy, but it difficult to set up and scale. Additionally, it can be limiting to data researchers that are desperate for massive data sets containing the rich information needed for training AI systems.
- Differential privacy takes a different approach, attempting to obfuscate the details by providing aggregate information but not sharing specific data, i.e., “describe the forest, but not individual trees”. It is often used in conjunction with federated learning. Again, there are privacy benefits but it can result in serious degradation of accuracy for the AI system, thereby undermining the overall value and purpose.
- Homomorphic encryption, one of my favorites, is a promising technology that allows for data to remain encrypted yet still allow useful computations to be done as if they were unencrypted. Imagine a class of students being asked who is their favorite teacher: Alice or Bob. To protect the privacy of the answers, an encrypted database is created containing the names of individual students and the corresponding name of their favorite teacher. While in an encrypted state, calculations could be done, in theory, to tabulate how many votes there were for Alice and for Bob, without actually looking at the individual choices by each student. Applying this to AI development, data privacy remains intact while training can still proceed. Sounds great, but in real-world scenarios, it is extremely limited and takes tremendous computing power to accomplish. For most AI applications it is simply not a feasible way to train the system.
For now, there is no perfect solution on the horizon. It currently takes the expertise of and committed partnerships between privacy, legal, AI developers, and ethics professionals to evaluate individual use-cases to determine the best course of action. Even then, most of the focus is placed only on current concerns and not on applying a more difficult strategic viewpoint of what challenges will emerge in the future. The only thing that is clear is that we need to achieve the right level of privacy so we can benefit from the tremendous advantages that AI potentially holds for mankind. How that is achieved in an effective, efficient, timely, and consistent manner is beyond what anyone has figured out to date.
Originally published on HelpNetSecurity https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/01/23/ai-privacy-problems | <urn:uuid:589ee0dc-ed44-4d72-8f8b-423d5a60c18d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cisoplatform.com/profiles/blogs/there-is-no-easy-fix-to-ai-privacy-problems | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.953859 | 1,159 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Girls and young women spend 40% more time on unpaid housework chores than boys and young men, according to new research from UNICEF.
The additional time spent contributing to housework and caregiving duties has been shown to have a direct impact on women’s later employment, therefore increasing the existing inequalities in the gender pay gap. This is due to the extra weight of chores being carried over to adulthood.
The study conducted by the Universities of East Anglia (UEA), Birmingham and Brunel, followed the lives of 12,000 children aged 8 to 22 from India, Ethiopia, Peru and Vietnam through a longitudinal cohort study of childhood poverty, by analysing the employment participation in any paid work and any sector (including agriculture), type of employment and wages.
Prof Shireen Kanji, Professor of Human Resource Management at Brunel University London, said: “It seems that in comparison to men, women's employment is likely to be driven to a greater extent by lack of choice or by need, and is characterised by fewer opportunities for well-paid, higher-quality employment.”
Longer hours and more work for girls
As girls were more likely to assist in household chores than boys, girls faced disadvantages that linked to greater inequalities, such as access to piped water, which shapes the amount of necessary work, according to UNICEF.
The more time girls spend participating in household chores, the less time they are able to contribute to their education, which jeopardises their future employment prospects.
“Longer hours of unpaid household work that reduces girls' time for study may therefore limit their future lives by constraining employment opportunities,” says Prof Fiona Carmichael, Professor of Labour Economics at Birmingham Business School. “This confirms that the care burden to women of their greater share of household work starts back in childhood.”
Data found that women’s hourly wage of US$1.46/hour is significantly less (p=0.001) than men's US$1.77/hour at age 22. This means that there is already a gender gap in employment participation (85.72% of men versus 70.64% of women).
However, the study also found that girl’s with families that have higher employment expectations of them from the age of 12, had a higher chance of gaining higher-paid employment by age 22.
Findings were first published in the journal Feminist Economics, under the study, “The contribution of girls' longer hours in unpaid work to gender gaps in early adult employment: Evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam”. | <urn:uuid:9dc599c7-5804-43e9-b147-2b9f66c2e547> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://march8.com/articles/unpaid-household-chores-found-to-widen-gender-pay-gap | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030333455.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924182740-20220924212740-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.967858 | 539 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS):
A cloud computing service that allows the user to back up their data and assets by providing third party-services, and in the case of failover, it includes data recovery. This backing up data and IT infrastructure are known as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). The organization does not have to arrange all the resources independently; it relies entirely on the DRaaS provider’s services and resources.
Working of Disaster Recovery as a Service:
DRaaS provides disaster recovery by backing up the data and assets in virtual locations. This whole process includes the following key steps:
The assets and the data on the primary site are replicated, and that replicated data is transferred to the remote and virtual environment established by the DRaaS. The replication process must include the physical and virtual servers. To avoid data loss at the time of failover, DRaaS should take snapshots of the data and assets time by time.
The speed is the primary and significant factor at the failover time because it determines the amount of data loss and recovery.
After the failover, it is mandatory to restart the replication process as soon as the completion of failback.
Need of Disaster Recovery as a Service:
Followings are the main five reasons for an organization or enterprise to go for DRaaS:
- Security-related attacks
- On-premises power outages
- Network or hardware failures
- IT system, software, or application errors
- On-premises data center failures
Due to the reason mentioned above, every organization and business needs DRaaS. DRaaS provides the best data backup and recovery services at the time of the disaster.
Disaster Recovery as a Service model:
There are mainly three models for DRaaS available to the customer organization, such as:
Assisted Disaster Recovery as a Service:
This type of Disaster Recovery as a Service model fits the organization’s customized software and applications. The Assisted DRaaS is responsible for providing IT expertise and services to optimize and enhance the disaster recovery plan.
According to the requirement, the customer independently or dependently implies the disaster recovery plan, assisted DRaaS.
Managed Disaster Recovery as a Service:
The Managed DRaas model is the best for an organization that lacks IT expertise and time. In managed DRaaS, Disaster Recovery service providers are fully responsible for resources, services, management, optimization, and infrastructure and application changes. The customer is not responsible for any Data Recovery plan or benefits.
Self-service Disaster Recovery as a Service:
If your organization has experienced and specialized IT expertise and disaster recovery personnel, then the self-service DRaaS model is the best fit. It is the most reasonable and affordable model as the customer has to manage, optimize, monitor, test, examine, and plan the disaster recovery itself. The customer has to host IT infrastructure, hardware, software, and other resources on its own.
Pros and Cons of DRaaS:
DRaaS has its pros and cons simultaneously. Advantages and disadvantages of the DRaaS include the followings:
Pros of DRaaS are as followings:
No duplication of storage:
While availing DRaaS services, there is no VMware License Key duplication of storage hardware in the data recovery center and primary data center.
Relaxed in-house IT staff:
The IT staff is free of backup and data recovery worries and can focus on other responsibilities.
No need for the secondary data center:
DRaaS excludes the Tally Prime 32 Bit Download need for the secondary data center for recovery and backup purposes.
Provision of data recovery capabilities:
It provides data recovery Anu Script Manager capable expertise and specialists to establish an effective and enhanced data recovery plan.
Disadvantages of DRaaS includes the following:
Rely on service providers:
The most significant disadvantage of DRaaS is that the customer has to rely on the service providers at failover or disaster.
Trust the disaster recovery services:
The organization must trust the DRaaS service providers to implement the infrastructure and IndiaFont disaster recovery plan. The organization has to entrust the DRaaS service providers to meet the organization’s recovery time objective and recovery point objective.
Potential performance issues:
Cloud applications and software may experience performance and deployment issues.
There might be any bandwidth challenge while replicating data and assets.
Key considerations to choose Disaster Recovery as a Service:
While selecting the DRaaS, the followings are the key considerations to keep in mind for any organization or enterprise:
Assistance by the DRaaS
Reliability of the DRaaS
Cost of DRaaS:
The cost depends on the model you select. DRaaS is very reasonable and cost-effective. Your organization has to pay for the services monthly. If any organization does not invest in Disaster Recovery, they might lose up to $ 100,000 per hour of downtime. | <urn:uuid:72635a92-703f-444a-b4fd-f8d1d312d919> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://enteriscloud.com/what-is-disaster-recovery-as-a-service/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334644.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926020051-20220926050051-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.936322 | 1,074 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Depending on where you live, your electric bill can be super expensive no matter which season we’re in. You run the AC all the time during summer and the furnace during winter. We just don’t seem to get a break.
To tackle that problem, you should consider a smart thermostat. These handy smart devices are easy to install, and they can save you money in the long run. Plus, wouldn’t it be nice to turn on your AC when you’re away, so you come home to a comfortable home? Tap or click here for our picks.
But what about the rest of your home? Most electronics continue to consume energy when they’re “off.” Why does this occur, and what can you do about it? We’re here to answer these questions and help slash your power costs brought to you by our sponsor, SimpliSafe.
Why do appliances stay on when powered off?
When certain appliances are powered off but still plugged into electrical outlets, they passively consume electricity. This is referred to as “phantom energy.” Most of these devices draw an insignificant amount of energy, but others, such as those listed here, suck a higher quantity of power, earning the title “energy vampires.”
Research shows that when enough devices are plugged in, the standby power can swell to equal 20% of your electric bill. Here are some of the biggest contributors:
1. Chargers: Have you made it a habit to leave a charger or charging cable plugged in next to the couch or other convenient location? As handy as this practice is, the charger will continue to draw power. When your fully charged cellphone remains plugged into an outlet, it will continue to drain your home’s electricity.
2. Computers: Most of us don’t bother turning off our computers. Instead, we put them into sleep or hibernate mode. While these settings allow the computer to turn on quickly, it can be a drain on your electric bill. If your desktop has a monitor with a separate power supply, it too will consume energy while in this lower power mode.
3. Televisions: When you turn your TV off, do you notice its power light turns red? If so, this indicates your television is still sucking electricity. Note that most newer TVs have a listening feature that can automatically turn on by your voice or other devices, despite being “turned off.”
4. Streaming boxes: If you have a streaming box for your TV, any time you power it down, it continues to use energy to record shows you’ve scheduled. The device further requires power so it can receive a signal from its remote at any given time.
5. Game consoles: Ever turn off your game console before completely shutting down your last session? Though keeping them on allows you to pick up where you left off, it requires the devices to remain powered. Of course, during any periods your gaming system is off, your console continues to perform tasks like installing software updates.
6. Printers: Do you turn off your printer at all? Or do you merely leave it in standby mode when you’re done using it for the day? This habit ensures your printer sucks up electricity at all times. If your printer is wireless, be aware it requires a higher amount of energy due to maintaining an active Wi-Fi signal, even when powered down.
How to reduce or stop energy vampires
Beyond the recommendation to unplug all devices when not in use — which is unrealistic — there are ways you can reduce and stop wasting electricity, including the use of energy star appliances, outlet timers, surge protectors and standby power killers.
Energy Star appliances – Energy Star is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program that certifies devices that meet various energy efficiency standards. While using Energy Star appliances will not eliminate your phantom power issue, it will decrease energy consumed when your appliances are both on and off.
Outlet timers – The use of outlet timers, such as this handy mechanical model, will not stop powered-off appliances from sucking electricity; however, they can reduce power consumption by turning off devices and equipment that are left on by mistake or are in standby mode.
Surge protectors – Surge protectors and power strips have come a long way from protecting a few household appliances. Why not make turning off your office devices simple with a surge protector power strip that can accommodate a variety of outlet sizes and has USB ports for charging cables?
Plug all of your devices’ power cords into one surge protector to ensure that your equipment’s energy pull is equivalent to that of unplugged devices when you turn the power strip off.
Standby Power Killers – Equipment like your TV should be unplugged to stop it from racking up kilowatts on your energy bill; however, you can eliminate this type of phantom power by merely plugging your television into the TV Standby Killer. This device plugs into a standard wall outlet and uses an infrared sensor to determine when you turn off your TV using its remote. Once detected, your television is OFF, not in standby mode.
Don’t let energy vampires suck your home’s electricity. Get to unplugging your devices, install some power-saving gadgets and slash your energy usage.
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By clicking our links, you’re supporting our research. As an Amazon Associate, we earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Recommendations are not part of any business incentives. | <urn:uuid:17deaa65-1899-44f3-b0b6-fa2ddeeb7ec1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.komando.com/tech-tips/6-common-power-drains/598718/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334644.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926020051-20220926050051-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.926473 | 1,380 | 2.53125 | 3 |
In the 1960s, Americans invented the phrase "Generation Gap" to define the discrepancies in values and viewpoints among generations. This phrase originated from the counterculture, a time when political and social turmoil captured the attention of Baby Boomers. This group of generational revolutionaries varied from the conservative Traditionalists before them, and even more so from the Generation Xers and the Millennials proceeding them.
Sociologists later extensively studied these differences in attitudes, renaming the Generation Gap as "institutional age segregation." Generation gaps are often observed in the workplace: Millennials may find a Traditionalist preference for face-to-face communication boring, and a Generation Xer may find the Baby Boomer's commitment to work disturbing! In this post, acknowledging that no description perfectly describes any generation of workers, we attempt to uncover some nuanced differences arising from Generation Gaps in the workplace, and how companies can cultivate harmony and passion despite age differences.
Traditionalists (1922 - 1945):
Traditionalists grew up during the Great Depression. Due to crippling economic circumstances, many grew up with a dedication to work that persists even to this day. Many Traditionalists are accustomed to working separately and methodically, often preferring clear patterns of work. Traditionalists also tend to prefer clearly defined hierarchical structures.
They have a strong predilection for formal communication in the form of written letters and face-to-face interaction.
Baby Boomers (1946 - 1964):
The Baby Boomers today constitute the largest percentage of America's workforce. This generation enjoyed relatively healthy economic times and carry optimistic expectations for their children and grandchildren. A Volunteer Power article by Thomas W. McKee delves into the opportunities and joys of this generation of workers. Mr. McKee provides insight into surprising facts, such as the fact that over 7% of Peace Corps volunteers are over 50 years old.
This generation prefers informal, face-to-face meetings.
Generation Xers (1965 - 1980):
Political, economic, and social turmoil greatly influenced this generation. Generation Xers are recognized for being wary of authority and willing to question leadership. They are open to new methods of problem solving and envision an array of solutions for today's problems.
They prefer an array of communication styles, formal and informal, and possess adept e-technology skills.
Millennials (1981 - 2000):
Society immerses this generation in the "new" -- new media, new technology, new ways of expression. An excerpt in the novel Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation by Neil Howe and William Strauss delves into the naming of this generation:
"Several thousand people sent suggestions to abcnews.com. Some thought that gen.com would be a good idea. Others said Generation Y (Why), Generation Whatever, Gen-D was the one. The Boomlets. The Prozac Generation. When everyone got talking about it online, the second-number thought there should be no label at all, and the greatest interest was in the Millennium Generation, or the Millennials."
This sentiment captures the experiences of this fast-paced and creative generation. Many Millennials grew up in financially-favorable circumstances and were encouraged to embrace teamwork from a very young age. But because of this generation's weakness towards instant gratification, many may experience impatience with their work and require positive, frequent feedback from employers. This generation does exceptionally well with online communication.
Again, we concede that none of the aforementioned generalizations will perfectly apply to every person, but there appear to be some distinct differences across generations. By joining members of different age groups and cultural upbringings, companies can potentially benefit from diverse insights, working styles, and opinions. Trent Beekman from Accounting Principles and Ryan Scott from Forbes explain how to encourage all volunteers and employees to work together harmoniously regardless of age. A synthesis of these strategies, and additional strategies, follows:
- Celebrate Differences: One of the best ways to unite workers of all walks of life is to celebrate the different and unique experiences they have to offer. Instead of sweeping generational differences under the rug, companies can celebrate differences by acknowledging and making the most of these differences. Workers of all ages can learn a lot from each other, learning from the wisdom of a newer or older generation.
- Show Everyone Respect: Regardless of age, all workers and volunteers want respect. By communicating that age discrimination is unheard of in a certain corporation's vocabulary, the company effectively demonstrates that all volunteers and employees should treat each other respectfully. Furthermore, acts of respect acknowledging generational events, such as a worker's wedding or a worker's graduation from a dedicated graduate degree path, are an immersive way for a company to celebrate employees with respect to their ages.
- Find Joy in Shared Work: The workforce body of a nonprofit or a company should all be committed to the organization's mission. Even if there are age gaps, volunteers will find camaraderie in shared objectives and common goals.
Working with, rather than working against, generation gaps can benefit business and promote corporate social responsibility, in uniting people together for common good, which can also increase work-place satisfaction. | <urn:uuid:a9e4abe7-2a75-494f-8676-e9ed6b95fb3d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.givainc.com/blog/index.cfm/2015/9/8/embracing-generation-gaps-in-business--volunteering | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335424.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930020521-20220930050521-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.930537 | 1,049 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Saturday, October 1, 2022
Published 2 Years Ago on Tuesday, Dec 08 2020 By Adnan Kayyali
It has been widely accepted that more rapid and decentralized testing is the best way to maintain societal function while keeping the wider community safe.
According to a study published in the scientific journal Cell, researchers from Gladstone Institutes, UC Berkeley, and UCSF detailed their new CRISPR-based COVID-19 testing technology which can be used for rapid COVID-19 testing with a smartphone camera, delivering results in under 30 minutes.
In short, a sample is mixed with CRISPR Cas13 proteins, and molecular probes. When COVID-19 RNA is detected within the sample, the proteins cut the molecular probes, which then release a fluorescent glow visible to smartphones.
“It has been an urgent task for the scientific community to not only increase testing, but also to provide new testing options,” says Melanie Ott, MD, PhD, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and one of the leaders of the study.
“The assay we developed could provide rapid, low-cost testing to help control the spread of COVID-19,” she continued.
Traditional PCR tests use a two-step approach to testing, that being, taking the samples, conversion, and the amplification step. The second step makes it possible to detect the Coronavirus DNA from an RNA sample, converting the RNA to DNA. Amplification makes the virus detectable.
These processes, of course, require specialists and a lab fitted with all necessary equipment. Enabling COVID-19 testing with a smartphone puts the user in control, skipping the second and third steps that burden the healthcare system with centralized labs and the need for trained professionals.
“We chose to use smartphones as the basis for our detection device since they have intuitive user interfaces and highly sensitive cameras that we can use to detect fluorescence,” explains Daniel Fletcher, bioengineer at UC Berkeley, PhD, adding that, “smartphones are also mass-produced and cost-effective, demonstrating that specialized lab instruments aren’t necessary for this assay.”
Using their gene-editing technology, CRISPR coupled with advances in smartphone technology may enable rapid, decentralized and accurate COVID-19 testing with a smartphone, handing regular people the tools they need to keep themselves and those around them safe.
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are already seeing huge adoption by businesses big and small. Its ability to enhance marketing tactics, customer service, business strategy, market analytics, preventive maintenance, autonomous vehicles, video surveillance, medical, and much more. Making AI technology invaluable across all sectors. Here are the fastest advancing AI trends to watch for in 2022. Small […]
Stay tuned with our weekly newsletter on all telecom and tech related news.
© Copyright 2022, All Rights Reserved | <urn:uuid:8d233d26-de6d-4542-bed4-4d942173f735> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://insidetelecom.com/new-technology-may-allow-covid-19-testing-with-a-smartphone/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335609.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001101652-20221001131652-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.915913 | 609 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Most widespread viruses can be removed from your PC without any additional setups. However, some “serious” examples of computer viruses can block the anti-malware software usage or just load the CPU so much that the security tool will fail to start. For that case (and some other actions) Microsoft added the Safe Mode to their operating system.
What is Safe Mode in Windows?
Safe Mode is a setting available in every Windows Operating System (version 7 and later), and it is the last option you should get before you decide that the operating system is beyond repair. It allows you to repair system errors that could put your PC at risk, such as a computer virus and temporarily restores the system to the previously healthy state.
This system mode means that a great number of system services will not start together with Windows (as it usually does). Besides system services, Windows also ignores the programs in the startup list. It may cause sound or graphics problems, but the main benefit is much bigger. Originally, this model was designed to make the diagnostics process easier. While most system elements are not running, you can easily understand if the problem is related to hardware issues or if there is a software bug. However, it also gives a huge handicap in malware removal.
Safe Mode in malware removal process: why is it needed?
In most cases, malware removal can be performed without additional activities: launch your anti-malware program, scan your PC, and you’re good to go. But things turn worse when we talk about something more complicated than adware or unwanted programs. Most of the modern ransomware variants, as well as spyware and backdoors, can prevent the anti-malware software from launching. Moreover, they can even forbid the launch of AV-tool installation files. Such viruses as coin miners, on the other hand, create a problem in another way – just by consuming almost 90% of your CPU power. None of the antivirus programs will be able to run correctly in such conditions.
Safe Mode allows you to ignore malware changes to your PC. All prohibitions or autorun entries will not be compelling when the system has the rule to run with a minimal (~10%) amount of settings. Hence, malware will not be able to affect the antivirus program job directly or through the changes in system settings. Sure, such a system mode is not comfortable for everyday use – but who said that a special troubleshooting mode could be used for a regular job?
How to enter the Safe Mode?
Since the appearance of this ability in Windows 7, the access to this system mode and its appearance have changed two times. In Windows 7, you need to press Win+R to call a Run window, then type MSConfig and press Enter. In that window, opt on the Safe Mode with the suboption Minimal. Press Apply and OK to save the choice.
Then, the system will offer you to reboot the computer – for the changes to take effect. Apply this action – and you will be booted just to the needed system mode. Choose Safe Mode with Networking and proceed to malware removal.
n Windows 8, this procedure was made more accessible – you need to click the Reboot button while holding the Shift key on your keyboard.
Then, in the Troubleshooting screen, you need to choose to Troubleshoot → Advanced Options → Startup Settings → Safe Mode with Networking.
How to remove malware using Safe Mode?
As I have mentioned, Safe Mode disables most of the Windows Services, leaving only ones that are crucial for system work. The problem is that Windows Defender is disabled in Safe Mode, too. You cannot wake it up until you boot your PC into a standard Windows mode. To remove malware in that system mode, you must install a separate anti-malware program. Precisely, the networking is needed to install it after entering the Safe Mode – malware can block the installation.
GridinSoft Anti-Malware will be a perfect solution for removing malware using Safe Mode. This anti-malware tool has its detection databases updated hourly; it also offers Proactive Protection, which allows you to protect the system in the background. Together with the overall lightweightness of this program, it will be a perfect option for any system. | <urn:uuid:cd7523c1-9103-4bc5-a00c-57a1c2f0dad3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://gridinsoft.com/blogs/remove-viruses-safe-mode/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337473.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004023206-20221004053206-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.925351 | 875 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Data architecture is a framework for how IT infrastructure supports your data strategy. The goal of any data architecture is to show the company’s infrastructure how data is acquired, transported, stored, queried, and secured.
A data architecture is the foundation of any data strategy. It is the “how” when implementing a data strategy.
In this article, we’ll look at:
- Business agility
- Data architecture
- Architecture components
- Data standards
- The shift to new architecture
Let’s get started.
Data architecture supports agility
In today’s world, the key is agility.
Agility allows your company to adapt quickly to the business environment and industry. A particular kind of data architecture can actually enable agility, so you can meet these business demands.
Data architecture is critical to the success of a business (and why we’ve written extensively on each data component). The world is jumping aboard this framework. The writings and how-to’s and best practices are there to share the architecture and help get organizations moving towards it.
What is data architecture?
Data architectures will define a company’s livelihood. If a company were a chess piece, the data architecture defines the moves the company can make on the board.
A primitive architecture allows your company to move like a pawn. An advanced architecture can make that pawn a queen.
Picture these different data architectures:
- Storing a file as a .csv on a local hard drive and reading the file into Tableau on a person’s computer for analysis is a very simple kind of data architecture.
- Streaming data from a set of point-of-sale registers to accounting is another kind of architecture.
The data architecture is 100% responsible for increasing a company’s freedom to move around the world.
If agility is what is needed to avoid collapse during slow seasons or to capitalize on the spontaneous popularity of a new product, the more advanced the data architecture is, the more capable the company is to take action.
Explicitly, the data architecture:
- Gives a fuller picture of what is happening in the company
- Creates a better understanding of the company’s data
- Offers protocols by which data moves from its source to being analyzed and consumed by its destinations
- Ensures a system is in place to secure the data
- Grants all teams the ability to make data-driven decisions
Components of data architecture
The architectural components of today’s data architectural world are:
- Data pipelines
- Cloud storage
- AI & ML models
- Data streaming
- Cloud computing
- Real-time analytics
- And more…
Data standards are the overarching standards of a data architecture, which you apply to areas such as data schemas and security.
The architecture is responsible for setting the data standards that define what kinds of data will pass through it.
These standards can be achieved by creating a data schema. The data schema defines:
- Each entity that should be collected. Schema for contact info, for example, might include name, phone number, email, and place of work.
- The type of data each piece should be. For example, name is text data, phone number is integer data, email is text data, place of work is text data.
- The relationship of that entity to others in the database, such as where it comes from and where it’s going.
Most companies will version their data schema. As data becomes increasingly pervasive, companies will begin using relational databases over more traditional SQL databases.
Relational (NoSQL) databases allow you to easily add data and piece data together more like a network of entities rather than a strict hierarchy of entities. Plus, these relational databases can grow much larger and handle adding data dynamically to the database, where traditional SQL databases could not (or was strongly advised against).
That’s why versioning is so vital. Versioning the data schema helps standardize:
- What to find where
- The ability to ask when a data was where
Data standards also help set the security rules for the architecture. These can be visualized in the architecture and schema by showing what data gets passed where, and, when it travels from point A to point B, how the data is secured.
Security protocols can include:
- Encrypting data during travel
- Restricting access to individuals
- Anonymizing data to decrease the value of the information upon receipt by receiving party
- Additional actions
Shifting to new architecture
McKinsey published a great article about six important changes to consider when building a data architecture in today’s world. It highlights the older architectural components, and how it has been updated to the distributed, agile architecture for today’s companies.
Here is the short version of these six changes:
- From on-premise to cloud-based data platforms
- From batch to real-time data processing
- From pre-integrated commercial solutions to modular, best-of-breed platforms
- From point-to-point to decoupled data access
- From an enterprise warehouse to domain-based architecture
- From rigid data models toward flexible, extensible data schemas
When thinking about anything related to data—which is arguably everything—you should always consider the data architecture. | <urn:uuid:0903f638-e82a-4bb7-a203-9ff55400c7cd> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.bmc.com/blogs/data-architecture/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337625.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005105356-20221005135356-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.901634 | 1,128 | 2.9375 | 3 |
DNS redirection security mechanism flawed say researchers
- Published: Wednesday, 13 April 2016 09:04
Cloud-based security providers commonly use DNS redirection to protect customers' websites: however, computer scientists from KU Leuven, Belgium, and digital research centre iMinds have found that the protected IP address can be retrieved in more than 70 percent of cases. This means that the DNS redirection security mechanism can easily be bypassed.
Nearly 18,000 websites, protected by five different providers, were subjected to the research team's DNS redirection vulnerability tests. To assist the testing, the researchers built a tool called CLOUDPIERCER, which automatically tries to retrieve a website’s original IP address based on eight different methods.
"Previous studies had already described a number of strategies that can be used to retrieve a website's original IP address. We came up with a number of additional methods. We were also the first to measure and verify the exact impact of these strategies on a larger scale," says Thomas Vissers. "The results were pretty convincing: in more than 70 percent of the cases, CLOUDPIERCER was able to effectively retrieve the website's original IP address, thereby providing the exact info that is needed to launch a successful cyberattack. This clearly shows that the DNS redirection strategy still has some serious shortcomings."
The researchers have already shared their results with the cloud-based security providers who were tested, allowing them to respond properly to the risk that their customers are still running. However, the researchers also want to inform other businesses and website owners about the shortcomings of the popular DNS redirection strategy. To help with this CLOUDPIERCER has been made available free of charge.
"With CLOUDPIERCER, people can test their own website against the eight methods that we have used in our research. CLOUDPIERCER scans the website, and indicates to which IP detection method it is most vulnerable," says Thomas Vissers.
When websites use DNS redirection as a defence mechanism against cyberattacks, two simple measures can be taken to prevent the original IP address from being retrieved. One option is adjusting the website's firewall settings to only allow web traffic from the cloud-based security provider. Alternatively, the IP address of the website can be changed once the contract with the cloud-based security provider is initiated. | <urn:uuid:06d58047-afc1-46aa-8689-9b47c12b48fc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://continuitycentral.com/index.php/news/technology/1015-dns-redirection-security-mechanism-flawed-say-researchers | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335034.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927131111-20220927161111-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.962987 | 490 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Software bugs are annoying. Anyone who has to go through the tedious task of debugging knows that. But why do we call it ‘bugs’ in the first place?
Many think that the term ‘bug’ came to life with the dawn of the information age. The term is often attributed to the famed computer science pioneer Grace Hopper.
The story goes that an operator noted an issue with the electromechanical computer Mark II back in 1947. After a quick investigation, the engineers discovered a moth stuck in a relay and identified the insect as the primary issue.
As a joke, the engineers took the moth and taped it to their logbook, following the gnarly entry with a cheeky label: ‘first actual case of bug being found’ (pictured in the featured image of this article).
Hopper, who later became United States Navy rear admiral and other engineers who were involved in the ‘discovery,’ retold the funny countless times, engraving the 9 September 1947 as the first time a computer bug was mentioned. The famous log entry is even a part of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
This story is often confused as the origin story of the term ‘bug’ so frequently used by every developer around the globe. However, as the label next to the poor moth suggests, engineers in 1947 were perfectly aware of the term ‘bug’ and its meaning. It was only the first time, they joked, a bug was found where an error was present.
A century too late
Computer bugs, obviously, could not predate the machines whose developers they annoy. Computer engineers, however, are far from the first to use the term ‘bug’ to describe an annoying issue interfering with their and their project’s wellbeing.
It’s likely that bugs have been bugging engineers since the beginning of the second industrial revolution in the mid-19th century.
The earliest written example of the use of the term ‘bug’ to date belongs to the famous inventor Thomas Edison. In an 1878 letter to the head of Western Union William Orton, Edison wrote, ‘I did find a ‘bug’ in my apparatus, but it was not in the telephone proper,’ further explaining other reasons for the delayed project.
Later the same year, Edison mentioned ‘bugs’ in yet another letter. In an exchange with a Hungarian inventor Theodore Puskas, Edison explained his engineering troubles, the ones that so many modern professionals could relate to.
“It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise—this thing gives out and then that “Bugs”- as such little faults and difficulties are called- show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached,” Edison wrote.
Even though it's not clear whether Edison was the first to coin the term ‘bug,’ by the late 19th century, ‘bugs’ have infested the minds of engineers completely. An 1892 Standard Electrical Dictionary by Thomas Sloane already defined ‘bug’ as ‘any fault or trouble in the connections of electric apparatus.’
Thus, by the mid-20th century, engineers were well aware of ‘bugs,’ repurposing the term for a Third industrial revolution involving ‘mechanical calculators’ that will come to define the age we live in today.
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An NFS is a protocol that lets users on client computers access files on a network, making it a distributed file system. A Network File System or NFS is necessary for helping your business share files over a network. You can access remote data and files from any remote computer or device that links to the network you will use. All people within a network will have access to the same files, making file-sharing efforts easier.
The NFS protocol has been evolving since Sun Microsystems first introduced it in 1984. It continues to change today, as it is an open standard solution where anyone can implement the protocol on all operating systems and adjust it as necessary.
The General Concept
An NFS uses a basic system where a “mount” command will prompt the server to link with many clients. The clients will get access to the same files on the server through the proper platform. The design can use security protocols to dictate who will access certain files, producing a simplified and safe approach to work.
An NFS can also use a file locking system that allows many clients to share the same files. The NFS can manage multiple application or compute threads for operation.
The NFS uses several hosts that will access the same files. It does not require one application for its operation, providing a simple design for handling the content one will read.
How Does the NFS Work? A Look At the Three Versions
The way how the NFS works will vary based on whatever version you use. You’ll find three NFS versions for use today, with each having different standards for how it will operate.
NFS version 2 (NFSv2)
NFSv2 is the oldest format and is the most widely supported one you can use. It operates with the User Datagram Protocol or UDP through an IP network. The IP network allows for a stable network connection.
The UDP on this setup does not formally produce a connection before it can start transferring data. The feature is convenient, as it makes it easier for connections to work in less time. But the UDP clients can keep sending requests for a server even when the server is not functioning.
NFS version 3 (NFSv3)
NFSv3 supports asynchronous writes, which allow the server to dictate the right policies for synchronizing data. The data will be synchronized before a command to commit to managing the data is established. The design produces better buffering when compared with NFSv2.
NFSv3 can also handle errors more effectively and will manage more massive files. It can handle 64-bit file sizes, meaning a user can access about 2 GB of file content on average.
NFS version 4 (NFSv4)
NFSv4 is the most recent version of the NFS protocol you can use. It can work on the internet and through firewalls. It does not require an rpcbind service, making it easier to run in more places.
The Transmission Control Protocol or TCP works in this NFS format. The TCP links between an application and an IP. It keeps tabs on segments of data and only needs to receive the lost frames in the TCP set when something has to be sent for a second time.
The server will also accept TCP port 2049 commands. This port is one of the more commonly-used ports you will find on the market. It does not have to interact with daemons like the rpcbind and lockd options.
What Services Are Necessary?
You will require a few services to make an NFS file system work:
- nfs – The nfs service will start the server and the RPC processes necessary for accepting shared systems.
- nfslock – The nfslock service starts the RPC processes and allows NFC clients to lock files.
- portmap – You can take port reservations from local services with this one. portmap will respond to messages stating that certain ports are available for file access.
Other Services You Can Use
You can also program a few other services for an NFS setup:
- rpc.mountd – You can start with a process that receives mount requests and confirms that a computer can reach the NFS files one wishes to access.
- rpc.nsfd – You can define specific NFS versions and protocols for the server to support here.
- rpc.lockd – Files are easy to lock on the server with this command.
- rpc.statd – The Network Status Monitor protocol will start with this command. It will notify clients when a server restarts, plus it ensures the server stays online without possibly being shut down.
What Makes An NFS Useful?
You’ve got many positives surrounding an NFS to explore:
- Everyone in your network can access the same files when they become clients on the same NFS.
- The mounting process for the file system remains transparent, giving clients an idea of how they can handle the content you manage.
- The NFS may be more secure, as you won’t have as many removable drives and disks on hand.
- Multiple computers can share the same applications. They don’t have to use excess disk space, plus they don’t have to store things as often.
Are There Any Concerns?
There are a few drawbacks to the NFS to notice:
- A firewall is necessary for running an NFS to keep unwanted parties from entering. Any NFS that does not use this protection will be at risk of harm.
- It may be tough for multiple parties to access a file at the same time, especially if the file is more massive in size.
- Some protocols allow for up to 1 MB of data to move in each read or write request. While today’s protocols can handle immense amounts of requests, the 1 MB standard may be too weak.
A Useful Solution
An NFS can be necessary when you’re trying to get files out to more people in your network. Be sure you see how an NFS can work if you need assistance in making your network and your file contents more visible to everyone in your business. In order to quickly access data stored on another device, the server would implement NFS daemon processes to make data available to other users.
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DNS servers provide the roadmap to the Internet, and help clients find the servers they are looking for. A DNS query flood uses a network of clients to target a single server with floods of valid requests.
Because this type of attack involves flooding a single DNS server with valid requests, it is difficult for a DNS server to distinguish between a DNS query flood and normal, heavy traffic.
F5 BIG-IP DNS uses DNS Express functionality to mitigate these attacks through the intelligent application of computational power. By scaling linearly across multiple processing cores, DNS Express protects the perimeter by handling all DNS traffic—valid and invalid—as much as an order of magnitude faster than a traditional DNS server.
To learn more on DNS, visit DevCentral. | <urn:uuid:c8497415-f7c6-4fed-975d-cb54cf1c86d0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.f5.com/services/resources/glossary/dns-flood-query-flood | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335034.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927131111-20220927161111-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.886519 | 149 | 2.5625 | 3 |
With more than two billion people using the Internet, even the most casual observer can see that it plays an advantageous role in commerce and, from that, job creation. As members of the industry, we may recognize the positive influence that the Internet has worldwide, but it’s challenging to specifically quantify the economic impact. With that question in mind, a May 2011 McKinsey Global Institute study has provided an evaluation to more precisely show how the Internet contributes to national economies. While the study was published last year, its findings present an interesting snapshot of the Internet’s growing influence over time.
McKinsey researched the effect that the Internet has had on GDP and boosting the economy in 13 countries, which included the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States of America) as well as Brazil, China, India, South Korea, and Sweden. While there were fluctuations depending on the country, one thing is universal: the Internet is a critical vehicle to help grow the economies. According to the study, the Internet accounted for 3.4 percent of the GDP on average of the 13 countries examined, which included 6 percent in countries with larger economies and the majority of even smaller economies being under 4 percent.
The research also showed that the Internet has accounted for 21 percent growth of GDP in the past five years from 2011 in larger economies and 11 percent growth over the past five years for all countries included in the study. These numbers are constantly increasing and if continued to be harnessed, the Internet has almost unlimited potential for even the world’s smallest economies.
In addition to underscoring the benefit that the Internet has on GDP, the study also showed that the Internet is an important factor in job creation. According to McKinsey, 2.6 jobs were created for every job lost in the industry. Similarly, the research also highlighted a rise in living standards over the past 15 years, with an average of $500 increase in GDP per capita.
While the beneficial impact of the Internet continues to be realized internationally with an estimated $8 trillion in annual e-commerce, we in the Internet Infrastructure Industry continue to focus on ways to spur innovation and growth for such an important sector in our global economy. | <urn:uuid:bd2fd3e4-85cb-4a03-9019-fa10802c853c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://i2coalition.com/mckinsey-global-institute-internet-boosting-global-economies/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336674.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001132802-20221001162802-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.956428 | 454 | 2.984375 | 3 |
According to the Bluetooth SIG, Bluetooth Direction Finding will accelerate indoor positioning thanks to new features that support higher accuracy. Statistics show that nearly 70% of all Bluetooth Location Services implementations will include indoor navigation by 2025. That’s two times the growth from previous years!
In our previous blog post, we covered the basics of positioning systems and proximity solutions for Bluetooth location services as well as some example use cases for each. In this blog, we’ll be focusing on direction-finding using the angle of arrival and angle of departure as well as a brief introduction to trilateration and triangulation. Let’s dive in!
What is Bluetooth direction finding?
Bluetooth direction finding was introduced as part of the Bluetooth Core Specification 5.1 specification in January 2019. The purpose of this technology is to enhance the positioning capabilities of Bluetooth technology by being able to detect the direction of an incoming Bluetooth signal instead of relying on simple transmit power (Tx) and RSSI-based methods.
The core of the direction-finding specification relies on two methods: the angle of arrival (AoA) and the angle of departure (AoD). Both methods rely on at least one of the Bluetooth devices having an array of antennas and the ability to receive or transmit the Bluetooth signal while shifting between the different antennas. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 below:
The Angle of Arrival (AoA) is designed to be used in applications like asset tracking, where the moving transmitter sends direction-finding signals using a single antenna. Using AoA, a fixed receiver, equipped through an antenna array with a minimum of two antennas, determines the direction of the transmitter using the angle of the received signal. The angle determination is based on the phase differences of the received signal as detected by the receiver’s antenna array.
The Angle of Departure (AoD), on the other hand, is designed to be used in applications like wayfinding indoor navigation, where a person in a shopping mall, for example, wants to locate a specific store. With AoD, the moving receiver receives direction-finding signals using a single antenna. The signal is transmitted by a fixed transmitter switching through an antenna array with a minimum of two antennas. The receiver determines the direction of the transmitter using the phase differences from the incoming signal.
The AoA and AoD direction-finding enhancements found in Bluetooth 5.1 can greatly increase positioning accuracy for a wide variety of use cases such as asset tracking or wayfinding.
What is trilateration and triangulation?
In our previous blog, we briefly discussed indoor positioning using Bluetooth beacons. To recap, a beacon is a small Bluetooth radio transmitter, powered by tiny batteries. A Bluetooth beacon has no location intelligence built into it. Their functionality is similar to that of a lighthouse, which means they transmit Bluetooth signals around them expecting nearby smart devices to pick up these signals and understand their meaning. Secondly, beacons don’t have a directional antenna which means you can only receive an estimation of the distance to the beacon, not from which direction the signal is coming from.
This is where trilateration comes into play. Let’s take a BLE tracking solution as an example. This solution requires three regular beacons and a BLE tag. When the tag starts reporting RSSI values, those values can be converted to distances and used to locate the tag. The location accuracy is approximately ~1-2 m. Trilateration is the more common and simpler method for asset tracking applications compared to triangulation which is far more complex. With triangulation, not only does one need to understand the location of the BLE beacons, but also their spatial rotation. The measurements are far more sensitive due to how they are measured. Triangulation relies on the timing differences in the reception of the tags’ signals, whereas trilateration relies on signal strength to approximate distance. What’s more, triangulation is more costly because of the instruments needed to measure the required distances. See Figures 3 and 4 below.
From navigating through crowded airports and busy shopping malls to tracking valuable assets in a hospital, the opportunities for Bluetooth location services are endless. And, with the continued developments and advancements in Bluetooth technology, we can expect to see new and exciting use cases for Bluetooth direction finding and locationing services in the years to come. | <urn:uuid:eff3bc7f-5214-4bcb-bcd1-b7a4e91b2139> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cassianetworks.com/blog/bluetoothdirectionfinding/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336674.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001132802-20221001162802-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.931061 | 893 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Scammers are continually evolving their tricks to trap as many people as possible. Whether it’s impersonating government agencies or faking a call from the bank, unfortunately, many people will fall victim.
With so many new scams and methods, it can be challenging to keep track of them. Often, criminals will use tactics that don’t seem like a scam. For example, a new method of attack attempts to get you to install software to listen to a WhatsApp message.
Read on to see how this scam works and what you should look for.
Here’s the backstory
Most communication platforms can integrate with others. For example, you can easily share a photo from Instagram to Facebook or post an image from WhatsApp to Twitter. Even if you are versed in how WhatsApp works, you might not know you can forward messages, photos or voice notes to an email address.
It is this functionality that scammers are exploiting, but it comes with a twist.
According to a report from security company Armorblox, cybercriminals recently sent malicious emails to 30,000 accounts. Here’s how the scheme works: The email claims that you’ve received a voice message from WhatsApp. To listen to it, you must press the play button that’s included in the email.
To no surprise, the button doesn’t activate the voice message. Instead, it redirects you to a malicious website that attempts to install malware onto your device. Once you pass the required “not a robot” test and agree to the pop-up, the Kryptik Trojan gets installed.
According to Armorblox, the malware can steal sensitive information from your device, retrieve data from your internet browser, and skim user names and passwords.
What you can do about it
The fraudulent emails have primarily targeted healthcare, education and retail companies across the U.S. However, the thieves behind the attack could start randomly sending malicious emails to anyone at any time.
Another frightening aspect is that the malicious emails bypass Microsoft and Google email security filters. That’s because the email itself doesn’t contain malware but redirects traffic to a fake website that does.
It is unclear if the attacks are related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Still, Armorblox pinpoints the origin as a Russian domain associated with a government institution in the Moscow region.
Here are some tips to stay safe online:
- Don’t click on links or download attachments that you receive in unsolicited emails.
- If you receive an email that claims to have a voice message attached, check with the sender to verify they mailed it to you. If you don’t know the sender personally, delete the email and add the email address to your blocked list.
- If a message gives you a sense of urgency, delete it.
- Spelling and grammar errors are big red flags.
- Use two-factor authentication and password managers for better security.
- Keep your operating systems, apps and devices updated with the latest official software and patches.
- Always have a trusted antivirus program updated and running on all your devices. We recommend our sponsor, TotalAV. Right now, get an annual plan with TotalAV for only $19 at ProtectWithKim.com. That’s over 85% off the regular price! | <urn:uuid:ec9af5ca-b797-40cd-b072-12ebd2a24229> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/whatsapp-voicemail-phishing/833744/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337360.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002212623-20221003002623-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.917042 | 690 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The field of technology has never stayed the same. Starting from the very basic tech to the most complex ones, this field offers various opportunities and has the highest growth potential for the future. The internet has become the key factor that accelerates the development of technology. With the Covid-19 pandemic, technology has now become a major part of all of our lives as almost everything from grocery shopping to business meetings is carried out over the internet. According to a study, it has been found that approximately 4.72 billion people are using the internet from various parts of the world.
Technology has made its presence very noticeable in the business world. Beginning with automation to human-like decision-making, technology is present everywhere. Especially during this time, where companies have adopted the work from home (WFH) trend, technology, in so many ways is helping carry out the business processes seamlessly. For instance, online communication tools, collaboration tools and many other tools prove to be very useful to businesses. It is for sure that the technology will only keep advancing in the upcoming years. For individuals who work in the tech sector, it becomes highly important to keep up with the changes and improvements in your respective fields in order to stay in the field for a long time. On that note, this article focuses on the emerging technologies that are likely to provide greater scopes in careers for fresh graduates and experienced professionals.
Top 5 emerging technology trends for a brighter career in 2021-25
1) Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the ability of a machine to perform tasks and think like human beings. At present, AI is yet to surpass the ability of complex human thinking capabilities but Elon Musk, a visionary and founder of SpaceX and Tesla, believes that AI would soon be able to perform more efficiently than human beings.
Artificial intelligence is widely being adopted by many industries across varied industrial verticals. In the financial sector, AI has been helping companies carrying out mundane and repetitive tasks such as employee payroll and accounting. AI has been enormously contributing to the healthcare industry in monitoring patience’ health, heart rate, etc. This field is still pretty much in its beginning stages. This means that there are a whole variety of opportunities available for anyone with a prior computer science background. Online courses are being offered by experts and professionals in the field of AI. Students who want to learn AI or professionals who want to stay updated can make use of such courses.
2) Cloud technology
Before the advent of cloud computing, industries used to spend huge amounts in setting up a server and maintaining it. An entire team would be dedicated to this. Any errors in the server affected the entire company. But with the help of cloud computing, businesses were able to store data on servers that were maintained and hosted by a service provider that is nowhere close to the company’s geographical location. Not only did it prove to be cost-effective as it deducts the infrastructure and maintenance cost, but it also improved productivity and offered flexibility to business operations. It is found that almost 94% of the companies are using cloud technology for their business operations.
Even the traditional business vendors and entrepreneurs have considered the advantages of the cloud and are shifting towards Cloud technology to pursue their businesses. This shifting of companies towards cloud technology has opened up various opportunities in this field such as cloud engineer, DevOps engineer, etc. Huge corporations like Amazon Web Services, Google and Salesforce are predominantly known for their cloud services. These companies offer training to students, fresh graduates and even experts related to cloud technology. People with a keen interest in Cloud can avail these opportunities to learn or level up for their career.
With the covid-19 affecting the entire world, lockdowns have been implemented to reduce the spread of the virus. This has majorly disrupted the business operations, especially in the manufacturing sector where employees cannot be physically present in the industries. Here is where the multipurpose, reprogrammable and automatically controlled industrial robots come into play to keep the business operations running smoothly. But even before this pandemic, robots were implemented for their precision and efficiency to automate redundant and repetitive tasks.
Robotics is being adopted in many industrial sectors, out of which it has noticeably been gaining sharp attention in the medical field for its capabilities to perform microscopic surgeries. Whilst top universities across the globe offer graduate programs in robotics engineering, a deep understanding of this concept is required to become a robotics engineer. Anyone with analytical skills and a computer science background can work their way to become a robotics engineer. Robotics is one of the top fields with massive career opportunities at present and for the future.
As mentioned earlier, the internet has now become very important in all of our lives. Massive amounts of information are being sent through the internet daily. Like talking to a friend or entering credit card information on shopping sites. With such data being shared over the internet, cyberattacks are becoming very common. Especially, the medical sector is being the prime target for prying eyes as it holds too much sensitive data such as patient’s identity details. Sharing personal data over the internet has to be done securely. Cybersecurity practices can be used to protect the data from theft and prevent damage.
In the business sector, any data breach or data compromisation would cause huge damages where the companies have to pay millions of dollars to repair the damage. Equifax, a global credit card rating company paid $147 million to repair the damages caused by the data breach. Such a big loss would disrupt the entire business. To prevent this from happening, companies hire cybersecurity experts to prevent data leakages and protect data. Even there are companies today that offer cybersecurity services. Cybersecurity is a field that will forever be in high demand. Students can do their higher studies or a master’s degree in cybersecurity. Cybersecurity experts can take up some courses that are available online on reputed educational platforms to keep themselves updated with the current scenario in the field.
Imagine a system that can potentially replace the existing working mechanism of financial systems by offering transparency and security to the data. Blockchain is nothing but a database where the data are stored in the form of blocks that are linked together forming a chain-like structure. Hence it got the name “Blockchain”. In a blockchain network, once the data has been entered, it becomes impossible to alter the data. To access a certain block of data, its previous or parent blocks have to be accessed that have hashed address values. This makes it impossible for a hacker to enter into the blockchain network.
At present, blockchain has found its way into the financial sector in terms of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (Eth). As of early 2021, it has been found that there are 4000 different cryptocurrencies available in the market. Soon this technology will be adopted across various industries for carrying out business transactions using smart contracts as it could eliminate the need for the intervention of third parties and for its ability to track data. Blockchain offers enormous career opportunities in various fields starting from healthcare to finance. Blockchain engineering courses are being offered by experts in this field. Many of these courses can be found on top online educational platforms such as Udemy, Coursera and Khan Academy.
Apart from the above-mentioned emerging trends, other technological fields offer numerous career opportunities like the internet of things (IoT), Data Science, UX design, Machine learning, Virtual and augmented reality, etc. Opportunities are always abundant in the above-mentioned technological fields. With a keen interest and perseverance, people can excel in their respective fields and can stay in the game for a long time by making contributions to the betterment of the world. | <urn:uuid:46e38c9a-8801-492c-a251-b0a63ebfcee6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://expersight.com/emerging-enterprise-technologies-career-opportunities/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334514.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925035541-20220925065541-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.962784 | 1,557 | 2.59375 | 3 |
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Wikipedia and World of Warcraft Classic Targeted for DDoS Attacks
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) again made the headlines over the weekend with the attacks on the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia and popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft Classic. These latest incidents show that malicious actors are continually targeting vulnerable devices and online services for DDoS attacks.
In a statement released last September 7, Wikimedia Foundation, said that Wikipedia was hit with a “malicious attack”, making the site inaccessible to site visitors in several countries for intermittent periods. Wikimedia Deutschland, meanwhile, outrightly called the attack as “DDoS attack”, announcing via its Twitter account that Wikimedia servers, on which Wikipedia is also hosted, are being “paralyzed by a massive and very broad DDoS attack”.
According to the report by the civil society group NetBlocks, Wikipedia became intermittently unavailable as of approximately 6:00 p.m. UTC September 6, 2019 and at 1:30 a.m. UTC, the attack extended to a near-total outage in the United States and much of the world, continuing up until 2:40 a.m. UTC.
Last September 7 also, Blizzard Entertainment, owner of the World of Warcraft Classic, via its Twitter account said, “Some online services continue to be impacted by a series of DDoS attacks which are resulting in high latency and disconnections.”
It isn’t yet confirmed whether the DDoS attacks on Wikipedia and World of Warcraft Classic are related. A Twitter account claiming responsibility on the DDoS attacks on Wikipedia and World of Warcraft Classic was taken down by Twitter.
DDoS Attacks Prevalence
Wikipedia and Blizzard Entertainment are no stranger to DDoS attacks. On May 15, 2019, NetBlocksreported that Wikipedia became temporarily unavailable internationally. NetBlocks said that its global internet observatory data showed that the incident wasn’t related to filtering or blocking, and was rather likely caused by a DDoS attack.
NetBlocks said that DDoS attacks are distinct from state filtering or blocking, as these attacks have broader international impact but typically last for short periods. Wikipedia is totally blocked in Turkey, is varyingly restricted in China, and was briefly filtered in Venezuela early this year.
In August 2017, meanwhile, Blizzard Entertainmentreported another set of DDoS attacks on its networks. No person or group has taken responsibility for the 2017 DDoS attacks on Blizzard Entertainment and May 2019 incident on Wikipedia.
Real-time gaming networks have been favorite DDoS targets by malicious actors. In August 2014, Sony’s PlayStationnetworks were taken offline as a result of a DDoS attack. The threat group called “Lizard Squad” claimed responsibility over the Sony’s PlayStation networks DDoS attack.
KrebsOnSecurityreported that Lizard Squad controlled a botnet comprised of hacked home routers and commercial routers at universities and companies from around the globe. A botnet is a group of computers infected with the same malicious software (malware) and controlled by a threat actor or actors for the purpose of conducting malicious activities such as DDoS attacks. KrebsOnSecurity reported the botnet controlled by Lizard Squad group drew internet bandwidth from routers around the globe by exploiting the use of factory-default usernames and passwords.
The Mirai botnet, a much bigger botnet, which at its height controlled hundreds of thousands of IoT devices such as routers and CCTV cameras, brought down a big chunk of the internet for most of the U.S. east coast as a result of the DDoS attack on Dyn, an internet infrastructure company.
The recent Wikipedia DDoS attack, according to NetBlocks, is understood to have been amplified through insecure devices.
Prevention and Mitigation
In a DDoS attack, both the owners of computers or Internet of Things (IoT) devices and owners of targeted online services play an important role. IoT, such as routers, small as they are, are also computers. Owners of these devices, however, don’t view these devices like typical computers such as laptops, with many owners leaving these devices vulnerable to attacks by opting to use the default-factory login details.
The threat of DDoS attack is real as malicious actors have the technology to control not just IoT devices but ordinary computers as well. French authorities and antivirus solution provider Avastrecently took down the botnet called “Retadup”, which controlled nearly a million computers worldwide. It isn’t yet known how the Retadup malware initially infected these nearly one million computers.
In an ideal world, owners of IoT devices and internet-facing desktop or laptop computers have the responsibility to protect these computers from being used as an army for DDoS attacks by practicing basic cyber hygiene such as changing default-factory usernames and passwords and by applying the latest security updates.
DDoS protection is all the more important in organizations that rely on providing online services. While your organization may have no control over the cyber hygiene of other IoT devices, desktop and laptop users, your organization can undertake cyber security measures in order to mitigate the effects of DDoS attacks.
Mitigating measures against DDoS attacks are broadly categorized into do-it-yourself (DIY) methods, on-premise mitigation appliances and off-premise cloud-based solutions. DIY methods, such as manual IP blacklisting, is often a reactionary measure in response to a successful first DDoS attack that already caused hours of downtime.
On-premise mitigation appliances refer to hardware appliances deployed inside a network and placed in front of protected servers. Compared to DIY methods, on-premise mitigation appliances have advanced traffic filtering capabilities such as geo-blocking, rate limiting, IP reputation and signature identification.
Off-premise cloud-based solutions, meanwhile, offer virtually limitless scalability and don’t require investment in security personnel or expenses for DIY solutions and on-premise hardware.
Connect with our web application securityexperts and protect your mission critical infrastructure in less than 10-minutes.
Steve E. Driz, I.S.P., ITCP | <urn:uuid:11dd5e33-82d8-45e7-b62b-67484acf51b7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.drizgroup.com/driz_group_blog/wikipedia-and-world-of-warcraft-classic-targeted-for-ddos-attacks | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334514.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925035541-20220925065541-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.944055 | 1,303 | 2.515625 | 3 |
In sports, the best defense is a good offense. The same can also be said for cybersecurity. In today’s digital age, cyber threats are everywhere. From phishing scams to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, there are hundreds of ways that your business’s sensitive data can fall into the wrong hands. However, by taking a proactive approach, you can minimize your risk and better protect yourself.
The best way to avoid cybersecurity threats in the future is to plan ahead. You should have a comprehensive protocol in place to minimize damage if you do fall victim to an attack. For added security, it’s best to invest in managed solutions from a company that offers small business IT services. That way, you can rest assured that your network is being monitored and maintained at all times.
While planning is key to prevention, sometimes emergencies happen. Whether hackers gain access to your data through weak passwords, phishing attacks, or rogue employees, you must take immediate action to mitigate the issue promptly.
Let’s take a closer look at what to do in the event of a cyber-attack.
Steps to Take During a Cybersecurity Breach
You can find a great deal of advice about preventing cyber-attacks, but what do you do if you’re in the middle of a breach? Unfortunately, few companies have security plans in place prior to an attack, and therefore have a higher risk of data loss and monetary damages.
If your company has fallen victim to a security breach, don’t panic. By following a few key steps, you can minimize damage from the attack and regain control of your system.
1. Determine the Type of Attack
Some attacks are harder to detect than others. For example, hackers will often notify you of ransomware attacks by freezing your system and giving you instructions (which usually involve making a payment) to get your data back. In other cases, such as a virus obtained from a phishing email, you’ll need to find out what type of program has compromised your system and which files have been affected. Then, you can decide how to move forward.
2. Identify Which Systems Have Been Compromised
Once you’ve identified the type of attack, you’ll need to determine its scope. In other words, you must verify how widespread it is and which areas of your system have been affected. That way, you can prioritize your repair efforts.
3. Quarantine Any Malicious Files
If your system becomes infected by a virus or other malicious software, you’ll need to quarantine any affected files until it can be removed. That way, you can prevent the virus from spreading to other areas of your system.
4. Determine What Data Was Stolen
In the case of a breach, it’s essential to find out exactly what data was compromised and what the repercussions might be. This is crucial, as the information you gather will help you determine your next steps. For example, if you find that hackers gained access to customer credit card numbers, you’ll have to create a plan for compensation. Meanwhile, if the stolen data was solely internal information, you’ll need to correspond with employees and executives to ensure the issue doesn’t spread any further.
5. Notify Necessary Parties
Following a serious breach, you’ll likely have to make several mandatory disclosures. This might include notifying regulatory bodies, law enforcement, and any person whose data was compromised in the attack. Additionally, if your business’s financial information has been wrongfully accessed, you’ll need to maintain contact with your banks to prevent loss. While this is a mandatory step, it’s also the best way to go about rebuilding your company’s credibility.
6. Public Relations
Depending on the severity of the attack, you may want to consult a public relations specialist or have a PR plan in place. Make sure that your messaging tells customers how you’re mitigating the threat and protecting their information. These types of incidents can negatively impact your reputation in the industry, so it’s important to handle this step correctly. At the end of the day, honesty and transparency is everything. Your customers will want to know exactly what happened, what you’re doing to fix it, and how you’re going to prevent similar issues going forward.
The Bottom Line – Have a Plan in Place
The best way to minimize damage from a cyber-attack is to have a plan in place ahead of time. Handling a security issue without a clear procedure puts you at a significant disadvantage. It’s not insurmountable, but it does mean that you’ll lose more time and risk more damage to your reputation. With this in mind, prevention really is your best option. By designing a comprehensive security protocol, you can mitigate cyber threats and ensure your company has a step-by-step process to follow in the event of an attack. This should include:
- Remote Monitoring Services
- Increased Cybersecurity and Virus Protection
- A Secure Business Firewall Router
- Remote Threat Assessment Services
- Onsite and Cloud Data Backup
Looking for High-Quality IT Services?
If you’ve recently fallen victim to a cyber-attack or would like to set up a robust security protocol to prevent such issues, it’s best to get in touch with a reliable IT company. Luckily, NerdsToGo is here to help you handle all of your business cybersecurity needs. We offer a variety of custom business IT solutions that can help you ensure your data remains secure at all times.
For more information about our affordable IT solutions or to schedule a free cyber risk assessment, contact us today! | <urn:uuid:3345e952-e546-45d5-9ec5-be51149fc0dc> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.nerdstogo.com/blog/2020/january/cybersecurity-for-businesses-what-should-you-do-/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334871.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926113251-20220926143251-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.939401 | 1,181 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Machine Learning Statistics 2022 Facts, Trends and Adoption You Must Need To Know
Updated · Sep 22, 2022
WHAT WE HAVE ON THIS PAGE
- 1 What is Machine Learning?
- 2 Advantages Of Machine Learning?
- 3 Disadvantages Of Machine Learning
- 4 Which Software is Using Machine Learning?
- 5 General Machine Learning Statistics
- 6 Voice-Supported Technology In Machine Learning
- 7 Machine Learning Adoption
- 8 Adoption of Machine Learning in Business
- 9 Achievements By Machine Learning
- 10 Machine Learning in Marketing
- 11 Machine Learning Actual Cases
- 12 Machine Learning Use Case Frequency
- 13 Summary
- 14 Conclusion
Machine learning statistics: Technology is introducing new concepts every year to improve the overall business processes over the universe. But technology is not only useful in corporations but also in households. Machine learning, metaverse, augmented reality, and virtual reality is all technical terms introduced recently in the market. And they are proving the best possible solutions in every aspect of the world.
What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning is a computerized term that is focused on the term “learn”. In the other sense, it is a part of augmented reality which allows machines to behave just like human beings. Machine learning is more flexible than other technical terms and it has the ability to fully automate processes. A great example of Alexa or Siri who are taking over the world using machine learning techniques is just amazing. You simply a question to them, or just tell them to perform any task on your electronic devices. They read you daily news, write a message or email, call someone on the phone or just entertain you, all of these features of course hands-free!
Advantages Of Machine Learning?
- Machine learning can automate each and every process available in the corporate world or in households
- They can listen like humans and talk like human beings
- Machine learning provides intellectual learning which allows the business processes to run on an error-free basis.
- Increases productivity
- Improves digitalization
- Provides distance e-learning
- With the help of machine learning, remote work is possible
- Supports technological developments
- It has the ability to replace manual work
Disadvantages Of Machine Learning
- Machine learning is an expensive technology
- Requires continuous improvements otherwise, it counts as an old technology
- Machine learning includes difficult calculations, algorithms, and much more, which is required by humans to build upon
- This technology can be addictive, and it can destroy the intelligence of human beings
- Focuses only on high-end technology
Which Software is Using Machine Learning?
Hotjar: Hotjar uses AI and machine learning to understand ad track the user’s behavior in the online world. It has powerful features to convert raw data into usable data.
SAP Crystal: In the case of SAP crystal, it can transform the static report into a dynamic one.
Tableau: Tableau has the ability to analyze visualizations and data without any further need for advanced and costly technology. The reports are independent.
Microsoft Power BI: In the combination with AI and machine learning complex data can be analyzed, gathered, and shared.
SAP Business: In SAP business it is easy to perform visualization steps by analyzing the complex business data.
General Machine Learning Statistics
- Machine learning is increasing its presence in AI funding over the global
- Augmented intelligence is increasing its voiced-based operations
- Machine learning is increasing its participation in business processes
- According to the market data forecast for 2020, in the year 2019, the global revenue for physical AI businesses such as chips reduced to 12%.
- McKinsey states that the expected growth of AI technology by the year 2030 will rise to $13 trillion.
- It is expected to have a value of $87.68 billion in the hardware of the AI market at a CAGR of 37.60% from the year 2019 to 2026.
- Fortune business insights studies from the year 2020 that, the global market of machine learning will be valued at $117.19 billion at a CAGR of 39.2% by the year 2027.
- $44.3 billion results in the global deep learning market at a CAGR of 39.2% by the year 2027.
- Statista estimated that US deep learning market software will rise to $80 million by the year 2025.
- Various companies globally in the first quarter of 2019 funded a total of $28.5 billion.
- From the year 2019 to 2023, Technavio estimates that the estimated market size will rise to $75.54 billion including the global AI industry.
Voice-Supported Technology In Machine Learning
Alexa and Siri are the top examples of voice-controlled machine learning. The importance of voice-supported technology improved as it became available on handy electronic devices such as mobile phones.
- According to the eMarketer, around 128 million people in the United States of America uses voice assistant.
- On the other hand, in the year 2019, the number of users in the US was only 115.2 million.
- In those two pandemic years, more people chose voice assistants resulting in 20% of 2019 of the population, whereas in the year 2020 the number rose to 25%.
- The global number of voice-based assistants rose to 7% in pandemic years
- According to Voicebot. at, in 2019, 80.5% of users who are under 30 prefer mobile phones, whereas only the number results in 60.5% of people in the old age group.
- On average people from the age group between 30 to 44 and 45 to 60, use voice assistants on smartphones 74.7% and 68.8% respectively.
- By the year 2023, around 8 billion people are predicted to use voice assistants.
- Motor Intelligence in 2020 predicted the value of the global natural language processing market will be $42.04 by 2026.
Machine Learning Adoption
As the competition in the corporative world increased, it gave an advantage to technology-driven companies to adopt machine learning. Machine learning is also increasing its capabilities to provide maximum benefits to users around the world.
- McKinsey in the year 2020 stated that 50% of the companies around the world have already shifted their technology to AI for at least one business process.
- In the year 2019, 1 out of three 3 big IT corporations was planning for adopting machine learning for business analytics.
- Machine learning will fulfill the purpose of security in many companies resulting in at least 25%.
- Machine learning also supports sales and marketing therefore 16% of IT players will use the technology.
- Mckinsey studied in 2020 and 80% of the industries reported that they could increase their revenue with machine learning, but it didn’t aid in cost-effective business activities.
- Machine learning and AI adopted will help to increase the GDP by 14% by the year 2030.
- Machine learning poses great challenges for technology adoption in terms of scaling resulting in 43% and versioning of machine learning models up to 41%.
Adoption of Machine Learning in Business
IT industries as well as other business processes are adopting machine learning as they are easing day-to-day activities. Today, there’s not a single field where this technology is not involved. Be it healthcare, construction, education, finance, hospitality, or engineering and the list is unending. The following statistics provide knowledge about what percentage of ML is being involved in the globe today.
- Remote workers such as virtual agents are being employed in companies to perform their duties as stated by Dataversity, 2019.
- Customers around the world of which 62% have agreed to submit the backend data to improve the functionality of business processes.
- Around to Forbes in the year 2020, LinkedIn published available jobs in machine learning as required skills resulting in 44,000 jobs and 98,000 required jobs over all the world.
- Till today, 91.5% of business processes are increasing their investments in AI.
- Around 75% of the projects in AI are now led by C- level executives.
- Globally 15% of the companies have maximum included machine learning users.
- The overall productivity increases, while AI is involved in the processes, resulting in a 40% increase.
- According to McKinsey, 51% of companies adopted AI technology in the early phase only.
- Till today, 49% of the companies are still acknowledging the technology.
- The projected improvement in productivity after involving AI is increased up to 54%.
Achievements By Machine Learning
Machine learning is a topmost advanced technology currently base for many businesses easing all their processes. The following analysis has been developed by many institutes.
- 95% time machine learning is accurately predicting the patient’s death states Bloomberg.
- According to Indeed 2020, machine learning was the second most in-demand skill needed in the list of vacancies.
- Goggle’s deep learning program with an accuracy of 89% detecting breast cancer.
- According to Forbes 2019, it takes 3.7 seconds to clone a voice for AI-powered voice cloning
- Teks mobile states that, by the year 2025, Japan will deliver 3.4 of elderly care services using AI robots
- Google claims that there’s a 60% decrease in errors happening while translating using Google translate.
- The rate of error is reduced to 5% in terms of speech recognition systems
- Microsoft states that AI with an accuracy of 62% recognizes highs and lows in the stock market.
Machine Learning in Marketing
- As machine learning is not cent percent perfect, a study by Smart brief in the year 2020 showed that, 41% of the customers around the world prefer human being to solve their issues rather than an AI.
- Netflix was able to save up to $1 billion by applying machine learning algorithms in its marketing activities.
- Amazon uses AI and machine learning at their designated fulfillment center which means, people around the world are being delivered 10 million products in a day.
- According to Vox 2019, around 3,000 Amazon go stores will be open focusing on AI and machine learning in the US.
- A number of total 87% of companies that use AI are focusing their activities mainly on email marketing and sales forecasting.
Machine Learning Actual Cases
Till today, many companies have invested in machine learning along with AI. As in the current market, competition has increased, therefore it automatically becomes impossible to just operate from old way methods and stand in the competition.
- According to Deloitte in the year 2019, Frontrunners were able to grab 47% of the sales and marketing and 32% were reduced from the operational costs
- Businesswire states that only 14.6% of the companies have involved AI possibilities on a larger basis.
- Customer service in NLP will be equipped with more advanced applications to ease the process.
- As of 2019, Tesla managed to land on 1.88 billion using the advantaged technology.
Machine Learning Use Case Frequency
The company’s most important department is customer service. It provides assistance to customers and resolves their questions. Machine learning and AI have been too focused on customer service. This report shows data from a time when everyone was locked in their homes by a pandemic. This shows that machine learning can be used to enable remote work for all employees around the world.
Machine learning is an important component of remote work. Employers can connect with employees’ desktops via various apps. There are many remote job opportunities on LinkedIn today. Employees can now work remotely on LinkedIn since the pandemic. This means that 35% of the 5 days they work are in the office, and 2/3 are at home.
Looking at the numbers, it can be said that by the year 2025 each and every company around the world will be equipped with AI and machine learning. Every sector is being benefited from this technology. The number of people using AI even in households will reach to sky soon in the coming years. As of today, AI is in the initial step and people are still planning to accommodate it with business processes.
To conclude, the world will be soon powerful enough to work with the automated machines designed by humans. The numbers 33%, and 40% will soon reach 100% easing all the processes around the globe. Machine learning technology will be more advanced in the future and change the face of everything.
Barry is a lover of everything technology. Figuring out how the software works and creating content to shed more light on the value it offers users is his favorite pastime. When not evaluating apps or programs, he's busy trying out new healthy recipes, doing yoga, meditating, or taking nature walks with his little one. | <urn:uuid:e481758e-0380-40b1-9c7a-2864c793846f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/stats/machine-learning-statistics.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335304.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929034214-20220929064214-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.942583 | 2,682 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Indian Space Research Organization Achieves Demonstrates Free-Space Quantum Communication Over 300 Meters
(GizBot) Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has achieved a landmark in satellite communication as it has successfully demonstrated free-space quantum communication over a distance of 300 m. This means India now joins the elite group of significant contributors in quantum communication.
The success of this project is the first step toward a future in which Indian satellites will be used to relay quantum encrypted data from one location to another.
In order to make this mission a success, several key technologies were developed by ISRO, including an indigenously developed NAVIC receiver for message transmission between the transmitting and receiving modules.
It was led between two buildings inside the grounds at Space Applications Center which is situated in Ahmedabad. The experiment was conducted at night to prevent interference from direct sunlight. | <urn:uuid:e79871e5-8ae1-44ab-b498-7bf9d653b49c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.insidequantumtechnology.com/news-archive/indian-space-research-organization-achieves-demonstrates-free-space-quantum-communication-over-300-meters/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335469.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930113830-20220930143830-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.944455 | 175 | 2.65625 | 3 |
(AZOM) Quantum technology is the application of quantum physics for real-world applications such as quantum computing, sensing, navigation, and communication.
Here superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) and superconducting qubits have been essential building blocks. The SSPDs and superconducting qubits encompass a variety of devices, including microwave resonators, transition-edge sensors (TES), superconducting nanowires for single-photon detectors (SNSPDs), Josephson junctions and high-Q superconducting resonators. One of the most crucial factors impacting the operation of these quantum devices is the choice and quality of the superconducting material used. It is important that the material of choice exhibits superconducting behavior at high critical temperatures (Tc) in order to avoid the additional cryocooler techniques that are needed for low Tc material, and that the quantum efficiency (QE) and quantum detection efficiency of these devices is maximized.1 Furthermore, it is also important that the defects in materials used in tunnel barriers, such as in Josephson junctions, are at a minimum as these could lead to decreased coherence of the qubit.
This article is the summary of a white paper accessible from Oxford Instruments at the close of the article. | <urn:uuid:6f71b0f2-46cf-47f2-82aa-a0c197280e29> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.insidequantumtechnology.com/news-archive/single-photon-detectors-superconducting-qubits-are-essential-building-blocks-for-quantum-computing-sensing-navigation-communication/amp/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335469.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930113830-20220930143830-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.925628 | 266 | 3.359375 | 3 |
A Visual Guide to Learning Data Science
Learning data science may seem intimidating but it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s make learning data science fun and easy. So the challenge is how do we exactly make learning data science both fun and easy?
Cartoons are fun and since “a picture is worth a thousand words”, so why not make a cartoon about data science? With that goal in mind, I’ve set out to doodle on my iPad the elements that are required for building a machine learning model. After a few days, the infographic shown above is what I came up with, which was also published on LinkedIn and on the Data Professor GitHub.
A dataset is the starting point in your journey of building the machine learning model. Simply put, the dataset is essentially an M×N matrix where M represents the columns (features) and N the rows (samples).
Columns can be broken down to X and Y. Firstly, X is synonymous with several similar terms such as features, independent variables and input variables. Secondly, Y is also synonymous with several terms namely class label, dependent variable and output variable.
It should be noted that a dataset that can be used for supervised learning (can perform either regression or classification)would contain both X and Y whereas a dataset that can be used for unsupervised learning will only have X.
Moreover, if Y contains quantitative values then the dataset (comprising of X and Y) can be used for regression tasks whereas if Y contains qualitative values then the dataset (comprising of X and Y) can be used for classification tasks.
Exploratory Data Analysis
Exploratory data analysis (EDA) is performed in order to gain a preliminary understanding and allow us to get acquainted with the dataset. In a typical data science project, one of the first things that I would do is “eyeballing the data” byperforming EDA so as to gain a better understanding of the data.
Three major EDA approaches that I normally use includes:
- Descriptive statistics — Mean, median, mode, standard deviation
- Data visualisations — Heat maps (discerning feature intra-correlation), box plot (visualize group differences), scatter plots (visualize correlations between features), principal component analysis (visualize distribution of clusters presented in the dataset), etc.
- Data shaping — Pivoting data, grouping data, filtering data, etc.
Data pre-processing (also known as data cleaning, data wrangling or data munging) is the process by which the data is subjected to various checks and scrutiny in order to remedy issues of missing values, spelling errors, normalizing/standardizing values such that they are comparable, transforming data (e.g. logarithmic transformation), etc.
“Garbage in, Garbage out.”
— George Fuechsel
As the above quote suggests, the quality of data is going to exert a big impact on the quality of the generated model. Therefore, to achieve the highest model quality, significant effort should be spent in the data pre-processing phase. It is said that data pre-processing could easily account for 80% of the time spent on data science projects while the actual model building phase and subsequent post-model analysis account for the remaining 20%.
In the development of machine learning models, it is desirable that the trained model perform well on new, unseen data. In order to simulate the new, unseen data, the available data is subjected to data splitting whereby it is split to 2 portions (sometimes referred to as the train-test split). Particularly, the first portion is the larger data subset that is used as the training set (such as accounting for 80% of the original data) and the second is normally a smaller subset and used as the testing set (the remaining 20% of the data). It should be noted that such data split is performed once.
Next, the training set is used to build a predictive model and such trained model is then applied on the testing set (i.e. serving as the new, unseen data) to make predictions. Selection of the best model is made on the basis of the model’s performance on the testing set and in efforts to obtain the best possible model, hyperparameter optimization may also be performed.
Another common approach for data splitting is to split the data to 3 portions: (1) training set, (2) validation set and (3) testing set. Similar to what was explained above, the training set is used to build a predictive model and is also evaluated on the validation set whereby predictions are made, model tuning can be made (e.g. hyperparameter optimization) and selection of the best performing model based on results of the validation set. As we can see, similar to what was performed above to the test set, here we do the same procedure on the validation set instead. Notice that the testing set is not involved in any of the model building and preparation. Thus, the testing set can truly act as the new, unseen data. A more in-depth treatment of this topic is provided by Google’s Machine Learning Crash Course.
In order to make the most economical use of the available data, an N-fold cross-validation (CV) is normally used whereby the dataset is partitioned to N folds (i.e. commonly 5-fold or 10-fold CV are used). In such N-fold CV, one of the fold is left out as the testing data while the remaining folds are used as the training data for model building.
For example, in a 5-fold CV, 1 fold is left out and used as the testing data while the remaining 4 folds are pooled together and used as the training data for model building. The trained model is then applied on the aforementioned left-out fold (i.e. the test data). This process is carried out iteratively until all folds had a chance to be left out as the testing data. As a result, we will have built 5 models (i.e. where each of the 5 folds have been left out as the testing set) where each of the 5 models contain associated performance metrics (which we will discuss soon in the forthcoming section). Finally, the metric values are based on the average performance computed from the 5 models.
In situations when N is equal to the number of data samples, we call this leave-one-out cross-validation. In this type of CV, each data sample represents a fold. For example, if N is equal to 30 then there are 30 folds (1 sample per fold). As in any other N-fold CV, 1 fold is left out as the testing set while the remaining 29 folds are used to build the model. Next, the built model is applied to make prediction on the left-out fold. As before, this process is performed iteratively for a total of 30 times; and the average performance from the 30 models are computed and used as the CV performance metric.
Now, comes the fun part where we finally get to use the meticulously prepared data for model building. Depending on the data type (qualitative or quantitative) of the target variable (commonly referred to as the Y variable) we are either going to be building a classification (if Y is qualitative) or regression (if Y is quantitative) model.
Machine learning algorithms could be broadly categorised to one of three types:
- Supervised learning — is a machine learning task that establishes the mathematical relationship between input X and output Y variables. Such X, Y pair constitutes the labeled data that are used for model building in an effort to learn how to predict the output from the input.
- Unsupervised learning — is a machine learning task that makes use of only the input X variables. Such X variables are unlabeled data that the learning algorithm uses in modeling the inherent structure of the data.
- Reinforcement learning — is a machine learning task that decides on the next course of action and it does this by learning through trial and error in an effort to maximize the reward.
Hyperparameters are essentially parameters of the machine learning algorithm that directly impacts the learning process and prediction performance. As there are no “one-size fits all” hyperparameter settings that will universally work for all datasets therefore one will need to perform hyperparameter optimization (also known as hyperparameter tuning or model tuning).
Let’s take random forest as an example. Two common hyperparameters that are typically subjected to optimization when using the randomForest R package includes the
ntree parameters (this corresponds to
RandomForestRegressor() functions from the scikit-learn Python library).
max_features) represents the number of variables that are randomly sampled as candidates at each split while
n_estimators) represents the number of trees to grow.
Another popular machine learning algorithm is support vector machine. Hyperparameters to be optimized is the
gamma parameters for the radial basis function (RBF) kernel (i.e. only the
C parameter for the linear kernel; the
exponential number for the polynomial kernel). The
C parameter is a penalty term that limits overfitting while the
gamma parameter controls the width of the RBF kernel. As mentioned above, tuning is typically performed so as to arrive at the optimal set of values to use for the hyperparameters and in spite of this there are research directed towards finding good starting values for the
gamma parameters (Alvarsson et al. 2014).
As the name implies, feature selection is literally the process of selecting a subset of features from an initially large volume of features. Aside from achieving highly accurate models, one of the most important aspect of machine learning model building is to obtain actionable insights and in order to achieve that it is important to be able to select a subset of important features from the vast number.
The task of feature selection in itself can constitute an entirely new area of research where intense efforts are geared toward devising novel algorithms and approaches. From amongst the plethora of available feature selection algorithms, some of the classical methods are based on simulated annealing and genetic algorithm. In addition to these, there are a large collection of approaches based on evolutionary algorithms (e.g. Particle Swarms Optimization, Ant Colony Optimization, etc.)and stochastic approaches (e.g. Monte Carlo).
Our own research group have also explored the use of Monte Carlo simulation for feature selection in a study of modeling the quantitative structure-activity relationship of aldose reductase inhibitors (Nantasenamat et al. 2014). We have also devised a novel feature selection approach based on combining two popular evolutionary algorithms namely genetic algorithm and particle swarm algorithm in our work entitled Genetic algorithm search space splicing particle swarm optimization as general-purpose optimizer (Li et al. 2013).
Machine Learning Tasks
Two common machine learning tasks in supervised learning includes classification and regression.
A trained classification model takes as input a set of variables (either quantitative or qualitative) and predicts the output class label (qualitative). The following figure hows three classes as indicated by the different colors and labels. Each small colored spheres represent a data sample whereby each sample
Take for example, the Penguins dataset (recently proposed as a replacement dataset for the heavily used Iris dataset) where we take as input quantitative (bill length, bill depth, flipper length and body mass)and qualitative (sex and island) features that uniquely describes the characteristics of penguins and classifying it as belonging to one of three species class label (Adelie, Chinstrap or Gentoo). The dataset is comprised of 344 rows and 8 columns. A prior analysis revealed that the dataset contains 333 complete cases where 19 missing values were presented in the 11 incomplete cases.
How do we know when our model performs good or bad? The answer is to use performance metrics and some of the common ones for assessing the classification performance includes accuracy (Ac), sensitivity (Sn), specificity (Sp) and the Matthew’s correlation coefficient (MCC).
where TP, TN, FP and FN denote the instances of true positives, true negatives, false positives and false negatives, respectively. It should be noted that MCC ranges from −1 to 1 whereby an MCC of −1 indicates the worst possible prediction while a value of 1 indicates the best possible prediction scenario. Also, an MCC of 0 is indicative of random prediction.
In a nutshell, a trained regression model can be best summarised by the following simple equation:
where Y corresponds to the quantitative output variable, X refers to the input variables and f refers to the mapping function (obtained from the trained model) for computing the output values as a function of input features. The essence of the above equation for the regression example is that Y can be deduced if X is known. Once Y is calculated (we can also say ‘predicted’), a popular way to visualise the results is to make a simple scatter plot of the actual values versus the predicted values as shown below.
The Boston Housing dataset is a popular example dataset typically used in data science tutorials. The dataset is comprised of 506 rows and 14 columns. For conciseness, shown below is the header (showing the names of variables) plus the first 4 rows of the dataset.
Of the 14 columns, the first 13 variables are used as input variables while the median house price (
medv) is used as the output variable. As can be seen all 14 variables contain quantitative values and thus suitable for regression analysis. I also made a step-by-step YouTube video showing how to build a linear regression model in Python.
In the video, I started by showing you how to read in the Boston Housing dataset, separating the data to X and Y matrices, perform 80/20 data split, build a linear regression model using the 80% subset and applying the trained model to make prediction on the 20% subset. Finally the performance metrics and scatter plot of the actual versus predicted
medv values are shown.
Evaluation of the performance of regression models are performed to assess the degree at which a fitted model can accurately predict the values of input data.
Common metric for evaluating the performance of regression models is the coefficient of determination (R²).
As can be seen from the equation, R² is essentially 1 minus the ratio of the residual sum of squares to that of the total sum of squares. In simple terms, it can be said to represent the relative measure of explained variance. For example if R² = 0.6 then it means that the model could explain 60% of the variance (i.e. that is 60% of the data fits the regression model) whereas the unexplained variance accounted for the remaining 40%.
Additionally, the mean squared error (MSE) as well as the root mean squared error (RMSE) are also common measures of the residuals or error of prediction.
As can be seen from the above equation, the MSE is as the name implies easily computed by taking the mean of the squared error. Furthermore, a simple square root of the MSE yields the RMSE.
A Visual Explanation of the Classification Process
Now let’s take another look at the entire process of a classification model. Using the Penguins dataset as an example, we can see that penguins can be characterised by 4 quantitative features and 2 qualitative features, which are then used as input for training a classification model. In training the model, some of the issues that one would need to consider includes the following:
- What machine learning algorithm to use?
- What search space should be explored for hyperparameter optimization?
- Which data splitting scheme to use? 80/20 split or 60/20/20 split? Or 10-fold CV?
Once the model has been trained, the resulting model can be used to make predictions on the class label (i.e. in our case the penguins species), which can be one of three penguins species: Adelie, Chinstrap or Gentoo.
Aside from performing only classification modeling, one could also perform principal component analysis (PCA), which will make use of only the X (independent) variables to discern the underlying structure of the data and in doing so would allow the visualisation of the inherent data clusters (shown below as a hypothetical plot where the clusters are color-coded according to the 3 penguins species). | <urn:uuid:7a9c8401-73bd-4b3a-9663-d8fd633ad985> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://resources.experfy.com/ai-ml/how-to-build-a-machine-learning-model/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337398.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003035124-20221003065124-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.907494 | 3,506 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Data is the new gold and as such, businesses need to invest in data management technologies to make their enterprise smarter, faster, and more productive.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy for IT teams to get all this information and handle the database needs themselves – which is where database administrators come in.
Database administration is becoming an increasingly essential skill due to the growing need for data management.
What is a database?
Databases are a large collection of information which is organised so that it can be accessed quickly. Databases can be made up of a wide range of information, from customer records to library catalogues.
A database is important because it allows workers to search for specific pieces of data quickly and efficiently. It also allows us to find connections between different pieces of data, or even find information about other databases that might contain the data we are looking for.
This helps us to break down difficult tasks into smaller, more manageable ones, as well as helping people who work in many different places at the same time.
What is a database administrator?
Database administrators (DBA) are in charge of designing, developing, and implementing database systems. They are also responsible for ensuring that the data stored on the database is available, secure, and has high performance.
Database admins should have a good understanding of relational databases and how to design them. They should also have skills in managing disaster recovery, back-up, and maintenance of databases.
They need to have familiarity with many programming languages, because each one has its own distributed database system. For example, Python scripts are typically used for data manipulation, whereas Java is used for NoSQL databases.
A good database admin should be able to maintain confidentiality with data by applying security controls, encryption, access management, and logging.
A DBA should also have experience with both relational and non-relational databases in order to keep up with emerging trends in technology that are shaping the landscape of data storage and management.
Why do you need a database admin?
As with any IT role, a database administrator has an important role in the company. They’re responsible for managing data storage and security compliance. Database administrators also keep track of how much storage each system has, and ensure that no single system impacts another system’s performance.
Without a DBA, your business may deal with data errors, data loss, and an inefficient use of data.
As a result, they have an important responsibility that cannot be replaced by any other position in the company.
Types of DBAs
Do you need a full-time or freelance DBA?
You might need a full-time or freelance DBA depending on factors like the size of your company, whether you are in need of someone with more expertise, and your budget.
Business factors to consider:
What to look for in DBA applicants
Hiring a database administrator is a difficult task. The candidate must be skilled in database management, software development, and network administration.
Applicants must have the necessary technical qualifications. This includes knowledge of databases and the programming language used. The person also needs to be trained in data modelling, security, backup and recovery, encryption, and managing large volumes of data.
Other factors to consider:
Questions to ask DBA candidates
There are a number of questions which you should ask when looking for a database administrator so you can find out if they are the right person for the job.
For example, you might want to know what DBMS they are more versed in or how they handle security risks. Asking about their previous experiences can also be helpful in making your decision.
Talk to the database experts
Database administrators are the backbone of every organization. But how do you find them? And how do you know they’re the right fit?
With years of experience, Everconnect has all the database expertise and knowledge you need. Contact them today and talk to a database specialist about your business needs. | <urn:uuid:9a6487bf-6d64-4df5-9335-866e164dbc34> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://everconnectds.com/blog/what-to-look-for-when-hiring-a-database-administrator/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337504.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004121345-20221004151345-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.940299 | 810 | 3.140625 | 3 |
The Role of the CISO and how to Win Over the Board
Whatever your industry, threats to the security of data are increasing hugely, especially with the shift to working remotely due to the pandemic. It offers more potentially vulnerable endpoints for cyber criminals to exploit.
The cyber security challenges faced by businesses and organisations require boards and business leaders to recognise the need for expertise.
In this article, you’ll learn what a CISO is, their roles and responsibilities, the importance of a CISO and some reasons to invest in cyber security.
What is a CISO?
CISO stands for Chief Information Security Officer. They are a board-level executive responsible for an organisation’s information and data security.
CISO role and responsibilities.
What does a CISO do?
The CISO advises the executive team on the organisation’s security requirements.
The role has evolved from being one of primarily implementing and managing information technology security to one that encompasses consultation, business processes and risk management and evaluation.
The CISO communicates risks to decision-makers and advocates for investment and resources for security.
So, the CISO needs to:
- Talk the executive board’s language.
- Understand business operations.
- Understand complex security reports from a technical perspective but also communicate them appropriately to other executives.
Key responsibilities of a CISO might include:
- Reporting to and advising top executive management on all information security, cyber threats, etc.
- Cyber security advocacy. Ensuring cyber security initiatives run smoothly, are suitably funded, and that the board understands the importance of cyber security.
- Risk management and incident management. Analysing and managing immediate threats. Investigating breaches, what went wrong, why and how to stop it from happening again.
- Security architecture. Planning, buying and advising on security hardware, system patches, software and network infrastructure.
- Identity and access management. Ensuring processes are in place so only authorized users have access to restricted data and systems.
- Awareness and training. Maintain training and awareness plans and materials.
- Policy and procedure management. Develop security policies and procedures.
Importance of a CISO.
Digital security must be a priority for companies.
Cyber attacks are costly, damaging and can be difficult to recover from, and they’re becoming more prevalent and severe.
The CISO is responsible for keeping the organisation safe from data breaches that could result in huge financial loss and irreparable reputational damage.
Therefore, it’s vital to have an executive responsible for and capable of making important security decisions and advising the management team on risks.
Business success relies on cyber security.
In pretty much every industry security is a critical concern for companies. Security incidents and data breaches are becoming increasingly commonplace.
So, a lack of focus on cyber security can greatly damage a business. There’s an economic cost of cyber attacks to a business – theft of corporate information, disruption to trading, repairing or replacing the affected system, compensation payments, not to mention the huge reputational damage.
Without sufficient cyber security in place, a business runs a great risk of failing.
Increasingly, business success relies on cyber security. The view of security and risk has shifted from a technical problem to a strategic priority.
Investing in a CISO is an investment in the future.
As well as critically important for present success, an effective CISO is vital for future innovation and safety. The CISO must have the authority to put strong policies in place.
And the role is only going to gain even more importance as time goes on. As security threats rise, companies must increasingly utilise and empower the role of the CISO.
As security concerns are increasingly shaping business growth, investing in security through a CISO role makes business sense – it’s one of the best ways to prepare for the future and rising threats.
Invest in cyber security.
How can you convince your executive board to invest in cyber security?
- Use language they understand. There’s no point trying to make your case using jargon and acronyms that no one listening understands. The tech and security world may understand but that’s not who you’re trying to persuade - the board members will tend to come from business backgrounds, not security backgrounds. This is also a good reason to learn the board member’s backgrounds if possible – it’ll affect the language you use.
- A picture tells a thousand words, so use simple and clear visual presentations to illustrate your points.
- Data. Discuss industry and company security and cyber attack data and averages, this quickly gets attention and is easy to digest. Highlight the growth in cyber crime and how all types and sizes of business are being targeted and the potential costs involved if an investment isn’t made.
- Present realistic funding requests. Be realistic about the true cyber security risk and suggest a responsible solution that also strategically aligns with the business responsibility of maximizing shareholder value.
- Communicate regularly with board members. Keep them aware of the latest significant security developments to maintain an ongoing relationship.
Hopefully, this article has enlightened you a little to the ways of the CISO.
We looked at what a CISO is, their roles and responsibilities, the importance of a CISO, reasons to invest in cyber security and some tips on convincing the board to invest.
This article has come from part of our research that has uncovered some key findings that every UK CISO will want to know. We will be hosting a hybrid, interactive event that will be broadcast on the 15th October, 3:30 pm from a studio in London, UK to a live audience of CISOs and CTOs - Bluefort Live
You can read more about the latest cyber security developments on BlueFort Security’s news page.
If you have any questions or want to discuss any requirements, just give us a call on 01252 917000, email email@example.com or use our contact form.
Learn about the role of a virtual CISO, what they can provide and when you should consider hiring one.
Learn about the main concerns for all CISOs and why cybersecurity is not just their responsibility. | <urn:uuid:2a903415-67c1-495e-bd31-7ebd4d440760> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.bluefort.com/news/latest-blogs/what-is-role-of-ciso-how-to-win-over-the-board/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337504.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004121345-20221004151345-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.931023 | 1,291 | 2.5625 | 3 |
In a move that recalls blockbuster movie Terminator, a new project has been launched to hook up computers around the world into a giant supercomputer. Its name? SkyNet.
Unlike its fictional namesake, though, SkyNet will use its distributed computing power to sift through huge quantities of mountains of astronomical data,.
The Skynet project is being run by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), which is calling for the help of PC users around the globe to analyse data for evidence of previously undiscovered stars and galaxies.
Users need to download a small piece of software from the SkyNet website (opens in new tab) that downloads and crunches through data when their PC is idle.
As an incentive to get involved, SkyNet contributors who process the most data could win themselves a trip to one of the observatories gathering data for the project.
"As we design, develop and switch on the next generation of radio telescopes, the supercomputing resources processing this deluge of data will be in increasingly high demand," said Professor Peter Quinn, director of ICRAR in a statement.
"SkyNet aims to complement the work already being done by creating a citizen science computing resource that radio astronomers can tap into and process data in ways and for purposes that otherwise might not be possible," added Quinn.
One of the sources producing data for the SkyNet project in the future may be the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array (opens in new tab) (SKA), which will harness the power of thousands of dishes into the most sensitive radio telescope ever made. The project is due for approval in February 2012, and will be built in either Australia or South Africa.
Distributed computing has been used in the past to tackle projects that require massive number-crunching power. These have included Folding@Home, a scheme to investigate potential cures for cancer, and SETI@Home, which scoured radio telescope signals for evidence of extra-terrestrial life - but was controversially discontinued earlier this year. | <urn:uuid:9fde994e-fe59-4835-81f8-932d67e349f3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.itproportal.com/2011/09/13/skynet-project-recalls-terminator-supercomputer/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337504.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004121345-20221004151345-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.93865 | 413 | 3.421875 | 3 |
REST is an architecture style that defines a set of constraints to be used for creating web services. Moreover, it is considered an alternative to SOAP & WSDL. REST architecture was developed based on the lessons learned from previous approaches to create web services while avoiding their shortcomings. REST is based on four main constraints: addressability, statelessness, self-descriptiveness, and a layered system; and has emerged as an alternative to the heavily used, but more complex web service technologies, for example SOAP and WSDL.
- It reduces the cost of implementation, maintenance, and support, thereby increasing IT staff productivity.
- You can reuse existing platform components and increase scalability and availability of applications.
- Addressability of resources: URI identifies every resource (property, item, data type etc.). Thereon, they can be accessed using standard HTTP methods.
- Stateless protocol: Servers and clients need to maintain no client context between requests. The HTTP protocol allows the server to handle requests in any order. This lets clients act as simple browsers.
- Self-descriptive messages: Each resource representation contains all the information necessary to understand the message. This includes the resource’s media type.
- Layered system.Resource functionality can be layered to allow delegation of processing for optimal performance.
- Code on demand: A Web Service may provide executable code along with its representation to compute or process a response.
- Cacheable: Clients can cache responses to reduce the number of requests they have to send to a Web Server. | <urn:uuid:f148d0d4-ad58-42a6-a25d-0b7fa991122f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://data443.com/data_security/supported-platforms-rest/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.877299 | 322 | 3.5 | 4 |
Network Security, Explained
In today’s increasingly digital environment, network security is a critical part of any business environment. Without network security, essential corporate systems, business data and the personal information of customers are vulnerable to outside threats, posing significant financial, operational and reputational risks. Effective network security uses a wide range of measures to keep business operations safe.
What Is Network Security?
Network security involves many different types of policies and controls to protect the accessibility, integrity and confidentiality of a network and data. A network should be reliable, providing strong uptime and keeping the data of the company and its customers safe from malware, leaks and exploitation. A strong network security solution will also be one that can help save costs through reduced overhead expenses and a minimized risk of costly data breaches or other security problems.
How Does Network Security Work?
Network security is all about building up multiple layers of defenses in and around a network, with various policies, controls and systems in each one. Between hardware, software and cloud service components, network security focuses on principles like authentication and authorization. The goal is to allow the right users to access the resources they need while keeping any malicious parties out of important data.
Some of the things network security systems protect against include:
- Viruses, worms and trojans.
- Spyware, adware and ransomware.
- Unauthorized access.
- Data leaks.
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
- Data destruction.
The Types of Network Security
With so many different safeguards in place, it’s no surprise that there are many types of network security out there:
- Firewalls: A network firewall applies security rules to the incoming and outgoing traffic to the network, blocking any malicious traffic or malware.
- Network segmentation: Network segments can be defined and separated, so certain assets are grouped by their function or risk level. This setup can offer better security and performance and allow for unique access control at each segment.
- Access control and authentication: An access control and authentication system validates user identities before granting access to network systems. These users should be carefully defined and granted access based on their roles. Another component of access control is checking that users are accessing the network via secure endpoints that won’t endanger the system or data.
- Data loss prevention: Data loss prevention involves monitoring data being sent and received to minimize the chances of personally identifiable information (PII) from being released outside the organization. This prevention can involve technology, like email and file transfer scans, or practices, such as training requirements for employees.
- Remote access virtual private networks (VPNs): These VPNs allow individuals to gain secure access to a network from a remote endpoint. They’re often used by telecommuters, mobile users and extranet users to provide access to necessary data without risking privacy.
- Network monitoring and detection: Continuous monitoring of the network can use a wide range of applications to monitor traffic and respond appropriately. These systems might include intrusion prevention and detection systems as well as security information and event management.
Your Partner in Network Security
One of the most important components of your network’s health is security, and that’s especially true if you work in a sensitive industry like health care or finance. At DataSpan, professional networking security is one of our specialties. We can deliver well-rounded network security solutions built to the unique landscape of your business. To learn more about our network security options, reach out to an expert today! | <urn:uuid:42cab93c-f1b1-4648-8280-4178bc7f0797> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://dataspan.com/blog/network-security-explained/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.911979 | 727 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Although all businesses handle data, data classification strategies vary from one organization to the other. How you decide to label and classify your data may depend on a constellation of factors, starting with what type of data you have.
In general, you’ll find that you have both external and internal data (also called public and confidential). However, not all data is created equal and some pieces will require more protection than others. How you determine what data needs special attention in your information security program will impact the way you organize and store your data.
Modern companies all handle a tremendous amount of data. We may have customer payment information, invoice records, email lists, order history, user data in software, or so many other bits of information. Companies need to keep this data organized and secure, but also accessible to the people who need it.
Data classification is an essential step for assessing risk at your company and creating a comprehensive information security strategy. You need to know what is your most sensitive data and where that is kept.
Here are a few best practices to consider when classifying data in your business.
Internal Data: The Proof of Processes
Internal data originates within your business and is typically generated as a result of regular business activities. Unlike data gleaned from external sources, internal data involves sources of information that aren’t available to the public. It must be protected due to proprietary or ethical considerations. This would include things like trade secrets or health data regulated by HIPAA. Only people with a legitimate reason to access it should be able to do so.
Internal data is what most people think of when discussing business intelligence. You can break your internal data down into three different categories:
1. General Internal Data
General internal data is information that is private because it simply isn’t relevant to the public. For example, internal data might include the company’s electricity usage for the building, its printer meter data, employment data that doesn’t involve identifiable information, or the identity of suppliers where a confidentiality agreement doesn’t exist.
In general, this sort of information likely doesn’t have any laws requiring its protection, but must be protected from unauthorized access, modification, or transmission to retain business integrity. Disclosure of this information would be inconsequential but might look bad for the company.
Best Practice: To prevent embarrassing mishaps or data breaches, encourage a culture of security in the workplace. Conduct security awareness training and encourage employees to take security seriously, no matter how trivial a piece of information may seem.
2. Confidential Information
The US Securities and Exchange Commission defines confidential information as non-public information that concerns any aspect of a company or the affairs of the party supplying the information that isn’t publicly available. In other words, it is information intended to be used by the business, for business purposes, and includes sensitive information related to the business or the provider. Some examples of confidential information under the SEC include:
- Trade secrets
- Procedures, specifications, or formulas for products
- Financial information
- Personal information like names, addresses, and credit card numbers
Confidential data must only be accessed by individuals with a legitimate reason, may have authorization requirements, and likely has laws governing its collection, use, storage, and transmission. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union is one such example of a law governing personal confidential data.
Best Practice: When it comes to confidential information, use a Zero Trust security model. Require users to authenticate themselves before connecting to internal networks or accessing systems containing confidential information.
3. Regulated or Classified Data
Regulated or classified materials are a subset of confidential information. These are pieces of data subject to regulatory compliance, such as HIPAA or another set of legal mandates. Breaches to this type of data will be accompanied by fines, penalties, lawsuits, or business damage.
Because of these serious consequences, it’s worth separating these in your data classification. This type of data may require specific types of storage, security, or transmission through specific channels. You should have strict policies regarding who can access classified data.
Best Practice: Perform frequent assessments on regulated data and the technology used to collect, manipulate, transmit, or store it. Updates or changes to technology may render a service non-compliant without notice. (This happens a lot with cloud services.) Ignorance is not an excuse for non-compliance.
External Data: Context and Competition
External data is generated either outside the company or within the company, but it’s generally publicly available for anyone who goes looking for it. There are many different sources for external data. Typically, these sources include things like surveys, research, customer feedback, and/or open sources like industry news blogs.
Possession of this data is frequently overlooked by companies and security information programs. According to a survey by The Silicon Review, 65 percent of respondents felt that external data was less valuable than internal data.
However, external data is critical to understanding your customers, market, and industry. It’s what provides context for internal data and empowers a company to differentiate itself in the competitive landscape. Therefore, it’s important to classify and protect data that a company collects from external sources.
Best Practices for Classifying and Protecting External Data
External data can prove just as important to your company as much as internal data. However, it comes with its own set of challenges. Ensure that external data remains useful to your company by considering classification systems that include:
- Source: It’s important to vet sources to ensure accuracy and truthfulness. Using questionable sources invites harmful disinformation into a business, opening the door for risks stemming from misguided decisions.
- Real-time vs. historic: Classify external data as either real-time or historic to capture changes in markets, consumer preferences, or industries. This will help prevent you from acting on dated information while gaining a deeper insight into why a certain market feature exists.
Carbide Helps Implement Smart Data Classification
Good data classification is a foundation for keeping you company’s data organized, accessible, and useful. While there are many different dichotomies and ways to classify data, most companies will handle some sort of mixture of external/public or internal/confidential information. Additionally, internal data may occupy different levels of confidentiality, particularly once regulatory compliance enters the picture. Choose the classification system that best works for your data, and help it stay secure.
Need more help figuring out how to classify data at your company? Reach out to our team and learn how we can help you assess risk and build an information security program to build trust and win customers. | <urn:uuid:ff433db2-493a-40da-8b8d-753b2a95f3a8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://carbidesecure.com/resources/best-practices-for-data-classification-in-your-business/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20220925070216-20220925100216-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.915848 | 1,370 | 2.921875 | 3 |
How IoT Firewalls Work
IoT devices pose significant security risks to an organization’s network. IoT firewalls protect these devices from exploitation and can be implemented in one of two ways:
- IoT Network Firewalls: IoT network firewalls are deployed as part of network gateways and allow both macro and micro segmentation of an organization’s IoT deployment. IoT network firewalls can use VPNs to encrypt traffic between the gateway and remote servers that process data collected by IoT devices.
- IoT Embedded Firewalls: IoT embedded firewalls are built into the operating system of an IoT device. They are installed by the IoT device manufacturer and can filter traffic to the device and potentially act as a VPN endpoint.
The Importance of IoT Firewalls
IoT devices are notorious for their poor security. Some common IoT security risks include:
- Legacy Operating Systems: IoT devices may be running outdated operating system versions. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation via publicly known vulnerabilities.
- Lack of Built-In Security: Most IoT devices lack the built-in firewalls and antivirus that are common on desktop systems. This makes it easier for attackers to exploit these systems and infect them with malware.
- Difficult Patch Management: When was the last time you updated the software in your lightbulb? Fixing functionality and security issues is vital to the security of all software. However, IoT devices are rarely updated, making them vulnerable to attack.
- Weak Passwords: IoT devices are commonly deployed without changing the default password and may have hardcoded passwords that users cannot change. When these passwords become publicly known, attackers can simply log into vulnerable devices.
- Poor Physical Security: Many IoT devices — such as Internet-connected cameras — are designed to be deployed in public and remote locations. With physical access to devices, attackers may be able to bypass and defeat a device’s security defenses.
- Insecure Protocol Use: While most Internet traffic avoids the use of insecure protocols such as Telnet, the same is not true of IoT devices. The use of these protocols makes it easier for attackers to steal login credentials and exploit vulnerable protocols.
These security issues make IoT devices a significant security risk to their owners and the networks where they are deployed. IoT firewalls help to manage this risk by making devices more difficult to attack and limiting the impact of a compromised device.
IoT Architectures Differ
IoT devices are being deployed in various industries, but these devices and architectures are not created equal. Industrial and consumer IoT are often deployed under two very different architectures.
Manufacturers commonly use the Purdue model to segment their industrial control system (ICS) networks. This model separates an IoT architecture into several layers with defined purposes. IoT network firewalls inspect and control traffic across network boundaries.
- Level 4/5: The Enterprise layer is the corporate IT network, where enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems perform highly-level management of manufacturing operations.
- Level 3.5: The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separates IT and OT environments and includes security systems designed to protect OT environments from attacks over IT networks.
- Level 3: Manufacturing operations systems manage workflows on the manufacturing floor.
- Level 2: In the process network, operators monitor and manage physical processes using Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) access to supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software.
- Level 1: In the control network, intelligent devices such as PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller) and RTUs (Remote Terminal Unit) monitor and manipulate physical devices.
- Level 0: In the field network are the physical devices and sensors that perform manufacturing operations.
In contrast, consumer IoT devices that are deployed across a larger and more diverse geographic area may operate under a four-layer architectural model:
- Sensor Layer: IoT devices collect data for processing.
- Network or Data Acquisition Layer: Data from one or more systems is collected by IoT gateways and securely transferred to processing systems.
- Data Pre-Processing Layer: Edge-based IoT devices perform pre-processing to reduce the amount of data sent to cloud-based servers.
- Cloud Analysis or Application Layer: Cloud servers analyze data and provide users access to analytics and data.
Industrial IoT architectures have integrated security layers that consumer IoT deployments may lack. IoT gateways and cloud firewalls can control access to improve the security of consumer IoT devices.
Which Industries Need IoT Firewall Security?
IoT adoption is growing across the board, making IoT security important for all organizations. However, for certain industries and companies, IoT firewall security is especially vital, including:
- Industrial: High availability and performance requirements mean that OT systems commonly run legacy software and have limited support for built-in security solutions. As these systems are increasingly connected to IT environments, IoT firewall security is vital to blocking attacks from entering OT environments and then moving laterally within the organization.
- Healthcare: The Medical IoT (MIoT) is rapidly growing, and includes pacemakers, scanners, fitness trackers, and similar networked devices. These devices’ poor security makes IoT firewalls necessary to block attempted exploitation of these vulnerable devices.
- Enterprise: In addition to industry-specific solutions, enterprises are deploying IoT devices such as smart building management systems, networked cameras, and printers. Not all devices may be known or managed by the IT team, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.
- Device Manufacturers: IoT devices’ unique deployment scenarios make them difficult to secure using traditional methods. By deploying IoT embedded firewalls on their devices, device manufacturers can improve these devices’ security and resilience to attempted exploitation.
Achieving IoT Firewall Security with Check Point
Check Point offers comprehensive protection for an organization’s IoT deployment, including both network and embedded IoT firewalls.
Check Point’s IoT Protect network firewall provides complete visibility into IoT devices connected to the corporate network by identifying both known and unknown IoT devices. It also recommends zero trust policies to macrosegment IoT devices and includes an integrated intrusion prevention system (IPS) to prevent attacks against IoT devices.
Check Point’s IoT Protect embedded firewall enables IoT device manufacturers to make their devices secure by design. After assessing a device, it applies a light-footprint nano agent to offer runtime protection against attempted exploitation.
Learn more about Check Point’s IoT security solutions in the IoT Protect solution brief. Then, see their capabilities for yourself by signing up for a free demo. | <urn:uuid:681a8129-fde4-41d4-9d69-22e3a09246aa> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.checkpoint.com/cyber-hub/network-security/what-is-iot/what-is-an-iot-firewall/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334912.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926144455-20220926174455-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.917892 | 1,351 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Chad Cisco, general manager of federal business at DataRobot, said artificial intelligence could help glean insights from massive amounts of data and agencies could allow their employees to take advantage of AI through the use of automated machine learning.
Cisco wrote how an automated machine learning platform could help agencies develop citizen data scientists who could automate the testing process for different algorithms and identify the best models for predicting the data without learning how to code or getting a Ph.D. in data science.
“Automated machine learning helps make data scientists more productive because repetitive steps in the model-building process are automated,” he wrote. “This frees them to use their unique expertise for selecting and fine-tuning models, helping them accelerate how they address potentially hundreds of problems a year.”
Cisco cited the potential applications of automated machine learning in fraud prevention, cybersecurity, logistics planning and predictive maintenance. He also called on agencies to educate their employees on how they can leverage AI to support government missions.
“The people who have the best knowledge of their data should have the opportunity to expand their capabilities and use AI to find answers to the questions they encounter in their daily work.” | <urn:uuid:52495c52-175e-4cd1-a663-5b04b008a904> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.govconwire.com/2020/06/datarobots-chad-cisco-automated-machine-learning-could-help-agency-employees-leverage-ai/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927225413-20220928015413-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.955969 | 243 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Open topic with navigation
Linguistic sentiment analysis (LSA) is a tool based on Eduction that you can use to identify positive or negative sentiments in text. Sentiment analysis is available as Eduction grammar files, in various major languages.
The sentiment analysis grammar files define positive and negative sentiments. Some of them have components defined, which allow you to extract attributes from matched phrases, such as topic, subject, and positive or negative sentiments. | <urn:uuid:982ce7ce-f015-4b30-8c8b-f473eae66127> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/idol/IDOL_11_6/IDOLServer/Guides/html/English/expert/Content/IDOLExpert/EductionAndSentimentAnalysis/Sentiment_Analysis.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335326.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929065206-20220929095206-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.90804 | 95 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Certificates and PKI
A PKI certificate is a digital document issued by a CA that verifies the identity of a certificate subject and binds the identity to a public key. Each certificate has a corresponding private key that is stored separately. The public key and private key form an asymmetric key pair that can be used for data encryption and identity authentication. A CA signs the certificate to verify that entities that trust the CA can also trust the certificate.
Depending on the device capabilities and activation type, devices and apps can use certificates to:
- Authenticate using SSL/TLS when connecting to webpages that use HTTPS
- Authenticate with a work mail server
- Authenticate with a workWi-Finetwork or VPN
- Encrypt and sign email messages using S/MIME protection
Multiple certificates used for different purposes can be stored on a device. | <urn:uuid:3bf217fd-9dc3-4e44-99e9-d95a6e04e4fb> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://docs.blackberry.com/en/endpoint-management/blackberry-uem/12_13/administration/pki-certificates/jth1399034187513 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335491.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930145518-20220930175518-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.890299 | 177 | 3.5 | 4 |
A PDU - short for Power Distribution Unit - is a device that allows you to remotely turn on, turn off, and reboot gear running on AC and/or DC power. This means that a PDU is a device used to control and distribute electrical power.
The most basic form of a PDU is a large power strip without surge protection. This is designed to provide standard electrical outlets for use within a variety of settings that don't require monitoring or remote access capabilities.
Power Distribution Units are used in server rooms, data centers, remote telecom sites, and anywhere else that you need to be able to control power to equipment without someone physically being on-site. PDUs are also commonly used in transportation/transit, public utilities, government, military, education, and research environments worldwide.
The PDU technology is absolutely important to minimize time wasted driving out to remote sites. Instead of sending out a technician and burning time, fuel, and wages on the road, you can issue power control commands remotely via a simple LAN connection.
PDUs come in a variety of form factors. If purchasing this device is something you're considering, you'll want to know you're selecting the right unit for your needs first. So, let's take a look at the top 5 key-factors that you should keep in mind in order to choose the perfect PDU for your remote site.
Going back to the definition of a PDU, it's essentially an industrial-grade power strip used - in most cases - to power servers and telecommunications equipment. You'll generally have too many devices at a site to plug them all directly into your power supply, so you'll need a PDU to distribute your site's power to each device. This is possible because a PDU turns one (or a few) power inputs into many power outputs.
PDUs are available in both AC and DC models to match the power in use at different kinds of sites. Your number one concern should be finding out if you need an AC-powered PDU or a DC-powered PDU.
Although internally they may be quite similar, an AC-powered PDU has very different connectors than a DC-powered PDU. DC power distribution units are built just like their AC-powered counterparts - except for their output current - and are designed to provide electric current in the Direct Current format that many rack-mounted devices use.
Some PDUs are built for use in corporate IT environments where the power is mostly 110v AC - at least here in the US. Others handle -48v or +24v DC. This affects not only the needed circuit design but also the connector type that you'll need. Make sure that, whatever power voltage you plan to use, your PDU will accommodate it because if you don't have the right connectors, you won't get much use out of your PDU at all.
It's also critical to make sure that you're purchasing a PDU with the right amount of power outputs that you need.
The whole point of getting a PDU is being able to control power directly and remotely, so if the number of power outputs is not enough for all your gear, the PDU is essentially useless, as you'll still have to visit your site to control the gear that's not connected to it. Similarly, it's also important that you don't buy a device that has so much capacity that you'll never be able to use all of the outputs either.
Always look for a PDU that has the right number of power outputs that you need now plus a couple more, so you can allow yourself room to grow.
One of the defining characteristics that separates great PDUs from the rest is the ability to handle servers with redundant power supplies. Just because your server has two or three redundant power inputs doesn't mean you should struggle to reboot it. Think about it.
Issuing a remote reboot command is simple if your server has only one power supply. You press one button in the PDU's web interface or other interface, and a power relay turns off. Then, it'll wait a second and turn back on to reboot your server.
Now imagine the same scenario with a redundantly powered server instead. Killing power to just one power input won't cause a reboot - you have to hit all of them at the same time. With an automated power cycle time of just one second, timing is going to be tricky.
What you'll probably end up doing is issuing a manual "power off" command to each server power supply, wait a moment, and then power each power supply back on. There has to be a better way, and fortunately, there is.
If you have servers with redundant power supplies, you really need to find a power distribution unit that understands this fact. You should be able to configure your PDU to "link" several power outputs together in its software. This will allow you to issue a single remote reboot command for your servers - no matter how many power supplies they may have.
The bottom line is: when you're evaluating PDUs, consider whether you have devices with a lot of redundant power supplies. If you do, look for a PDU that supports "outlet grouping" or a similarly named feature. This will let you toggle all redundant inputs at the same time, rebooting that device (usually a server) with a minimum number of click and keystrokes.
Just like any piece of equipment, a PDU should be sized to fit the environment where you'll deploy it.
PDUs can be rack-mounted, wall-mounted, or they can be "0 RU" rack-mounted.
A rack PDU - like the name suggests - is a PDU that is designed to be mounted in an industry-standard equipment rack. These are typically either 19 inches or 23 inches in width. Height can vary from PDU to PDU, but most are just one "rack unit" high. This translates to about 1.75 inches. For rugged industrial environments, rack-mounted PDUs are standard.
The advantage of a rack PDU is that it mounts into your existing gear racks. This not only gives you a place to install the device, but it also reduces the electrical wiring distance required to connect to your gear.
One disadvantage of the rack PDU model, though, is that it takes up space in your environment/server racks, where space may be tight.
If you do choose a rack PDU design, try to find one that is only a single rack-unit tall - also called "1 RU" or "PDU 1U". A PDU 1U in size minimizes the vertical space in your rack that must be consumed to hold the PDU.
In "0 RU" PDU designs, a long and narrow power strip is attached to the side of a gear rack, which is ordinarily wasted space. This allows you to add PDU functionality to your site without using up any physical rack space.
If you don't have room in your equipment racks - or you're deploying in a small or unusual location - you may want a PDU that mounts to the wall.
Keep in mind that wall-mounted PDUs, or those that are attached to the side of an equipment rack do conserve space in cramped equipment racks, but they can increase the distance between the power outputs of the PDU and the power inputs of the devices that will receive electricity.
Who doesn't like bonus features? Get alarm monitoring included with your PDU.
You can purchase a simple, no-frills PDUs from many different manufacturers, but choosing the right vendor can get you the ones that do include a lot more functionality in the same device than the rest.
If you only have a few remote locations, a good built-in web interface will let you toggle inputs and outputs when you need to.
Once you have more than 10 sites or so, that strategy breaks down. You need a centralized interface to manage your PDUs. This should be the same master station you use to manage equipment and environmental alarms. If it happens to be the current SNMP manager at your company, make sure you purchase PDUs that can be controlled using SNMP SETs.
Here's two examples of good power distribution units that also includes network alarm monitoring worth taking a looking at:
Remote Power Controller 100
This device is an excellent way to get double duty out of your investment in a PDU. Not only will you be able to control power and reboot your servers remotely, you'll also - with the RTU capabilities - be able to monitor their status with discrete inputs (contact closures) and analog inputs.
Now, keep in mind that the Remote Power Controller 100 is also available without alarm monitoring functionality if you decide that you really don't need it. Still, most people find that after looking at their server room or server closet environment that they can benefit from adding alarm monitoring at such a small incremental cost to their PDU.
Remote Power Switch AC
The Remote Power Switch AC is another great example of a PDU that also has RTU features.
This device allows you to remotely power cycle your equipment. One device has the capacity to cycle up to eight other devices, right from your central office. Never again will you have to send a tech to a site just to turn something off and then on again. Simply plug your devices into the back of the unit which is then connected to a power supply, similar to a surge protector.
The Remote Power Switch then takes the power and allocates it to each of the connected devices. If one of the devices stops working, you can use the Remote Power Switch to turn it off and then on again, without driving to the site.
As I said, the Remote Power Switch also has RTU functionality, which means that you can monitor sensors and other devices all from one unit.
For complete environmental visibility, the Remote Power Switch also monitors internal temperature, external temperature, and current draw for each input. This is important at your unmanned sites, where you need to detect and respond to network issues remotely.
Using any PC on your network, you can operate controls, check temperatures at the site, and keep tabs on power consumption - all without any windshield time. Unlike other power switching devices, SNMP compatibility makes the Remote Power Switch special. You can choose up to 8 different notification devices - any combination of SNMP managers and email addresses - to inform you of any potential issues that may be going on at the site.
Also, if you need to control a lot of power at a single site, you can use the expansion port on the back panel of the unit to daisy chain many Remote Power Switches together. Linked switches will act as a single unit, making them easy to control using the web interface.
Everyone likes to save money, and that's an awesome instinct to have. What you need to watch out for, though, is a $1 savings today that ends up costing you $10 in the future.
How much money do you have invested in your server room or remote sites already? Take a minute to get a rough total in your head. It's likely a big number.
Since PDUs don't generally require incredibly complex logic or processing, some vendors end up selling PDUs that really aren't reliable. Maybe they're tough to use. Maybe they're not compatible with open standards. Maybe they won't last very long in harsh environments.
We, from DPS, know that your existing investment in your remote sites or servers is big, so you need to protect it with a high-quality power distribution unit.
When you go out shopping for PDUs, you should look for sturdy units. That's what we offer you: a reliable, powder-coated metal chassis. Also, our power outputs have a high enough amperage rating to meet your needs (10 amps is usually a good number for each output).
Another ingredient for a quality power distribution unit is a manufacturer who has been in business for at least 10 or 20 years. We have actually been in business for more than 30 years, and we ensure that you'll be buying not only from someone whose business is stable, but also someone whose products have been successfully deployed in networks around the world. Don't trust your valuable remote sites or servers to a power distribution unit vendor that doesn't have proven technology.
Contact me today and let's talk more about PDUs and remote monitoring. And don't forget to ask to see my references from previous customers.
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Whether you're new to our equipment or you've used it for years, DPS factory training is the best way to get more from your monitoring.Reserve Your Seat Today | <urn:uuid:568a72f9-3419-4eda-b6b8-c5ed5f724ae8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.dpstele.com/blog/top-five-factors-for-choosing-the-right-pdu.php | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335491.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930145518-20220930175518-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.950301 | 2,649 | 3.125 | 3 |
The wireless network's security is something crucial thing that can protect or facilitate in the theft of the data. The main thing in the security is the encryption of the data. Encryption is a process of obscuring information to make it unreadable. In simple words, it is the translation of data into a secret code. The most effective way to achieve data security is Encryption. One cannot gain access to an encrypted file without the secret key or password. Password decrypts the encrypted document. Encryption converts the data into a form called cipher text, which cannot be understood by unauthorized people. The stronger the cipher the harder it is for the unauthorized people to break it. Cost is the main factor for the strength of encryption. Here are some ways through which one can ensure that the data is encrypted and the wireless network is safe;
All wireless computers are radio transmitters and receivers which anyone can listen in. To make sure that the information remains private, the solution is to encrypt the data so that a limited access is achieved. Only people with the password can transmit and can read the data. One can have the security control of the network through the QPA. But for many of the public Wi-Fi, one might not be able to give the same statement.
WPA2 was the final certified version of WPA which came out in 2004. It introduced Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP).
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is an encryption methodology. By using this system one can set up different levels of encryption key strength, either 40-bit key or 104-bit key. In the year 2001 many WEP cryptographic vulnerabilities were identified. One of them is that WEP used static keys, the keys never changed. All the people were using the same keys and the keys were static. This made it easy to crack into any WEP connection in just a few minutes. So it was recommended not to use WEP. When the encryption vulnerability was found out then Wi-Fi protected access was introduced. It was referred to WPA, WPA2 and WPA2-Enterprise.
Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). It is a common set of frameworks that can be used to authenticate people onto wireless networks. It provides many different ways to authenticate based on RFC standards. WPA and WPA2 use five EAP types such as authentication mechanisms
PEAP stands for Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol. It is created by Cisco, Microsoft and RSA Security. To come up with a way to encrypt all of these communications that is very much a standard network across mini wireless devises what this essentially does is create a TLS tunnel, one certificate on the server. And the entire authentication is encrypted in that tunnel.
A common way of setting up the authentication methods especially early on wireless networks was created as a proprietary method by Cisco it is called Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol (LEAP). LEAP uses passwords only; no detailed certificate management is required. It is based on MS-CHAP (including MS-CHAP security shortcomings).
MAC stands for Media Access Control, it is the hardware address. It limits access through the physical hardware by keeping the neighbours out and by maintaining an additional administration with visitors. It is easy to find working MAC addresses through wireless LAN analysis. MAC addresses can be spoofed and it's free open-source software. In reality it provides a security through obscurity.
SSID stands for Service set identifier. To ensure safety one must change the SSID to something not-so obvious. One might also be able to disable the SSID broadcasting from the configuration settings of the access point by turning the broadcast on or off. SSID is easily determined through wireless network analysis. Applying this provides security through obscurity.
When WPA came out it used TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol). TKIP provides the rotation of keys. This was an improvement over WEP primarily because TKIP allowed changing the keys in every packet. And the rotation made it very difficult to decrypt the data. The mechanism which is used in the TKIP is almost same as the WEP. Hence the one, who is using such network, is prone to get attacked by the similar attacks.
The CCMP is the encryption protocol which has been designed especially for the WLAN products. They can help implementing the standards of the IEE 802. It is the enhanced data encryption mechanism which is designed for the confidentiality of the data and it also meets the AES standards, With the help of this, one can get ensured that ne would be able to maintain the data encryption and the data would stay safe and in the confidentiality. Also, the protocol ensures that only the authorized parties, which are authorized by one, can get access to the information. Also, one can get some authentication and the proof of the genuineness and the last but not the least, one can also benefit the other perks like the layer management conjunction. Also, one can be very comfortable using this since the CCMP is has a block chipper mode. It uses the 128 key and hence it can secure some attacks against the operation.
Where one might put the antenna can make a huge difference on the security level. The access points can be layered and overlapped a little bit so that frequencies don't create any problem. One might adjust the power levels or use different types of antennas. The best thing about the antenna is that we can know that we should be putting the router closer to get some full access. Like, if one has router located at the ground floor and he is working at the upper floor, then one should put the antenna at some place where he can get maximum signals. Another thing that he can do is, to install new router there. Normally, the antennas that one has have some limited range, are not being used these days. But they can be very helpful for one. Like, if one wants to get the signals become limited then it is a great tool to apply at home.
One should set the power level to as low as they can in a wireless configuration. In this way the control of the signal level can be achieved. Some additional study is required to know the exact amount of power that should be set. The power control is actually said to be the intelligent selection of some power output of a transmitter it helps the communication system get some good performance there in the system. One should know that the good performance can actually depends on the optimizing metrics and the context as well.
This is the technique which forces the HTTP client who is on a network, to see some special webpage before he starts using the internet in a normal way. Hence, it helps turning the web browser in the authentication device. One can get it done by some interception the packets, not caring about the ports or the addresses. At such time, the browser becomes directed towards a web page which can have some authentication required or the payment as well. So when someone open up the browser and finds out a message that he hasn't paid the previous bills and he needs to do that in order to keep enjoying the services, then the network provider has dome it through the usage of the technique mentioned. Also, the web browser can also be directed towards some page which can require the authentication. One can find these captive portals are several places which can include the wireless routers at home, offices, hotels rooms, some business centres and the jacks for open Ethernet as well. The thing is that the login page ah to be presented to the client itself. That login page has to be stored in the gateway locally, or in the hosting of webserver. There the page has to be listed through some walled gardened so it can get bypassed the given authentication process. It also depends on the set features of the gateway.
The signal might also depend on the receiver. High gain antennas can hear a lot. It also depends hugely on the location, where the connection is used. The antennas are of any types and one can find them in the market. They can be the yogi type, the ones which were used decades ago for the TV signals receiving. The antenna can be the dipoles and the monopole as well and one should know about them all in order to develop some better understanding of how this antenna system works and how it can help someone get and send some really good signals.
the site survey, which is the wireless survey, is also known as the RF site or the wireless survey. Is basically a process which includes the planning and the design of the wireless network? It helps one getting some wireless solution which can deliver the demanded wireless coverage's, network capacities and the roaming abilities. This survey also includes some site visits to the testing d RF and to have some ability to get the optimum install locations for the access point. Also, it requires some analysis of the building of facility inception, floor plans, and the survey site tools. One should also know that it includes the interviews done with the IT management and with the end users too to help understand that what are demanded design parameters which related to the wireless network. One should also know that when the wireless site survey is done, some of the effective boundary is set up as well. It helps ne defining the area upon which the signals levels would support the applications intended. Also, it would be involving the minimum of the signals and noise ratio. Also, the survey can also include some auditing, diagnosing, walk testing etc. One should also know about the process of the wireless sites. They are done with the help of some computer software's which helps collecting the data and analysing the metrics of the WLAN and the spectrum characteristics. Before the survey is conducted, some site map of first imported to the survey site application and then is calibrated to the scale. Also, during one survey, the person taking that survey walks into the facility and keeps a portable computer with him which can help recording the data continuously. Also, then he marks the position he currently holds on the map manually, and then clicks at the floor plan and sues the GPS receiver that also marks the position automatically. This helps a lot if the survey is being conducted outdoors. After this survey is done, then the analysis of this data is performed. The results which are gained by the survey are then documented in some reports of the survey which is generated through the application.
It is basically the part of some comprehensive network access which includes the authentication support and the authorization services. One can find two main strategies which can help someone secure the connection between the private networks and then can enable the access for the remote users as well. The systems and methods listed above only provide a security through obscurity. They have marked changes in securing the wireless network but many changes are yet to come, which may provide one with the high level security that one wishes to achieve. Hackers are everywhere and one must be careful with their valuable data.
So basically, one should know what parameters are available out there, which can help someone improve the security of the wireless network. Also, one can know which steps should be taken in order to improve the performance and the signals range. The encryption types, specially can lead someone have the security of the data and the power settings can ensure some really good performance is the devices which are used by one.
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Students used to bring apples for the teacher. Now medical students are keeping their Apples all to themselves. TechNewsWorld said many medical and nonmedical students are now using tablets like the iPad to keep notes and have better access to texts for class.
“Having access to textbooks and notes on the iPad facilitated productivity – not only in the classroom, but also on subway and train commutes,” said Crystal Kyaw, a student who participated in a study of the iPad’s benefits for medical education, according to the news source. “Its sleek profile made it easy to carry and allowed me to access references in a non-obtrusive and convenient manner during meetings as well.”
TechCrunch interviewed Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education, who said he believes that e-books on tablets or e-reader devices are likely to completely replace paper textbooks over the next three years, which is something that has been expected for a while. Kibby said the trend is already underway, with students using tablets as something of a utility device for all things school.
Hofstra University undertook a recent study looking at medical students’ affinity with the iPad as a way to improve their studies, focusing on a 12-week pilot program at the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine’s Health Sciences Library to track the use of iPads and determine how successful they were.
“It made life easier,” said one student who participated in the study. “Overall, the iPad was useful in that it allowed me to study while on the go and saved time by condensing all the electronic gadgets I use on a daily basis into one device.”
Another student said it was better than PCs or laptops due to the portable size,and another student said it could go a long way toward helping to improve medical care. Dean Lawrence Smith said on the Hofstra website that iPads are not mandatory for all students, but due to the positive outcome of the study, the faculty and students will look at exploring best practices when it comes to using the iPad in a medical school environment.
“Students were eager to use iPad functionality as a collaborative tool in their case-based and self-directed learning, critical pathways in our integrated curriculum,” Debra Rand, associate dean and director for health sciences libraries, told TechNewsWorld. “This grant-funded pilot study provided us with usage trends and the opportunity to obtain significant real-time feedback from students and faculty that will guide us in our future planning.”
Medical News Today said iPads are reaching out far beyond the realm of the medical student into the world of the medical professional as well. Staff at New York Methodist Hospital, as an example, are using kiosk-mounted iPads as diagnostic aids within medical systems. Another hospital, Massachusetts General in Boston, uses iPads to help access updated information whenever it is needed. Medical students using iPads could mean they have a much easier transition into a world that is already more tablet-based than anyone could have guessed.
The news source said Yale Assistant Dean for Curriculum Dr. Mike Schwartz told Yale Medicine that it costs about $1,000 to provide students with paper copies of course materials, which is what an iPad with applications would end up costing per student as well.
“We pretty much break even,” said Schwartz, “but the iPad is better for the environment – and as an information delivery system, it’s much more versatile.”
What do you think about the medical community going toward a more tablet-based environment? Are you at all worried about what kind of layered security and application control they will employ when it comes to records? Let us know what you think! | <urn:uuid:07c88ac5-e486-4648-b8fd-e9cd73e04a7c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.faronics.com/news/blog/medical-students-embrace-tablets-for-learning | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.964937 | 770 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Aug. 16, 2022 — Quantum computing technology could have notable advantages over classical computing technology, including a faster speed and the ability to tackle more complex problems. In recent years, some researchers have also been exploring the possible establishment of a “quantum internet,” a network that would allow quantum devices to exchange information, just like classical computing devices exchange information today.
The quantum internet could open fascinating possibilities for numerous quantum technology applications. For instance, it could enable more secure communications, more precise remote sensing and distributed quantum computing networks.
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China and Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology have recently demonstrated quantum entanglement between two memory devices located at 12.5 km apart from each other within an urban environment. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, could be a further step towards the development of a quantum internet.
“In 2020, we published a paper in which we demonstrate the entanglement of two quantum memories via a fiber link of 50 km,” Xiao-Hui Bao, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “In that experiment, both two memories we used were located within one lab and thus not fully independent. The next step in our research was to make the two memories fully independent, while placing a long distance between them.”
In their experiment, Bao and his colleagues introduced two quantum nodes in different locations in an urban environment, placing them at a 12.5 km distance from one another. In the first node, dubbed node A, they entangled their first quantum memory with a single photon. This single photon was then sent to node B and stored within the second quantum memory.
“In this way we entangle the two remote quantum memories,” Bao explained. “Since the photon emitted from our memory is near infrared (795 nm), being not suitable for low-loss transmission in fiber, we make use of the quantum frequency conversion technique to shift the photon’s wavelength to 1342 nm instead, which improves the overall transmission efficiency significantly.”
While some previous studies had demonstrated quantum connections over long distances, they primarily involved the transfer of entangled photons. On the other hand, Bao and his colleagues established entanglement between two atom-based quantum memory devices.
This could enable connectivity between several different nodes, which is a key requirement for establishing reliable quantum computing networks.
“The main achievement of our recent work is that we realized the longest distance of entanglement distribution with quantum memories,” Bao said. “Such entanglement is the fundamental resource to build quantum network and quantum repeaters.”
The recent work by Bao and his colleagues is a notable contribution to the area of research focusing on the establishment of a quantum internet. Their demonstration of entanglement between two quantum memory systems at 12.5 km could be an important step towards enabling secure quantum communications over long distances.
“In the current experiment, the remote entanglement generated is not heralded yet, limiting its further applications,” Bao added. “In the near future, we plan to implement a heralded version, meanwhile we plan to extend number of nodes as well.”
Source: Ingrid Fadelli, Phys.org | <urn:uuid:cac18994-9663-4c23-8eaf-44fc85271811> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/chinese-researchers-demonstrate-entanglement-of-two-quantum-memory-systems-12-5km-apart/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.938424 | 678 | 3.734375 | 4 |
Last month, we looked at Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) technology and saw how to use a COM-compliant object like MS Word. This month, we'll take the COM concept a step further and consider when and how to create an ActiveX COM-compliant Dynamic Linked Library (DLL).
Have you ever wondered what a DLL is and how it's used? Well, let's talk about DLLs. DLLs are common to Windows operating systems, and the PC doesn't run very well without them. On the other hand, a DLL file will not run by itself, like a program or .exe file does. And everyone's heard of "DLL hell."
A DLL is a collection (or "library") of executable routines. The routines may be run from outside the DLL by another program (or another DLL), but they can't run on their own because they're not ready to interact with the operating system; they rely on the calling program to do that. Routines within a DLL are accessed, or "linked," on the fly, i.e., "dynamically." So, then, a DLL is a library of program routines that are linked dynamically to an external program.
So why are DLLs important? Because DLLs are compiled and linked independently of the applications that use them. That means that the services provided can come from a singular and central place. Further, Windows will only load a single copy of the object code in a DLL into memory, regardless of how many active applications are using it.
How Can You Use DLL Technology?
You use DLLs all the time in the course of running your Windows systems, and you may be able to enhance code reuse and standardization within your enterprise if you create your own DLLs.
Suppose, as a simple example, that you need a way to keep all your PCs and your iSeries in agreement as to the time of day. Having all your PCs synchronized will facilitate certain time-sensitive functions within your company, let's say. So you want to have some mechanism running on each PC in exactly the same way that will access the iSeries and grab the time. This little bit of function will be called from six of your company's custom desktop applications.
This is where the notion of a DLL comes in. You can create a DLL to perform the functions you need, and then tell each of your desktop applications to use the DLL. That way, you only need to have one copy of the code on the PC, and all the applications will share it.
To further illustrate, suppose you expect the requirements for your DLL to change substantially in the future, perhaps to accommodate time zones. Again, you're a winner with a DLL because a DLL can be updated without requiring the applications that use it to be recompiled or relinked. (Remember, the applications access the DLL routines dynamically.)
This is a micro-example of the black-box paradigm, where applications use the centralized services of a code library without knowing or caring how they are provided. The result of this sort of arrangement is standardized functions, reduced maintenance, and reduced overhead. In contrast, consider the case where a DLL is not used. Each application must be fitted with the exact same code and then compiled. When the requirements for the processing change, each application's source code must be modified and recompiled, and the resulting executables must be redistributed to all your PCs.
On the other hand, some problems can arise as a result of employing dynamic linking. When your desktop applications call the routines in your DLL, they do so by DLL name and routine names. If the DLL and attendant routines are not found, my application crashes. Even if they are found, if they're not the right version, you can get unexpected results. Hence the term "DLL hell."
Here's a good one. Sometimes, competing software vendors will each produce their own versions of a DLL, and they'll name it the same thing. When replacing software package A with package B, if A's DLLs have a creation date later than B's, they may not get replaced during the installation of product B. So you have the applications of product B and the DLLs of product A.
A COM Code Example: Creating Your Own DLL
As an example of how you can code your own COM objects, a simple ActiveX DLL will be created and then accessed from a couple of calling applications. First, the DLL.
A collection of utility routines that comply with the COM interfacing standards is called an ActiveX DLL. The ActiveX objects in the DLL will have publicly exposed methods and/or properties, and you can create instances of those objects within your COM-aware applications (like those built with .NET languages, VB6).
A simple DLL will be created within VB6 that will figure out what time it is at corporate (Eastern time zone). It will do so by determining which time zone the PC is in and then adjusting the time by the number of offsetting zones. The DLL will get the offset from the PC to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) using the Windows GetTimeZoneInformation API. This API returns the number of minutes between your time zone and Greenwich, England. From that, you can figure out where you are, and in turn, how many minutes you are from the Eastern Time zone.
To begin an ActiveX DLL project in VB, start a new project and select "ActiveX DLL" as the project type (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Select "ActiveX DLL" to begin an ActiveX DLL project. (Click images to enlarge.)
You'll be presented with the familiar VB6 IDE. You may notice, however, a different set of properties that are associated with a DLL project. These are DataSourceBehavior, DataBindingBehavior, Instancing, and whatnot. Of these, the Instancing property may be the only one of interest. Instancing refers to the way Windows will create and share the objects in the DLL. For most applications (certainly our humble illustration), the default value of "5-Multiuse" is appropriate and will allow the most efficient use of the code.
A class within the DLL will have a public method called GetCorporateTime (Figure 2) that will return the time to corporate.
Figure 2: The GetCorpTime function returns the time.
Note that the function is defined as Public. This must be the case for the method to be available to a calling application.
The function returns a string that represents the adjusted time. The adjustment is made in the "tziWork.Bias – 300 statement" (300 being the number of minutes difference between Greenwich and the Eastern zone. The bias, or offset, from GMT is returned from a call to yet another piece--this time, the Windows API routine called GetTimeZoneInformation (for more information regarding the Windows API, see "Microsoft Computing: Introduction to the Windows API").
Figure 3 shows the definition of the structures required for the GetTimeZoneInformation API call as well as the declaration of intent to use the API. Note the DLL itself does not require any APIs be used; it's only part of the example.
Figure 3: These structures and function declaration are required to use the GetTimeZoneInformation API routine.
Once the code in Figures 2 and 3 is entered, you should appropriately name your DLL class ("CorpUtilsClass" is used in the example) and your project. The project name is part of the project properties and was set to "CorpUtils" in the example. You'll see where these names are used again in the code for the calling procedure.
OK, that's it. Just compile the DLL by selecting "Make DLL..." from the File menu. Note that the DLL must be available in your PC's folder path or explicitly specified in all calling programs. Most folks choose to create their DLLs in the Windows system folder. For instance, DLLs are created in C:WINNTSystem32 or the equivalent.
Now, you have a COM-compliant object that is universally available to each of your custom desktop applications. All you have to do is call it from some COM-friendly application. To illustrate how that's done, consider the following two examples. One is written in VB6; the other is written in C# and shows how COM objects may be called from a .NET application.
Calling Your DLL
Within a VB6 program, your ActiveX DLL, because it was registered as a COM object when it was created, is available as an object you may reference. So the first step in accessing the DLL's routines from a VB program is to open the "Project references..." dialog box and put a check mark next to your DLL (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Set a reference to an ActiveX DLL from a VB program.
With that done, you can refer to the publicly exposed methods and properties of the DLL as if the methods and properties were coded with your program.
Figure 5 shows the concise code required to call the GetCorpTime method.
Figure 5: This code creates an object of the CorpTime class and executes the GetCorpTime method.
The name of the class--CorpTime--is specified as the type for an object from which the GetCorpTime function may be called. The adjusted time is put in a label on the form for display.
Using a COM Object with a .NET Application
If you're wondering why, in an emerging .NET world, you would create an ActiveX DLL, your point is well taken. In a purely .NET environment, you would not create an ActiveX DLL; you would create a .NET assembly instead. But in the mixed environment where at least some calling applications are of pre-.NET origin, an ActiveX COM DLL can service both environments.
A .NET application can also use an ActiveX DLL. In the following example, a C# program was created to interface with the CorpUtils DLL.
As with the VB6 version, the first step is to set a reference to the DLL (Figure 6).
Figure 7: This code calls an ActiveX DLL from a .NET C# program.
Again, the example code will call the DLL and display the result of the effort in a label caption. The code to call the DLL from a VB.NET program is very similar.
So there. You've achieved your goal of providing the same service from the same source to a variety of desktop applications. If the DLL requires a change, you only have to modify the DLL's source code in most cases. Further, you may employ COM technology to enforce compatibility limitations between calling and called entities, to help avoid a walk through DLL hell.
In an upcoming article, we'll explore the techniques for producing a .NET shared assembly for native level code reuse among the .NET community. | <urn:uuid:3b146d93-d1bf-462e-bfaf-668a9dc76da2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.mcpressonline.com/programming-other/microsoft/microsoft-computing-the-microsoft-com-architecture-part-2/print | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030336978.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221001230322-20221002020322-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.920301 | 2,440 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Virtual machines today are the de facto standard for deploying software, but it is not the only technology capable of fulfilling this niche. Containers, a technology that essentially isolates applications from the host operating systems (much like a virtual machine) is quickly becoming a viable alternative for many software deployment scenarios. Though the technologies share many similarities in end functionality, containers do offer some advantages as well as disadvantages to virtual machines.
Containers and virtual machines: what’s the difference?
Shown: comparison of a container and virtual machine architecture running X and Y apps
Though both technologies have the same goal: isolating an application from other processes and applications on the host system, they both take fairly different approaches.
Virtual machines: As the name suggests, this approach is much more involved in scope. It relies on a Hypervisor (e.g. KVM, XEN) which emulates an entire physical machine, assigns a desired amount of system memory, processor cores and other resources such as disk storage, networking, PCI addons and so forth.
Containers: Container-like technologies have existed for a long time, though under different names: jails, sandboxes, etc. Its only fairy recent that the technology has matured enough and made headway into production environments. Containers essentially isolate an application from the host through various techniques, but utilize the same host systems kernel, processes (e.g. network stack) to run application or VNFs.
What does that this mean for performance, security and portability?
Virtualization technologies and techniques have come a long way for both software and hardware. Most x86 processors manufactured from 2013 onwards include virtualization-specific optimizations (Intel VT-x, AMD-V) which bring virtualization overhead penalties on the processor to around 2%, a more than fair trade-off for the functionality virtualization brings. The same cannot be said of other resources such as system memory and storage. Since a virtual machine runs an entire operating system on top of the host operating system, it is inherently more inefficient in terms of application size and system memory usage. Virtualization not only consume more system memory, it requires a fixed amount to be allocated to the VM, even if the application is not consuming those resources. With all that taken into account system memory usage might end up being the most important difference between virtualization and containers.
One of the true advantages of VM’s over containers is their portability. Although docker containers offer a certain degree of portability between host operating system by packaging dependencies with the application, there’s no guarantee the underlying host OS is compatible with XYZ container application. Another advantage is the maturity of Virtual machine management solutions, though Kubernetes is steadily closing this gap.
Containers are often seen as more efficient than virtualization by design, because instead of duplicating processes and services available on the host operating system inside OS, applications are run in sandboxed environments within the host OS, removing layers of abstraction, essentially running applications on bare-metal. Though not untrue, Docker (the leading container project) does not come without its own performance hits. For example: Dockers network access translation does introduce overhead that can impact performance in high workloads.
Considering the low overhead of modern hypervisors, the real efficiency in containers comes from reduced memory usage from the elimination of the guest OS, the subsequent de-duplication of processes which consume additional resources and the reduction in application size from aforementioned reductions. Combine that with the ability to manage resources like system memory on the-fly and dynamically, it could make for a much more efficient deployment option.
Another promising characteristic of container is the startup time. Since the application doesn’t have to initiate an entire guest OS before launching, it’s a much more agile deployment platform which could potentially drive adoption in areas like 5G network slicing.
When it comes to security, both technologies can suffer from the same Host OS, library or application vulnerabilities, though the attack surface is reduced by quite a bit for containers as an additional Guest OS is not necessary. At the same time hypervisors are more mature and as such currently offer a more transparent view of running processes. Only time will tell which technology can provide the most secure system.
Both technologies offer distinct advantages:
Virtualization comes with a plethora of time-tested tools, management and orchestration platforms, virtual probes, hyper-converged virtual infrastructure solutions and much more. Portability and interoperability are the characteristics that stand out when compared to containers.
Containers offer increased resource efficiency and service agility. While it might not seem like much it opens the door for a microservices model which can scale faster and more efficiently. On paper containers fit more in line with NFV/SDN initiatives and the industry has taken notice as Kubernetes is one of the fastest growing open source projects to date.
Today service providers are in the midst of a network evolution and seek to use the best technology available, and to that end many are running containers inside a virtual machine to take advantage of the superior tools and infrastructure management solutions available today. Though this eliminates some of the benefits of containers, it allows service providers to leverage the agility and memory efficiency of containers to mitigate the inefficiencies present in virtual machines and gives the best of both worlds. Eventually improved interoperability and standardized API’s may allow containers and virtual machines to work together and create the ideal software deployment solution for SDN/NFV. | <urn:uuid:abc25fd8-1320-45b0-a040-f4820715e8d8> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.lanner-america.com/blog/containers-vs-virtualization-superior/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338001.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007080917-20221007110917-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.926813 | 1,116 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The idea is to assess and identify the cancer that’s of high risk. While the word “biopsy” is enough to send patients into a tizzy, oncologists say it is crucial to correctly identify the cancer stage and “faster growing” ones for appropriate and timely treatment. And to ensure accuracy, researchers in India are now turning to artificial intelligence (AI).
A team of experts from IIT-Kharagpur (IIT-Kgp) and Tata Medical Centre (TMC), Kolkata, has devised a computer-assisted model they say can automatically grade breast cancer aggressiveness, even in remote settings, providing fresh impetus to AI-based medical technology in India. It also seeks to reduce human error in identifying breast cancer of various levels of aggressiveness to assist in distinguishing normal and low and higher risk malignant tumours. To do that, the team tapped into deep learning, a form of AI concerned with algorithms inspired by the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks.
Detecting High Risk Cases
“The idea is to assess and identify the cancer that’s of high risk. This software allows accurate identification of the aggressive cancers anywhere, even in the remotest part of the country, allowing faster referral and quicker treatment for patients, irrespective of their geographical location,” Sanjoy Chatterjee, senior clinical oncologist at TMC, told IANS. They were driven by the fact that the precise grouping of aggressiveness (high or low rates of cell growth) of breast cancer remains a challenge at a time when the disease is the top cancer in women worldwide and is increasing, particularly in developing countries like India, where the majority of cases are diagnosed in their late stages.
Support for pathologists
“For best results, it is always desirable to have experienced pathologists in sophisticated laboratories, but it is also important that we recognise that this is not always feasible, especially outside large urban hospitals,” Ahmed pointed out. The clinical decision on breast cancer aggressiveness is mostly made manually based on certain pathological markers as seen in examining a tissue or cell sample under a microscope (called biopsy), they said. “The manual assessment is subjective, and could be error-prone with a steep learning curve and dependent on the intra and inter-observer ambiguities. The AI algorithm aids pathologists to identify aggressive forms accurately to allow quicker and faster referral and suitable treatment,” said Chakraborty, lead researcher and professor-in-charge of the Biomedical Imaging Informatics (BMI) Laboratory, School of Medical Science & Technology, IIT-Kgp. […] | <urn:uuid:885e1897-8cc4-444b-85c2-7c32b53566b3> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://swisscognitive.ch/2017/07/27/artificial-intelligence-to-identify-aggressive-breast-cancer/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335059.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928020513-20220928050513-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.945311 | 546 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Unicycle is a bare-metal OS, and bootloader is UEFI bootloader that runs the apps.
UEFI-based bootloader for Unicycle applications: UEFI bootloader that allows to load Unicycle application directly, without any support from operating system like Linux. This bootloader implements Uniboot protocol on top of UEFI specification. The bootloader supports booting from the same bootable device where bootloader.efi is located or loading from network using TFTP protocol.
Unicycle – unikernel application framework: Most modern day operating systems use idea of separating applications from kernel. Kernel has access to underlying hardware and resources. If some application needs access to the hardware (like network or disk) then it asks kernel to perform the action. Such separation to kernel vs userspace became dominant in 60s when computers were expensive and need to be shared between large number of users. And it works well for majority of use-cases. Though performing a context switch between userspace and kernel to make an action is not free. Heavy-loaded applications that need to make a large number of input/output operations spend quite a lot of time switching back and forth. But what if the application code lived in the kernel address space and thus the context switch can be avoided altogther? What if the application itself will take responsibilities on managing hardware directly? That is the main idea behind unikernel applications. And Unicycle project is a framework to create such applications. […] | <urn:uuid:49ad1040-bba5-4d3b-b467-49672b1d7afe> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://firmwaresecurity.com/2019/04/28/unicycle-bare-metal-unikernel-app-framework-with-uefi-based-bootloader/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930181143-20220930211143-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.89412 | 299 | 2.875 | 3 |
I’ve seen written many times that “Privacy can be improved with techniques like differential privacy and homomorphic encryption”. Sure, but for totally different reasons.
What is Homomorphic Encryption?
Homomorphic encryption is an added layer of security that allows computation against encrypted data without decrypting it.
Without homomorphic encryption, databases must first decrypt the data before they can answer your question, which leaves a small opening for an adversary listening on your database to intercept information. This is what I’d term an enhanced security technique – not a privacy technique alone. If that sounds like splitting hairs, it really isn’t. Security and privacy are different yet related concepts. In order to understand where homomorphic encryption fits, we need to begin by understanding where security and privacy overlap – and where they don’t.
How Secure is Homomorphic Encryption?
Security is about hackers. Those hackers can be inside your company walls, or, more often than not, outside your walls. Those hackers want to breach your data, and security is your countermeasure. A common security method is authentication, managed through passwords or two-factor authentication. This is how your email client ensures it’s you logging in and not someone else. Network firewalls are another critical way to protect against hackers – think of this as a way to prevent external adversaries from getting to the data you’re trying to protect because they can’t even get on your network in the first place. Lastly, and a little less obvious method, is encryption – this ensures that if someone were to physically steal your server or the data on it, or if they were intercepting network traffic, the data they would get would be encrypted (think of this as scrambled in a way that only people with the right key can descramble) and of no use to them. As mentioned, homomorphic encryption is an advanced method of encryption.
Authentication, firewalls, and encryption are black and white: you are either allowed in, or you aren’t. You can login to your email, but your colleague can’t; you can get through your network firewall, but someone outside of your company can’t; you can access data through official channels which will decrypt it for you, but an adversary intercepting data through unofficial channels will get garbage. Doctor Seuss might say, “The allowed are in, the unallowed are out.”
Privacy vs Utility Trade-Off
Privacy is not black and white. In fact, the whole reason privacy is so challenging is exactly this reason. You need to find middle ground: enable analysis, while preserving some level of privacy. This is commonly referred to as the “privacy vs. utility trade-off.” Privacy techniques enforced within companies provides assurances about your data use/misuse that can be made without relying on blind trust in those companies or their employees. This sounds easy on the surface, but let’s talk about some major challenges here.
Consider the keyboard on your smartphone. Some fancy keyboard apps will predict what you’re going to type based on your personal tendencies to help you type faster. To do this, they capture what you’re typing and details about you, send it back to their servers for analysis, and ship back an updated algorithm to your phone to make predictions. Why not just have the algorithm learn on your phone? Well, servicing a user that just installed the app, a “ground zero” user, would result in predictions that are not yet personalized for that user. A generalized global model is required to solve this scenario. To do so, the global algorithm can leverage your personal information to categorize you and make predictions – “you are at IP address 220.127.116.11, with an Android phone, I’m going to make predictions based on similar users.” As you can see, employees at the mythical “Super Keyboard” can access anything you’ve ever typed and much of your related personal information. This is an example of getting unbounded utility from the data at the expense of privacy – something the GDPR and other regulations want changed.
Privacy measures can make this less invasive, such as masking your name and/or phone ID. Or, your age could be bucketed to ranges rather than your precise age. This continuous data bucketing is called k-anonymization. Privacy techniques, such as masking, generalization. and k-anonymization, are commonly referred to as pseudonymization techniques because they help, but aren’t true anonymization (hence “pseudo-anonymization”). Pseudonymization means privacy is preserved, but there’s no way to quantify how well preserved. There are also more complex and protective techniques like differential privacy. Differential Privacy, unlike pseudonymization techniques, can actually be true anonymization allowing you to quantify how much privacy is being preserved. There are other even simpler controls that can be implemented, such as data retention policies – “delete user keyboard data immediately after use” – but may not be possible in many cases because that data is required for other purposes.
Think of privacy controls as a gear that can be tuned: on the left is pure randomness (no utility) and on the right is complete utility (no privacy measures enforced at all). Differential privacy, for example, would be skewed to the left of that gear but still provide a good enough mix of privacy and utility to build a meaningful model (in many but not all cases). This gear should be tweaked based on who you are in the organization and what you’re trying to do with the data – and it should not, and cannot, be black and white at all.
Privacy techniques have been around for a long time, as have the regulations that have driven them. HIPAA sets pseudonymization standards so you can transfer health records and get appropriate care without giving up privacy (but as you now know with pseudonymization, no guarantees of privacy). GDPR is another regulation that forces companies to manage data with a privacy-first mentality – what the EU regulators term “Privacy by Design.” These controls are complex to understand and implement, especially in large dynamic corporations with many algorithms being developed and new data arriving constantly.
But effective privacy techniques, when implemented appropriately, allow data subjects to reap huge benefits – in this case, have your keyboard predict what you’re going to type without giving up your privacy to random humans at some “Super Keyboard.” Trust is the future of consumer brand relationships. (Side note, Google’s keyboard has many privacy measures, even beyond what was discussed here).
Now, back to homomorphic encryption.
Shortcoming of Homomorphic Encryption
The shortcoming of homomorphic encryption as a privacy technique is that it’s the same black and white / all-or-nothing paradigm as authentication, firewalls, and encryption – it’s just another security measure for data breaches. Of course without security, there is no privacy. So homomorphic encryption enhances privacy but it’s not a privacy technique in and of itself. Differential Privacy, on the other hand, is a privacy technique, but, when left alone without security measures, also doesn’t get you to the finish line. A great example of combining a privacy technique with homomorphic encryption is found in Google’s Secure Aggregation paper.
If privacy is your goal, you need to carefully consider the differences between privacy techniques and security techniques. While organizations struggle with data breaches and consumer trust, had they also incorporated privacy techniques along with security techniques, their breaches would have been less devastating or not have been breaches at all.
Special thanks to Alex Ingerman, product manager at Google AI, for his personal (not associated to Google) feedback on this blog. | <urn:uuid:22912d5c-35a8-4330-b349-9038199d6203> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.immuta.com/blog/homomorphic-encryption-alone-is-security-not-privacy/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337244.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002021540-20221002051540-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.950561 | 1,627 | 3.125 | 3 |
Clean-energy investments can help America in more ways that one. Moving in the direction of clean-energy also creates millions of jobs, and puts money back in the pockets of consumers.
On January 6th, 2010, Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, announced that there would be just about $100 million in federal grants to support the training for various green jobs. The goal is to help give unemployed workers jobs, and also help the country move to clean-energy.
The grants come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The act has a total funding of $500 million. However, for this particular grant there was $5 million given to the Utility Workers Union of American to give training to individuals in the states of New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts.
There was also another $5 million that was given to the International Transportation Learning Center for the following states: New York, New Jersey, Utah, and Ohio.
The training for green jobs will be in various industries such as wind and energy auditors, solar panel installers, hybrid and electric automobile technicians, and weatherization specialists. | <urn:uuid:b74df5aa-75ef-4c36-b445-696f7c6c0129> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://executivegov.com/2010/01/more-green-jobs-more-clean-energy/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337415.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003101805-20221003131805-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.962987 | 228 | 2.6875 | 3 |
In this blog post
Personal Data Protection in India
The healthcare sector is in the middle of massive digital reform to overcome inefficiencies, improve utilization of resources, and enhance the delivery of quality service to patients. The rapid adoption of technology comes with its challenges – one of them being the huge volumes of data that get generated every single day – data that needs to be protected on priority. The availability of vast amounts of sensitive patient information is what has made the healthcare industry a primary target of cyberattacks and data breaches. In 2020, India reported a 37% increase in cyberattacks on healthcare organizations in November and December. With increasing healthcare digitalization, cyberattacks of various kinds like ransomware attacks, DDoS attacks, phishing emails, have also increased in number and complexity.
Understanding health data
According to National Digital Health Mission (NDHM), health data is classified into two broad segments:
- Personal health data – data related to an individual. This contains detailed information of various health conditions and treatments, personally identifiable information of multiple stakeholders, including healthcare professionals.
- Non-personal health data – includes aggregate health data and anonymized health data where all personally identifiable information has been removed.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued draft legislation, namely the Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act (DISH Act), to regulate all digital health data generation, collection, storage, access, transmission, and use.
Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (PDPB)
Notably, India does not have any national regulatory authority focusing on the protection of personal data. To remedy the situation, the government of India and a Joint Parliamentary Committee proposed the draft PDP Bill on December 12, 2019, that addresses the issue of data protection. This bill will be India’s first law on personal data protection and will repeal Section 43A of the IT Act.
The bill defines ‘health data’ under section 3(21) as the ‘data related to the state of physical or mental health of the data principal and includes records regarding the past, present or future state of the health of such data principal, data collected in the course of registration for, or provision of health services, data associating the data principal to the provision of specific health services’.
The proposed PDP Bill applies extraterritorially to non-Indian organizations if specific nexus requirements are met and suggests the formation of a Data Protection Authority of India that will be in charge of preventing misuse of personal data, protecting the interests of data principals, and ensuring compliance with the new law.
The PDP Bill takes inspiration from GDPR to establish a comprehensive data protection regime in India. The current draft of the PDP Bill
- Introduces a central data protection regulator
- Broadens the rights given to individuals
- Specifies compliance requirements for all personal data
- Institutes data localization requirements for certain types of sensitive data
PDP bill vs. existing data protection regimes
With a tighter grip around localization, the PDPB goes a step beyond the rules mandated by GDPR and the United States’ Clarifying Lawful Oversees Use of Data (CLOUD) Act. Although there is no timeline for the implementation, PDP will be rolled out in a phased manner.
- Localization of data – The PDP Bill is more restrictive and mandates the localization of sensitive personal data and critical personal data. The bill also imposes restrictions on the cross-border transfer of critical and sensitive personal data.
- Extra-territoriality principle – The bill applies the extra-territoriality principle to the processing of any personal data by organizations outside India. The principle applies if personal data is processed concerning any business or activity that involves offering goods or services to consumers in India or profiling data principles within India.
- Local presence required – The draft policies regulate organizations that are not established in India but offer goods or services to consumers in India to have a company incorporated in India and appoint an Indian resident as a nodal person of contact to ensure compliance with applicable laws. This move is to ensure regulatory and enforcement control over foreign entities who trade in India.
In today’s highly regulated data environment, healthcare companies in India must embrace and build an effective compliance strategy. They need to obtain better visibility of their data before considering focusing on data protection regulation compliance. By adopting a layered approach to data security focusing on people, processes, and a technology-centric approach, organizations across industries in the country can embrace the new PDP Bill. The bill should be viewed as a competitive advantage. While the regulation focuses on data protection and security, healthcare organizations can implement these methods to effectively manage health data.
- Deploying encryption to store data
- Mandating the use of strong passwords
- Data sharing with only relevant people to avoid misuse
- Periodic review of firewall settings
- Securing all devices that have access to the personal data of an individual
- Due diligence before sharing information with third-party vendors
GAVS offers data privacy services and solutions designed to protect the organization’s information through the full data lifecycle, from acquisition to disposal. Our service offerings help organizations adhere to data privacy best practices and regulatory compliance in a constantly evolving threat environment and regulatory landscape. You can find more information on GAVS’ offerings at Cyber Security Services & Data Privacy Services. | <urn:uuid:1469434a-8bfa-439f-aa09-8fe076c08815> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.gavstech.com/personal-data-protection-in-india/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335355.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929131813-20220929161813-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.901008 | 1,084 | 2.734375 | 3 |
When did you last change your online passwords? Do you feel confident that they can keep hackers out of your most sensitive accounts? This tactic is crucial for preventing cyber identity theft — a huge problem among individuals and small businesses alike. Unfortunately, data from Avast reveals that 83% of Americans rely on weak passwords.
A variety of password strategies are problematic. If you’re like most users, you’re content to stick with multiple ill-advised password habits simply because they’re convenient. Perhaps you opt for simple words or phrases. Or maybe you use the same password for several online accounts. These and other practices leave your data alarmingly vulnerable. That’s why it’s time to clean up your passwords and achieve the thorough protection you require, given the realities of today’s risk-filled digital environment!
Not sure how to choose a strong password? This process only takes a few moments, but it holds great implications for your digital future. Achieve peace of mind by giving these password security best practices a try:
Skip Common Passwords
With so many considerations to keep in mind, choosing a password can feel overwhelming. Often, however, the best fixes are the most simple. To begin: avoid the most common passwords. Hackers often turn to these first when attempting brute force attacks.
Passwords worth skipping include:
Avoid Personal Details
Yes, personal details such as birthdays, anniversaries, or pet names are easier to remember. Unfortunately, they also make your password far easier for malicious parties to crack. This is true even when your passwords contain details that might not seem obvious. After all, many hackers conduct thorough research on social media and elsewhere in hopes of finding clues.
According to the Avast survey referenced above, problematic details frequently featured in passwords include the following:
- Names of loved ones
- Words related to hobbies
- Favorite celebrities
- Names of favorite movies, TV shows, or books
- Portions of home addresses or phone numbers
Create a Long String of Characters
The longer your password, the better. It should consist of at least ten characters, including, ideally, numbers as well as uppercase and lowercase letters. Depending on the account, you may also be able to add special characters to the mix. These should be placed in a random order rather than starting with letters and ending with numbers.
Opt for Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-factor authentication builds additional steps into the process of accessing your account. Yes, this takes longer than simply typing in a password, but it also locks out hackers if your password is ultimately discovered.
Many forms of multi-factor authentication are available. Processes involving text or email messages are common, but biometric solutions are beginning to become more prevalent. Depending on the system, biometric multi-factor authentication could incorporate voice, facial recognition, or fingerprints.
Don’t Recycle Passwords
After you’ve put the hard work into developing an original, lengthy password free of personal details, you may be tempted to recycle this specific string of characters for other sites. Unfortunately, by doing so, you make yourself far more vulnerable in the event of an attack. With one password for multiple accounts, you increase the potential for access across the board if a particular password is hacked. Instead, commit to coming up with a new password every time you open a new account online.
Use a Password Manager
It’s common knowledge that reused passwords should be avoided, and yet, many people stick with this problematic practice. Avast’s survey reveals that over half of the people who reuse passwords, 88% know they shouldn’t. When asked why they continue with this dangerous habit, 54% reference the struggle to keep so many passwords straight. Thankfully, an excellent solution exists: the trusty password manager. Equipped with this helpful tool, you no longer need to shoulder the burden of remembering dozens of complex passwords.
Your password manager can help you generate passwords that are unlikely to be cracked. Just as important, this service can manage vast collections of passwords, so you don’t feel compelled to recycle account details.
Choose your password manager carefully. Not all options are free of charge, but that doesn’t mean that you need to pay crazy rates for the sake of password security. However, keep in mind that the added features provided with paid password management services can be valuable. Many add secure file storage or even proactive solutions for checking passwords against leaks.
If you’re not happy with your initial choice, don’t worry. Most password managers allow you to export your data to other services, so you can continue to use expertly generated passwords for all of your accounts.
Regardless of which service you select, you’ll need to take extra care when choosing your master password. This may be unrecoverable if you lose it, so you’ll need to walk the tough line between making it complex enough to keep hackers out but memorable enough that you can access your account.
Improve Data Privacy and Security With Help from NerdsToGo
At NerdsToGo, we understand the many elements that come together to form a safe and secure digital presence. We also realize how difficult it can be for the average user or small business to implement these best practices. To address this problem, we provide various data backup and cybersecurity services designed to address common vulnerabilities.
Whether you’re interested in using a personal password manager or would like to develop a strict password policy as part of your security template, we can help. In the worst-case scenario, we’ll be there to assist with data recovery and other mitigation services. | <urn:uuid:5e182dc6-2364-4835-aeac-1bc6a19c9aef> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.nerdstogo.com/blog/2021/may/password-security-top-tips-how-to-protect-your-i/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335355.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929131813-20220929161813-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.923506 | 1,200 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Business process management (BPM) is commonly defined as “a systemic, structured approach to analyze, improve, control, and manage processes with the aim of improving the quality of products and services” . In other words, BPM takes care of processes in order to fulfill business objectives.
BPM defines four basic principles that you must follow in order to successfully “take care of processes”. In this article the first principle, ‘Processes are assets’ is presented. In addition, we will investigate the role that BPMN plays in support of the first principle.
What are Assets?
The term “asset” can be defined as any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation, especially that which could be converted into cash. According to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) , assets can be one of the following types:
- financial capital.
These assets are basically divided into two categories: ‘resources’ and ‘capabilities’ :
- Resources are the tangible assets of an organization. Resources in a company are: infrastructure, people, money, software or anything else that might help to deliver a product or a service.
- Capabilities are the intangible assets of an organization. They represent the ability of an organization, person, process, application, configuration item or service to carry out an activity.
As figure 2 show, people can simultaneously represent a resource (people are frequently an instrumental in delivering a service) and a capability (people carry out activities). The product or service of an organization will be dependent on how capabilities use resources (develop, deploy and coordinate) . This means that, in a simplified view, resources can be acquired: if we have money and the resource is available, then we can buy it. Capabilities, however, take time to build up.
They are also generally harder to copy by competition, providing the organization with a source of sustainable competitive advantage in the market.
The first BPM principle states that “Business processes are organizational assets that are central to creating value for customers”. This principle gives business processes a central role within organizational assets, stating that processes are “central to creating value for customers”. Business processes are important because they deliver value for the customer by connecting other organizational assets into a flow of activities (see Figure 1).
How Does BPMN Support the 1st BPM Principle?
BPMN supports the first BPM principle because it enables the visual representation of business processes in a standardized way. With BPMN it is possible to link different types of organizational assets into a flow of activities that fulfil a common objective – usually a product or service for a customer. The next figure shows an example of a collaboration process between a customer and a pizza vendor.
This article has discussed the first BPMN principle, which states that “Business processes are organizational assets that are central to creating value for customers”. Business processes are important because they represent the way in which value is delivered to customers. In addition, their competitive potential can be derived from the fact that they cannot be easily copied or acquired. Instead, they can only be developed organically for a specific organizational context.
BPMN supports the first BPM principle because that standard enables organizations to visually represent the interrelationships between different types of assets during the delivery of common objectives.
The next article will show how BPMN supports the second BPM principle.
J. F. Chang, Business Process Management Systems: Strategy and Implementation, 1st ed. Auerbach Publications, 2005. | <urn:uuid:c9c2367b-6571-43d3-8128-38931c79cf34> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.goodelearning.com/subject-areas/bpmn/supporting-core-bpm-principles-bpmn-2-0-1st-principle-processes-assets/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335504.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220930212504-20221001002504-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.935619 | 778 | 2.703125 | 3 |
In this NetApp training tutorial, we will focus on NetApp storage architecture. The NetApp storage architecture is organised into disks, aggregates, RAID groups, volumes, Qtrees and LUNs. Scroll down for the video and also text tutorial.
The NetApp Storage Architecture – Video Tutorial
Disks and Aggregates
At the bottom level of the storage architecture we have our physical disks – our hard drives. Our disks get grouped into aggregates, so an aggregate is a set of physical disks. One of the attributes of our aggregates is the RAID group which defines the RAID configuration.
If you look in the System Manager GUI, you will see that there is a page for disks where you can view all of your disks, and there’s a page for aggregates, where you can view and configure your aggregates. There’s not a page for RAID groups however. The reason for that is your RAID groups are an attribute of your aggregates, so your RAID groups are configured on the aggregate page.
The next level we have moving up is our volumes. You could have multiple volumes in the same aggregate, or maybe just one volume in the aggregate. Volumes are the lowest level that clients can access data at, so you will always have disks, aggregates and volumes on a NetApp ONTAP system. You can share (for Windows) or export (for UNIX/Linux) a volume and then clients can access it.
Your disks and your aggregates are classified by NetApp as physical resources, and volumes are classified as logical resources.
Moving up the next level above volumes, we have our Qtrees which go in volumes. Qtrees are an optional component. If the containing volume is being accessed by a NAS client, it will see the Qtree as a directory in the volume. Qtrees can also be shared or exported directly themselves.
They’re called Qtrees because one of their main functions is for quotas. You can limit the total size that the Qtree itself can grow to, or limit the amount of space that a user or group can use in the Qtree.
LUNs – Logical Unit Numbers
The last component we have in the storage architecture is our LUNs, our Logical Unit Numbers. A LUN is specific to SAN protocols, and is the storage container that SAN clients use for their storage. The LUNs can either go in a Qtree or a volume. Best practice is to have a dedicated volume or Qtree for each LUN (do not put multiple LUNs in the same volume or Qtree).
NetApp Storage Architecture Organisation
You can see the different components build on top of each other. We need to have our physical disks. Our disks get grouped into aggregates. For our clients to be able to access data we configure our volumes, which go in our aggregates, and optionally we can configure Qtrees which go in our volumes and appear as a directory to NAS clients.
Lastly, if we’re using SAN protocols we’ll need to configure LUNs. Our LUNs either go into a Qtree or into a volume.
The mandatory components are the disks, aggregates, and volumes. Qtrees are optional, and LUNs are for SAN Protocols only – you wouldn’t have LUNs if you were using only NAS protocols.
SVM Storage Virtual Machines
The other storage architecture component to tell you about is Storage Virtual Machines (SVMs). These used to be known as Vservers, but they were renamed to SVMs in a more recent version of ONTAP. ‘Storage Virtual Machine’ and ‘Vserver’ both mean exactly the same thing.
If you’re working in the System Manager GUI, you’ll see they’re listed under Storage Virtual Machines. If you’re doing your configuration in the CLI the commands still use the ‘vserver’ syntax.
SMV Use Cases – Multitenancy
Say that you’ve got two different departments – Department A and Department B. They want to have their own separate secure storage. In the old days, what you would have to do is buy two completely separate storage systems, and you would require separate supporting network infrastructure for them as well. This would be pretty expensive.
What you can do with NetApp ONTAP and Storage Virtual Machines now, is you can have one physical storage system, but you can virtualize it into separate logical storage systems, which are kept secure and separate from each other. Each SVM appears as a separate storage system to clients.
The physical resources of our disks and our aggregates are shared throughout the entire cluster, they’re not dedicated to individual SVMs. The reason for this is if we had dedicated aggregates, maybe the aggregate for department A is pretty empty, and the aggregate for department B is getting really full.
If the aggregates were dedicated at the SVM level, you would have to go and buy more disks for department B, even though you’ve got spare disks on Department A. Aggregates are a shared resource to ensure we get the most efficient use of our capacity.
Volumes are dedicated to and belong to a particular SVM. If department A has got volume A, it’s owned by department A, and department B cannot see it. Other resources that are dedicated to and owned by particular SVMs are its name space (the directory structure of the SVM), its Logical Interfaces (LIFs, which are where our IP addresses live).
The SVMs can have their own separate SVM level dedicated administrators with different usernames and passwords. SVM level administrators have no visibility of the other SVM, they can’t even see it exists. Global cluster level administrators can administer both SVMs.
In our example the Department A SVM will have its namespace, volumes, Logical Interfaces and administrators, and the Department B SVM will have its own separate namespace, volumes, Logical Interfaces and administrators.
SMV Use Cases – Multiple Client Access Protocols and Cloud Environments
Another common reason for configuring separate SVMs is for ease of administration of multiple client access protocols. You could run NFS, CIFS and iSCSI for example all in the same SVM. In this case it will appear to all clients that they are accessing the same storage system. Or you could configure separate SVMs for each protocol, in which case they will appear as separate storage systems. Both configurations are supported.
SVMs are also very useful in a cloud environment, where we can have separate SVMs for different customers.
If you don’t need to configure separate logical Storage Virtual Machines in your enterprise, you’ll still have at least one SVM. SVMs are an integral part of the NetApp storage architecture, they house our volumes and LIFs so they are a mandatory component for client data access. | <urn:uuid:96ff5e54-2547-4258-b8b7-303ed44a4e1c> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.flackbox.com/netapp-storage-architecture-tutorial | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337731.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20221006061224-20221006091224-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.934659 | 1,460 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Hacking SQL Server
SQL Injection is a fairly new method of hacking your database. Learn how it’s done—and how to protect yourself.
MOST NETWORK ADMINISTRATORS charged with keeping the network infrastructure
secure tend to overlook one of the most visible aspects of the environment:
Web-based applications that interact with internal database systems. Even
an innocent-looking application such as a guestbook can provide a determined
hacker with access to the internal network through a technique known as
SQL Injection used to insert a rogue SQL statement into an application,
either to perform some back-end server function or bypass application
security. The problem for most network administrators is that they’re
not usually SQL programmers and, therefore, can’t easily recognize when
a system’s vulnerable to such attacks.
This article provides a cursory background of the SQL language, explains
the various theories behind SQL Injection attacks and provides tried-and-true
methods to protect your SQL Servers. While this article focuses entirely
on Microsoft products and environments, the techniques demonstrated can
easily be applied to other systems.
To fully understand the techniques used by SQL Injection requires a basic
understanding of SQL Statements and how they’re interpreted and processed
by Microsoft SQL Server.
Anatomy of a SQL Statement
Microsoft SQL Server uses a proprietary implementation of the SQL
language known as Transact-SQL (TSQL). TSQL consists of four basic language
- Data Control Language (DCL): Used to configure various security
parameters. DCL consists of three statements: GRANT, REVOKE and DENY.
- Data Definition Language (DDL): Used to create and modify
database objects. DDL consists of three statements: CREATE, ALTER and
- Data Manipulation Language (DML): Used to query database objects,
and insert or update data within the objects. DML Consists of four statements:
SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE.
- Additional Language Elements: Usually flow control, logic
control or specific maintenance-related commands.
When a command is submitted for processing, SQL will parse the command
to verify that it’s syntactically correct, then compile and execute the
command, returning either the requested data or command status. SQL Server
understands the concept of command “batches,” which are multiple commands
submitted as one single batch. But, in most cases, SQL parses batches
on a statement-by-statement basis. If the statement is considered valid,
SQL executes each individual statement independent of any other statements
submitted in the batch. (There are a few exceptions to this rule but,
for the most part, this behavior is exactly what the hacker depends on).
For example, consider the following SQL Statement:
SELECT homephone, birthdate FROM employees
When executed, this statement will return the home phone and birthday
of any employee whose last name is “Davolio.” If you were to add a statement
to the end, SQL Server would see this as two completely separate statements
contained in a single batch. For example:
SELECT homephone, birthdate FROM employees
SELECT homephone, birthdate FROM employees
When executed, this batch returns the same information as the single
statement above, and returns a second result set with the output of the
second command. SQL Server evaluates each statement individually, even
though they were submitted as part of a batch.
Talking to SQL Server
Application developers have many choices when deciding how to connect
Web applications to back-end data stores. In Microsoft environments, the
most popular language is Active Server Pages (ASP), using ActiveX Data
Objects (ADO) to connect to the data. (Although Microsoft has updated
ASP and ADO under the .NET platform, both ASP.NET and ADO.NET are equally
susceptible to these SQL Injection techniques.) ASP and ADO are used because
they’re very simple to program, and they leverage a developer’s knowledge
Using ADO to make a database connection to SQL Server generally consists
of three steps:
- Create a Connection Object: Done through the use of the Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Connection”)
command. This establishes a connection between the IIS and SQL servers.
Depending on the connection string used, it could do this via integrated
Windows authentication (using the IIS Anonymous connection) or via SQL
authentication (which requires a username/password combo encoded in
the connection string).
- Create a Command Object: Done through the use of the Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Command”)
command. This creates a placeholder object to execute the SQL Command.
Several properties of the command object identify the type of command
being created, the connection timeout and other database-specific properties.
- Create a Recordset Object: Done through the use of the Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Recordset”)
command. This creates a placeholder object used to hold the results
of the command object’s execution.
There are many variations on how these objects are created and utilized.
This article will concentrate on some rather simple examples. For more
information, see the ASP documentation or the ASP resources at www.15seconds.com.
Putting ASP to Work
A simple guestbook application written in ASP could consist of
an HTML form, written to post information to an ASP “responder.” The ASP
responder would retrieve the fields from the form, make the connection
to the SQL Server and execute SQL code to enter the data into the database.
The code might look something like this:
Sal = Request.Form("Salutation")
Lname = Request.Form("LName")
Fname = Request.Form("FName")
Secret = Request.Form("Secret")
Email = Request.Form("Email")
City = Request.Form("City")
State = Request.Form("State")
strSQL = "Insert tblChallenge values ('"
strSQL = strSQL & Sal & "','" & Fname & "','"_
& Lname & "','"
& Email & "','"
strSQL = strSQL & City & "','" & State & "','"_
& Secret & "','"
Set RS = Nothing
Set Conn = Nothing
In this example, neither a Command nor a Recordset object was used; the
SQL Command was a simple INSERT that didn’t return any data. Also note
that Integrated Security was used, which means that the IIS Anonymous
user account must have rights to log on to SQL Server and access the database.
Many applications today use simple code like this to make their database
connections. The code listed above, however, is a hacker’s dream when
it comes to being able to inject malicious code into the application.
SQL Injection at Work
In the example, the SQL statement is constructed from a simple
string concatenation. The assumption is that all fields of the form are
alphanumeric, and thus must be surrounded by single quotes. Since SQL
sees the single quotes as a string delimiter, all a hacker needs to do
is insert an extra quote, followed by any SQL code into the last text
field. For example, say the value:
')exec master.dbo.sp_addlogin 'ted'--
was entered for the Secret field. The ASP page would build the SQL statement
to look something like this:
Insert tblChallenge values('Mr','Ted','Malone',
exec master.dbo.sp_addlogin 'ted'--')
This would cause SQL to execute the INSERT statement, possibly returning
an error because the last field was empty (if the database were so programmed).
The code would then execute the sp_addlogin command to create a SQL user
called “ted” with no password and access to the master database. If this
command were successful, then the hacker would now have a valid user on
the SQL box. He or she could mount more serious attacks through this user
(assuming, of course, that standard SQL authentication has been enabled).
For this method of injection to work, the administrator configuring the
server would have had to make some pretty obvious mistakes, such as granting
the Web account access to the master database and allowing that account
to execute the sp_addlogin procedure. That said, many applications in
use today are written such that the account being used is an administrator
or a user with elevated privileges.
Another method of SQL Injection is to bypass the logic that might be
contained within a particular SQL statement. For example, say we want
to use SQL to search for a particular value in a table. The statement
might look like this:
SELECT Lastname,Homephone from Employees
This statement would return a list of all employees whose last name is
Davolio. If we made a simple modification to the statement:
SELECT Lastname,Homephone from employees
WHERE Lastname='Davolio' or 1=1
SQL will return a recordset with all employees and their home phone numbers,
due to the fact that 1 will always equal 1.
More Creative Injection Methods
In the above example, the hacker attempted to inject a SQL statement
that provided access into the system by adding additional code into a
text field. This might allow access, but the hacker still has to get through
the firewall and use some sort of client tool in order to get to any data
(which isn’t as difficult as it may seem). This method also leaves behind
an audit trail, which is something the hacker wants to avoid at all costs.
With this in mind, SQL Injection can also be used to obtain seamless access
to the database in improperly written front-end applications. For example,
the simple guestbook detailed earlier might be written such that a user
could enter a name and password to gain access to his or her personal
data for editing. The front-end form would contain the username and password
fields and the back end might be written to look like this:
strSQL ="Select UserToken
from tblUsers where UserName='"
strSQL = strSQL & strUserName & "' AND Password='"
strSQL = strSQL & strPassword & "'"
if rsUser.EOF then
Set rsUser = Nothing
Set cnConn = Nothing
The key part of this code is where the strSQL variable is being built
to create the SQL statement. The logic states that if a record is found
during the search, the username and password must have been valid; therefore,
allow access; otherwise, don’t allow access. To circumvent this logon
procedure, all the hacker needs to do is enter the following code in the
Username: Administrator '--
This will result in the following strSQL string:
Select UserToken from tblUsers
Note the fact that after the administrator username is sought, the rest
of the statement is treated as a comment. If there’s a user account named
Administrator, the hacker is now logged into the system as that user.
You’ve seen examples of how some seemingly innocent code can be used
by hackers to inject SQL statements into applications. Obviously, we’ve
only touched the tip of the iceberg in relation to the different techniques
that could be used. The reality of the situation is that some very simple
code could be used in the front-end application to eliminate most of the
problems. Couple this with a good monitoring procedure for user input
and your SQL server can be made relatively secure from SQL Injection attacks.
Replacing the Bad With the Good
Hackers will use any number of methods to attack your systems.
SQL Injection is a relatively new technique, and hackers are still exploring
the many different possibilities. In all the examples so far, we’ve seen
that the hacker makes use of the single quote to do most of their damage.
For this reason, the obvious fix is to make sure the ASP code intercepts
all single quotes and either filters them or adds additional text to ensure
the quotes don’t affect the SQL strings. VBscript provides a REPLACE function
that looks like this:
Using the Replace function ensures that any time a single quote character
is encountered, it will be replaced with two single quotes. This instructs
SQL Server to treat the quote as a character and continue processing.
Using the Replace function to replace single quotes with two single quotes
is a good method to secure against simple SQL injection. Make sure, though,
that you actually do replace the quotes (as shown earlier) rather than
simply filtering them out. Some routines suggest replacing them with NULL
characters, which can result in a new vulnerability rather than securing
Obviously, this is a rather simple method to secure your applications,
but the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle does, indeed, apply here.
The simpler the solution, the easier it is to understand and maintain.
Tracking Down SQL Injection Attempts
After securing your application, you should always follow up with
some form of monitoring to ensure that your efforts were worthwhile. For
SQL Server, the easiest and most effective method for tracking server
activity is the built-in Profiler application. It’s easy to set up SQL
Profiler and you can maintain and run it from a dedicated workstation.
Simple Auditing With SQL Profiler
The first step in setting up an audit trail for SQL Injection would
be to decide where and how to store the audit information. If possible,
store the information in a table in a SQL database. This makes for much
easier report writing when the time comes to report on what you’ve found.
Depending on the level of detail you choose and how busy your server is,
this data can get large quickly, so have a plan in place to manage the
information. A good rule of thumb to use is to figure your audit information
will take up about a quarter to half of the space of your daily database
changes. Once you’ve figured out where you’ll store the audit information,
you can set up Profiler and begin tracing SQL activity. There are six
basic steps to set up Profiler:
- Start the Profiler application from a workstation that can be secured
(preferably in a locked room). Profiler is located in Start|Programs|Microsoft
SQL Server|Profiler by default.
- Start a new trace by clicking the New Trace icon in the upper left
corner of the screen.
- Choose the server to connect to and the logon parameters, as shown
in Figure 1.
Set up the general trace properties by selecting the name of the trace,
the storage mechanism and the standard template. (Obviously there are
many options here; we’ll just touch on the basics.) See Figure 2.
|Figure 1. Use the Connect dialog to connect to
the appropriate SQL Server.
|Figure 2. Use the Trace Properties dialog to
select trace options.
- Choose the Events tab and remove all items from the “Selected Event
Class” frame to start with a clean slate. Then choose the “Security”
Audit Class and click Add. Open the TSQL node under Audit Class and
choose the items shown in Figure 3.
|Figure 3. The next step is to add all security
objects to the Selected Events.
- Select RUN to start the Trace. (Again, there are a lot of options
here, but we’re focusing on the basics.) Once Profiler starts, you’ll
see a screen similar to Figure 4.
|Figure 4. The Profiler screen shows data collected
by the trace. (Click image to view larger version.)
- There will be varying output on the screen at this point, as the
actual activity on your server is what’s being traced. Figure 4 shows
the application as SQL Query Analyzer and the NT User name of “tmalone”
logged into the server and performing several operations. The upper
section of the screen shows the activity occurring. If you highlight
any row in the upper section, the lower section will display the detail
of that particular command.
Although it can be used for real-time auditing, Profiler’s power lies
in its ability to store this information in SQL, so that any standard
reporting tool can write queries against the data. Obviously, you’ll want
to monitor all user logins to ensure that only authorized users are logging
in, and you’ll want to monitor all statements that aren’t simple SELECT,
INSERT or UPDATE statements.
In some cases, hackers try to circumvent the auditing by using a special
command called sp_password. This command hides any subsequent text entered
within that batch, as Figure 5 shows.
|Figure 5. Caption. (Click image to view larger
You’ll definitely want to query your audit tables for any occurrence
of this command to learn who’s executing the command and why.
The more data you store, the more you have to sift through in order to
produce a meaningful report. A tool such as Crystal Decisions’ Crystal
Reports can make this task much easier, but even loading the data to Excel
can help you learn what’s happening on your server.
Tip of the Iceberg
This article has discussed some basic concepts related to the SQL Injection
technique of database hacking. There are many, many variations of this
technique, and we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. However, having
a basic understanding of what the hacker is trying to accomplish will
go a long way in helping secure your servers and applications. | <urn:uuid:06779d73-eb43-43e9-8dcd-0da6205b30c9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://mcpmag.com/articles/2002/12/01/hacking-sql-server.aspx | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338213.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007143842-20221007173842-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.859613 | 4,201 | 3.25 | 3 |
Computer virus definition
A computer virus is a type of malware that attaches to another program (like a document), which can replicate and spread after a person first runs it on their system. For instance, you could receive an email with a malicious attachment, open the file unknowingly, and then the computer virus runs on your computer. Viruses are harmful and can destroy data, slow down system resources, and log keystrokes.
Cybercriminals aren’t creating new viruses all the time, instead they focus their efforts on more sophisticated and lucrative threats. When people talk about “getting a virus” on their computer, they usually mean some form of malware—it could be a virus, computer worm, Trojan, ransomware or some other harmful thing. Viruses and malware continue to evolve, and often cybercriminals use the type that gives them the best return at that particular time.
“When people talk about “getting a virus” on their computer, they usually mean some form of malware—it could be a virus, computer worm, Trojan, ransomware or some other harmful thing.”
Virus vs. malware
The terms “virus” and “malware” are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. While a computer virus is a type of malware, not all malware are computer viruses.
The easiest way to differentiate computer viruses from other forms of malware is to think about viruses in biological terms. Take the flu virus, for example. The flu requires some kind of interaction between two people—like a hand shake, a kiss, or touching something an infected person touched. Once the flu virus gets inside a person’s system it attaches to healthy human cells, using those cells to create more viral cells.
A computer virus works in much the same way:
- A computer virus requires a host program.
- A computer virus requires user action to transmit from one system to another.
- A computer virus attaches bits of its own malicious code to other files or replaces files outright with copies of itself.
It’s that second virus trait that tends to confuse people. Viruses can’t spread without some sort of action from a user, like opening up an infected Word document. Worms, on the other hand, are able to spread across systems and networks on their own, making them much more prevalent and dangerous.
Famously, the 2017 WannaCry ransomware worm spread around the world, took down thousands of Windows systems, and raked in an appreciable amount of untraceable Bitcoin ransom payments for the alleged North Korean attackers.
Computer viruses don’t typically capture headlines like that—at least not anymore. They are still a harmful type of malware, but they are not the only type of threat out there today, on your computer or mobile device.
Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS
Many computer viruses target systems running Microsoft Windows. Macs, on the other hand, have enjoyed a reputation as virus-proof super machines, but in Apple's own admission, Macs do get malware. There are more Windows users in the world than Mac users and cybercriminals simply choose to write viruses for the operating system (OS) with the largest amount of potential victims.
Today, the "computer" in our pockets may be the one we use most often: our smartphones. Android and iOS are susceptible to various forms of malware, too. Fortunately, most cybersecurity companies like Malwarebytes offer protection for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS today.
Computer virus examples
Sometimes to understand what something is, we have to examine what it isn’t. Keeping that in mind, let’s play: Is It a Virus?
In the Is It a Virus game we’re going to take a look at examples of things people on the Internet commonly believe to be a virus and explain why it is or isn’t. What fun!
Is a Trojan a virus? Trojans can be viruses. A Trojan is a computer program pretending to be something it’s not for the purposes of sneaking onto your computer and delivering some sort of malware. To put it another way, if a virus disguises itself then it’s a Trojan. A Trojan could be a seemingly benign file downloaded off the web or a Word doc attached to an email. Think that movie you downloaded from your favorite P2P sharing site is safe? What about that “important” tax document from your accountant? Think twice, because they could contain a virus.
Is a worm a virus? Worms are not viruses, though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Even worse, the terms are sometimes used together in a strange and contradictory word salad; i.e. a “worm virus malware.” It’s either a worm or a virus, but it can’t be both, because worms and viruses refer to two similar but different threats. As mentioned earlier, a virus needs a host system to replicate and some sort of action from a user to spread from one system to the next. A worm, conversely, doesn’t need a host system and is capable of spreading across a network and any systems connected to the network without user action. Once on a system, worms are known to drop malware (often ransomware) or open a backdoor.
Is ransomware a virus? Ransomware can be a virus. Does the virus prevent victims from accessing their system or personal files and demands ransom payment in order to regain access à la ransomware? If so, then it’s a ransomware virus. In fact, the very first ransomware was a virus (more on that later). Nowadays, most ransomware comes as a result of computer worm, capable of spreading from one system to the next and across networks without user action (e.g. WannaCry).
Is a rootkit a virus? Rootkits are not viruses. A rootkit is a software package designed to give attackers “root” access or admin access to a given system. Crucially, rootkits cannot self-replicate and don’t spread across systems.
Is a software bug a virus? Software bugs are not viruses. Even though we sometimes refer to a biological virus as a “bug” (e.g. “I caught a stomach bug”), software bugs and viruses are not the same thing. A software bug refers to a flaw or mistake in the computer code that a given software program is made up of. Software bugs can cause programs to behave in ways the software manufacturer never intended. The Y2K bug famously caused programs to display the wrong date, because the programs could only manage dates through the year 1999. After 1999 the year rolled over like the odometer on an old car to 1900. While the Y2K bug was relatively harmless, some software bugs can pose a serious threat to consumers. Cybercriminals can take advantage of bugs in order to gain unauthorized access to a system for the purposes of dropping malware, stealing private information, or opening up a backdoor. This is known as an exploit.
How do I prevent computer viruses?
Preventing computer viruses from infecting your computer starts with situational awareness.
“Situational awareness is something law enforcement and militaries have practiced for decades. It refers to a police officer or a soldier’s ability to perceive threats and make the best decision possible in a potentially stressful situation,” said Malwarebytes Head of Security, John Donovan.
“As it applies to cybersecurity, situational awareness is your first line of defense against cyberthreats. By staying on the lookout for phishing attacks and avoiding suspicious links and attachments, consumers can largely avoid most malware threats.”
Regarding email attachments and embedded links, even if the sender is someone you know: viruses have been known to hijack Outlook contact lists on infected computers and send virus laden attachments to friends, family and coworkers, the Melissa virus being a perfect example.
If an email reads oddly, it’s probably a phishing scam or malspam. When in doubt about the authenticity of an email, don’t be afraid to reach out to the sender. A simple call or text message can save you a lot of trouble.
Next, invest in good cybersecurity software. We’ve made a distinction between computer viruses and malware, which now begs the question, “Do I need antivirus software or anti-malware software?” We’ve covered this topic before in great detail so checkout our article on antivirus vs. anti-malware. For now, though, here’s a quick gloss on the subject.
Antivirus (AV) refers to early forms of cybersecurity software focused on stopping computer viruses. Just viruses. Anti-malware refers to all-encompassing threat protection designed to stop old-fashioned viruses as well as today’s malware threats. Given a choice between traditional AV with limited threat detection technology and modern anti-malware with all the bells and whistles, invest in anti-malware and rest easy at night.
As mentioned previously in this piece, traditional AV solutions rely on signature-based detection. AV scans your computer and compares each and every file against a database of known viruses that functions a lot like a criminal database. If there’s a signature match, the malicious file is thrown into virus jail before it can cause any damage.
The problem with signature-based detection is that it can’t stop what’s known as a zero-day virus; that is, a virus that cybersecurity researchers have never seen before and for which there is no criminal profile. Until the zero-day virus is added to the database, traditional AV can’t detect it.
Malwarebytes’ Multi-Vector Protection, conversely, combines several forms of threat detection technology into one malware crushing machine. Amongst these many layers of protection, Malwarebytes uses what’s called heuristic analysis to look for telltale malicious behavior from any given program. If it looks like a virus and behaves like a virus, then it’s probably a virus.
How do I remove computer viruses?
Going back to our virus analogy one final time—removing a virus from your body requires a healthy immune system. Same for your computer. A good anti-malware program is like having a healthy immune system. As your immune system moves through your body looking for and killing off invading viral cells, anti-malware scans for files and malicious code that don’t belong on your system and gets rid of them.
The free version of Malwarebytes is a good place to start if you know or suspect your computer has a virus. Available for Windows and Mac, the free version of Malwarebytes will scan for malware infections and clean them up after the fact. Get a free premium trial of Malwarebytes for Windows or Malwarebytes for Mac to stop infections before they start. You can also try our Android and iOS apps free to protect your smartphones and tablets.
News on computer viruses
- Barcode Scanner app on Google Play infects 10 million users with one update
- ‘Just tell me how to fix my computer:’ a crash course on malware detection
- Do Chromebooks need antivirus protection?
- Scammers use old browser trick to create fake virus download
- Our computers, ourselves: digital vs. biological security
- Malware vs. virus: What’s the difference?
History of computer viruses
Today’s malware authors owe a lot to the cybercriminals of yesteryear. All the tactics and techniques employed by cybercriminals creating modern malware were first seen in early viruses. Things like Trojans, ransomware, and polymorphic code. These all came from early computer viruses. To understand the threat landscape of today, we need to peer back through time and look at the viruses of yesteryear.
1949, John von Neumann and “self-reproducing machines”
It was in those salad days of computing that mathematician, engineer, and polymath John von Neumann delivered a lecture on the Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata in which he first argued that computer programs could “self-reproduce.” In an era where computers were the size of houses, and programs were stored on mile-long punch tapes, Neumann’s ideas must’ve sounded like something from a sci-fi pulp novel.
1982, The proto computer-virus
In 1982 a fifteen-year-old boy pranking his friends proved Neumann’s theory a reality. Rich Skrenta’s Elk Cloner is widely regarded as the first proto-computer virus (the term “computer virus” didn’t exist just yet). Elk Cloner targeted Apple II computers, causing infected machines to display a poem from Skrenta:
Elk Cloner: The program with a personality
It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes, it’s Cloner!
It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner!
Other notable firsts—Elk Cloner was the first virus to spread via detachable storage media (it wrote itself to any floppy disk inserted into the computer). For many years to come, that’s how viruses travelled across systems—via infected floppy disk passed from user to user.
1984, Computer virus, defined
In 1984 computer scientist Fred Cohen handed in his graduate thesis paper, Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments in which he coined the term “computer virus,” which is great because “complicated self-reproducing automata” is a real mouthful. In the same paper, Cohen also gave us our first definition of “computer virus” as “a program that can ‘infect’ other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself.”
1984, Core War
Up to this point, most talk about computer viruses happened only in the rarified air of college campuses and research labs. But a 1984 Scientific American article let the virus out of the lab. In the piece, author and computer scientist A.K. Dewdney shared the details of an exciting new computer game of his creation called Core War. In the game, computer programs vie for control of a virtual computer. The game was essentially a battle arena where computer programmers could pit their viral creations against each other. For two dollars Dewdney would send detailed instructions for setting up your own Core War battles within the confines of a virtual computer. What would happen if a battle program was taken out of the virtual computer and placed on a real computer system? In a follow-up article for Scientific American, Dewdney shared a letter from two Italian readers who were inspired by their experience with Core War to create a real virus on the Apple II. It’s not a stretch to think other readers were similarly inspired.
1986, the first PC virus
The Brain virus was the first to target Microsoft’s text-based Windows precursor, MS-DOS. The brainchild of Pakistani brothers and software engineers, Basit and Amjad Farooq, Brain acted like an early form of copyright protection, stopping people from pirating their heart monitoring software. If the target system contained a pirated version of the brother’s software, the “victim” would receive the on-screen message, “WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON . . . CONTACT US FOR VACCINATION” along with the brothers’ names, phone number, and business address in Pakistan. Other than guilt tripping victims in to paying for their pirated software, Brain had no harmful effects.
Speaking with F-Secure, Basit called Brain a “very friendly virus.” Amjad added that today’s viruses, the descendants of Brain, are “a purely criminal act.”
1986, Viruses go into stealth mode
Also in 1986, the BHP virus was the first to target the Commodore 64 computer. Infected computers displayed a text message with the names of the multiple hackers who created the virus—the digital equivalent of scrawling “(your name) was here” on the side of a building. BHP also has the distinction of being the first stealth virus; that is, a virus that avoids detection by hiding the changes it makes to a target system and its files.
1988, Computer virus of the year
1988, one could argue, was the year computer viruses went mainstream. In September of that year, a story on computer viruses appeared on the cover of TIME magazine. The cover image depicted viruses as cute, googly eyed cartoon insects crawling all over a desktop computer. Up to this point, computer viruses were relatively harmless. Yes, they were annoying, but not destructive. So how did computer viruses go from nuisance threat to system destroying plague?
“Viruses were all about peace and love—until they started crashing people’s computers.”
1988, A message of peace goes haywire
Viruses were all about peace and love—until they started crashing people’s computers. The MacMag virus caused infected Macs to display an onscreen message on March 2, 1988:
RICHARD BRANDOW, publisher of MacMag, and its entire staff
would like to take this opportunity to convey their
UNIVERSAL MESSAGE OF PEACE
to all Macintosh users around the world
Unfortunately, a bug in the virus caused infected Macs to crash well before Brandow’s day of “universal peace.” The virus was also designed to delete itself after displaying Brandow’s message but ended up deleting other user files along with it. One of the victims, a software executive working for Aldus Corp, inadvertently copied the virus to a pre-production version of Aldus’ Freehand illustration software. The infected Freehand was then copied and shipped to several thousand customers, making MacMag the first virus spread via legitimate commercial software product.
Drew Davidson, the person who actually coded the MacMag virus (Brandow wasn’t a coder), told TIME he created his virus to draw attention to his programming skills.
“I just thought we'd release it and it would be kind of neat,” Davidson said.
1988, front page of The New York Times
A little over a month after the TIME magazine piece, a story about the “most serious computer ‘virus’ attack” in US history appeared on the front page of The New York Times. It was Robert Tappan Morris’ Internet worm, erroneously referred to as a “virus.” In all fairness, no one knew what a worm was. Morris’s creation was the archetype. The Morris worm knocked out more than 6,000 computers as it spread across the ARPANET, a government operated early version of the Internet restricted to schools and military installations. The Morris worm was the first known use of a dictionary attack. As the name suggests, a dictionary attack involves taking a list of words and using it to try and guess the username and password combination of a target system.
Robert Morris was the first person charged under the newly enacted Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which made it illegal to mess with government and financial systems, and any computer that contributes to US commerce and communications. In his defense, Morris never intended his namesake worm to cause so much damage. According to Morris, the worm was designed to test security flaws and estimate the size of the early Internet. A bug caused the worm to infect targeted systems over and over again, with each subsequent infection consuming processing power until the system crashed.
1989, Computer viruses go viral
In 1989 the AIDS Trojan was the first example of what would later come to be known as ransomware. Victims received a 5.25-inch floppy disk in the mail labelled “AIDS Information” containing a simple questionnaire designed to help recipients figure out if they were at risk for the AIDS virus (the biological one).
While an apt (albeit insensitive) metaphor, there’s no indication the virus’ creator, Dr. Joseph L. Popp, intended to draw parallels between his digital creation and the deadly AIDS virus. Many of the 20,000 disk recipients, Medium reported, were delegates for the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO previously rejected Popp for an AIDS research position.
Loading the questionnaire infected target systems with the AIDS Trojan. The AIDS Trojan would then lay dormant for the next 89 boot ups. When victims started their computer for the 90th time, they’d be presented with an on-screen message ostensibly from “PC Cyborg Corporation” demanding payment for “your software lease,” similar to the Brain virus from three years earlier. Unlike the Brain virus, however, the AIDS Trojan encrypted the victims’ files.
In an era before Bitcoin and other untraceable cryptocurrencies, victims had to send ransom funds to a PO box in Panama in order to receive the decryption software and regain access to their files. Funds, Popp claimed after his arrest, were destined for AIDS virus research.
1990s, Rise of the Internet
By 1990 ARPANET was decommissioned in favor of its public, commercially accessible cousin the Internet. And thanks to Tim Berners-Lee’s pioneering work on web browsers and web pages, the Internet was now a user-friendly place anyone could explore without special technical knowledge. There were 2.6 million users on the Internet in 1990, according to Our World in Data. By the end of the decade, that number would surpass 400 million.
With the rise of the Internet came new ways for viruses to spread.
1990, Mighty morphin’ 1260 virus
Cybersecurity researcher Mark Washburn wanted to demonstrate the weaknesses in traditional antivirus (AV) products. Traditional AV works by comparing the files on your computer with a giant list of known viruses. Every virus on the list is made of computer code and every snippet of code has a unique signature—like a fingerprint. If a snippet of code found on your computer matches that of a known virus in the database, the file is flagged. Washburn’s 1260 virus avoided detection by constantly changing its fingerprint every time it replicated itself across a system. While each copy of the 1260 virus looked and acted the same, the underlying code was different. This is called polymorphic code, making 1260 the first polymorphic virus.
1999, “You’ve got mail (and also a virus)”
Think back to 1999. If someone you knew sent you an email that read “Here is the document you requested ... don’t show anyone else ;-),” you opened the attachment. This was how the Melissa virus spread and it played on the public’s naiveté about how viruses worked up to that point. Melissa was a macro virus. Viruses of this type hide within the macro language commonly used in Microsoft Office files. Opening up a viral Word doc, Excel spreadsheet, etc. triggers the virus. Melissa was the fastest spreading virus up to that point, infecting approximately 250,000 computers, Medium reported.
2012, A full Shamoon over Saudi Arabia
By the turn of the 21st century, the roadmap for future malware threats had been set. Viruses paved the way for a whole new generation of destructive malware. Cryptojackers stealthily used our computers to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Ransomware held our computers hostage. Banking Trojans, like Emotet, stole our financial information. Spyware and keyloggers shoulder surfed us from across the web, stealing our usernames and passwords.
Old-school viruses were, for the most part, a thing of the past. In 2012, however, viruses made one last grab at the world’s attention with the Shamoon virus. Shamoon targeted computers and network systems belonging to Aramco, the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company, in response to Saudi government policy decisions in the Middle East. The attack stands as one of the most destructive malware attacks on a single organization in history, completely wiping out three-quarters of Aramco’s systems, The New York Times reported. In a perfect example of what comes around goes around, cybersecurity researchers have suggested the attack started with an infected USB storage drive—the modern equivalent of the floppy disks used to carry the very first virus, Elk Cloner.
Today, tech support scams
Decades have passed since computer viruses reached their destructive zenith but there’s a related threat you should know about. Commonly referred to as a tech support scam or a virus hoax, this modern threat isn’t a virus at all.
Here’s how tech support scams work. The victim is served up a bogus pop-up ad after landing on a spoofed website or as a result of an adware infection. In a recent example, scammers used malvertising to link victims to malicious support sites after victims searched for things like cooking tips and recipes. We’ve also seen hacked WordPress sites redirecting to support scam sites. The bogus ad is designed to look like a system alert generated by the operating system, and it may say something like, “Security alert: Your computer might be infected by harmful viruses,” along with contact information for “Technical Support.” There’s no virus and no technical support—just scammers who will make it seem like you have a virus and demand payment to “fix” it.
According to the Federal Trade Commission there were 143,000 reports about tech support scams in 2018, with total losses reaching $55 million. What makes this scam particularly insidious is that cybercriminals frequently target the most vulnerable part of the world’s population. People 60-years-old and over were five times more likely to report being a victim of a tech support scam.
Is Chromium a virus?
As discussed above, a number of things that are called viruses are not actually viruses. Some of those, like ransomware or computer worms, are still malicious, but they are not computer viruses. Some things that are not malicious are sometimes suspected as viruses, and Chromium is a good example of this.
Chromium is not a virus. Chromium is a free open-source web browser project by Google. Much of the Chromium code serves as source code for Google Chrome, a legitimate and popular web browser. Just because you suddenly have Chromium on your computer doesn't necessarily mean that it’s malware. You may have unwittingly installed a legitimate copy of Chromium that was bundled with other software.
Because Chromium is open-source, anyone can download Chromium and modify it to suit their needs. Bad actors could download Chromium and alter it to serve malicious purposes. WebNavigator Chromium browser is an example of a threat actor adapting Chromium code and using it as a search hijacker. However to reiterate, Chromium itself is not a virus. | <urn:uuid:d9ce952b-fc4f-41b7-bd5e-8be3c696e284> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.malwarebytes.com/computer-virus | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338213.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007143842-20221007173842-00746.warc.gz | en | 0.93834 | 5,634 | 3.640625 | 4 |
XML represents a fundamental change in computing. It allows applications to move away from proprietary file and data formats to a world of open data interchange. XML has become ubiquitous not only because of its range of applications, but also because of its ease of use. Its text-based nature makes creating tools easy, and since it is an open, license-free, cross-platform standard, anyone can create, develop, and use tools for XML. In short, XML means portable data.
Although XML solves many problems by providing a standard format for data interchange, some challenges remain. In the real world, applications need reliable services to store, retrieve, and manipulate data. These services were traditionally offered by relational databases. The relational database technology has matured over the last 30 years, and it is well-known for its impressive SQL query performance, unequaled reliability and scalability, strong management and security, and legendary concurrency through locking and caching. So it would seem to be natural to use relational databases to persist and manipulate XML documents. Well, the problem is that relational and hierarchical representations of data are very different. In the relational model, the data is stored in rows of two-dimensional tables where the physical order of rows is insignificant. XML, on the other hand, is a highly hierarchical model where the order of elements is significant, and the relationship among elements is described in a given document. Using a relational model to express a hierarchy of elements in a complex XML document is a non-trivial task. Therefore, some software vendors decided to implement pure XML databases designed to efficiently handle the hierarchical model. Unfortunately, the native XML databases don't provide maturity, scalability, and concurrency of the relational databases yet. Another approach adopted by other software vendors is to programmatically process the XML documents and map their hierarchy into a relational database. Typically, these solutions leverage one of the standard APIs to manipulate XML, such as Simple API for XML (SAX) or Document Object Model (DOM). The JDBC is then used to write the extracted data into the database. Although the programmatic approach works fine in many cases, it also has serious limitations. It requires custom development for each XML schema, meaning that the structure of a given XML document type is hard-coded. So the code maintenance cost is usually very high. Every time the structure (schema) of an XML document changes, the respective code needs to be changed accordingly.
I believe that a much more productive approach is to use database middleware to handle the XML parsing and XML-to-relational mapping. Most database vendors provide this kind of functionality. DB2 UDB for iSeries, for example, provides DB2 XML Extender. DB2 XML Extender offers several advantages over the programmatic approach. It allows your development team to focus on business logic implementation rather than on mastering low-level APIs such as SAX or DOM. In addition, the XML-to-relational mapping is greatly simplified by a visual mapping utility provided in IBM's WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), Rational Application Development (RAD), and WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSc) Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
In this article, I will demonstrate how to take advantage of the XML Extender and WSAD tooling to dramatically speed up the process of building robust XML-based applications. I'll also share best practices and techniques aimed at streamlining the XML-DB2 integration.
Note: I'm assuming that you are already familiar with basic XML-related concepts such as Data Type Definition (DTD), XML Schema (XSD), and location path. If not, you may check out the online W3 Schools tutorials web site. In this article, I focus only on the functionality specific to XML Extender.
DB2 XML Extender Basics
The DB2 XML Extender for iSeries, which consists of several components, is not a part of the DB2 UDB for iSeries runtime. It is shipped as a separate license program (5722-DE1) and needs to be ordered from IBM as a chargeable feature.
DB2 UDB stores and retrieves XML data and also generates helper side tables that can greatly improve the performance of the XML retrieval process. The extender, which mediates between DB2 UDB and the application requester, is functional and flexible whether you have relational data that needs to be transformed into XML or XML data to store in DB2 UDB tables. It contains a rich set of user-defined types (UDTs), user-defined functions (UDFs), and stored procedures to manage XML data. XML documents can be stored in DB2 UDB databases as character data. These concepts are illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The DB2 XML Extender allows you to transform relational data into XML or store XML data in DB2 UDB tables. (Click images to enlarge.)
The DB2 XML Extender provides you with the ability to use DB2 UDB to store, manage, query, and update XML data. Two basic techniques are used:
- XML column method
- XML collection method
With the XML column method, you can use DB2 UDB tables to store XML documents in columns that have been enabled for XML, or you can store them as external files. The XML data can then be retrieved, updated, and searched. Furthermore, you can extract XML element or attribute values into secondary tables, called side tables, which, when indexed, provide fast XML element and attribute search capabilities. Columns that have been enabled for XML are known as XML columns and can be implemented as one of the three user-defined types provided with the XML Extender:
The XML collection method allows you to compose XML documents from existing DB2 UDB data or decompose (shred) XML documents into DB2 UDB data--that is, store untagged element or attribute values in DB2 UDB tables.
One of the cornerstones of the extender's architecture is the Data Access Definition (DAD) document. The DAD specifies how to map the hierarchical structure of XML documents to the actual relational structure in the database. For example, if you have an element called
The XML Extender provides two types of mapping schemes: SQL mapping and Relational Database (RDB_node) mapping. Both methods use the XPath model to define the hierarchy of the XML document. My experience shows that, for most applications, the RDB_node mapping provides much richer functionality and better flexibility than the SQL mapping. In the RDB_node mapping, the relationship between XML elements and relational database columns is expressed by employing element_node (or attribute_node) to RDB_node associations.
Let's explore these concepts by examining the following excerpt from a DAD document:
In the DAD source listed above, indicates that the XML Collection method is used. The top element_node at represents the root element of the XML document. The RDB_node associated with the root element is used to specify all tables that are associated with the XML document. At , I list two tables necessary for mapping. In the condition tag at , I provide the join condition for the two tables. At , I use an attribute_node to associate an XML attribute with an RDB_node . This time, the RDB_node defines the column name, its data type, and the target table name. Note that the nesting of the attribute_node within the root_node reflects the hierarchy of the XML document. At , I use an element_node to associate the content of the element represented by a text_node with an RDB_node. The RDB_node defines the target column in the database table. Again, the nesting of the element_node within the root elements represents the hierarchy in the XML document.
XML Shred Walkthrough
Armed with the basic understanding of the DB2 XML Extender functionality, we can now analyze the shredding methodology that I have successfully implemented for several large projects. As mentioned, the purpose of shredding is to store untagged elements or attributes in DB2 UDB tables. The proposed end-to-end development and deployment process is illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Shredding stores untagged elements or attributes in DB2 UDB tables.
In the above figure, steps 1through 5 are performed in WSDC. Once the necessary application files are generated, the solution is deployed to the target iSeries server, where the application files are used as input to the XML Extender shred procedures. The development and deployment steps are described in the following sections.
Analyze the XML Document's Structure and Figure Out the Mapping
I use a sample XML document called GlobalSales.xml as an input to the shredding process (source code contained in the Download Image. The document contains global sales data for various brands distributed in the retail stores throughout the world. First, the XML document is imported into a folder in a newly created Java project in WSAD. I use a Java project because the solution contains a simple Java program that needs to be compiled and tested. After you switch to the XML perspective, you can use the Outline view to analyze the hierarchy of the sample document. This is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: From the XML perspective, you can see the hierarchy of GlobalSales.xml.
Before you start the XML-to-RDB mapping process, you need to understand some fundamental concepts of XML technology:
- Containment--Some elements are fully contained in other elements. For example, in Figure 3, a Store element is contained in the StoreChain element that, in turn, is contained in RetailSales.
- Repeating Elements--Some elements may repeat within one parent element. For example, a StoreSales element can contain one or many occurrences of the Brand element. So there is a one-to-many relationship between StoreSales and Brand.
- Optional Elements--Some elements are optional. For example, a Returns element may occur zero times or one time within a Brand element. Optional elements are mapped to nullable columns in the database tables.
- Wrapper elements--These elements have no child attributes or text nodes. However, they contain children elements that have attributes or text nodes. For example, CountrySummary is a wrapper element. It has no attributes or text nodes. It is used to logically separate sales data from other elements.
In the proposed methodology, I assume that the target tables do not exist and that they need to be designed as part of the mapping process. In other words, during the mapping, I decide what tables and columns are needed to accommodate the data found in the XML document. Each text node or attribute of an element is mapped into a column in a table. Note that an element and all its children that cannot repeat can be mapped into columns of the same table. This is so because different columns in one row of a table correctly represent the one-to-one relationship between parent and child for those elements that cannot repeat. For example, each occurrence of a Store element can have just one occurrence of StoreInfo element, thus all data from Store and StoreInfo can be stored in one row. On the other hand, a child element that can repeat must be mapped to
a separate table. In this case, there is a one-to-many relationship between a parent and its children. The only way to reflect this relationship in a relational database is to store the parent element in a parent table and store the children elements in multiple rows of a dependent table. For example, a StoreChain element contains multiple Store elements, so the data for a particular occurrence of StoreChain can be stored in one row of a StoreChain table while children of this StoreChain element are stored in multiple rows of the Store table. This is illustrated in Figure 4.
Figure 4: This is an example of a parent element and children elements that repeat.
I'll now employ the concepts I've explained so far to map out the GlobalSales.xml document. The Data Type Definition (DTD) for the sample XML document allows you to easily follow the XML hierarchy and find all elements that occur once, occur multiple times, or are optional. Here's the source of GlobalSales.dtd:
The analysis starts at the root element, GlobalSales in this case. It has two children: EffectiveDate and CountrySummary. Both can occur only once. So I can map data from all three elements to a single table. For simplicity, let's call this table GlobalSales. Note also that GlobalSales and CountrySummary (a wrapper) contain no attributes or text nodes. Only EffectiveDate contains a text node. The CountrySummary, in turn, contains Country, which, as indicated by the plus sign (+) next to it, can occur one or more times. So Country needs to be mapped to a separate table. This leaves me with just one column in the GlobalSales table, namely EffectiveDate. Similarly, Country contains CountryInfo and CountrySales (a wrapper). The text node of element CountryInfo/Name cannot repeat, thus it is mapped into the Name column in the Country table. The process is continued recursively until all elements are mapped.
Three more elements can repeat: StoreChain, Store, and Brand (check out the + signs in the DTD). As a result, the mapping requires five tables: GlobalSales, Country, StoreChain, Store, and Brand. The following figure shows the layout of the target tables and their relationships. Sample data is provided to better illustrate the one-to-one and one-to-many relationships between rows.
Figure 5: The layout of the example target tables looks like this.
In the above figure, the arrows indicate the hierarchy of the elements in the sample XML document mapped into a set of tables. For example, a Store named ABC Hardware Winona contains two Brand elements (Bosch and DeWalt). In other words, the arrows are needed to correctly reflect the containment and repeating elements.
Our discussion has reached the most critical aspect of hierarchical-to-relational mapping: How do we preserve the relationships represented by the arrows in Figure 5 in a relational database model? Referential integrity (RI) is probably the most natural choice, and, in fact, it is the cornerstone of the proposed methodology. In order to tie the related rows with the unique key/foreign key constraints, I need to insert unique key values into the designated elements. The key value uniquely identifies the given instance of an element, and at the shredding time, the extender will propagate the key value as a foreign key to the children elements that can repeat. That way, the children will be tied back to the parent element. The process of selecting the designated elements is pretty straightforward: I need to add a unique key to the GlobalSales element and then to all elements that can repeat--Country, StoreChain, Store, and Brand.
Use XSLTransform to Insert Unique Keys
The mapping process determined which elements need to contain the unique keys. I decided to use the XSL Transformation to insert the necessary values into the inbound sample XML document. I use the javax.xml.transform.Transformer class to apply the following simple XSL style sheet (see download for source code of the Java GlobalSalesTransform program):
At , the elements that need to contain a unique key are selected. At , a unique key is generated. The input parameter guuid is concatenated with the return value of the XSL generate-id() function to produce a unique value. For simplicity, I use the current timestamp as the input parameter. This guarantees the key uniqueness on consecutive invocations of the transformer. The newly generated unique key value is inserted as an attribute called Uid. All other nodes in the inbound document are just copied to the transformed XML document.
Here's an excerpt from the transformed GlobalSales_t.xml document:
Note the presence of the inserted attributes for the GlobalSales and Country elements.
Modify DTD or XSD
The original DTD needs to be modified to reflect the structure of the transformed XML document. The necessary change boils down to adding a new attribute called Uid to the designated elements. The DTD for the transformed XML document is used in step 5. Additionally, the DTD may be required if you decide to validate the inbound documents before shredding them into the database.
Once the DTD has been updated, I can use the WSAD's Generate XML Schema wizard to generate a corresponding XSD from the modified DTD. To do so, I right-click the GlobalSales_t.dtd in the Navigator window and select Generate -> XML Schema. The process outlined in this step is illustrated in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Use this process to modify DTD.
The XSD, in turn, serves as input to the Generate DDL wizard that is used in step 4.
Alternately, an existing XSD may have to be modified to reflect the structure of the transformed XML. XSD is better than DTD, because it more precisely reflects the data types for elements and attributes.
Create Target Tables
In step 1, I defined the layout of the target tables. Now it is time to create a DDL script that can be run on the database server to actually create the necessary tables. Once again, WSAD provides a handy wizard that can facilitate the process. I use the Generate DDL wizard to produce a "draft" DDL script from the modified XML schema (GlobalSales_t.xsd). To do so, I right-click the GlobalSales_t.dtd in the Navigator window and select Generate -> DDL. As indicated, the wizard provides only a rough guess as to what tables are needed to accommodate data contained in an XML document described by a given XSD. Despite the wizard's imperfection, I still prefer to use it rather than type the entire DDL script from scratch.
Typically, in the generated script, I need to remove unnecessary and redundant table and column definitions. Then I add to all tables the unique key constraints to accommodate the inserted Uid attributes. Next, starting from the GlobalSales and Country tables, I recursively express the one-to-many relationship between rows in two tables by specifying a foreign key in the dependent table. This is done by adding a new column to the dependent table with the same attributes as the unique key column in the parent table and defining it as a foreign key. This definition ties the two tables together.
Here's an excerpt from the modified SalesGlobal.sql script:
CREATE SCHEMA GLBLSALES;
SET SCHEMA GLBLSALES;
CREATE TABLE GlobalSales (
GlobalSalesUid CHAR(30)NOT NULL, <---------
EffectiveDate VARCHAR (80), |
PRIMARY KEY (GlobalSalesUid) |
CREATE TABLE Country ( |
CountryUid CHAR(30) NOT NULL, |
GlobalSalesUid CHAR(30)NOT NULL, <-----------
Name VARCHAR (80),
PRIMARY KEY (CountryUid),
FOREIGN KEY (GlobalSalesUid) REFERENCES GlobalSales (GlobalSalesUid)
ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE RESTRICT
In the above example, the GlobalSalesUid column in Country is a foreign key referencing the same-named column on the parent table. Note also that, in the foreign key definition, I specified the ON DELETE CASCADE rule. This will allow me, if needed, to remove all shredded data for a given XML document by deleting just one row in the GlobalSales table. DB2 will automatically remove all other related rows.
Note: Currently, the XML Extender does not provide the functionality to update the data once the document has been shredded. To perform the update, you could delete the data from the target tables and then shred again using the modified XML document.
Once the DDL script is cleaned up, I create the target tables by right-clicking on GlobalSales.sql in the WSAD's Navigator and selecting Run on the database server.
Build the DAD
WSAD provides a wizard that allows you to create RDB-to-XML mappings using graphical drag-and-drop editing. To invoke the wizard, I switch to the XML perspective and then select File -> New -> RDB-to-XML mapping. The wizard uses the target database meta data previously imported into the project (see the download materials for details) and GlobalSales_t.dtd as input. The mapping editor allows me to drag a column from a target table and drop it on an element or attribute in the XML structure. That way, I provide the information about the required mapping. The mapping editor session is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: The RDB-to-XML mapping editor offers drag-and-drop functionality.
In the above figure, the upper left panel contains the list of target tables and their columns. The upper right panel contains the expanded structure of the XML document. The lower panel shows what mapping has been already defined.
In addition to column-to-element/attribute mapping, I also need to specify the join condition for the target tables. I use the unique key/foreign key pairs for that purpose. Here's the join condition needed for the target tables:
GLOBALSALES.GLOBALSALESUID = COUNTRY.GLOBALSALESUID
AND COUNTRY.COUNTRYUID = STORECHAIN.COUNTRYUID
AND STORECHAIN.STORECHAINUID = STORE.STORECHAINUID
AND STORE.STOREUID = BRAND.STOREUID
Once the mapping and the join condition are provided, I can generate the DAD by selecting Mapping -> Generate DAD in WSAD. Next, I verify that in the generated DAD file the multi-occurrence attributes are present for elements that repeat. Also, decomposing a wrapper element into one row requires a multi-occurrence attribute.
The WSAD's Generate DAD function automatically provides the necessary multi-occurrence attributes for repeating elements but not for the wrappers. Hence, you might need to manually modify the DAD. Check the Multi-occurrence requirements for wrapper elements technote for more info on that subject.
This concludes the development phase of the proposed methodology.
Deploy the Solution on the iSeries
I'm assuming that the XML Extender is already installed and enabled on the target iSeries server. To deploy the application, I need to copy the following files to the iSeries IFS: GlobalSales.xml, GlobalSales.xsl, GlobalSales_t.dad, GlobalSales_t.dtd, GlobalSales_t.xsd, and GlobalSalesTransform.java. Note that DTD and XSD files are needed only if the validation is required. I use the Export function in WSAD to copy all the files into an IFS directory called /dxx/Demo. To compile the Java source, JDK 1.4 or higher is required. You can check the default JDK version on your system by running the following command from the Qshell prompt:
The default Java version on V5R2 systems is 1.3.1; therefore, you need to change it to 1.4. To do so, create a stream file called SystemDefault.properties in your home directory--for example, /home/jarek. Add the following line to the properties file:
From now on, JDK 1.4 will be used for your user profile. Of course, this assumes that 57722-JV1 Option 6 is installed on your iSeries. The following command is used to compile GlobalSalesTransform.java:
Additionally, I create an SQL stored procedure called ShredXMLWrapper in the target DB2 schema (GLBLSALES). The source of the stored procedure is listed below:
CREATE PROCEDURE GLBLSALES.SHREDXMLWRAPPER ( IN DAD_FILE VARCHAR(512),
IN XML_FILE VARCHAR(512),
OUT ERRCODE INTEGER,
OUT ERRMSG VARCHAR(1024) )
RESULT SETS 0
P1 : BEGIN
DECLARE DAD_BUF CLOB ( 102400 ) ;
DECLARE XMLOBJ CLOB ( 1048576 ) ;
SELECT DB2XML.XMLCLOBFROMFILE(DAD_FILE) INTO DAD_BUF FROM SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1;
SELECT DB2XML.XMLCLOBFROMFILE(XML_FILE) INTO XMLOBJ FROM SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1;
CALL DB2XML.DXXSHREDXML( DAD_BUF , XMLOBJ , ERRCODE , ERRMSG ) ;
IF ERRCODE < 0 THEN
SET ERRMSG = 'ErrCode=' || TRIM ( CHAR ( ERRCODE ) ) || ' - ' || ERRMSG ;
SIGNAL SQLSTATE '70001' SET MESSAGE_TEXT = ERRMSG ;
END IF ;
At , the DAD file is read into a Clob variable. At , the XML file to be shredded is read into another Clob variable. At , the XML Extender stored procedure is called to perform the shredding. So the purpose of the wrapper is to read the DAD and XML from a file system and pass them to the XML Extender as Clobs.
Run the Application
Once the application is deployed, just a few easy steps are required to shred any number of XML documents that comply with GlobalSales.dtd grammar. For example, I use the iSeries Navigator Run SQL Scripts utility to execute the following commands:
CL: cd '/dxx/Demo';
CL: RUNJVA CLASS(GlobalSalesTransform) PARM('/dxx/Demo/GlobalSales.xml'
If everything works fine, the stored procedure returns the following message:
Output Parameter #3 = 0
Output Parameter #4 = DXXQ025I XML decomposed successfully.
The data from the GlobalSales.xml is now stored in DB2!
For maximum database server stability, you should install the latest database group PTF (SF99502 for V5R2 or SF99503 for V5R3) on the iSeries server. In addition, the following table lists the PTFs required for the recently implemented DB2 XML Extender enhancements and improvements:
PTFs Required for the DB2 XML Extender Enhancements
I hope that this article will help you select the XML-to-RDB strategy that is the most efficient in your computing environment. I believe that XML Extender can be used in many situations to simplify and speed up the implementation process. It's also important to know that the XML Extender development lab intends to provide function and performance improvements in future releases of the product.
Download the source code that accompanies this article: Download Image
The following publications can be helpful to those who want to learn more about the DB2 XML Extender:
- Simplified XML applications, DB2 Developer Domain white paper
- XML Extender Administration and Programming, SC27-1234-00
- XML for DB2 Information Integration, ITSO Redbook, SG24-6994 | <urn:uuid:f146af7a-e964-42d9-b616-ca0cd1f1d7e1> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.mcpressonline.com/programming/web-languages/a-fast-path-to-xml-integration-with-db2-for-iseries/print | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335254.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928113848-20220928143848-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.836276 | 6,366 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Every day the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) is greatly changing and expanding. With new forms of technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence continues to grow and expand throughout the work force.
But how will people comprehend the outcomes of artificial intelligence? How will they explain it to a co-worker who may not understand the statistical and technical outcome?
The answer is explainable artificial intelligence (XAI)!
What is XAI?
XAI is a new and emerging area attempting to focus on increasing the transparency of AI processes. The overall goal of XAI is to help humans understand, trust, and effectively manage the results of the solution of AI technology.
The main objective of XAI is to produce more explainable AI models while maintaining a high level of learning performance/prediction accuracy.
XAI aims to inspect and reflect the steps a machine took when making a decision or taking an action. It does so in a two-step process of interpreting and comprehending the AI model’s decisions and explaining the model’s decisions from one human to another without being an expert and with both people fully understanding the decision.
Benefits of XAI
While using and adapting to XAI, there are plenty of benefits that come with it. These benefits could help you and your company thrive no matter the industry.
According to Philip Pilgerstorfer, a Data Scientist and XAI specialist for QuantumBlack, these are just some of the benefits of adapting XAI:
- Build user trust
- Satisfy legal requirements
- Provide ethics-related justification
- Derive actionable and robust insights
With new technology and different techniques being developed, many companies and industries are adopting XAI techniques and strategies to help their company become more effective.
XAI in Industries
Many industries are adopting XAI techniques and strategies into their own companies. With technology consistently changing and new techniques and methods are being developed, it is important to adapt to those changes.
According to auromind.org, these certain industries have already adopted to XAI and what they would use XAI for.
Machine learning and AI technology is already used and implemented in the healthcare setting. However, doctors are unable to account for why certain decisions or predictions are being made. This imposes limitations on how and where AI technology can be applied.
With XAI, doctors are able to tell why a certain patient is at high risk for hospital admission and what treatment would be most suitable. This enables doctors to act based on better information.
Financial institutions such as Capital One and Bank of America are actively leveraging AI technology. They look to provide their customers with financial stability, empower financial awareness, and help them better manage their spending.
With XAI, this is possible in providing fair, unbiased, and explainable outcomes to help their customers and service providers understand the results of the solutions. It allows financial institutions to ensure compliance with different regulatory requirements while following ethical and fair standards.
Security and Defense
XAI is one of the main initiatives of DARPA to enable their third wave AI systems. With XAI, these systems give not only accurate predictions but also provides an understanding of the context and environment in which they operate.
The main challenges of this sector are mainly in areas of classifying events of interest from multiple multimedia data sources along with constructing decision policies to perform a variety of simulated missions.
XAI is a new and emerging area that helps humans better understand the outcomes and decisions their AI technology makes in a way that they can comprehend.
There are many benefits that come with the adoption of XAI techniques and strategies that could help your company become more efficient.
Adoption of XAI is also being implemented and tested daily in many different industries ranging from healthcare to financial technology, as well as security and defense. Soon enough most industries will adapt to XAI technology.
With more advanced technology and ways of learning, being able to adapt to these changes and understanding them provides a significant importance in order for a company to become successful. Companies will need XAI to help them understand the results of the solutions that are provided. The adoption and learning of XAI is more important now than ever. | <urn:uuid:2ed22d6f-3e81-4a2f-819f-96c921890b0d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://avianaglobal.com/a-brief-guide-to-explainable-artificial-intelligence/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.956524 | 856 | 2.875 | 3 |
These valuable repositories remain exposed to an increasing amount of cyber attacks and data breaches.
Machines and the internet are woven into the fabric of our society. A growing number of users, devices and applications work together to produce what we now call “big data.” And this data helps drive many of the everyday services we access, such as banking.
A comparison of internet snapshots from 2018 and 2019 sheds light on the increasing rate at which digital information is exchanged daily. The challenge of safely capturing and storing data is becoming more complicated with time.
This is where data warehouses and data lakes are relevant. Both are online spaces used by businesses for internal data processing and storage.
Unfortunately, since the concept of data lakes originated in 2010, not enough has been done to address issues of cybersecurity. These valuable repositories remain exposed to an increasing amount of cyber attacks and data breaches.
A proposed panacea for big data problems
The traditional approach used by service providers is to store data in a data warehouse -- a single repository that can be used to analyze data, create reports and consolidate information.
However, data going into a warehouse needs to be preprocessed. With zettabytes of data in cyber space, this isn’t an easy task. Preprocessing requires a hefty amount of computation done by high-end supercomputers and costs time and money.
Data lakes were proposed to solve this. Unlike warehouses, they can store raw data of any type. Data lakes are often considered a panacea for big data problems and have been embraced by many organizations trying to drive innovation and new services for users.
James Dixon, the US data technician who reputedly coined the term, describes data lakes thus:
If you think of a datamart as a store of bottled water -- cleansed and packaged and structured for easy consumption -- the data lake is a large body of water in a more natural state. The contents of the data lake stream in from a source to fill the lake, and various users of the lake can come to examine, dive in, or take samples.
Be careful swimming in a data lake
Although data lakes create opportunities for data crunchers, their digital doors remain unguarded, and solving cyber safety issues remains an afterthought.
Our ability to analyze and extract intelligence from data lakes is threatened in the realms of cyber space. This is evident through the high number of recent data breaches and cyber attacks worldwide.
With technological advances, we become even more prone to cyber attacks. Confronting malicious cyber activity should be a priority in the current digital climate.
While research into this has flourished in recent years, a strong connection between effective cyber security and data lakes is yet to be made.
Not uncommon to be compromised
Due to advances in malicious software, specifically in malware obfuscation, it’s easy for hackers to hide a dangerous virus within a harmless-looking file.
False data injection attacks have increased over the past decade. The attack happens when a cyber criminal exploits freely available tools to compromise a system connected to the internet, to inject it with false data. The foreign data injected gains unauthorized access to the data lake and manipulates the stored data to mislead users. There are many potential motivators behind such an attack.
Components of data lakes
Data lake architecture can be divided into three components: data ingestion, data storage and data analytics.
Data ingestion refers to data coming into the lake from a diverse range of sources. This usually happens with no legitimate security policies in place. When incoming data is not checked for security threats, a golden opportunity is presented for cyber criminals to inject false data.
The second component is data storage, which is where all the raw data gets dumped. Again, this happens without any sizeable cyber safety considerations.
The most important component of data lakes is data analytics, which combines the expertise of analysts, scientists and data officers. The objective of data analytics is to design and develop modeling algorithms which can use raw data to produce meaningful insights.
For instance, data analytics is how Netflix learns about its subscribers’ viewing habits.
Challenges ahead for data experts
The slightest change or manipulation in data lakes can hugely mislead data crunchers and have widespread impact.
For instance, compromised data lakes have huge implications for health care, because any deviation in data can lead to a wrong diagnosis or even casualties.
Also, government agencies using compromised data lakes may face mayhem in international affairs and trade situations. The defense, finance, governance and educational sectors are also vulnerable to data lake attacks.
Considering the volume of data stored in data lakes, the consequences of cyber attacks are far from trivial.
And since generating huge amounts of data in today’s world is inevitable, it’s crucial that data lake architects try harder to ensure these at-risk data depots are correctly looked after.
This article was first posted on The Conversation.
NEXT STORY: 3-part strategy for mitigating IIoT risk | <urn:uuid:3c580dfd-7306-4131-8a2b-26c0a802a102> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://gcn.com/cloud-infrastructure/2019/10/data-lakes-where-big-businesses-dump-their-excess-data-and-hackers-have-a-field-day/297802/?oref=gcn-next-story | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.920787 | 1,014 | 3.265625 | 3 |
A Brief History of Spear Phishing
Learn the best practices for developing a security awareness training program that is engaging. Engaging awareness programs have been shown to change more users’ behavior and are seen as an asset for your organization instead of annoyance.
A term we hear often these days is spear phishing – an advanced form of social engineering that is more effective than traditional phishing scams, as it is tailored to a specific target. Spam text messages and unsolicited e-mail or posts have evolved from mass mailings sent to a wide audience into a new and harmful form with a more targeted approach (hence the “spear”), with phishers pointing precisely at victims.
In fact, spear phishing is a method used by malicious hackers to gain valuable information and access to a network by targeting particular individuals within an organization. Messages are customized thanks to a thorough operation of intelligence perpetrated by the phishers that collect information from corporate websites and social networks on their target. They can then construct and send legitimate-looking e-mails impersonating realistic senders (a coworker, boss, family member or a familiar organization) and trick people into believing the message they receive is legitimate. Through customization, hackers are able to deliver messages that can lure executives and employees in general into clicking on a bogus URL or into giving away sensitive data.
Users are now well versed in recognizing normal phishing attempts. The majority of people will not send account information or click on links in messages that promise a large inheritance or deposits coming from overseas countries. They may, however, be more willing to click on e-mails received by known senders (a boss, and HR official…) referring to a common friend or containing their own account number as an identifier. In addition, they might also be willing to download seemingly work-related files referring to last quarter sales or reorganization plans that appear to be sent by legitimate sources or a particular company department.
According to Trend Micro Incorporated, “monitoring revealed that 94% of targeted emails use malicious file attachments while the rest use alternative methods like installing malware by luring victims to click malicious links and to download malicious files, or else using webmail exploits.” Attachments are routinely shared within a company network and between coworkers, so it is easier to trick individuals into downloading files than actually into clicking on links. Spam filters also might be deceived into allowing the attachment through, but may be more sensitive to e-mails with links.
In general, then, phishers “combine tactics such as sender impersonation, personalization of the intended victim, enticement and access-control bypass techniques such as email filters, antivirus, and IDS/IPS evasion,” explains Todd Salmon, Director of the Security Assessment Practice for FishNet Security.
History of Spear Phishing
While phishing has been around since the 90s, its most targeted version, spear phishing, is a much more recent phenomenon. The first notable cases of spear phishing attacks were recognized around the year 2010. Studies show that in this period, mass phishing attacks declined. The number of spam messages went from 300 billion messages per day to 40 billion between 2010 and 2011. Within the same period, spear phishing grew by 300% and for a good reason: a spear phishing campaign is calculated to provide ten times the ROI compared to mass phishing attempts. Spear phishing emails are opened by targets in 70 percent of cases, compared to three percent normal rate for mass spam emails.
Spear phishing made the news in 2011 when an attack at RSA, the security division of EMC, was discovered. The strike was targeted to only four individuals within the company. As FireEye Inc. explains in a white paper, one of them downloaded the Excel spreadsheet that was carefully crafted by the hackers with a Trojan horse that allowed access into the corporate network thanks to a zero-day flaw in Adobe Flash. The spear phishing attack was the means to begin the aggression, then, followed an APT movement that allowed malicious hackers to steal administrators’ credentials and have access to information on Secure-ID customers including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
In 2013, however, it became clear that spear phishing had actually been around a bit longer. The Kaspersky Lab discovered that a cyber-espionage-style incident had used phishing as the vector targeting various diplomatic, governmental and scientific research organizations for at least five years. Classified information, credential and intelligence were stolen through the “Red October” campaign, an attack perpetrated thanks to a malware called “Rocra” containing malicious extensions and backdoor Trojans. Victims were infected by a Trojan infiltrated through a targeted spear phishing attack, disclosed Kaspersky Lab’s team of experts.
A more recent episode involved Anthem, the second-largest health insurer in the United States. Malicious hackers gained access to the personal data (SSN, birth dates, e-mail and physical address information) of health care customers and used them to launch a spear phishing campaign that targeted people by constructing legitimate looking e-mails containing the info stolen.
Exploit tactics have also changed through time. Spear phishing is now coming through new channels, including “VOIP, SMS, instant messaging, social networking sites […],” says Jason Hong, a student from Carnegie Mellon University in a research paper.
As for what is in store, no one knows for sure; however, SMEs suggest spear-phishing will come to be the weapon of choice not only for general cybercrime but also for cyber terrorism. The fear is that spear phishing might become, in the near future, a useful tool for terrorists who might be able to use these techniques to gain access to important defense information.
According to TrendLabs’s APT Research Team report, Spear-Phishing Email-Most Favored APT Attack Bait declares that cyber strikes are a major concern as 91% of targeted attacks use spear-phishing emails. The most targeted industries are government agencies and activist groups. This is probably due, according to Micro Trend observations, to the abundance of information and contact data available on these organizations’ official websites.
Overall, spear fishing is particularly dangerous when it comes from within an organization. An employee or somebody very familiar with how an organization works or has knowledge of its organogram can easily create e-mail baits that would leave no doubts as to their legitimacy. This was particularly obvious in the case of Charles Harvey Eccleston, a former employee of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and of the U.S. Department of Energy terminated in 2010 and arrested in the Philippines with the accusation of attempting a spear phishing attack in January of 2015. The target of this attempt was a group of Department of Energy employees; the aim was the harvesting of sensitive information and the damage of the Department of Energy computers. Eccleston was not successful, but such an attack could have allowed him to gain access to sensitive nuclear weapon-related information that could have been easily sold to foreign nations, the US Department of Justice said.
Looking back, trends in spear phishing indicate dramatic shifts in attack strategy with attackers applying new security evasion tactics, says Websense Security Labs research. We have seen an increase in activity and in the success rate of these attacks. From phishers attempting to steal the log in credentials of users to obtain financial information, or else even penetrating their victims’ networks with malicious code. Troublesomely, “spear-phishing is one of the primary vectors of compromise and subsequent data loss,” states Websense, a firm with comprehensive security solutions. As stated in Websense Security Labs Top Phishing Findings (see infographic), it reveals, “92 percent of email spam contains a URL” pin pointing the United States as the country that continues to dominate the volume of hosted phishing URLs.
Fortunately, many computer mail users are getting better at recognizing and blocking these kinds of phishing emails. Becoming aware of spear phishing techniques has helped users to prevent acts started by cybercriminals. From learning what phishing is, can, help to reduce your risk.
Can you spot spear phishing? “Unless the users are educated (i.e., have the knowledge of various types of phishing techniques), they will be lured to the spoofed sites, say experts at Phishing.org. As well, “they should also be aware of anti-phishing techniques to protect themselves from getting phished.” There are various types of phishing scams, such as clone phishing, reverse-phishing, mass phishing, and whaling. Each is currently used today. Though the phishers’ method might be different, they have the same motive—i.e., of obtaining information from other people using spam, hoaxes, or phishing schemes.
Spear phishing attacks are not going away any time soon. Scam artists have been around for some time and will continue to be looming on the information highway and make both Web and e-mail-based threats. Spear phishing is so effective because the attackers usually invest time and effort to research their targets. Their ability to impersonate legitimate users and sites as well as masquerade themselves as a trustworthy entity may convince email users that any request of the phisher comes from a trusted sender. Do not be fooled. Once an attack is underway, it may too late to turn back, as the damage has already been done.
Yet, by investing in next-generation security solutions (e.g., anti-spam, anti-virus, firewalls, IDPS, and/or gateway sensors integrated with threat intelligence) to detect malware and zero-day exploits, there will be perhaps a chance to stop attack vectors used in spear phishing, says FireEye Inc., a US network security company. In order to reduce the likeliness of success from these types of attacks and be more resilient, it will require also proper continuous user e-mail awareness training on cyber security trends and conducting periodic anti-phishing campaigns.
Bromium. (n.d.). Spear Phishing. Retrieved from http://www.bromium.com/resources/threat-information/spear-phishing.html
FireEye, Inc. (2012). Spear Phishing Attacks – Why They are Successful and How to Stop Them. Retrieved from http://www.locked.com/sites/default/files/Spear-Phishing-Attacks-White-Paper.pdf
Hong, J. (2012). The Current State of Phishing Attacks. Retrieved from http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1282&context=hcii
Kaspersky Lab. (2013, January 14). Kaspersky Lab Identifies Operation “Red October,” an Advanced Cyber-Espionage Campaign Targeting Diplomatic and Government Institutions Worldwide. Retrieved from http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2013/Kaspersky_Lab_Identifies_Operation_Red_October_an_Advanced_Cyber_Espionage_Campaign_Targeting_Diplomatic_and_Government_Institutions_Worldwide
Runald, P. (2012, October 9). What is Scaring Businesses the Most? Spear-phishing. New Websense Security Labs Research. Retrieved from https://community.websense.com/blogs/websense-insights/archive/2012/10/09/what-is-scaring-businesses-the-most-spear-phishing.aspx
Salmon, T. (n.d.). Tip of the Spear: Phishing or SpearPhishing? Retrieved from https://www.fishnetsecurity.com/6labs/blog/tip-spear-phishing-or-spearphishing
Suman, S., Srivastava, N., & Pandit, R. (2014, February). Cyber Crimes and Phishing Attacks. Retrieved from http://www.ijritcc.org/download/Cyber%20Crimes%20and%20Phishing%20Attacks.pdf
Tamir, D. (2013, July 3). FBI Warns of Increase in Spear-Phishing Attacks. Retrieved from https://securityintelligence.com/fbi-warns-increase-spear-phishing-attacks/#.VdW88WbouUl
US Department of Justice (2015, May 8). Former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Employee Charged With Attempted Spear-Phishing Cyber-Attack on Department of Energy Computers. Retrieved from http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-us-nuclear-regulatory-commission-employee-charged-attempted-spear-phishing-cyber
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The recent series of high-profile ransomware attacks underscores how vulnerable critical infrastructure is and the impact cybersecurity can have on American society. This is not a new development, according to research from FortiGuard Labs, organizations across the globe saw a sevenfold increase in ransomware during the last six months of 2020, and that trend has not abated. While some of this may be the result of state-sponsored activity, the increasing revenue generated from ransomware has attracted a growing number of cybercriminals.
In response, the White House announced the formation of a cross-government task force to develop and coordinate defensive and offensive measures against ransomware. Solutions being discussed range from revising cybersecurity regulations to updating security infrastructures to offering rewards for identifying threat actors.
Because this is a problem that crosses political, geographic, and technology borders, dealing with the increasing volume and impact of ransomware will require an integrated response involving government and the private sector. Three general areas need to be addressed.
The Role of the Private Sector
Preventing ransomware from infecting a network or detecting an active infection and blunting its impact are technical problems for which effective commercial cybersecurity solutions exist. Here is what we know:
- Vulnerable endpoint devices are the most common attack vector because many victims lack up-to-date endpoint protection. However, ransomware attacks can be detected and blocked at the point of attack—especially by endpoint defenses that look at software behavior instead of signatures, known as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions.
- Once ransomware gains a toehold in a network, it can spread laterally within the victim's network due to inadequate security control configurations (excessive account privileges, inadequate monitoring, etc.) and a lack of network segmentation. Implementation of a Zero Trust architecture and access policies can help minimize the spread of malware within an infected network.
- Many ransomware exploits leverage known vulnerabilities for which patches exist. Organizations need to be diligent in patching and updating their technology.
- Not every system can be patched. In such cases, organizations need to update their security devices to automatically block exploitation attempts using known vulnerabilities and attack patterns, a technique known as a "hot patch."
- Cybercriminals are also starting to spend more time on the reconnaissance and weaponization phases (left of boom) of the cyber kill chain before launching ransomware operations. As a result, attacks may happen more rapidly and with surgical precision. Automated tools enhanced with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies can now detect and respond to such threats in real-time.
- Up-to-date data backups stored offline offer a viable alternative for recovering encrypted data. There are countless commercial solutions for creating and maintaining such backups. However, organizations need to be aware of new efforts by some ransomware operators to get around this practice. For example, our FortiGuard Labs research team recently discovered a new Darkside variant that can search multi-partition environments to find backups. As a result, backups should be stored off-network.
- Stored data and data at rest should also be encrypted. A new ransomware strategy leverages the threat of 'doxing' (publishing stolen data) or selling it online if a ransom is not paid. As a result, backups alone are insufficient to prevent significant damage to an organization or its customers. Encrypted data, however, can effectively counter this strategy. Encrypting data and then decrypting it in real-time when needed would prevent a malicious actor from readily exploiting or leveraging stolen data to further extort payment.
- Many victim organizations have limited or no incident response capability in place, even though time is of the essence in responding to ransomware to minimize its spread and aid in recovery. Advanced tools leveraging automated behavioral analytics and capabilities such as deception technologies can ensure that malicious behavior is readily identified even when actively seeking to evade detection.
The Role of Government
While mature and viable commercial solutions and best practices exist to prevent, detect, and respond to ransomware attacks, prevention will never be foolproof—even if organizations and individual users implement strong cybersecurity measures. The growth of ransomware reflects challenges that require government and potentially international cooperation to address.
- Most ransomware activity emanates from a small number of nations who appear unwilling or unable to crack down on this criminal activity—or who may be complicit in and benefit from it. And increasingly, the line between a nation-state (Advanced Persistent Threat) attack and one mounted by a criminal enterprise is becoming blurred. Dealing with these geopolitical havens requires government action.
- The rapid growth of cryptocurrency worldwide has fueled the ability of ransomware actors to readily monetize their activity. Cryptocurrency markets largely have not been subject to the type of oversight that has evolved to counter illicit transactions in other financial markets. Applying existing tools such as 'Know Your Customer,' Anti-Money Laundering, and Combating Financing of Terrorism rules can thwart the exploitation of cryptocurrency as an easy tool for malware perpetrators to exploit.
- Given the growing impact of ransomware on critical infrastructure and citizens' daily lives, governments can decide whether to treat it as a high priority for law enforcement and intelligence collection. The US began to take such steps in the May 12 Executive Order (EO 14028). Additional steps could be taken, such as empowering and resourcing law enforcement to more rapidly partner and pursue cybercriminals, whose actions typically cross jurisdictions and political boundaries. Also, this summer, Federal prosecutors across the U.S. have been directed by the Department of Justice to coordinate any ransomware investigations with the Washington, D.C.-based task force the DoJ set up to focus on ransomware.
- Governments can also decide whether to ban ransom payment, which would fundamentally affect the financial viability of ransomware as a criminal activity. However, banning payment could also increase the operational impact on a victim organization and its customers. As a result, such a measure could be considered in conjunction with a more substantial government role in aiding recovery, as is done in the US for the victims of state-sponsored terrorism.
- Even if a government decides not to ban ransomware payment, it could consider mandatory breach reporting and mandatory ransomware payment disclosure requirements. Most experts agree that ransomware incidents are under-reported. Better data collection on the magnitude and rapidly changing characteristics of the ransomware problem is necessary to better understand and more effectively counter this growing epidemic.
The Public-Private Partnership
While there are distinct roles for the private sector and for government in dealing with ransomware, there are aspects to addressing this issue in which a partnership is essential.
- Defining what constitutes 'due diligence' or a reasonable standard of care to prevent ransomware infection and shaping 'the carrots and sticks' that drive implementation are areas where government and market forces, such as the insurance industry, have a role to play. For example, the government can decree or mandate standards and minimum levels. The insurance industry can also require adherence to specified cybersecurity standards and best practices as a condition for coverage.
- Whether cyber insurance coverage against ransomware on balance helps or hurts in the fight against ransomware is an open question. Anecdotal data suggests that the ability of a ransomware actor to learn whether a prospective target has a cyber insurance policy, and even what the coverage limits are—facts that by law may be public records for many local governments—may make them a more attractive target because of the possibility of a ready payout by the insurer.
- Incident response is another area where government and the private sector are better together. Most victims don't have a response strategy in place or know who or where to call. Strategies for dealing with ransomware should include prevention, training, and incident response. They should consist of detecting an attack, the first steps to take to limit its impact, having pre-established chains of command and communications in place, maintaining business continuity, preserving a crime scene, and publicly reporting an incident.
In sum, while government and the cybersecurity industry each have a role to play in developing solutions, enterprises and individuals must do their part to implement them. The challenge is that ransomware is a complex and growing problem that must be addressed holistically and through unity of effort. But the good news is that there is growing recognition of the importance of dealing with this problem, and there are viable and practical solutions to addressing the challenge. We just need to bring them together.
Learn more about how Fortinet Federal helps Federal agencies efficiently protect U.S. government data and critical infrastructure against advanced nation-state threats. | <urn:uuid:97438ff7-4a34-4bbd-893c-1295a801f2b2> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.fortinet.com/blog/industry-trends/countering-ransomware-a-shared-responsibility | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337432.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003200326-20221003230326-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.936546 | 1,709 | 2.625 | 3 |
Across the globe, smart city technology spending is expected to boom to $327bn by 2025, up from $96 billion in 2019. More cities are digitising utilities, transportation, traffic and waste networks to Improve security, infrastructure, energy efficiency and sustainability – but new and different challenges come with this transformation.
Even though these critical networks can become connected, cities are ironically facing a massive disconnect: the smart city applications on these networks are relatively isolated and often can’t connect that well with each other because networks are oftentimes proprietary and therefore, non-interoperable. Imagine, how can smart city sensors on streetlights collecting data transmit it back to a traffic monitoring application effectively if the sensors and applications aren’t integrated on the same network?
Proprietary networks can be complex, fragmented and limiting, in terms of adding new devices easily from a wide variety of ecosystems. They are also more susceptible to cybersecurity breaches – a growing, global concern as seen with ransomware attacks to systems in cities such as Las Vegas and New Orleans.
Scaling Obstacles to Connect Everything
To modernize the grid infrastructure and enable innovation across industries, cities need flexible wireless standards to deploy IoT applications securely and at scale. Enter: Wi-SUN, one of the world’s first public protocols for smart city and smart utility applications. Launched in 2011, Wi-SUN, which stands for Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Networks, is an IPv6-based mesh technology designed for large-scale IoT wireless communication networks in a wide range of applications covering both line-powered and battery-powered nodes. Market leaders such as Landis + Gyr, Cisco, Toshiba, Renesas, Itron and more also join Silicon Labs as members of the Wi-SUN Alliance.
Wi-SUN is opening doors as a standard, interoperable network, enabling a self-forming mesh with thousands of end nodes connecting dynamically with each other.
The protocol features low latency, higher data throughput benefits, further catering to complex device requirements in low power, long range devices such as streetlights or battery-operated gas and water meters. Streetlights, for example, are becoming increasingly digitized with sensor nodes that can monitor environmental air quality, parking, waste management, manhole cover detection and other uses. Analysing real-time data from these sensors can help inform solutions to reduce energy consumption, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide higher quality civic services to more people across the entire city landscape.
The mesh architecture offers significant latency gains as opposed to a typical star wireless network centered around a central server hub. Wi-SUN’s IoT network offers 0.02 -1 second latency, compared to other low-power wide-area networks such as LoRaWAN, offering 1 – 16 seconds and NB-IoT offering 2 – 10 seconds. Wi-SUN is currently governed by the FAN 1.0 specification, with the next version FAN 1.1 expected to be ratified later this year. Wi-SUN’s FAN 1.1 specification delivers enhancements such as OFDM support allowing data rates up to 2.4 Mbps to support demanding low-latency applications, leaf-node support for longer battery life of up to 20 years, as well as mode-switching that allows for dynamic data rate negotiation.
Wi-SUN enables utility providers to serve all their metering needs on one network. FAN 1.1 enables use of the same network for line-powered electric meter devices as well as battery operated water and gas meters. Essentially, having all applications interoperable on one Wi-SUN network creates an opportunity to scale existing infrastructure relatively quickly without modification, which can be time consuming and expensive, or limiting if connectivity is required outside of one network. One can think of Wi-SUN FAN as a true Internet-like infrastructure optimized for IoT devices. Recently, the Wi-SUN FAN specification was adopted by the IEEE Standards Association, further demonstrating the network’s capability to be accepted globally for open standards communications and cybersecurity standards.
Securing Critical City Infrastructure
Mesh networks like Wi-SUN with multiple connections provide stronger protection and reliability. If one node is down or compromised due to an attack or an extreme weather event like a hurricane or ice storm, the mesh network is self-healing and can reroute data to an unaffected connection. Massive loads of data within applications will always attract adversaries; therefore, expanding smart city means ramping up protection in critical infrastructure against vulnerabilities.
Based on IEEE 802.15.4g/e standards, Wi-SUN is also attractive from a security lens because the network devices authenticate all the way back to the cloud provider through a certificate chain that is cryptographically linked. Wi-SUN’s certificate chain provides the secure identity that is required for continuous authentication to meet the Zero Trust security architecture – which is beginning to dominate the industry, as seen with the Biden administration’s executive order on improving cybersecurity.
Strong certificate-based identities that authenticate to a cloud service have been common in the utility space for many years. However, this advanced continuous device authentication method being integrated into a wireless protocol like Wi-SUN is new, transformational and necessary as smart city devices will represent as enticing publicly accessible targets for cyber criminals looking to exploit public infrastructure for ransom payments.
As pressure mounts to address aging infrastructure that is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks and warming climate conditions, Wi-SUN’s scalable, resilient and secure wireless technologies serve as an accessible solution to create a more sustainable future.
Author details: Soumya Shyamasundar is a Product Manager with the wireless IoT group responsible for Wi-SUN markets at Silicon Labs. | <urn:uuid:3af7117e-e318-43d3-a968-fa58340345d9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | http://babelouedstory.com/bibliographies/accueil_bibliographie/training-pdf-guide.php?pdf=310-502-Sun-Certified-JCAPS-Integrator | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337537.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005042446-20221005072446-00146.warc.gz | en | 0.936222 | 1,171 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Proponents of artificial intelligence (AI) hail the advances in the ability of machines to make independent decisions based on an analysis on the environment as the next step in machine intelligence – and claim that it will revolutionize complex problem solving across a wide spectrum of human endeavor. The simplest definition of AI is that of an ‘intelligent’ machine that exhibits all the attributes of a flexible, rational agent that perceives its environment and makes decisions – and in many instances takes actions that maximize the chances of success when engaged in a particular task. If one looks at a popular definition, Artificial Intelligence machines mimic human cognitive function. They can learn and solve problems.
One of the oldest and most well accepted tests on whether a machine exhibits true AI is the Turing Test. Machine AI can pass the 65-year-old Turing Test if the computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations. In 2014, a computer program called Eugene Goostman, which simulates a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, is said to have passed the Turing test at an event organized by the University of Reading.
But many argue that this is of historical interest only – and is in effect an AI party trick. The definition of AI in the 21st century remains whether a machine can mimic that all important cognitive function – learning to solve problems using logic and not whether it can imitate a human being.
Artificial intelligence – Machine learning using massive data
So, how does this work in the real world? Without delving too deeply into the programming behind it, no matter how fascinating that might be – at its core it falls into different categories. However, when it comes to possible threats regarding privacy there is one subset of AI that should give those concerned with data privacy pause. It is so called ‘machine learning’. An explanation is almost superfluous. This field is focused on giving machines the ability to ‘learn’ without human intervention. This is achieved through advanced algorithms that spot and decode patterns – and then generate insights based on the data that they observe. This then influences the future decision making and predictive responses of the machine. It neatly sidesteps the need for a machine to be programmed to respond to every eventuality within the environment it operates – which in a chaotic environment (think of an AI car on a city street or the sheer amount of data available to big business at the moment) would be a practical impossibility. At least for human beings operating in real time.
Privacy implications of machine learning algorithms
The old saying that cash is king is swiftly falling by the wayside. There can be no doubt that data is now king. The most successful businesses in the world must now deal with enormous amounts of data – and increasingly that data is gleaned from the actions of their customers. That data is gathered from an enormous number of sources. It is gathered from customer buying habits and their actions on the company’s owned Internet landscape – websites, blogs, social media accounts and other sources. But it is also gathered from third parties.
It is well known that consumers sacrifice their anonymity when they use services that on the face of it they use for free. Think of Google and social media sites such as Facebook. There is a contract. It is not implied – it is part and parcel of the terms and conditions that consumers agree to when they use services and sites like these. So, consumers know that the information they supply and the behavior that they engage in will be used for (among other things) to target them with advertising. They also agree within those terms and conditions that these service providers will be free to supply the information on their behavior to third parties who use that to improve their sales through targeted advertising on those sites.
Consumers are offered limited (at least at this point) opportunities to block this advertising. However, this is at best an interim measure. Large social media companies like Facebook and search engines like Google have no intention of giving up lucrative income streams that target consumers based on their online behavior.
The bad news for employees and even private citizens is that AI needs massive amounts of data to be as effective as a human being in analyzing behavior – and those algorithms are getting better and better. It’s that thorny issue of machine learning that is at the foundation of concerns when it comes to AI and privacy.
Business applications are being developed that harness the power of machine learning. A mobile sales application can collect location data, or IP addresses. This is all possible now – it happens every day. But drawing together that data and building a coherent ‘persona’ from that data, without human intervention is a frightening possibility. It may seem frivolous to suggest that a machine learning algorithm may be able to build an avatar of any single human being, including behavioral patterns, but the reality may be closer than many people think.
A machine learning algorithm may mine a user’s personal apps to supply human resources departments with information that the individual may not be comfortable with that department knowing. Personal fitness devices which many companies are handing out to employees gather data which could be used for insurance purposes. All of this without human intervention. The next logical step according to many experts is for machine intelligence to decide, based on advanced algorithms who should be supplied with this information. If it affects the company’s bottom line should that information be supplied to third parties? Without human intervention?
Here to stay despite unanswered questions
Many futurists are, perhaps rightly excited by the idea of AI and machine intelligence. It does of course hold huge promise in automating parts of our lives. It can make driving a car safer and hassle free. It can allow us better access to more modern and efficient healthcare. But is it a good idea to remove the human gatekeeper from the process? A driverless car may seem to be a science fiction idea come true, but is the sacrifice of control over personal data something that people would be willing to give up to an artificial intelligence worth the reduction of the stress of a rush hour traffic jam? It’s a question that still needs to be answered. However, make no mistake AI and its increasing ability to mine personal data, collate that data and draw conclusions about behavior is here to stay – and it is getting ever more advanced. | <urn:uuid:9a48a1ed-64a9-428f-a72e-d579be32e60f> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/artificial-intelligence-and-the-privacy-challenge/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334992.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927064738-20220927094738-00347.warc.gz | en | 0.958385 | 1,284 | 3.875 | 4 |
Everyone is talking about batteries today. They are becoming an increasingly important component in the transition to a greener world. Electric cars, energy storage, telecommunication and of course, data centers. They all need batteries in one way or another.
Despite all of this most people don’t know very much about what goes on inside a battery and how to get the best from it. Batteries are sometimes one of the last elements to be considered. But good forward planning of the battery and its environment will help to ensure reliability and long life of the asset.
This article provides a few guidelines that should be considered when planning a data center and its backup power system.
A battery backup system must operate for many years and be ready for instantaneous release of energy. A battery is a component of the overall system. Most data centers use auxiliary gensets. The problem is that they need a time interval to reach full power. This is where batteries come in and play the role of instant power.
When choosing a battering system, the following are some of the critical elements that need to be considered.
Plan for battery performance at the end of their specified life
A battery is a device that converts chemical energy into electrical energy. The reaction involves the transfer of electrons from one material to another. This is called an anode and a cathode, and the transfer is carried out usually by a material known as an electrolyte. This transfer of energy is known as a charge or discharge. A discharge and recharging of the battery cell is a cycle.
All batteries, due to the characteristics of the chemistry, are subject to loss of performance over time. This is called ageing. This ageing factor must be considered when designing and specifying a system since a battery needs to be able to support the design load of the system over life. For example, a battery system, designed for 10 years’ service, must be able to support the load at the end of its 10 years’ service.
Consider mains power reliability
Throughout the world power, the quality and consistency of power generated by the utility differs. Some areas may have only a few power outages a year, and last just a few moments, while others are frequent and last for a long period. The implications of this for a battery are considerable.
Frequent power outages will have heavy demands on the system and consequently the battery and genset, which raises the question of cycle life. Frequent power outages and for long duration can mean that the system has to be able to withstand many cycles, many of which may not be full discharges. This can subject a battery to heavy workload and partial charges and the need to recharge the system rapidly.
Temperature plays a major role in battery life and performance
Temperature plays an important role in the life of a battery. In general, high temperatures lower the life of a battery as they speed up the internal chemical reaction. This applies to all chemical batteries. At lower temperatures, usually below zero, the performance of a battery is impeded. Most of us have experienced this with starting a vehicle in freezing conditions.
When planning an installation, it is important to consider where batteries will be situated and how to maintain and monitor the environment of the room. A battery room with variable temperatures will affect the life of a battery system.
Even a few degrees of higher temperatures, but over several years will shorten the operating life of the battery. It therefore makes for good design planning to consider the room where the batteries will be situated.
System redundancy: A duplicated battery requirement may be different
Batteries, as stated at the beginning of this article, are components of a system. This is often overlooked. Data centers, including batteries, all plan for redundancy. This means that every system is replicated, and often in very different locations.
So, when planning a battery system for a new installation, it is not enough to duplicate the installation. The environmental factors such as layout, power and operating temperature may be different.
A good installation solution must take these factors into consideration. It is important to consider that a second battery installation for a data center may have different environmental as well as operating needs. Therefore, each room needs to be considered individually.
Plan a service routine procedure
Many batteries today are classified as ‘maintenance-free’. These batteries are designed with an electrolyte sealed inside the battery; previously the electrolyte needed to be periodically ‘topped-up’ as well as a general maintenance inspection. This does not mean that the batteries can be ignored over their specified life.
In the latest Uptime Institute global data center survey which identifies major incidents and issues in the industry, one of the areas highlighted ‒ but not the first ‒ was batteries. They identified that most battery failures were due to lack of routine maintenance. But what does this mean?
Batteries often exist in a separate location on a site. The system is installed with a charger and specified for a period of guaranteed operation at specified operating conditions.
Maintenance free batteries do not need a high level of maintenance, but they do need periodic inspections and checks to ensure that all batteries are performing.
A large battery system can consist of hundreds of individual batteries, all linked together. The poor performance of one or more batteries can damage the system. A routine inspection of the battery system does not take much but it should be done as part of the operational routines of any data center.
Routine service can avoid future problems. Most battery suppliers, such as FIAMM Energy Technology, offer a monitoring solution that checks voltage and temperature and can act as an advanced warning system for problems.
- System life: Plan for performance needs at the end life
- Temperature: Temperature beyond the design will reduce life
- Power quality: Frequent power outages mean more demand on the battery
- Service routine: Develop a service inspection routine, it will help to avoid problems
- Design life: Remember the life of any chemical battery is affected by its operating environment
- Replace batteries at the end of life: Don’t wait for a performance failure
- Environment: Choose a battery system that is good for the environment.
For more information, visit the FIAMM website here.
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FIAMM Energy Technology has developed a special-purpose battery, designed to help meet the current demands of data center operators | <urn:uuid:ad1900f1-c198-4a52-a0ab-913a60956128> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/getting-the-best-from-a-battery-system/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335257.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928145118-20220928175118-00347.warc.gz | en | 0.947088 | 1,396 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Sentiment Analysis, Customer Feedback, New ML Algorithms
When using an online chatbot in the context of customer service, the chatbot in question needs to understand the various forms of feedback that customers provide to the business that has implemented the chatbot. To this point, sentiment analysis, also known as opinion mining, is a Natural Language Processing technique that is used to determine whether a particular input or piece of data is positive, neutral, or negative, particularly as it relates to the understanding of customer needs and feedback. To provide an example of this, when consumers choose to end their subscription for a particular product or service, they will often be asked the specific reason that led to their decision. Through the use of sentiment analysis, businesses can gauge customer feedback in a more efficient manner. Moreover, this feedback can then be used to improve their products and services.
How does sentiment analysis work?
Sentiment analysis works in conjunction with the implementation of machine learning algorithms that are used to assign a score to a data set in accordance with positive, negative, and neutral feedback. As is the case with any application of Natural Language Processing, a software developer looking to create a sentiment analysis algorithm would first start by creating a language model that would account for any feedback that a potential customer would provide to the said algorithm. For instance, a sentiment analysis algorithm that was designed for use on a website that is used to sell clothing would be trained upon sample utterances and inputs concerning prices, tracking labels, specific types of clothing, a return policy, etc. As such, sentiment analysis can be achieved using a number of different methods and techniques.
Generally speaking, sentiment analysis algorithms will fall into three distinct categories, rule-based, automatic, and hybrid systems. These three categories are very similar to supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised learning algorithms. In a ruled-based sentiment analysis algorithm, the software developer will create specific rules that govern the functionality of the feedback system. On the other hand, an automatic sentiment analysis system will instead rely on machine learning techniques to function. Finally, a hybrid sentiment analysis algorithm will combine the most beneficial features of both rule-based and automatic sentiment analysis algorithms. With this being said, there are various types of sentiment analysis.
Graded sentiment analysis
As the name suggests, graded sentiment analysis functions on the basis of interpreting customer sentiment or feedback according to a particular grading system. A common example of grading sentiment analysis are five-star rating systems, in which consumers convey their feedback in accordance with a particular number of stars. In such grading systems, a grade of 5 stars is representative of positive feedback, 3 stars are representative of neutral feedback, and 1 star is representative of negative feedback. Alternatively, a sentiment analysis system could also implement a grading system that functions on the basis of varying degrees of positive and negative feedback. Such a system would include responses that are very positive, positive, neutral, negative, and very negative.
Conversely, emotion detection is another method that software engineers can use to create a sentiment analysis system. Emotion detection sentiment analysis allows customers to provide feedback to businesses in accordance with specific emotional responses. Liking a post on a social media website such as Instagram or Twitter is perhaps the best example of such a system, as users can communicate their feedback by giving a particular photo or image a thumbs up or thumbs down. This approach has also proven to be extremely popular on the video streaming and social media platform Youtube, as popular personalities on the website are able to monetize their content by garnering positive feedback in the form of likes and views on their respective videos.
Aspect-based sentiment analysis
A third technique that can be used to create sentiment analysis systems is aspect-based sentiment analysis. While emotional detection and graded sentiment analysis can be used to gauge customer feedback in a quick and effective way, such responses are inherently vague. As such, aspect-based sentiment analysis instead functions on the basis of the more specific aspects of the feedback that customers provide to businesses. A common example of aspect-based sentiment analysis are online reviews for a particular product or service. For example, customers that purchase a computer may leave comments on the manufacturer’s website remarking that the computer does not have strong battery life. As such, an aspect based-classifier would be able to determine that such a sentence represents negative feedback concerning the product in question.
As machine learning has enabled software engineers to create cutting-edge and innovative new products, it has also provided customers with new ways to provide feedback concerning the quality of said products. While direct feedback through the means of written or verbal communication will always be the most effective way for human beings to express their feelings or ideas as it relates to a particular topic or issue, sentiment analysis provides customers with the opportunity to convey their opinions in a variety of different ways. As such, while many consumers may not be aware of sentiment analysis, they have undoubtedly expressed their emotions regarding a particular product or service when shopping online. | <urn:uuid:be3e764c-11a5-460a-bc5b-c0414ddd1ea6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://caseguard.com/articles/sentiment-analysis-customer-feedback-new-ml-algorithms/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335396.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929225326-20220930015326-00347.warc.gz | en | 0.935942 | 1,009 | 2.953125 | 3 |
What is rootkit malware?
A rootkit is a particularly nasty piece of malware that doesn’t behave like your typical virus. Rootkits insert themselves into the very heart of the operating system; usually at or below the kernel level. This makes them extremely difficult to detect and sometimes impossible to remove. Specific antivirus programs specialize in the detection and removal of rootkits. Below we list the five best anti-rootkit programs.
Some background on why rootkits are so evil
In the run of a day you probably use many different programs on your computer. Different classes of programs need different permissions in order to do their job. The operating system heart, the kernel, needs to have absolute control over every piece of hardware and software in the computer in order to do its job. On the other hand, applications that us humans directly interact with, such as word processors and web browsers, need relatively little control to do their job. Conceptually, these different levels of control are illustrated in the protection ring model with the all-powerful kernel inhabiting Ring Zero and mere human applications in the outer rings. Rootkits typically install themselves into Ring Zero and thus inherit the highest level of access possible.
Rootkits are so named because the first rootkits targeted Unix-like operating systems. The most privileged user on these systems is named root, ergo a rootkit is an application that provides root access to the system. The name stuck regardless of operating system and today even Windows rootkits bear that name despite having no such root user on the system.
While there are examples of beneficial, or at least benign, rootkits, they are generally considered to be malicious. Once installed, a rootkit has the ability to alter virtually every aspect of the operating system and to also completely hide its existence from most antivirus programs. Kernel rootkits are extremely hard to detect and sometimes the only way to ensure the computer is clean is to fully reinstall the operating system. Re-installation will still not help against the even more nefarious firmware rootkits that can live in a system BIOS and survive operating system reinstalls.
Kernel rootkits operate at Ring Zero and are injected into the kernel. In practice, that means kernel modules for Linux, macOS and other Unix-like operating systems, and Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) for Windows systems. They operate at the same level and security posture as the kernel itself, which makes them almost impossible to detect or remove if detected.
User space rootkits
The parts of the operating system that are accessed by the programs you use during your day is collectively referred to as user space or user land. Those terms simply mean that those memory and file areas are unprivileged and applications can access those things without having a high level of permissions.
By definition, rootkits that operate in user space do not have kernel access so they are at a disadvantage in avoiding detection. User space rootkits are usually targeted at specific applications. When that application runs, the rootkit patches the legitimate application in user space memory and hijacks its operation. This type of rootkit is easier to deploy, but is also easier to detect and more prone to giving itself up by causing system crashes.
These are rootkits that are bootable. Your computer’s operating system is bootable, otherwise the computer would not be able to start up. A typical rootkit loads itself during the operating system boot sequence. A bootkit doesn’t need an operating system to do that for it because the bootkit can boot all by itself, and then load the operating system afterwards.
A common aim of bootkits is to subvert things like digital signature verification on kernel modules. This gives the attacker the ability to stealthily load modified modules and files during the boot process, providing access to the machine.
Firmware is the term for something that lies in between hardware and software. Hardware is something that needs to be physically bolted into a computer, whereas software is just code that is introduced into the computer, such as a word processor. Firmware is hardware, usually a chip of some sort, which has the ability to have software loaded into it. Unlike normal software installation that just adds code to the computer, updating firmware software generally involves replacing the entire code base on the chip in one fell swoop with a process known as flashing.
This type of rootkit is normally seen in computer BIOSes or purpose-specific devices such as routers and mobile phones. Because the rootkit lives in firmware, formatting the computer’s hard drive and reinstalling the operating system will have no effect and will not remove the rootkit.
Where do rootkits come from?
Rootkits are usually installed by malicious attackers through the same common vectors as any malware. Phishing remains a very successful way to trick users into installing rootkits. Even though users will be prompted to authorize the installation of the rootkit, many of us have become numb to these constant prompts and will allow it.
In rarer cases, a reputable company may include a rootkit in its own software. In a widely publicised series of terrible decisions in 2005, Sony BMG included a rootkit in its CDs to prevent copying. That led to losing a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit due to the inherent insecurities that the rootkit contained above and beyond its intended purpose as a Digital Rights Management (DRM) tool.
5 free rootkit removal, detection and scanner programs
There are some anti-rookit programs that target a specific rootkit such as Kaspersky’s TDSSKiller, but we’ll deal with more general rootkit detectors. If you are in the unenviable position of already being infected with an identified rootkit, you may wish to search to see if an antivirus vendor has a specific tool for that rootkit.
chkrootkit (Check Rootkit)
Pros: Can be run post-infection
Cons: No Windows support.
Supported OSes: Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64, BSDI, and macOS
“Check Rootkit” (chkrootkit) is an open source rootkit detector that has been around for a long time. The current version as of this article was released in May of 2017 and can detect 69 different rootkits.
You’ll need a seasoned systems administrator to decipher chkrootkit’s output. Also, true to its name, chkrootkit only checks for rootkits; it can’t remove them. It examines your system files for common signs of rootkits such as:
Recently deleted log files
Log files are great tools for analyzing what has happened to a system. However, since a rootkit has the ability to modify any system file that means it has the ability to modify log file contents or delete logs altogether. chkrootkit tries to detect if the various important log files that record logins such as wtmp and utmp have been altered or recently cleared altogether.
State of network interfaces
TCP/IP networking essentially passes packets around the internet. At every stage of the journey, each packet is addressed to either an internet protocol (IP) address, or a local media access control (MAC) address. Routers on the internet or other networks use a packet’s destination IP address to get it to the proper network. Once the packet arrives in the destination network, the MAC address is used for the final delivery to the proper network card, or network interface controller (NIC).
During normal operation, a NIC will only accept packets addressed to its own MAC address, or broadcast traffic, and it will discard any other packets. It’s possible to put a network interface into promiscuous mode which means the network interface will accept all packets regardless of what NIC the packet is addressed to.
Promiscuous mode is typically only used in network analysis to perform packet sniffing or other types of traffic inspection. It would be unusual for a NIC to operate that way during day-to-day operation. chkrootkit will detect if any of the network cards on the system are operating in promiscuous mode.
Loadable kernel module trojans (LKM trojans)
As covered earlier in this article, the most difficult type of rootkits to detect and clean are kernel module rootkits. They operate at the lowest level of the computer in Ring Zero. These rootkits have the same high level of permissions as the operating system kernel itself. chkrootkit has some ability to detect this type of rootkit.
Related: Remote Access Trojans
rkhunter (Rootkit Hunter)
Pros: Mature product
Cons: Has to be installed pre-infection
Supported OSes: Unix-like operating system such as Linux
From the rkhunter README: “Rootkit Hunter is a host-based, passive, post-incident, path-based tool.” That’s a mouthful, but it tells us a lot.
It’s host based meaning that it is designed to scan the host it is installed on, rather than remote hosts elsewhere on the network.
Post-incident means that it does nothing to harden the system against a rootkit infection. It can only detect if an attack has happened or is in progress.
rkhunter primarily detects rootkits by looking for unrecognized changes in significant files. Before it can recognize changes, it has to know what all those files should look like when they’re clean. It’s therefore critical that rkhunter be installed onto a clean system so it can determine a clean baseline to use for subsequent scans. Running rkhunter on an already infected system will be of limited use since it will not have a complete view of what the clean system should look like.
Most antivirus programs use heuristics to some extent, which means that they look for things that look like viruses, even if it doesn’t specifically recognize every virus. rkhunter has no ability to look for rootkit-like things; it is path-based meaning it can only look for rootkits it already knows about.
Pros: Mature software with a large user base. Can be used post-infection
Cons: Aimed at advanced users; complete host intrusion detection system rather than just a rootkit scanner
Supported OSes: Linux, BSD, Solaris, macOS, AIX (agent), HP-UX (agent), Windows XP, 2003 server, Vista, 2008 server, 2012 server (agent)
OSSEC is a Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) that was founded as an Open Source project. It was acquired by Third Brigade, Inc. which was in turn acquired by Trend Micro. Trend is the current owner and OSSEC remains Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS).
The basic architecture is an OSSEC manager installed on a Unix-like central server that then talks to remote agents on the target systems. It is this agent architecture that allows OSSEC to support such a wide range of operating systems. In addition, some devices such as routers and firewalls can be used agentless meaning no software needs to be installed on them because they inherently possess the ability to talk directly to the OSSEC manager.
OSSEC’s rootkit detection is a mix of file-based analysis and other tests across the entire system. Some of the things OSSEC checks are:
- network interfaces in promiscuous mode that are not reported as such by other tools like netstat.
- ports that are not reported in use, but OSSEC is unable to bind to.
- comparing the output of pid-identifying tools with the output of system level tools like ps.
- detection of suspicious or hidden files.
Pros: Can remove some rootkits instead of just detection. Can be used post-infection.
Cons: Windows only
Supported OSes: Windows XP/VISTA/7/8/10
GMER is a rootkit detector and remover that run on Windows XP/VISTA/7/8/10. It has been around since 2006 and the current version supports 64-bit Windows 10. It was created by a programmer named Przemysław Gmerek, which gives us a hint as to the origin of its name.
Unlike chkrootkit and rkhunter, GMER can not only detect rootkits, but also remove some of them. There’s a version of GMER integrated with the Avast! antivirus software that provides pretty good all-around protection for both viruses and rootkit infections.
GMER doesn’t have to have any special knowledge of the system it is scanning. This means that it can be a post-event scan and detect rootkits even if it was not on the system prior to the rootkit infection.
Rather than comparing files or paths to detect rootkits, GMER concentrates on Windows-centric artifacts such as hidden processes, hidden services, and modified modules. It also looks for hooks which are malicious applications that attach themselves to legitimate processes in order to hide their existence.
Open Source Tripwire
Cons: Needs to be installed and initialized pre-infection
Pros: Mature product with a large user base
Supported OSes: Linux-based systems
Open Source Tripwire is a host based intrusion detection system (HIDS). The contrast here is compared to a network intrusion detection system (NIDS). Tripwire scans a local computer’s file system and compares its files to a known, good set of files.
Much like rkhunter, Tripwire must be installed onto a clean system prior to any possible infection. It then scans the file system and creates hashes or other identifying information about the files on that system. Subsequent Tripwire scans are then able to pick up changes to those files and alert the systems administrator of those changes.
There are two versions of Tripwire; the commercial products from Tripwire, Inc. and the Open Source version that was originally provided by Tripwire, Inc. in 2000. The commercial version offers a much broader array of products including hardening, reporting, and support for non-Linux operating systems.
While Tripwire isn’t a rootkit detector per se, it can detect rootkit activity that affects and changed files on the system. It doesn’t have any ability to remove rootkits, or to even say with certainty whether a rootkit exists. A skilled administrator will have to interpret the scan results to determine if any action needs to be taken.
Protecting your systems
Keep in mind that a rootkit is malware. It’s really bad malware, but it’s still just malware. The best practices which will protect your system from any type of virus will go a long way to protecting your systems against rootkits as well:
- Ensure users have the least amount of permissions they need to do their job
- Educate users how to avoid becoming phishing victims
- Consider disabling USB and CD drives to avoid people bringing malware from home
- Ensure antivirus is running on all systems and is up to date
- Use a firewall to stop unsolicited traffic from entering or exiting your system
In addition to those general steps, rootkit protection requires a proactive stance. Install a rootkit detector now, initialize it, and run it at least daily if not more often. While it’s true that if a system becomes infected with a rootkit that system is probably garbage, the more nefarious situation is that a rootkit lives on your systems for months or years without you knowing. Rootkits can silently ship your precious data off-site without any clue it’s happening until you read about it in the morning paper. If you’ve deployed a rootkit detector you stand a good chance of being alerted this is happening as soon as practical.
Privilege Ring Hertzsprung at English Wikipedia | <urn:uuid:6d6f166a-24bf-402c-86ca-7697395095db> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.comparitech.com/antivirus/best-free-rootkit-removal-scanner/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335396.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929225326-20220930015326-00347.warc.gz | en | 0.931618 | 3,371 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The drone's helicopter rotors must spin 10 times faster than on Earth.
In a little over a Martian year (687 days), we will be sending robots back into space as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover program, which is expected to launch in July or August of that (Earth) year. And this time, the pathfinding robot will be equipped with some of the latest technology, as well as years of added experience in the fields of artificial intelligence and autonomous drone research.
This new Rover will even come equipped with its own drone in the form of a helicopter that it will launch, a test to see if future robotic explorers could make use of a little flying backup.
When the original Mars Pathfinder launched in December 1996, it was a huge event, and even more so when it made landfall the following year on July 4, 1997. I was at a landing party that day and cheered with everyone else when the craft plodded down in its little bubble, bouncing across the surface of the red planet. We didn’t actually see anything, but still cheered when the news came in that Pathfinder had safely made landfall.
As impressive as Pathfinder was, it was more or less just a technology demonstration to see what worked, and what would need work, for the robots that followed. For example, we don’t bounce spacecraft down for a landing inside balloons anymore. This rover will be lowered to the planet on a giant sky crane.
To date, there have been four rovers from NASA that went to Mars, with Curiosity being the most recent, in 2012. Each robot pushed the boundaries and tested new designs, building on the ones that came before it.
The brains of the operation this time are based on the PowerPC 750 Architecture, a BAE RAD 750 processor operating at up to 200 megahertz. It also has two gigabytes of flash memory and 256 megabytes of dynamic RAM, plus 256 kilobytes of programmable read-only memory. Your smartphone is likely on par or even better, but for heavily ruggedized computers, that’s a powerhouse, and eight times as powerful as the Spirit or Opportunity rovers from 2004.
All that power will help the rover operate independently in the time between commands sent from Earth. With both Earth and Mars in motion, the distances between them change, so the delay for radio signals does as well, from four minutes on the low side to 24 when the two planets are farthest apart.
Besides powering this rover’s decision-making power so it won’t fall into a hole or run into something dangerous between commands, the extra power will enable the use of a new super-camera. That new device can analyze the chemical composition of rocks it encounters and scan for traces of water or even life, all from about 10 feet away from its target.
And this Mars rover is getting a whole new sense: hearing. Part of the camera now includes a microphone capable of high-definition audio recording. Those of us back on Earth will be able to hear what it’s like on another planet, recorded in three-minute bursts. It will probably just sound like an eerie wind, but I’m holding out hope for Calypso music.
And for the first time ever, this rover will have backup. NASA announced that an experimental helicopter would be deployed with the rover, making it the first heavier-than-air craft to take flight on another world—assuming it works. The Martian air is very thin, so the chopper’s blades need to spin ten times faster than it would on Earth to keep the four-pound unit aloft.
“The altitude record for a helicopter flying here on Earth is about 40,000 feet. The atmosphere of Mars is only one percent that of Earth, so when our helicopter is on the Martian surface, it’s already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up,” said Mimi Aung, Mars Helicopter Project manager at JPL. “To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be.”
Helicopter flying technology demonstrations aside, the Mars 2020 mission is mostly all about science. The new rover will build on the others that came before it and try to answer some hard science questions once and for all. Specifically, it will try and discover if water ever existed on Mars, if there was or is any life there, and where and how humans might one day visit the planet.
It will also directly lay the groundwork for future missions. Part of its mission is to collect core samples of the soil there, seal them up in weather-proof containers, and store them in a depot at a spot still to be determined. The goal is to have a future mission go to Mars, collect those samples, and return to Earth. Whether that would need to be accomplished by humans, or if our increasingly intelligent robots could be tasked with the ultimate home delivery, remains to be seen.
John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys | <urn:uuid:72ab6a9f-ce58-429e-be65-70f8020349f9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2018/05/nasa-soups-mars-2020-robot-hi-def-ears-and-its-own-drone/148215/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335396.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929225326-20220930015326-00347.warc.gz | en | 0.953244 | 1,092 | 2.8125 | 3 |
In financially challenging circumstances, it is perhaps no great surprise that people can resort to dubious means to survive. As such, data suggests a strong link between financial recessions and increases in criminal activity. It’s a correlation that is highlighted by a new guidance document produced by researchers at the University of Portsmouth. The researchers highlight that fraud, in particular, grew by 9.9% during the 1990 recession, and 7.3% during the 2008 recession. The researchers believe that if this trend is mirrored during the inevitable COVID-based recession, then fraud and cybercrime could increase by an incredible 60%.
"Economic pressures may lead people to radically re-evaluate loyalties and to rationalize behavior which, in normal times, they would not consider appropriate," the authors explain.
After studying the last three major financial recessions, the researchers found a clear correlation between economic turmoil and the rise in fraud and cybercrime. It’s a link the researchers believe is partly explained by the heightened financial pressure people are placed under, which prompts a [small] minority to resort to criminal means of extricating themselves from the situation.
The lockdown procedures implemented around the world to try and stymie the spread of the coronavirus are having a profound impact on the global economy. Tens of millions of people have registered as unemployed in the United States, and various commentators believe the economic fallout could last for a decade or more.
For instance, an analysis of the Australian economy suggests that up to 25% of the Australian workforce could be out of work as a result of the measures designed to halt the spread of the disease. The data was based upon work classifications that highlight the physical proximity workers are required to have with colleagues and customers. This renders workers in industries such as hospitality and leisure especially vulnerable, but the repercussions are likely to be wide-reaching.
As with so many economic shocks, the fallout from the coronavirus are unlikely to be felt equally across society, with research from the University of Cambridge highlighting that young people are disproportionately vulnerable.
The data found that just 30% of a typical young worker's job can be done from home, which is nearly half that of older workers, which places them at particular risk of unemployment.
“Our findings suggest that the immediate impact of the coronavirus downturn on workers has been large and unequal, with younger workers and those at the bottom of the income distribution hit hardest,” the researchers say. “In the long term, the economic shock caused by the pandemic is highly likely to increase inequality between young and old, between higher and lower earners, and between those on secure and insecure contracts.”
This matters, because as data from Flinders Criminology highlights, young people are more likely to engage in cybercrime than their older peers. The research shows that the internet blurs the social boundaries that exist in the real world, which can make it easier for people to engage in antisocial and criminal activities. With the recession providing a strong need for people to earn money in some way, the temptation can be significant.
Data from ActionFraud has shown a 400% increase in coronavirus-related cybercrime since the pandemic gathered steam in mid-February, with bogus websites and phishing emails common methods of conning people, often into buying protective equipment or tests for the virus. The researchers outline a number of steps they believe organizations can take to help protect themselves from attack.
- Understand their vulnerability to cybercrime, with the team developing a free Cybercrime Vulnerability Scorecard to help understand the risks organizations face.
- Protect their networks, while understanding that there is never any such thing as 100% protection.
- Build up sufficient capacity to respond to attacks as they happen, with a particular focus on having the skills and processes to respond quickly and effectively. The researchers advocate scenario-based training as a useful means of testing this capability.
- This capacity should also extend to being able to quickly investigate what has happened so that any damage and data loss is mitigated. Organizations should be aware that there is also likely to be a regulatory requirement to report any breaches, and a branding requirement to mitigate any reputational damage.
"The deep recession we face, if typical of past economic downturns, looks set to lead to a substantial increase in fraud,” the researchers say. “Possible economic pressures may also lead people to radically re-evaluate loyalties and to rationalize behavior which, in normal times, they would not consider appropriate. It is unlikely that any organization will be immune to these changes.” | <urn:uuid:db9c83c3-646f-47f6-8f0c-b105add367d0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cybernews.com/security/dealing-with-cybercrime-during-covid19/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337338.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002150039-20221002180039-00347.warc.gz | en | 0.962121 | 946 | 2.75 | 3 |
CBI, or Computer Based Interlocking, is an arrangement of signal devices that prevent conflicting movements through computer-based technologies. Interlocking systems, or IXL, prevent trains from conflicting movements along the track and make it impossible to display a signal to proceed unless the route is proven safe. Trains are guided by signals and appliances like relays and mechanics through control cables. A CBI system uses computers, which provides more advanced reliability and security than earlier mechanical or electrical systems.
Previously interlockings were fully mechanical and not compertized. Computer-Based Interlocking can be compromised via software exploitation, leading to safety and security disruptions.
Leading safety standard make the assupmtion that interlocking systems are always air-gapped and therefore shouldn't be encrypted, while air gaps are a known as an unreliable security measure.
Computer Based Interlocking is a fail safe system, and therefore most abnormal commands can lead to an immediate halt. Threat actors can leverage these halts to cause harm.
Complete information regarding interlocking features, maintenance servers, light signals, point machines, and all CBI functions.
Cutting-edge threat discovery and DPI for vendor-specific interlocking protocols and detection of abnormal commands, attack attempts, and cyber-inflicted disruptions.
Supports compliance with leading cybersecurity standards, such as TS 50701, IEC 62443 and NIST 800-82 using automatic validation of security controls.
June 22, 2022
[On-Demand Webinar] Watch now to learn about rail cybersecurity challenges and how your rail organization can create a safer and cyber-secure rail environment
April 7, 2022
February 8, 2022
December 16, 2021 | <urn:uuid:52a1640d-5b88-40ac-9272-a058bde41a2d> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.cylus.com/cbi | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00347.warc.gz | en | 0.910494 | 344 | 3.09375 | 3 |
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