Daily Tech Digest - February 07, 2019

How implantable tech is fighting blindness

While CERA's eye isn't the first 'bionic eye' system to be tested in human volunteers, it does offer a more simple surgical approach. "The idea was that if you have a more simple surgical approach, then there are less surgical complications," Penelope Allen, associate professor at CERA and head of the vitreoretinal Unit at The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, tells ZDNet. The array sits in a natural pocket within the eye, known as the suprachoridal space, which exists between the retina and the sclera, what most people know as the 'white' of the eye. "The device slides in quite easily and it is held in place quite naturally in that area, we don't need to put a [surgical] tack or go actually inside the vitreous cavity of the eye. It makes it a much more simple and straightforward surgical approach," she says. With the hardware in place, wearers began testing the system in the lab, learning to interpret the patterns the system transmit as visual information

AI and ML: Harnessing the Next Big Thing in Information Security

Hailed as the “next big thing” in the information security space, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are poised to disrupt the cybersecurity industry. If you believe everything you read, AI and ML is the miracle solution coming to save the day. No more exhaustively combing through massive stores of log files! No more lag in response times! No more undetected threats! Despite the hype, AI/ML is not a magic bullet that will solve every possible security threat, but rather a tool. Granted it’s a powerful and necessary tool – and one the opposition is using for nefarious purposes – yet you still need to make AI/ML work for you. As information security practitioners fight threats that are increasing in sophistication, the problem is finding the right tool for the job. Though it may feel like AI is generating a lot of noise in the cybersecurity space, there are a lot of valuable and effective products out there. The trick is unpacking all the claims made by security vendors to fully understand how AI/ML fits into their solution and whether that solution meets your specific and unique needs before you buy.

Cloud data management, security top of mind for government

"As we're shutting down our data center, moving things to the cloud, people can access what they need from wherever they are, faster," Roat said. "I'm moving SANs [storage area networks] and storage to the cloud, but I have to make sure it's accessible." The cloud can help reduce and improve infrastructure, while allowing organizations to take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning, said Tony Peralta, who handles data architecture for the Bureau of the Fiscal Service at the Department of Treasury. "Separation of compute from storage is a benefit that can help you adjust the scale of your infrastructure to meet your needs," he said. "To leverage technologies like machine learning, you can feed into automated DevOps in your cloud to adjust your compute and storage to become more efficient." The Department of Energy put its first commodity workloads in the cloud last year and is now realizing the benefits, as well as the challenges.

Fabula AI is using social spread to spot ‘fake news’

The startup says its deep learning algorithms are, by contrast, capable of learning patterns on complex, distributed data sets like social networks. So it’s billing its technology as a breakthrough. It is, rather unfortunately, using the populist and now frowned upon badge “fake news” in its PR. But it says it’s intending this fuzzy umbrella to refer to both disinformation and misinformation. Which means maliciously minded andunintentional fakes. Or, to put it another way, a photoshopped fake photo or a genuine image spread in the wrong context. The approach it’s taking to detecting disinformation relies not on algorithms parsing news content to try to identify malicious nonsense but instead looks at how such stuff spreads on social networks — and also therefore who is spreading it. There are characteristic patterns to how ‘fake news’ spreads vs the genuine article, says Fabula co-founder and chief scientist, Michael Bronstein.

Post-digital: Accenture's top 5 technology trends destined to shape business

The enterprise is at a turning point. Currently, digital technologies are being implemented at most levels to enable companies to thrive. Tech, such AI or IoT, is being used to understand enterprise customers with a new level of detail; giving them more channels with which to reach those consumers; and enable them to expand ecosystems with new potential partners. But, digital is no longer a differentiating advantage — it’s now the price of admission, according to Accenture’s annual report. In fact, nearly four in five of the 6,600+ business and IT executives worldwide believe that digital technologies — specifically social, mobile, analytics and cloud — have moved beyond adoption silos to become part of the core technology foundation for their organisation. “A post-digital world doesn’t mean that digital is over,” said Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s chief technology and innovation officer. “On the contrary ― we’re posing a new question: As all organisations develop their digital competency, what will set YOU apart? In this era, simply doing digital isn’t enough.

Will Fintech Replace Banking As We Know It Today?

Despite the big name, fintech is not solely about technology (completely weird, but bear with us). The era of new digital solutions that automate processes on each level and decrease the efforts required from the users has brought a new mentality to the game. There’s a story about grumpy representatives of heating services that would knock on your door at 7 a.m. and leave you no choice but to let them in for an inspection. It all changed when smiley agents that were selling boilers showed up. Their warm attitude and client-centric approach secured them tons of deals just because of the client satisfaction after their meeting with the agents! The story is taking another iteration right now. In a world where individual needs of a client may not be 100% matched, guys with a million-dollar smile and a tech that fits in your smartphone steal the show. "Remember how you needed a 20-digit password to send a few bucks to your mom? Now scan the fingerprints, and you're all set."

How to recover from SaaS stack bloat in the enterprise

Interestingly, the emergence of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a distribution model for applications has allowed companies to adopt new tools quickly. Due to relatively low costs of license subscriptions, even individual workers can simply opt in to these services using company credit cards. Previously, software purchases are made through lengthy formal purchasing processes. However, since acquiring tech tools has become easy, the problem of bloat and loss of control in enterprise IT has also emerged. On the average, enterprises could be using over a thousand cloud services across various business functions, many of which may be underutilized or even unnecessary. Uncontrolled, this surge in SaaS use can give rise to various other issues such as integration challenges, security risks, and redundant spending. As teams become empowered to acquire tools on their own to meet their specific needs, tech leaders may begin to wonder if it’s time to take a more passive role with software management.

Why data, not privacy, is the real danger

At the moment, the data is most immediately valuable as a way of targeting advertising. Without having to attach your name or address to your data profile, a company can nonetheless compare you to other people who have exhibited similar online behavior — clicking this, liking that — and deliver the most targeted advertising possible. In a statement provided to NBC News, Facebook said it targets advertising categories based on people’s interests, as gauged by their activity on Facebook, and the company points out that users can disassociate themselves from an interest by removing it from their settings. The company also says that one’s ad interests are not tied to personal characteristics, only to their interests, and that Facebook’s ad policy prohibits discrimination. But this sort of data is so powerful that it produces results far more powerful than traditional advertising. For instance, Facebook offers the chance to pay not just for a certain audience size, but an actual business outcome, like a sale, an app download, or a newsletter subscription.

Who’s taking malware seriously? SonicWall’s CEO has the answers

It’s no secret, right now the US and the UK are not united — you could even say they are divided.is not so united, and the United Kingdom is not so united either. But, unfortunately, the cybercriminals don’t care. They don’t know borders or boundaries other than is it target rich or not target rich; unless their motivations are political or economical. “Public institutions, private organisations and different governments have got to collaborate. But, above all, we’ve got to have dedicated cyber law enforcement,” said Conner. “It’s got to start with law enforcement. Between the UK, the US and Interpol we’ve had more takedowns in the last two years than we probably had in the five years before. Look at what’s happened with Huawei right now. So, I think there’s a good foundation for cyber collaboration across borders. “Law enforcement sharing is better than political sharing at the moment. There are too many political agendas, but this is changing.”

Microsoft joins OpenChain open-source compliance group

Microsoft, which has just become a platinum OpenChain member, clearly believes OpenChain is doing just that. This is yet another major step forward in Microsoft working and playing well -- not just with open-source code, but with its underlying legal and business foundation. It's a natural move forward from Microsoft's recent decision to join the Open Invention Network (OIN), thus making its entire patent portfolio available to this vital Linux and open-source patent consortium's members. Microsoft isn't the only major company to have realized how OpenChain can help companies use open-source code safely and legally. Facebook, Google, and Uber all joined in January 2018. David Rudin, a Microsoft assistant general counsel, explained why Microsoft joined in a blog post. OpenChain "plays an important role in increasing confidence around the open source code you receive. It does so by creating standards and training materials focused on how to run a quality open source compliance program, which in turn builds trust and removes friction in the ecosystem and supply chain," Rudin said.

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Quote for the day:

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control." -- Tom Laundry

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Daily Tech Digest - February 06, 2019

People Are Key to a Tech-Enabled Audit

Technological innovation is taking audit and assurance by storm. But for PwC, it’s not all about robots and technology. It’s also about upskilling their people. “I think that technology has a role to play, and me being in the technology field, I'm very fond of technology. The reality is without competent people, technology's only going to take you so far, and it's not far enough,” explained Mike Baccala, U.S. Assurance Innovation Leader. “It's critically important that any organization that is taking this journey, including our clients, can't leave their people behind.” Baccala was joined by PwC’s Maria Moats, U.S. Audit & Assurance Leader and Pierre-Alain Sur, U.S. Assurance Process & Technology Leader at a recent a PwC Audit Innovation Demo in New York where they sat down with members of the media to showcase the technologies enhancing PwC’s audit and the many ways they’re investing in their people.  There are clear risks, Baccala says, to overemphasizing technology at the expense of people and process, giving lease accounting as an example.

This is how AI bias really happens—and why it’s so hard to fix

The introduction of bias isn’t always obvious during a model’s construction because you may not realize the downstream impacts of your data and choices until much later. Once you do, it’s hard to retroactively identify where that bias came from and then figure out how to get rid of it. In Amazon’s case, when the engineers initially discovered that its tool was penalizing female candidates, they reprogrammed it to ignore explicitly gendered words like “women’s.” They soon discovered that the revised system was still picking up on implicitly gendered words—verbs that were highly correlated with men over women, such as “executed” and “captured”—and using that to make its decisions. Imperfect processes. First, many of the standard practices in deep learning are not designed with bias detection in mind. Deep-learning models are tested for performance before they are deployed, creating what would seem to be a perfect opportunity for catching bias.

Prepping the Enterprise for the AI Apocalypse

There are a lot of steps on this journey, according to Linthicum. For instance, how do you go about getting the talent and skill sets you need in-house? How do you migrate to new modernized platforms in the cloud? What's the collection of technologies that need to be put together, and how will you implement that technology in an orderly way? Enterprises need to create new kinds of infrastructure that can quickly adapt itself to the needs of the organization. Speed is important. "I think if you ask the CEOs they would say we're not funded to do it. And if you ask the board of directors and CEOs they say we want it to happen," said Linthicum. "So we just get fingers pointing both ways and nothing ends up getting done." Linthicum is predicting a brand apocalypse in which many of the familiar company names that we see every day are going to just disappear or be sold. He points to the fact that Ford Motor Co. is not building cars anymore -- just trucks and SUVs. "We need to understand that if we are going to survive in the market we have to react to the disruptors and try to disrupt them before they disrupt you. You have to leverage the technology you need to make that happen."

C# Futures: Static Delegates and Function Pointers

With each release of C#, it gains more low-level capabilities. While not useful to most business application developers, these features allow for high performance code suitable for graphics processing, machine learning, and mathematical packages. In these next two proposals, we see new ways to reference and invoke functions. A normal delegate in C# is a somewhat complex data structure. It contains a function pointer, an optional object reference for the this parameter, and a link to a chained delegate. The whole structure is heap-allocated like any other reference type, with the corresponding memory pressure. Furthermore, whenever it is used with unmanaged code it needs to be marshalled. Compared to a normal delegate, a “static delegate” is greatly simplified. It is implemented as a struct with one field, a function pointer of type IntPtr. This makes it blittable, which means it has exactly the same memory layout when used in managed and unmanaged code. Or in other words, marshalling isn’t required when calling a native system function.

2019 – Rise of the Robots? What lies ahead…

As members of the public become more aware of the capabilities and limitations of AI, they will demand more transparency and accountability in AI decision making, which will drive funding and research into such “explainable” tech. As a result, we will see more responsible use of AI, rather than just using AI for AI’s sake. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation will also promote a cautionary approach to machine learning rollouts within the EU, particularly where use cases involve direct or indirect processing of personal data. Underpinning this is a massive technological research drive to try and unpick the inherent “black box” nature of deep neural networks, either by re-architecting or developing complementary explicatory systems. Data Scientists are for example working on solutions to “slice” up complex ML decisions into more manageable (and defined) steps, each of which will hopefully make the task of auditing decisions easier.

14 Signs Your Smartphone Has Been Hacked

Today’s smartphones are powerful computers that allow us to perform tasks that only a generation ago would have literally been considered science fiction. Our portable devices also often contain a significant amount of personal and confidential information, including the contents of our text and email communications, as well as direct access to various of our social media and other accounts via pre-logged-in apps. It is imperative, therefore, that we keep our smartphones safe from hackers, and take immediate corrective action if we discover that any of our phones has been breached. So, how can you know that your smartphone was compromised, and that you need to take immediate, corrective action? Below are some symptoms for which to look out. Please keep in mind, however, that none of the clues that I discuss in this article exists in a vacuum, or is, on its own, in any way absolute. There are reasons other than a breach that may cause devices to act abnormally, and to exhibit one or more of the ailments described below.

Tech sector tells government that digital identity policy is 'urgently required'

“To ensure the UK does not fall behind other countries, we must create an interoperable framework for digital IDs which spans the public and private sectors,” said Julian David, CEO of TechUK. “We see instances where companies which want to bring world-class solutions to UK users often struggle to get support, either due to a reluctance to innovate or lack of a joined-up approach from key public sector bodies,” he said. “Too often, tech companies encounter difficulties which delay or obstruct innovation. It is particularly frustrating to hear British companies do not experience these problems in other countries.” Citing the growth in fraud, identity theft and the hindering of online innovation as the cost of further delay, the report says that “a coherent strategy is urgently required”. “The plea from many in the tech industry is that the issue of identity needs to be joined up to tackle the need to manage multiple digital identities and consumer expectations on ease of access to all types of online service,” said the report.

The top 4 IT security hiring priorities and in-demand skills for 2019

It’s no surprise that according to CIOs, security and people/talent top the list of core investment priorities for 2019. For IT security specifically, Information Security (InfoSec) ranked as the primary IT Security hiring priority for the next 12 to 18 months among decision-makers, according to Mondo’s IT Security Guide. Enterprise executives are taking note of the increased risks and PR damage associated with data breaches given the increase in coverage of these types of cyber attacks at major tech giants and global organizations in 2018. Additionally, the increased access and use of sensitive consumer data by various departments in a given business is providing hackers with new access points and vulnerabilities to exploit, resulting in an increased demand for enhanced InfoSec investments. As a result, Information Security Analysts, Engineers, and Manager roles are the in-demand positions for this high-end skill set.

The future of robotics: A convergence of the physical and digital

The hybridisation (there’s a word for you, technology and the dictionary are seeing hybridisation) of robots and humans are already coming together. There are ‘simple’ examples in healthcare, where robotic limbs are connecting to the user’s brain, so that an arm, for example, feels like it’s yours. It becomes an extension of that person, and adds to their sense of being. On the other side, robots are increasingly acting like humans, because the best way to interact with humans is to imitate them. But, to get this right we need to eradicate racial, gender, sexual and background prejudices that have stained society. Why? Because our robots and AI systems are going to use the social norms that we’re used to. 300 years ago prison architecture changed so that the guard could always see a prisoner. This, consequently, changed the behaviour of that prisoner. Information and knowledge of individuals can change their behaviour. In London, for example, the erection of 420,000 cameras and their position has changed the dynamic of crime.

Is 2019 the Year Agile Transformation Finally Works?

The traditional analogy of mass production encourages specialist teams focused on delivering the most efficient process for their activity. This works well when the problems are not that complex, the process can be defined, and problem well understood. Delivering value to customers is MUCH more complex than in the past where many projects were automating existing manual processes, with customers now requiring faster delivery cycles, with unknown requirements and potential technology solutions changing every few months. To be effective in this new world, it requires the formation of new, dynamic teams. Not just for the building elements but also marketing, operations and even finance. Specialists will still be required to do the work, but they will work in very different team models with different specialists. Management will change from coordinating the different teams to providing direction and helping the teams self-organize as necessary.

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Quote for the day:

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -- Frederick Douglass

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Daily Tech Digest - Feb 04, 2019

Facebook Gets Its First Real Privacy Penalty - From Apple

When Apple revoked Facebook's enterprise certificate, it subsequently broke all of Facebook's other internal employee apps. The side effect was likely unintentional, as just one certificate signed all of the apps. But it still had a far greater impact than any regulator could match for a privacy-related issue. The two companies, however, were working to restore Facebook's ability to use internal apps. Could Apple take this further and use its power in the mobile OS market to bring Facebook in line with evolving privacy wisdom? It's an idea floated in a column by Kevin Roose in the New York Times on Thursday. Apple could boot all of Facebook's apps - Instagram, WhatsApp included - literally with a few digital certificate revokations, a power no regulator has.There are all kinds of obvious problems with this, of course. A multi-billion dollar tech company shouldn't be taking up the slack for governments that are failing to protect consumers' privacy rights. Apple can take a strong privacy stance because it has little stake in the personal data trade. That could change, of course, depending on how Apple's business interests shift.

An inconvenient truth: Companies are struggling with technology in audit

Organizations first need to define the right balance between stability and innovation: starting with an evaluation of their environment from a regulatory and compliance perspective in order to determine where the most critical audit risks lie. Because every sector is different, the requirements can go from securing the crown jewels (personal data, intellectual property, etc.) and responding to regulatory and governing bodies to ensuring the high availability of customer-facing applications. This risk assessment must then feed into an overall technology strategy meant to address the most critical issues, starting with basic IT controls and extending to the enhancement of monitoring and reporting. The organizations’ objective should be to enable an approach where traditional auditing of its systems (Audit of IT) is no longer the norm.... Once all of these IT controls have been addressed and strong, effective processes are in place, organizations can focus on innovating and making more intelligent use of technology, like advanced analytics or control automation, for audit and insights. 

10 ways AI will enable self-service capabilities for enterprise automation

Within the past two years we’ve seen digital transformation dramatically impact businesses around the world. In the realm of enterprise automation, we saw artificial intelligence emerge as an impactful technology promising significant automation gains – in 2017 AI gained traction in the IT department, and during 2018 we saw its entry into boardrooms. In 2019, we will see AI combined with mobility and content understanding change entire workflows and processes within organizations, offices and factory floors. This requires not only transformation in IT strategy, but also in skills, recruitment and corporate attitudes. One of the most impactful technology trends we will see in 2019 is broad enterprise technology transition to self-service models. ... Corporate users are now eager to let robots take over. After panic of robots taking over their jobs have subsided, business users will initiate opportunities for digital workers to handle mundane, repetitive, manual tasks so they can focus on more cognitive and strategic work.

Chinese OEMs increase semiconductor buying power, says Gartner

According to Gartner, the buyers’ ranking was significantly impacted by consolidation in the smartphone and PC markets. The big Chinese smartphone OEMs, in particular, have increased their market domination by taking out or purchasing competitors. This also meant that the top OEMs’ spending increased and their share reached 40.2% of the total semiconductor market in 2018, up from 39.4% in 2017. This trend is expected to continue, which will make it more difficult for semiconductor vendors to maintain high margins. ... Memory prices also impacted the market. Despite being high in the past two years, the Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) average selling price (ASP) is now declining. However, the impact is limited, as OEMs will increase their memory content when the ASP drops and also invest in premium models. Gartner predicts that the share of total memory chip revenue in the total semiconductor market will be 33% in 2019 and 34% in 2020, higher than its 31% share in 2017.

Applying Industry Standards to Address Cybersecurity Risk

The need to improve industry response to address cybersecurity risk is well established. Each new incident report increases awareness of the risks faced. The nature of the risks continues to evolve as new vulnerabilities and threats are discovered. Beginning with the Stuxnet attack in 2010 a steady stream of incidents have shown that industrial systems are vulnerable to both general and targeted attacks. While they may accept the need to protect their critical systems better, many asset owners struggle to understand what type of guidance information is available and how industry standards can help them formulate their response. The number and variety of available standards and related sources and complexity of the topic add to the confusion. An effective response to the threat must address all phases of the life cycle, from conception and selection through operations and support. Established standards reflect this need and provide requirements for all involved, from suppliers and integrators to asset owners and support providers.

Can power be software-defined?

Does this disruptive and revolutionary change in IT have an equivalent in the way that power is distributed and managed? Power is, after all, not so dissimilar to the flow of bits: it is a flow of electrons, which can be stored, generated and consumed, is distributed over a network, and is switchable and routable, and therefore manageable, from a distance. A follow-on question to this is: Even if power can be managed in this way, when is it safe, economic and useful to do so, given the many extra complexities and expenses involved in managing power? The answer to both questions is not quite as binary or as definitive as at the IT level, where the impact of software-defined has been immediate, significant and clearly disruptive. While the application of more intelligence and automation is clearly useful in almost all markets, the opportunities for innovation in power distribution are much less clear. Data centers are a stand-out example: Large facilities present a great opportunity for suppliers, because of the size and growth of the market, vast over-provisioning, high costs, and inflexibility in power distribution and use.

Bangladesh Bank Sues to Recover Funds After Cyber Heist

The Bangladesh Bank heist also highlighted operational weaknesses at the New York Fed, a 2016 investigation by Reuters found (see: Report: New York Fed Fumbled Cyber-Heist Response). Notably, attackers timed their attack to occur on the evening of Feb. 4, 2016, a Thursday, which was the day before the weekend begins in Bangladesh. They also used malware that suppressed printouts of concerned messages sent by New York Fed officials after they saw suspicious transactions. When Bangladesh Bank officials spotted the activity on Saturday, Feb. 6, they attempted to contact the Fed via email, sending a message that read: "Our system has been hacked. Please stop all payment (debit) instructions immediately," according to the report. But the New York Fed reportedly apparently didn't receive the message until the start of its workday on Monday morning, and it didn't inform Bangladesh Bank that it had alerted correspondent banks to the fraud until Monday evening, New York time.

Smarter Connectivity for The Data-Driven Enterprise

It just seems that as the number of data sources grows, connectivity just becomes harder with the user having to know how to get at all the data he or she needs. Going back to IoT for a second, consider if you walk in to the office in the morning and there are 1000 more devices on the network than there were yesterday. What happens if you want access to the data on those new devices? Is the user expected to just know how to connect? Are we not just pushing more and more complexity onto the user? Can we not simplify it? Could it not be more dynamic? Or is it that we will continue to see software like BI tools lengthening the list of connectors to data sources, release by release? It just seems to me that we need to hide the connectors to all these data sources and connect to data at a higher level of abstraction. There are multiple ways of doing that. For example, you could use data virtualisation. Alternatively, we could look for some kind of advances in the data connectivity area itself – something that does not seem to have changed much in a couple of decades. If we look at the latter i.e. smarter connectivity, then what are we asking for?

How to Cultivate a Data-Inclusive Culture

We have seen organizations jump to acquire the latest cutting-edge technology in the hopes of capitalizing on data opportunities. But often the efforts are, again, myopic, driven by a single department, and not connected to the organization’s broader strategy. As a direct result of failing to coordinate with other parts of the business, organizations often will miss the opportunity to harness existing data to develop a deeper understanding of the customers and insights related to their business. In fact, the Katzenbach Center’s 2018 Global Culture Survey reveals that the biggest challenge to culture evolution is having certain areas of an organization more on board with an initiative than others. The solution is to instead bring in members of diverse teams throughout the organization to share the current state of how things actually work and make holistic decisions about how to move forward to best capitalize on data. This way, every department feels heard and is part of the process.

Brexit Preparation: Get Personal Data Flows in Order

In the event of "no deal," there also won't be an "adequacy" agreement in place. Such an agreement would mean that the U.K.'s laws are seen by the EU as being good enough to comply with European law. "Companies and organizations operating within countries with adequacy agreements enjoy uninterrupted flow of personal data with the EU," Denham says. Unfortunately, no withdrawal agreement also means no adequacy agreement, at least not right away. "An assessment of adequacy can only take place once the U.K. has left the EU," she says. "These assessments and negotiations have usually taken many months," she says. "Until an adequacy decision is in place, businesses will need a specific legal transfer arrangement in place for transfers of personal data from the EEA to the U.K., such as standard contractual clauses." ... EU data protection authorities can impose fines of up to €20 million ($23 million) or 4 percent of an organization's annual global revenue - whichever is greater - on any organization found to have violated GDPR. Regulators can also revoke an organization's ability to process individuals' personal data.

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Quote for the day:

"The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves." -- Ray Kroc

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Daily Tech Digest - February 03, 2019

Serverless computing’s dark side: less portability for your apps

How that serverless development platforms calls into your serverless code can vary, and there is not uniformity between public clouds. Most developers who develop applications on serverless cloud-based systems couple their code tightly to a public cloud provider’s native APIs. That can make it hard, or unviable, to move the code to another platforms. The long and short of this that if you build an application on a cloud-native serverless system, it’s both difficult to move to another cloud provider, or back to on-premises. I don’t mean\ to pick on serverless systems; they are very handy. However, more and more I’m seeing enterprises that demand portability when picking cloud providers and application development and deployment platforms often opt for what’s fastest, cheapest, and easiest. Portability be dammed. Of course, containers are also growing by leaps and bounds, and one of the advantages of containers is portability. However, they take extra work, and they need to be built with a container architecture in mind to be effective.

Grady Booch on the Future of AI

To put things in perspective, there have been many springs and winters in the development of artificial intelligence. The first winter was in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War. There was a great deal of interest in machine translation in order to translate Russian into some other language. According to an often quoted story, they put in statements such as "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak". Translated into Russian and back, the result was "The vodka is strong, but the meat is rotten." Language learning was a lot harder than people first thought. The next spring arose with the ideas of Newell and logic theorist Terry Winograd that used the idea of manipulating small world blocks, which led to some progress. Of course that was the time when Marvin Minsky stated that there will be human level intelligence in three years. No one makes those kinds of claims any more. Computational power and expressiveness were the limits to this approach.

Blockchain and biometrics: The patient ID of the future?

This isn't the first time blockchain has paired with biometrics for identification purposes. Starting back in 2017, Microsoft and Accenture joined to create a blockchain solution that used biometric data to act as digital identification for refugees. Pharmaceuticals have also considered utilizing blockchain to improve track-and-trace serialization. IrisGuard's technology has previously been used by the United Nation Agencies to prevent human trafficking, providing refugees with iris-based registration and e-payment solutions through the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP), the release said. "Patient identification is a growing problem in today's healthcare system," Chrissa McFarlane, CEO and founder of Patientory, Inc., said in the release. "This technology can help providers identify an individual with unparalleled accuracy, through iris-recognition and data matching. And because it's verified on the blockchain, it's scalable without sacrificing data security—which is one of the main problems with our current healthcare-data infrastructure."

State Machine Design in C

A common design technique in the repertoire of most programmers is the venerable finite state machine (FSM). Designers use this programming construct to break complex problems into manageable states and state transitions. There are innumerable ways to implement a state machine. A switch statement provides one of the easiest to implement and most common version of a state machine. Any transition is allowed at any time, which is not particularly desirable. For most designs, only a few transition patterns are valid. Ideally, the software design should enforce these predefined state sequences and prevent the unwanted transitions. Another problem arises when trying to send data to a specific state. Since the entire state machine is located within a single function, sending additional data to any given state proves difficult. And lastly these designs are rarely suitable for use in a multithreaded system. The designer must ensure the state machine is called from a single thread of control.

Privacy: Several States Consider New Laws

"Each of the 50 states now has its own breach notification laws, with nearly one-half adopting data security and/or data disposal requirements to protect consumers' personally identifiable information from unauthorized disclosure," says privacy attorney David Holtzman, vice president of compliance at security consultancy CynergisTek. "While most states are not taking a sectorial approach to the type of PII that must be protected, New York, Ohio and South Carolina have adopted cybersecurity requirements that target industries that include health plans and insurers," he adds. "A theme seen in state legislation to update breach notification laws in recent years is to set shorter notification periods. Some argue that this would give consumers more time to take action to protect themselves against the threat of financial fraud or identity theft by notifying major credit reporting agencies." Privacy attorney Kirk Nahra of the law firm Wiley Rein notes: "The states continue to examine the possibilities for increasing privacy and data security protections, both in currently regulated areas and in situations where federal law is not directly applicable through a specific law or regulation."

The 3 Secret Types of Technical Debt

Unfortunately, the cost of repaying debt is much higher by that point, just because of the compound interest you have to pay back that was consolidated into the debt. In other words, 2 hours invested in repaying technical debt 6 months ago, could be equivalent to 1 day of work today to repay the same amount of debt. The problem with this type of approach is it feels you are going fast to start with because you are delivering features and the technical debt is not hurting you as much at the very beginning. The problem is you are putting yourself on the compound interest curve, instead of staying linear. Linear and compound curves look similar at the start, very different later on. In most cases, you want to avoid ending up in this category. An example of where this type of debt is acceptable is when you need to hit a regulatory deadline, where the cost of not hitting the deadline outweighs the cost of repaying the compound debt accumulated later on.

Decision Trees — An Intuitive Introduction

Regression works similar to classification in decision trees, we choose the values to partition our data set but instead of assigning class to a particular region or a partitioned area, we return the average of all the data points in that region. The average value minimizes the prediction error in a decision tree. An example would make it clearer. Predicting rainfall for a particular season is a regression problem since rainfall is a continuous quantity. Given rainfall stats like in the figure below how can a decision tree predict rainfall value for a specific season? ... But being a supervised learning algorithm how does it learn to do so; in other words how do we build a decision tree? Who tells the tree to pick a particular attribute first and then another attribute and then yet another? How does the decision tree know when to stop branching further? Just like how we train a neural network before using it for making predictions we have to train (build) a decision tree before prediction.

Before AI is a human right, shouldn't we make it work first?

Benioff warned that AI-powered countries and companies will be will be "smarter," "healthier," and "richer," while those less generously endowed with AI will be "weaker and poorer, less educated and sicker." I guess he hasn't seen the AI that currently powers the Western world—you know, like IBM's Watson, which one of its engineers characterized as "like having great shoes but not knowing how to walk." Not that IBM is alone—take a walk through the transcripts of public companies' reporting earnings, and you'll see artificial intelligence mentions on a precipitous rise. Look around the real world, however, and finding true artificial intelligence is an exercise in futility. Even the companies packed with PhDs like Google seem to only be able to muster advertising that feels like weak pattern matching. It's one thing to insist that companies like, say, Google, give free access to its algorithms, but quite another to figure out how to do that in practice.

Overcoming RESTlessness

Broad as it was, the idea of using the Web for network-based sharing of data and services beyond the browser was a popular one. Software developers quickly seized on Fielding's work and put it into practice.3 The rise of REST was itself fuelled by a false dichotomy, with SOAP playing the role of bogeyman. Whereas SOAP attempted to provide a method of tunneling through the protocols of the web, the REST approach embraced them. This notion of REST being "of the web, not just on the web" made it a more intuitive choice for software engineers already building web-based solutions. As the SOAP and WS-* ecosystem became more complicated, the relative simplicity and usability of REST won out. Over time, JSON replaced XML as the de facto data format for web APIs for similar reasons. As the usage of the web computing paradigm expanded to new scenarios -- enterprise application integration, cloud provisioning, data warehouse querying, IoT -- so did the adoption of REST APIs.

Scrum Guide Decomposition, Part 2

In the enterprise, it would be difficult (but not impossible) to have a team with all competencies to do all the work simply because teams are siloed into specific competencies. For example, DBA’s, Middleware, specific back-end systems like SAP, and so forth. The enterprise's unwillingness to break apart these silos may hinder them from fully getting the benefits of Scrum. By having team members that are cross-functional, but not necessarily proficient in all competencies, you can avoid delays when someone, for example, is sick or on leave. Someone can continue the work. The team can also share the workload. No single person is carrying the team because they are the only person who knows that competency. The term “Jack of all trades – master of none” comes to mind. Good luck finding people who know everything. It is the team as a whole who becomes the masters. Not individuals. The Scrum Team has proven itself to be increasingly effective for all the earlier stated users, and any complex work.

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Quote for the day:

"Dont be afraid to stand for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone." -- Unknown

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Daily Tech Digest - February 01, 2019

What is application security? A process and tools for securing software

The faster and sooner in the software development process you can find and fix security issues, the safer your enterprise will be. And, because everyone makes mistakes, the challenge is to find those mistakes in a timely fashion. For example, a common coding error could allow unverified inputs. This mistake can turn into SQL injection attacks and then data leaks if a hacker finds them.  Application security tools that integrate into your application development environment can make this process and workflow simpler and more effective. These tools are also useful if you are doing compliance audits, since they can save time and the expense by catching problems before the auditors seen them.  The rapid growth in the application security segment has been helped by the changing nature of how enterprise apps are being constructed in the last several years. Gone are the days where an IT shop would take months to refine requirements, build and test prototypes, and deliver a finished product to an end-user department. The idea almost seems quaint nowadays.

India’s largest bank SBI leaked account data on millions of customers

The server, hosted in a regional Mumbai-based data center, stored two months of data from SBI Quick, a text message and call-based system used to request basic information about their bank accounts by customers of the government-owned State Bank of India (SBI), the largest bank in the country and a highly ranked company in the Fortune 500. But the bank had not protected the server with a password, allowing anyone who knew where to look to access the data on millions of customers’ information. It’s not known for how long the server was open, but long enough for it to be discovered by a security researcher, who told TechCrunch of the leak, but did not want to be named for the story. SBI Quick allows SBI’s banking customers to text the bank, or make a missed call, to retrieve information back by text message about their finances and accounts. It’s ideal for millions of the banking giant’s customers who don’t use smartphones or have limited data service.

DCMS funding fuels cyber diversity drive

The Crucial Academy Diversity in Cyber Security project is a Brighton-based initiative aiming to retrain veterans in cyber security, and is focused on female, neurodiverse and BAME candidates. Neil Williams, CEO of Crucial Group, said the funding will help support its initiative, and that, as a veteran, he understands the importance of projects such as Crucial. The QA: Cyber Software Academy for Women runs across several cities in the UK, including London, Bristol and Manchester, training women for cyber security roles. The Blue Screen IT: Hacked project will use the funding to scale a project that already exists, giving people, including those from poorer socio-economic backgrounds, neurodiverse and special needs talent, the skills needed for a cyber career. As well as train people in cyber, the project will also aim to create a “network of community Security Operations hubs”, according to Michael Dieroff, CEO of Bluescreen IT.

Don't Measure Unit Test Code Coverage

Some people use code coverage metrics as a way of enforcing the habits they want. Unfortunately, habits can't be enforced, only nurtured. I'm reminded of a place I worked where managers wanted good code commit logs. They configured their tool to enforce a comment on every commit. They most common comment? "a." They changed the tool to enforce multiple-word comments on every commit. Now the most common comment was "a a a." Enforcement doesn't change minds. Instead, use coaching and discipline-enhancing practices such as pairing or mobbing. To build up tests in legacy code, don't worry about overall progress. The issue with legacy code is that, without tests, it's hard to change safely. So the overall coverage isn't what matters; what matters is whether you're safe to change the code you're working on now. So instead, nurture a habit of adding tests as part of working on any code. Whenever a bug is fixed, add a test first. Whenever a class is updated, retrofit tests to it first. Very quickly, the 20% of the code your team works on most often will have tests. The other 80% can wait.

Meet The Chatbots That Will Make You Feel Better, One Text At A Time

The AI is trained to hold actual conversations rather than being a response generating program, like the early ELIZA. X2AI’s Tess is being used to support health care professionals like psychologists in clinics and hospitals across the US and Europe by giving patients access to 24/7 therapy support. They’ve also most notably collaborated with organisations and aid agencies in Lebanon to help Syrian refugees cope with their unimaginable situation. The Karim chatbot provides a mental healthcare service in an area where it is not available and now has one of the largest structured Arabic conversation data sets in the world. Similarly, Woebot Labs recently launched the first scientifically backed mental health therapy chatbot. You can chat with Woebot via Facebook Messenger for a two-week free trial, before then signing up to a $39 a month service. Stanford University researchers published a study showcasing how Woebot was able to help alleviate depression and anxiety over two weeks in its users. 

Don’t Collect Biometric Data Without Providing Notice

Interestingly, a lot of lawsuits and would-be lawsuits fail because the plaintiff is unable to show harm. For example, if a biometric identifier were stolen and the thief used that identifier to steal a prototype from a manufacturer, that manufacturer could show harm since there was a cost associated with developing the prototype, likely a cost associated with developing the associated intellectual property, lost revenue, etc. However, the Rosenbach v. Six Flags case isn’t about a security breach, it’s about a lack of disclosure. Under BIPA, plaintiffs don’t have to show actual harm in order to receive a monetary award. For BIPA case defendants, the effect is “unjust enrichment” because plaintiffs are getting money for nothing. “It’s not always huge businesses that get hurt by this and get sued,” said Kay. “A number of top tier companies were among the first entities sued. The second wave over the past two years has been mostly focused on finger scanning by employers. Some of them are big national companies [including] hotel chains, airlines and restaurant franchises. 

Android Pie: 30 advanced tips and tricks

Looking to do a little housekeeping and clear away all your recently used apps from Pie's Overview list? Swipe up once from the nav bar to open the Overview interface, then scroll all the way to the left of the app-representing cards. Once you've moved past the leftmost card, you'll see a "Clear all" command that'll do exactly what you desire. Android Pie tries to predict what you're likely to need next and then offer up specific actions — commands within apps, like calling a particular person or opening a certain Slack channel — at the top of your app drawer. If you see a shortcut there that strikes you as being especially useful, you can touch and hold it and then drag it onto your home screen for permanent ongoing access. You can also find any shortcut offered within Pie's app drawer by pressing and holding the icon for the associated app and looking at the menu of options that appears. You can touch and hold any item from that menu to drag it onto your home screen for future use, too.

What is digital health? Everything you need to know about the future of healthcare

The industry's aims are diverse and complicated: preventing disease, helping patients monitor and manage chronic conditions, lowering the cost of healthcare provision, and making medicine more tailored to individual needs. What makes the healthcare industry interesting is that those aims could potentially stand to benefit both patients, as well as their healthcare providers. By gathering more data on markers of health, from activity level to blood pressure, it's hoped that digital health will allow individuals to improve their lifestyles and maintain good health for longer, and so need fewer visits to their physician. Digital health tools could also help identify new illnesses or the worsening of existing ones. By enabling doctors to step in earlier during the course of a disease, digital health tools could help shorten the length of a disease, or help ease symptoms before they really take hold.

Cisco goes after industrial IoT

The industrial IoT rollout has enabled the network edge to extend its natural boundaries into places that traditional IT and network support hasn't had to have a lot of complexity and innovation, noted Vernon Turner, Principal and Chief Strategist at Causeway Connections. “Now that there is a lot of application development and deployment being done at the 'Extended Enterprise,’ it is only natural that a company such as Cisco follows with its capabilities in software, Turner said. "In particular, the ability to drive intent-based network functionality is critical for industrial-based workloads that now demand traditional IT-based attributes such as security, scale and flexibility.” One of the stumbling blocks for success is the customer experience of end-to-end integration and delivery of services. “For example, there can't be natural breaks between sensor-based data being generated by a shop-floor robot on a production line and the enterprise back-office systems for parts and material because of either different networks and different data systems – they both need to be delivered in a seamless manner,” Turner said.

How organizations need to react to new data privacy challenges

Development of inventories of personal data is likely the biggest trend, given how important they were to GDPR compliance in 2018 and how important they’ll be for CCPA compliance this and next year. They’re sometimes called “data maps,” and they’re crucial for understanding where personal data is located in an organization down to the server level, how it’s being protected, and with whom it’s being shared. ... The best data protection technology ever invented is an alert employee. The best way to get alert employees is through routine training in best practices. That include topics such as: what qualifies as personal information, how to recognize phishing and similar attacks, and who to ask when you have questions. I believe the majority of employees understand the gravity of the threats to personal information and expect their employers to acknowledge this and act accordingly.

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Quote for the day:

"The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist." -- Eric Hoffer

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