Category: IO Impotency

Current and Emerging Cyber-Threats

Security expert Steve Durbin discusses nation-state espionage and the dangers lurking in cyberspace, and urges organizations to become cyber resilient.

QUESTIONS ONLY

What should CIOs be most concerned about in Threat Horizon 2016?

How can enterprises mitigate nation-state espionage?

What threat intelligence-sharing forums should enterprise CIOs be following? What are useful security resources they might not be aware of?

Why do you think the Balkanization of the Internet is a large threat? Only a few nations are trying to create geopolitical borders on the Internet.

Regarding the unintended consequences of nation-states policing the Internet, what are the most likely types of incidents we'll see in 2014?

How can enterprises reduce the vulnerabilities posed by third-party service providers? What's a good action plan you've observed?

Your advice about using encryption now that it appears that encryption isn't the fail-safe tool that we'd believed it was.

When companies apply data analytics to information security problems, what are the most common things they do right? And what do they often do wrong?

Read full article with answers to each question.

Google Is as Intrusive as They Come

If you see the world through Google (www.google.com) colored glasses, you might think the search king can do no wrong, such as in this recent Medium.com article, “Why the Future Belongs to Google.” https://medium.com/mobile-culture/994daa5d0fee However, it’s starting to look like even those wearing the glasses are not happy.

According to the drum-thumping Medium.com piece:

“The search giant has infiltrated almost every sphere of our digital interaction and made the experience richer, more satisfying and rather beautiful…There are many big-name brands which often try to achieve this, but either their endeavour feels too intrusive or they just fail without a whimper.”

Pardon us, but if there’s one thing Google constantly stumbles over it’s how intrusive its latest and greatest ideas are. http://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-failures-google-flops We’re not just talking long-lost flops like Google Buzz, but new “innovations” like its flu-tracker http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2014/03/23/why-google-flu-is-a-failure/ and the most recent run of backlash that seems to have finally put a bullet in the motherboard of Google Glass, according to TechCruch http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/why-we-hate-google-glass-and-all-new-tech/ and others http://www.designntrend.com/articles/11970/20140321/negative-feedback-is-dimming-google-glasss-fate.htm. We are more than a little suspicious of the Medium.com article that claims google is unintrusive. It makes us wonder how deeply Google has intruded on that writer’s brain.

Patrick Roland, April 10, 2014

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

Eight (No, Nine!) Problems With Big Data

By GARY MARCUS and ERNEST DAVIS

New York Times, APRIL 6, 2014

BIG data is suddenly everywhere. Everyone seems to be collecting it, analyzing it, making money from it and celebrating (or fearing) its powers. Whether we’re talking about analyzing zillions of Google search queries to predict flu outbreaks, or zillions of phone records to detect signs of terrorist activity, or zillions of airline stats to find the best time to buy plane tickets, big data is on the case. By combining the power of modern computing with the plentiful data of the digital era, it promises to solve virtually any problem — crime, public health, the evolution of grammar, the perils of dating — just by crunching the numbers.

Or so its champions allege. “In the next two decades,” the journalist Patrick Tucker writes in the latest big data manifesto, “The Naked Future,” “we will be able to predict huge areas of the future with far greater accuracy than ever before in human history, including events long thought to be beyond the realm of human inference.” Statistical correlations have never sounded so good.

Is big data really all it’s cracked up to be? There is no doubt that big data is a valuable tool that has already had a critical impact in certain areas. For instance, almost every successful artificial intelligence computer program in the last 20 years, from Google’s search engine to the I.B.M. “Jeopardy!” champion Watson, has involved the substantial crunching of large bodies of data. But precisely because of its newfound popularity and growing use, we need to be levelheaded about what big data can — and can’t — do.

LIST ONLY:

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Eight (Nine!) Problems with Big Data”

Google and Pricing: High Stakes WalMarting

I read a number of write ups about the new Google cloud pricing. The main idea, in my opinion, that  unifies the different reports is, “Everybody loves a bargain.” Consider “Google Slashes Cloud Prices: Google vs AWS Price Comparison.”

The essay-editorial begins with the invocation of the Google-Amazon joust:

Google threw down the gauntlet to challenge AWS public cloud supremacy by announcing significant price reductions across its Google Cloud Platform. The eye-opening price cuts covered compute (32-percent reduction), storage (68-percent reduction), and BigQuery (85-percent reduction). Google also signaled that future reductions could follow Moore’s Law — citing that historically public cloud prices have dropped only 6 to 8 percent annually as compared to 20- to 30-percent reductions in hardware prices.

The fact that neither Amazon nor Google provide much detail about their actual costs, profits, number of customers, and goals for their cloud services is not of much interest. Explanations of how pricing thresholds operate and migrate excite little curiosity.

Continue reading “Google and Pricing: High Stakes WalMarting Just When Amazon Is Least Ready For A Price War”

Cybersecurity Expert and CIO: Internet of Things is ‘Scary as Hell'

By Al Sacco

ComputerWorld, March 25, 2014

CIO – The terms “Internet of Things” (IoT) and “connected home” are two of the trendiest buzzwords in the technology world today. And while both clearly offer very real potential, they also introduce their own share of risk, particularly if they're not approached with caution, according to Jerry Irvine, an owner and CIO of IT outsourcing services firm, Prescient Solutions.

. . . . . . .

Al Sacco: What exactly does the term “Internet of Things” mean to you?

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Internet of Things “Scary as Hell””

Stop Typing Linguastat Does It For You

Web content is a way for companies to attract attention and keep the organization in relevant social media feeds and search results. It is time consuming to generate content. Linguastat claims it offers a solution combining the power of big data and content.

Linguastat tells users that it will turn “haystacks into gold.” It is an interesting tagline, but not as believable as Linguastat’s software description:

“Built on proprietary natural language and artificial intelligence our cloud-based Content Transformation Platform ™ reads, understands, and transforms the vast amount of Big Data found in the world and automatically publishes unique, insightful, and optimized digital stories…at massive scale…at a fraction of the cost!”

If your company is tired of hiring third-parties or using valuable employee time developing Web content, Linguastat offers a solution. It will annotate and analyze your big data and the software’s AI will generate “optimized digital stories.” It also saves typing time and spares people from inflamed carpal tunnel syndrome.

Without seeing the finished product and the less than appealing “turning haystacks to gold” tagline, it is wise to be skeptical about Linguastat. They might be worth researching, however, and getting a trial run.

Whitney Grace, March 22, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext