IT Security

HBR – How to Spot a Machine Learning Opportunity, Even If You Aren’t a Data Scientist

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a niche subfield of computer science. Tech giants have been using AI for years: Machine learning algorithms power Amazon product recommendations, Google Maps, and the content that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter display in social media feeds. But William Gibson’s adage applies well to AI adoption: The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

The average company faces many challenges in getting started with machine learning, including a shortage of data scientists. But just as important is a shortage of executives and nontechnical employees able to spot AI opportunities. And spotting those opportunities doesn’t require a PhD in statistics or even the ability to write code. (It will, spoiler alert, require a brief trip back to high school algebra.)

More of the Harvard Business Review article from Kathryn Hume

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26
Oct 17

Continuity Central – Key trends in business continuity invocations

ach year Sungard AS publishes a summary of its business continuity service invocations, providing useful insights into incident trends. Here Daren Howell presents four key trends from the most recent data.

It’s easy to take for granted or forget the extent to which our lives now rely upon technology that is always on. Every now and again, however, something happens to remind us of this reliance and it’s often an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved. As IT environments become increasingly complex, unfortunately these types of incidents are only going to increase.

Over the past few years, there has been a steady uptick in the number of instances that businesses have required recovery services, reversing what was a long-established downward trend. Businesses are facing an evolving threat landscape, with the increase in malicious cyber attacks, alongside changing working habits that have seen more flexible approaches to the workplace environment and the infiltration of different and more complex technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. It’s perhaps, therefore, unsurprising that the need for recovery support is on the rise, however it is not always for the reasons you would expect.

TechTarget – More users flub evals of colocation data center providers

Colocation data center buyers are needlessly captivated by impressive features at data centers that distract them from important decision-making information.

If enterprises want to make the right colocation decisions, they’ve got to ask better questions.

IT pros in search of a colocation data center for their IT gear today know what’s most important to them: price, physical security and uptime. But increasingly, enterprises ask vague, open-ended questions instead of pointed relevant questions to evaluate and choose a colocation data center provider.

Comparison of colocation data center capabilities is a boring problem solved with a simple recipe: Take the time to research and ask the most appropriate questions, said Peter Kraatz, the national portfolio director of consulting services at Datalink Corp., a data center services provider in Eden Prairie, Minn.

More of the TechTarget article from Robert Gates

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29
Sep 17

Continuity Central – DNS attacks an increasing problem for public and education sector around the world

Councils, schools and government offices were among global public sector and education organizations hit badly by DNS attacks last year – with nearly half reporting dealing with the issue cost them hundreds of thousands of pounds.

One in five (19 percent) of public sector sites and 11 percent of education bodies affected by DNS attacks say sensitive information was stolen. A fifth (20 percent) of public sector and 12 percent of educational victims also think intellectual property data was lost, while 10 percent of schools and colleges affected say they needed to take more than one day to recover.

This is in the context of yearly average costs of DNS security breaches to be now running at £1.7m ($2.2m) for organizations globally, with malware (35 percent), DDoS (32 percent), Cache Poisoning (23 percent), DNS Tunnelling (22 percent) and Zero-Day Exploits (19 percent) as the main threats.

Harvard Business Review – How Does Blockchain Work?

Blockchain is an emerging technology that gets lots of press in the technology journals. Harvard Business Review put together this whiteboard session on the technology called “How Does Blockchain Work?”

Harvard Business Review video

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14
Sep 17

Data Center Knowledge – Multi-Cloud Is a Reality, Not a Strategy – Part 1

James Kelly is the Lead Cloud and SDN Expert at Juniper Networks.

So you’re doing cloud, and there is no sign of slowing down. Maybe your IT strategies are measured, maybe you’re following the wisdom of the crowd, maybe you’re under the gun, you’re impetuous or you’re oblivious. Maybe all of the above apply. In any case, like all businesses, you’ve realized that cloud is the vehicle for your newly dubbed software-defined enterprise: a definition carrying onerous, what I call, ‘daft pressures’ for harder, better, faster, stronger IT.

You may as well be solving the climate-change crisis because to have a fighting chance today, it feels like you have to do everything all at once.

More of the Data Center Knowledge post from James Kelly

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14
Sep 17

ZDNet – Security Features Built into Cloud Services

Public cloud providers go to great lengths to secure their infrastructure, but organizations are still responsible to protect their apps and data. We look at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

As we discussed in an earlier post [link to cloud fears entry], it’s a little late in the game to be wholly suspicious of cloud computing. However, there’s still a lot to talk about in terms of securing the cloud.

The security features offered by public cloud providers represent only a part of the shared responsibility model; the other part falls within your organization’s responsibility. For example, your public cloud provider may offer security groups for identity and access management (IAM) and firewalls that scan traffic on specific ports and to and from specific IP addresses.

More of the ZDNet article from Larry Seltzer

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11
Sep 17

Continuity Central – Gartner publishes ‘Hype Cycle for Cloud Security in 2017’

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Security aims to help security professionals understand which emerging technologies are ready for mainstream use, and which are still years away from productive deployments for most organizations. The 2017 edition of the Hype Cycle for Cloud Security is now available and a summary is below.

“Security continues to be the most commonly cited reason for avoiding the use of public cloud,” said Jay Heiser, research vice president at Gartner. “Yet paradoxically, the organizations already using the public cloud consider security to be one of the primary benefits.”

The attack resistance of the majority of cloud service providers has not proven to be a major weakness so far, but customers of these services may not know how to use them securely.

“The Hype Cycle can help cybersecurity professionals identify the most important new mechanisms to help their organizations make controlled, compliant and economical use of the public cloud,” said Mr. Heiser.

IT Business Edge – Second Quarter Reported DDoS Attacks Lasting Days, Not Minutes

What is your DDOS strategy?

What would you do if your company was hit with a DDoS attack that lasted 11 days? Perhaps a large organization could withstand that kind of outage, but it could be devastating to the SMB, especially if it relies on web traffic for business transactions.

That 11-day – 277 hours to be more exact – attack did happen in the second quarter of 2017. Kaspersky Lab said it was longest attack of the year, and 131 percent longer than the longest attack in the first quarter. And unfortunately, the company’s latest DDoS intelligence report said we should expect to see these long attacks more frequently, as they are coming back into fashion. This is not the news businesses want to hear.

More of the IT Business Edge post from Sue Marquette Poremba

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.