Your Tax Information Might Be for Sale on Dark Web
May 23, 2017
Theft of personal and sensitive information continues to be a threat for Internet users. Tax information is available for sale for as low as $30 in bulk over Dark Web.
WTMJ-TV published a news report titled Officials Say Thieves Are Stealing Tax Info and Selling It on the Dark Web says:
It may be past tax time, but that doesn’t mean the stress is over. Experts say thieves are stealing W-2 information and selling it on the part of the Internet hidden from search engines known as the dark web.
In this particular instance, the culprit masquerading as a high-level company executive asked the clerk at a company office to mail all W-2 forms. Though the con was discovered immediately, albeit it was too late.
Despite strict IT security policies, data thieves manage to steal sensitive information using a technique called as social engineering. This includes gathering bits and pieces of information from multiple employees and using it together to con someone higher-up for stealing the information. Experts are of the opinion that prevention is the only protection in such cases.
Vishol Ingole, May 23, 2017
Malware Infected USB Sticks on the Loose
May 18, 2017
Oops. We learn from TechRepublic that “IBM Admits it Sent Malware-Infected USB Sticks to Customers.”
The article cites the company’s support Advisory Post announcing the problem, a resource anyone who has received an IBM Storwize V3500, V3700 or V5000 USB drive should check for the models and serial numbers affected. The recommended fix—destroy the drive and, if you’d already inserted it, perform a malware purge on your computer.
Writer Conner Forrest describes:
So, what does the infected drive actually do to a system? ‘When the initialization tool is launched from the USB flash drive, the tool copies itself to a temporary folder on the hard drive of the desktop or laptop during normal operation,’ the IBM post said. Then, a malicious file is copied to a temporary folder called %TMP%\initTool on Windows or /tmp/initTool on Linux or Mac. It is important to note that, while the file is copied onto a machine, it isn’t actually executed during the initialization process, the post also said. As reported by ZDNet’s Danny Palmer, the malware was listed by Kaspersky lab as a member of the Reconyc Trojan malware family, which is primarily used in Russia and India.
It might be understandable if this were the first time this had happened, but IBM also unwittingly distributed infected USB drives back in 2010, at the AusCERT conference in Australia. Let us hope there is not a third time; customers rightly expect more vigilance from such a prominent company.
Cynthia Murrell, May 18, 2017
Salesforce Einstein and Enterprise AI
May 5, 2017
One customer-relationship-management (CRM) firm is determined to leverage the power of natural language processing within its clients’ organizations. VentureBeat examines “What Salesforce Einstein Teaches Us About Enterprise AI.” The company positions its AI tool as a layer within its “Clouds” that brings the AI magic to CRM. They vow that the some-odd 150,000 existing Salesforce customers can deploy Einstein quickly and easily.
Salesforce has invested much in the project, having snapped up RelatelQ for $390 million, BeyondCore for $110 million, Predicition IO for $58 million, and MetaMind for an undisclosed sum. Competition is fierce in this area, but the company is very pleased with the results so far. Writer Mariya Yao cites Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher as she examines:
The Salesforce AI Research team is innovating on a ‘joint many-task’ learning approach that leverages transfer learning, where a neural network applies knowledge of one domain to other domains. In theory, understanding linguistic morphology should also accelerate understanding of semantics and syntax.
In practice, Socher and his deep learning research team have been able to achieve state-of-the-art results on academic benchmark tests for main entity recognition (identifying key objects, locations, and persons) and semantic similarity (identifying words and phrases that are synonyms). Their approach can solve five NLP tasks — chunking, dependency parsing, semantic relatedness, textual entailment, and part of speech tagging — and also builds in a character model to handle incomplete, misspelled, or unknown words.
Socher believes that AI researchers will achieve transfer learning capabilities in more comprehensive ways in 2017 and that speech recognition will be embedded in many more aspects of our lives. ‘Right now, consumers are used to asking Siri about the weather tomorrow, but we want to enable people to ask natural questions about their own unique data.’
That would indeed be helpful. The article goes on to discuss the potentials for NLP in the enterprise and emphasizes the great challenge of implementing solutions into a company’s workflow. See the article for more discussion. Based in San Francisco, Salesforce was launched in 1999 by a former Oracle executive.
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2017
Can Digital Shadows Meet the Award Hype for Their Cyber Defense Product
April 28, 2017
The article on Zawya titled Digital Shadows Continues to Make Waves with Two Prestigious Award Wins positions Digital Shadows as the juggernaut of the risk management market with its product SearchLight sweeping up honors left and right from Cyber Defense Magazine, Momentum Partners, and the 2016 SINET awards. Each accolade cites Digital Shadows cutting edge technology and strategy. What makes the company so innovative?
Digital Shadows monitors for digital risks beyond the boundary of an organization, identifying cyber threats, data leakage and reputational risk. It then notifies clients of data leaks online; hacktivists’ or cybercriminals’ plans to target the organization; employees or suppliers putting themselves and their company at risk; along with criminals selling company information and data on the surface and dark web.
Beyond this, the alerts themselves are verified and rated in urgency by a team of analysts who also advise the organization on how to proceed for customized threat intelligence. Alastair Paterson, CEO and Co-Founder, calls the process a “marriage” between the technology and the human team. Digital Shadows has seen monumental growth in the triple digits for the past three years including opening new offices in Dallas, San Francisco, and London and building an employee base of over 100 people.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 28, 2017
SirionLabs Plants New United States Headquarters in California
April 27, 2017
The article on TechCrunch titled SirionLabs Establishes US Foothold to Scale Its NLP Contract Management Software frames the rapid growth and expansion of the enterprise vendor management software provider founded in 2012. SirionLabs was founded by CEO Ajay Agrawal, who recognized the large cost of supplier relationship management built into a contract’s value and decided to start a company focused on automating the process, but only partially. The article explains,
The establishment of a U.S. presence represents a strategic shift in the company’s growth plans…While the startup has had offices in the U.K., Germany, Denmark and Singapore, it has been slow to establish a permanent U.S. team…Sirion, the company’s platform, is currently used by companies like BP and Vestas to manage service providers and augment humans that traditionally manage vendor relationships. The startup expects to use natural language processing to analyze more than $8 billion in total contract value over the next year.
In order to mitigate the risk of the enormous number of potential discrepancies in a given contract, Sirion compels both parties to be accountable by agreeing on the outcome. That addendum hasn’t scared off BP, or Seal Software clients such as Deloitte, HP, Experian, and SalesForce.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 27, 2017
UK Big Brother Invades More Privacy
April 18, 2017
The United Kingdom has been compared to George Orwell’s 1984 dystopia before, especially in the last two decades with their increasing amount of surveillance technology. Once more UK citizens face privacy invasion reports the Guardian in “UK Public Faces Mass Invasion Of Privacy As Big Data And Surveillance Merge.” The UK’s Surveillance Camera Commissioner Tony Porter expressed his worry that government regulators were unable to keep up with technological advances.
Big data combined with video surveillance, facial recognition technology, and the profuse use of more cameras is making it harder to protect individuals’ privacy. People are being recorded 24/7 and often without their knowledge. Another worry is that police are not being vigilant with private information. One example is that license plate information has not been deleted after the two-year limit.
Porter wants changes to be made in policies and wants people to be aware of the dangers:
Porter’s new strategy, published on Tuesday, points out that an overwhelming majority of people currently support the use of CCTV in public places. But he questions whether this support can continue because of the way surveillance is changing.
‘I’m worried about overt surveillance becoming much more invasive because it is linked to everything else,’ Porter said. ‘You might have a video photograph of somebody shopping in Tesco. Now it is possible to link that person to their pre-movements, their mobile phone records, any sensor detectors within their house or locality. As smart cities move forward, these are challenges are so much greater for people like myself. And members of the public need to decide whether they are still happy with this.’
Porter admitted that advanced surveillance technology had allowed law enforcement to arrest terrorists and track down missing people, but it still can lead to worse privacy invasions. Porter hopes is new three-year strategy will inform authorities about how technology will impact privacy.
The good thing about surveillance technology is how it can track down bad guys, but it can be harmful to innocent citizens. The BBC should run some PSAs about video surveillance and privacy to keep their citizens informed. I suggest they do not make them as scary as this one about electricity.
Whitney Grace, April 18, 2017
Whose Message Is It Anyway?
April 11, 2017
Instant messaging service provider WhatsApp is in a quandary. While privacy of its users is of utmost importance to them, where do they draw the line if it’s a question of national security?
In an editorial published in The Telegraph titled WhatsApp Accused of Giving Terrorists ‘a Secret Place to Hide’ as It Refuses to Hand over London Attacker’s Messages, the writer says:“The Government was considering legislation to force online firms to take down extremist material, but said it was time for the companies to “recognise that they have a responsibility” to get their own house in order.
Apps like WhatsApp offer end-to-end encryption for messages sent using its network. This makes it impossible (?) for anyone to intercept and read them, even technicians at WhatsApp. On numerous occasions, WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has come under fire for protecting its user privacy. In this particular incident, the London attacker Ajao used WhatsApp to send message to someone. While Soctland Yard wants access to the messages sent by the terrorist, WhatsApp says its hands are tied.
The editorial also says that social media networks are no more tech companies, rather they are turning into publishing companies thus the onus is on them to ensure the radical materials are also removed from their networks. Who ultimately will win the battle remains to be seen, but right now, WhatsApp seems to have the edge.
Vishal Ingole, April 11, 2017
Whither the Tech Industry Under Trump Administration?
March 30, 2017
The Silicon-Valley-based tech industry has done quite well under the Obama administration, we’re reminded in the Hill’s article, “Tech’s Power Shifts as Obama fades to Trump.” Lobbying efforts by internet companies have escalated over the past eight years, catching up to the traditional telecommunications industry. Writers Ali Breland and David McCabe quote a mysterious source:
‘Everybody is amazed by Google’s sort of cozy relationship with the White House,’ said one communications industry insider who asked to remain anonymous. ‘They don’t even try to hide it.’
Ah, dear Google. What now?
The writers cite Noah Theran, of the Internet Association—a group that represents Google, Twitter, and Amazon—as they emphasize the importance of working closely with government. If policy makers don’t understand what is happening in the tech industry, it will be nigh impossible for them to regulate it sensibly.
To complicate matters, apparently, these upstart internet companies have ruffled the feathers of the old-school telecoms, who seem to believe the FCC and Obama administration unfairly favored their new rivals, Google in particular. The article continues:
The tension wasn’t always present. Silicon Valley at one point had famously dismissed Washington, D.C., assessing that it could be the new capital of change in the U.S. That attitude shifted as the tech industry saw a greater need to work with Washington. A touchstone was the Justice Department antitrust suit against Microsoft. After having to appeal an initial order to break into two separate business, Microsoft quickly learned that it needed to have a Washington, D.C. presence if it wanted to preemptively ease regulatory problems later on. …
Trump’s presidency may change how the battles play out for the next four to eight years, however. Trump has had a rockier relationship with some tech companies, including Apple. He at one point during the campaign suggested a boycott of the company’s products over its encrypted phone.
Hoo boy. Hang on to your hats, technology-supporters; this could be a bumpy ride.
Cynthia Murrell, March 30, 2017
Diffeo Incorporates Meta Search Technology
March 24, 2017
Will search-and-discovery firm Diffeo’s recent acquisition give it the edge? Yahoo Finance shares, “Diffeo Acquires Meta Search and Launches New Offering.” Startup Meta Search developed a local computer and cloud search system that uses smart indexing to assign index terms and keep the terms consistent. Diffeo provides a range of advanced content processing services based on collaborative machine intelligence. The press release specifies:
Diffeo’s content discovery platform accelerates research analysts by applying text analytics and machine intelligence algorithms to users’ in-progress files, so that it can recommend content that fills in knowledge gaps — often before the user thinks of searching. Diffeo acts as a personal research assistant that scours both the user’s files and the Internet. The company describes its technology as collaborative machine intelligence.
Diffeo and Meta’s services complement each other. Meta provides unified search across the content on all of a user’s cloud platforms and devices. Diffeo’s Advanced Discovery Toolbox displays recommendations alongside in-progress documents to accelerate the work of research analysts by uncovering key connections.
Meta’s platform integrates cloud environments into a single keyword search interface, enabling users to search their files on all cloud drives, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack and Evernote all at once. Meta also improves search quality by intelligently analyzing each document, determining the most important concepts, and automatically applying those concepts as ‘Smart Tags’ to the user’s documents.
This seems like a promising combination. Founded in 2012, Diffeo made Meta Search its first acquisition on January 10 of this year. The company is currently hiring. Meta Search, now called Diffeo Cloud Search, is based in Boston.
Cynthia Murrell, March 24, 2017
MBAs Under Siege by Smart Software
March 23, 2017
The article titled Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes Over Wall Street With AI Trader on Bloomberg explains how Sentient Technologies Inc. plans to take the human error out of the stock market. Babak Hodjat co-founded the company and spent the past 10 years building an AI system capable of reviewing billions of pieces of data and learning trends and techniques to make money by trading stocks. The article states that the system is based on evolution,
According to patents, Sentient has thousands of machines running simultaneously around the world, algorithmically creating what are essentially trillions of virtual traders that it calls “genes.” These genes are tested by giving them hypothetical sums of money to trade in simulated situations created from historical data. The genes that are unsuccessful die off, while those that make money are spliced together with others to create the next generation… Sentient can squeeze 1,800 simulated trading days into a few minutes.
Hodjat believes that handing the reins over to a machine is wise because it eliminates bias and emotions. But outsiders wonder whether investors will be willing to put their trust entirely in a system. Other hedge funds like Man AHL rely on machine learning too, but nowhere near to the extent of Sentient. As Sentient bring in outside investors later this year the success of the platform will become clearer.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 23, 2017
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