Google and Indian Government Spar over Authenticity of Google Maps
July 12, 2017
The Indian government has rejected the authenticity of maps used by popular navigation app Google Maps terming them as technically inaccurate.
Neowin in an article titled Indian Government Calls Google Maps “Inauthentic”; Asks Citizens to Use Their Solution says:
In an attack against the service, Surveyor General of India, Swarna Subba Rao said that the maps used by Google weren’t “authentic” and were “unreliable” with limited accuracy. She also stressed on how Survey of India’s own mapping data was qualitatively more accurate.
The bone of the contention seems to be Google’s inaccurate mapping of Kashmir, the northern territory disputed by Pakistan. Google was also denied permissions to map the country at street levels for Street View citing security concerns.
Considering the fact that Google has the largest user base in India, this seems to be a setback for the company. An official of the Indian government is recommending the use of their own maps for better topographical accuracy. However, the government approved maps are buggy and do not have a great interface like Google Maps.
Vishal Ingole, July 12, 2017
Mistakes to Avoid to Implement Hadoop Successfully
July 7, 2017
Hadoop has been at the forefront of Big Data implementation methodologies. The journey so far has been filled with more failures than successes. An expert thus has put up a list of common mistakes to avoid while implementing Hadoop.
Wael Elrifai in a post titled How to Avoid Seven Common Hadoop Mistakes and posted on IT Pro Portal says:
Business needs specialized skills, data integration, and budget all need to factor into planning and implementation. Even when this happens, a large percentage of Hadoop implementations fail.
For instance, the author says that one of the most common mistakes that most consultants commit is treated Hadoop like any other database management system. The trick is to treat data lake like a box of Legos and start building the model with one brick at a time. Some other common mistakes include not migrating the data before implementation, not thinking about security issues at the outset and so on. Read the entire article here.
Vishol Ingole, July 7, 2017
Facebook to Tackle Terrorism with Increased Monitoring
July 5, 2017
Due to recent PR nightmares involving terrorism organizations, Facebook is revamping their policies and policing of terrorism content within the social media network. A recent article in Digital Trends, Facebook Fights Against Terrorist Content on Its Site Using A.I., Human Expertise, explains how Zuckerberg and his team of anti-terrorism experts are changing the game in monitoring Facebook for terrorism activity.
As explained in the article,
To prevent AI from flagging a photo related to terrorism in a post like a news story, human judgment is still required. In order to ensure constant monitoring, the community operations team works 24 hours a day and its members are also skilled in dozens of languages.” Recently Facebook was in the news for putting their human monitors at risk by accidentally revealing personal information to the terrorists they were investigating on the site. As Facebook increase the number of monitors, it seems the risk to those monitors also increases.
The efforts put forth by Facebook are admirable, yet we can’t help wonder how – even with their impressive AI/human team – the platform can monitor the sheer number of live-streaming videos as those numbers continue to increase. The threats, terrorist or otherwise, present in social media continue to grow with the technology and will require a much bigger fix than more manpower.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 5, 2017
DoD and Textron Move Analytics to Cloud
July 3, 2017
Continuing in its efforts to become more cloud-based, the DOD has partnered with Textron to create a web-based intel program. This latest edition of intelligence gathering program has shifted the DOD away from software into cloud presence, one of the government’s goals for the future.
Defense Systems recently reported on this new collaboration:
Decreasing a hardware footprint by consolidating data-centers and servers is entirely consistent with the Pentagon’s push to move more services, applications, storage systems and functions to a cloud-based architecture; this is particularly relevant in light of DOD’s initiative to integrate more commercial IT systems and move more Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) functions to the cloud.
The program itself streamlines data analysis and places it in the cloud for easier storage and access. This latest move showcases how technology across the board is shifting from traditional software and hardware driven data analytics and moving toward cloud-based.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 3, 2017
Booz Boo Boo: Blue Chip? Maybe Not
June 1, 2017
I read “Booz Allen, NGA Probe Intel Leak.” Let’s assume that the information in the write up is “sort of” accurate. I suggest this because the article invokes the name of “Edward Snowden” and the name of “Hal Martin.” Both of these individuals allegedly behaved with a bit of professional “looseness.”
But the write up does more than remind me that the once highly regarded blue chip management consulting firm has become an example of how not to manage its own employees and contractors.
Too bad. I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton when the firm’s reputation was reasonably well regarded. Today I am not so sure I would place the Booz Allen outfit identified in the FCW article in my “I want to work their” Top 10.
The main point of the write up seems to me to be:
Edward Snowden, Hal Martin and now another Booz Allen Hamilton employee could be involved in the leak of sensitive intelligence data — though in the latest case, it appears it could be accidental.
The information, according the FCW, was sensitive. The error was a result of a misconfiguration error.
Nevertheless, a company charged with working within the constraints set forth by the client should have management procedures in place to prevent alleged security issues.
Booz, Allen & Hamilton once kept a low profile. Now the firm finds itself making headlines.
FCW is not the grocery store tabloid-type of “real news” outfit, of course. However, I ask myself, “Management or mismanagement?”
And from an outfit which once provided management consulting services to the world’s leading organizations.
Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2017
Dark Web Monitoring
May 26, 2017
As criminals have flocked to the Dark Web, the need for companies to protect themselves from hackers has escalated quickly. But are Dark Web Monitoring services worth the price tag, or is this today’s snake oil? Motherboard examines that issue in, “The Booming, and Opaque, Business of Dark Web Monitoring.”
There are two basic approaches to Dark Web Monitoring, explains contributor Joseph Cox. The first relies on algorithms to flag stolen data, while the second sends humans on fishing expeditions to Dark Web forums. Either way, though, the complexity and underground nature of the Dark Web make wild-goose chases inevitable. Cox writes:
Fundamental problems with the very idea of some of these services, such as the issue of verifying information gleaned from forums and marketplaces, means they might be providing an illusion of security, rather than the real thing.
There is a lot of misleading or outright fabricated information in the dark web. Often, particular listings or entire sites are scams, and forum chatter can be populated with people just trying to rip each other off. For that reason, it’s not really good enough to just report everything and anything you see to a customer.
Cox consulted with several Dark Web Monitoring vendors, who describe a balancing act—avoid passing along false flags (which cost clients time and money) while ensuring real threats do not slip through their fingers. A “confidence-level” some services include with each report aims to mitigate that uncertainty, but it is an inexact science. Especially since the Dark Web is ever changing.
Cynthia Murrell, May 26, 2017
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
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