AI Startups Use Advanced AI Technology to Improve Daily Chores
February 11, 2016
The article on e27 titled 5 Asian Artificial Intelligence Startups that Caught Our Eye lists several exciting new companies working to unleash AI technology, often for quotidian tasks. For example, Arya.ai provides for speeder and more productive decision-making, while Mad Street Den and Niki.ai offers AI shopping support! The article goes into detail about the latter,
“Niki understands human language in the context of products and services that a consumer would like to purchase, guides her along with recommendations to find the right service and completes the purchase with in-chat payment. It performs end-to-end transactions on recharge, cab booking and bill payments at present, but Niki plans to add more services including bus booking, food ordering, movie ticketing, among others.”
Mad Street Den, on the other hand, is more focused on object recognition. Users input an image and the AI platform seeks matches on e-commerce sites. Marketers will be excited to hear about Appier, a Taiwan-based business offering cross-screen insights, or in layman’s terms, they can link separate devices belonging to one person and also estimate how users switch devices during the day and what each device will be used for. These capabilities allow marketers to make targeted ads for each device, and a better understanding of who will see what and via which device.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Squiz and Verint Team up to Save the Government from Itself
February 9, 2016
The article titled Verint and Squiz Announce Partnership to Further Enable Digital Transformation for Government on BusinessWire conveys the global ambitions of the two companies. The article positions Verint, an intel-centric company, and Squiz, an Australian content management company, as the last hope for the world’s governments (on the local, regional, and national level.) While things may not be so dire as all that, the merger is aimed at improving governmental organization, digital management, and customer engagement. The article explains,
“Today, national, regional and local governments across the world are implementing digital transformation strategies, reflecting the need to proactively help deliver citizen services and develop smarter cities. A key focus of such strategies is to help make government services accessible and provide support to their citizens and businesses when needed. This shift to digital is more responsive to citizen and community needs, typically reducing phone or contact center call volumes, and helps government organizations identify monetary savings.”
It will come as no surprise to learn that government bureaucracy is causing obstacles when it comes to updating IT processes. Together, Squiz and Verint hope to aid officials in implementing streamlined, modernized procedures and IT systems while focusing on customer-facing features and ensuring intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. Verint in particular emphasizes superior engagement practices through its Verint Engagement Management service.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 9, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
US and Europe Split After Much Attensity
February 9, 2016
Most companies that are split across oceans usually have a parent company they remain attached to, however, PR Newswire shares that “IMCap Partners Acquire Attensity Europe.” Attensity Group Inc. is a leading provider in customer interaction management and its sub-company Attensity Europe headed its solutions across the pond. Recently, IMCap Partners invested money in a deal for Attensity Europe to split apart from the parent and become an independent company. Thomas Dreikauss will remain the CEO and also become a new shareholder in the new company. None of the details related to the purchase price and other details remain private.
Attensity Europe plans to focus on developing its omni-channel customer service and its market-leading product Respond, multilingual and omni-channel response management software. Respond increases productivity processing customer written requests and ensures better transparency over the service level.
“ ‘The market for CRM solutions is growing by just under 14% a year on average, according to Gartner, and therefore at a much more rapid rate than the overall software market. With Respond Attensity Europe is focusing on the highly attractive and rapid-growth customer interaction management/customer care segment, providing a solution that also fully meets the requirements of very large customer service units. The solution’s analytics, scalability and integration capacity are setting standards in the industry. Respond is a highly flexible, future-proof platform for customer service covering all written communication channels, including social media,” indicated Rolf Menne, operating partner at IMCap. “In cooperation with the highly motivated team at Attensity Europe, we see extremely attractive growth potential.’”
Attensity Europe will be rebranded and already has plans to take off in the coming year.
Whitney Grace, February 9, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How Often Do You Use Vocal Search
February 8, 2016
Vocal search is an idea from the future: you give a computer a query and it returns relevant information. However, vocal search has become an actual “thing” with mobile assistants like Siri, Cortana, and build in NLP engines on newer technology. I enjoy using vocal search because it saves me from having to type my query on a tiny keyboard, but when I’m in a public place I don’t use it for privacy reasons. Search Engine Watch asks the question, “What Do You Need To Know About Voice Search?” and provides answers for me more questions about vocal search.
Northstar Research conducted a study that discovered 55% percent of US teens used vocal search, while only 41% of US adults do. An even funnier fact is that 56% of US adults only use the search function, because it makes them feel tech-savvy.
Vocal Search is extremely popular in Asia due to the different alphabets. Asian languages are harder to type on a smaller keyboard. It is also a pain on Roman alphabet keyboards!
Tech companies are currently working on new innovations with vocal search. The article highlights how Google is trying to understand the semantic context behind queries for intent and accuracy.
“Superlatives, ordered items, points in time and complex combinations can now be understood to serve you more relevant answers to your questions…These ‘direct answers’ provided by Google will theoretically better match the more natural way that people ask questions in speech rather then when typing something into a search bar, where keywords can still dominate our search behaviour.”
It translates to a quicker way to access information and answer common questions without having to type on a keyboard. Now it would be a lot easier if you did not have to press a button to activate the vocal search.
Whitney Grace, February 8, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Leaky Web Pages a Call To Criminals
February 6, 2016
The Dark Web relies on the Tor network’s complex, multi-layered encryption technology to hide Web URLs and traffic sources. As we learned in “Basic Error Can Reveal Hidden Dark Web sites, however, not all hidden searches are actually hidden. Apache, the most widely used Web server software, includes a module that could make it easy for criminals to watch what Dark Web users are doing. A Facebook wizard points out that Apache’s “out-of-the-box” configuration, which is used to hide server-status page information, could inadvertently help hackers follow users as they meander through the Deep Web.
In 2012, Popular Web Sites Were Leaking System Status Information, Private Data and Passwords” confirmed what many had long suspected. Then, in 2015, a researcger discovered a Dark Web search engine not only showed what people were searching for. This begs the question:
What if a malicious actor had found that page instead of Muffet. They could have used it to assemble a trove of search data and, as we learned from the 2006 AOL search data leak, that can be enough Big Data to start unmasking people. And it gets worse. Exposed server status pages are a potential threat to users, but under some circumstances, they can completely unravel the protection that Tor provides to hidden websites.
In a perfect world, only localhost would have access to the mod-status feature. But Tor daemon also runs on localhost. All hackers have to do to access sensitive data is to exploit this weakness and anyone can see what people are looking at in the Deep Web.
Locard’s Principle tells us that criminal not only bring something of themselves to a crime scene, bad actors leave something behind, too. This clues, no matter how small, may help analysts and investigators shine a light on Dark Web criminals.
Martin A. Matisoff, MSc, February 6, 2016.
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publishers of the CyberSINT monograph.
Its Official: Facebook and the Dark Web
February 5, 2016
A piece from Nextgov suggests just how ubiquitous the Dark Web could become. Published as Facebook is giving users a new way to access it on the ‘Dark Web’, this article tells us “a sizeable community” of its users are also Dark Web users; Facebook has not released exact figures. Why are people using the Dark Web for everyday internet browsing purposes? The article states:
“Facebook’s Tor site is one way for people to access their accounts when the regular Facebook site is blocked by governments—such as when Bangladesh cut off access to Facebook, its Messenger and Whatsapp chat platforms, and messaging app Viber for about three weeks in November 2015. As the ban took effect, the overall number of Tor users in Bangladesh spiked by about 10 times, to more than 20,000 a day. When the ban was lifted, the number dropped back to its previous level.”
Public perception of the darknet is changing. If there was any metric to lend credibility to the Dark Web being increasingly used for mainstream purposes, it is Facebook adding a .onion address. Individual’s desire for security, uninterrupted and expansive internet access will only contribute to the Dark Web’s user base. While the Silk Road-type element is sure to remain as well, it will be interesting to see how things evolve.
Megan Feil, February 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
IBM Sells Technology Platform with a Throwback to Big Datas Mysteries
February 2, 2016
The infographic on the IBM Big Data & Analytics Hub titled Extracting Business Value From the 4 V’s of Big Data involves quantifying Volume (scale of data), Velocity (speed of data), Veracity (certainty of data), and Variety (diversity of data). In a time when big data may have been largely demystified, IBM makes an argument for its current relevance and import, not to mention its mystique, with reminders of the tremendous amounts of data being created and consumed on a daily basis. Ultimately the graphic is an ad for the IBM Analytics Technology Platform. The infographic also references a “fifth “V”,
“Big data = the ability to achieve greater Value through insights from superior analytics. Case Study: A US-based aircraft engine manufacturer now uses analytics to predict engine events that lead to costly airline disruptions, with 97% accuracy. If this prediction capability had ben available in the previous year, it would have saved $63 million.”
IBM struggles for revenue. But, obviously from this infographic, IBM knows how to create Value with a capital “V”, if not revenue. The IBM Analytics Technology Platform promises speedier insights and actionable information from trustworthy sources. The infographic reminds us that poor quality in data leads to sad executives, and that data is growing exponentially, with 90% of all data forged in only the last two years.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 2, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Big Data Is so Last Year, Data Analysts Inform Us
February 1, 2016
The article on Fortune titled Has Big Data Gone Mainstream? asks whether big data is now an expected part of data analysis. The “merger” as Deloitte advisor Tom Davenport puts it, makes big data an indistinguishable aspect of data crunching. Only a few years ago, it was a scary buzzword that executives scrambled to understand and few experts specialized in. The article shows what has changed lately,
“Now, however, universities offer specialized master’s degrees for advanced data analytics and companies are creating their own in-house programs to train talent in data science. The Deloitte report cites networking giant Cisco CSCO -4.22% as an example of a company that created an internal data science training program that over 200 employees have gone through. Because of media reports, consulting services, and analysts talking up “big data,” people now generally understand what big data means…”
Davenport sums up the trend nicely with the statement that people are tired of reading about big data and ready to “do it.” So what will replace big data as the current mysterious buzzword that irks laypeople and the C-suite simultaneously? The article suggests “cognitive computing” or computer systems using artificial intelligence for speech recognition, object identification, and machine learning. Buzz, buzz!
Chelsea Kerwin, February 1, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Trust and Security Lessons Offered by the Dark Web
January 27, 2016
Spreading lessons about trust is not what most people think when they think of the drug dealers, hackers and cyber criminals of the Dark Web, but an article from Medium begs to differ. Let’s hear it for the bad guys: What the Dark Web can teach us about trust focuses on the idea that these “bad guys” are successfully and efficiently making transactions, ultimately based on trust. The article states:
“Crucially, they offer the same kind of reliability of experience rather than ripping people off, thus creating a sustainable business model. Transactions are made using digital currency Bitcoin and are recorded and verified through a distributed public ledger called the block chain. In this way, such sites build trust by offering a straightforward transaction built on transparency, albeit achieved with complete anonymity.”
This trust may be seen as missing from many internet sites where collection of personal data is the price of admission; the Dark Web offers an alternative with the promise of information not being tracked. Ironically, the issue of information being collected, albeit through other means, and sold through channels in the Dark Web means the problem of security is not eradicated.
Megan Feil, January 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Beware: Spyware Disguised as Search
January 27, 2016
Do you know how when you type an incorrect Web address into the search bar and you are redirected to a search page saying it could not find the address? According to PCRisk one of these redirected pages could mean you serious harm, “Snjsearch.com Redirect.” If you have ever heard of snjsearch.com, you should get off the page as quickly as possible.
Snjsearch masquerades as a legitimate Internet search engine with more relevant results than Google. However, this is a false claim! The Snjsearch.com developers include spyware within an installation packet to track browsing history and other sensitive information.
The biggest question you are probably asking is how snjsearch.com gets installed on your computer?
“This deceptive website is promoted as a ‘bundle’ with other software. The developers know that many users do not pay enough attention when downloading and installing software. Therefore, bundled applications (or in this case, modification of browser settings) are usually concealed within the ‘Custom/Advanced’ settings. Many users rush these processes and skip virtually all steps, leading to inadvertent installation of potentially unwanted programs. This exposes their systems to risk of further infection and compromises their privacy.”
The easiest way to avoid downloading snjsearch.com is to monitor all downloads, making sure that snjsearch.com is not included in an installation bundle. Another preventive measure would be to know where you download an item. Remember the saying, “don’t take candy from strangers”? Well, do not take free downloads from strange Web sites.
If you believe you have snjsearch.com on your computer, the article contains steps to remove it. If you are a curious person, do not experiment with snjsearch.com unless appropriate precautions are taken; namely, using a separate, non-work computing device not connected to an office or work related network.
Whitney Grace, January 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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