Cyber Threat Intelligence Report
September 24, 2020
DarkCyber finds cyber-centric research interesting. We spotted a new report, current through June 30, 2020. The report costs about $1,600. The publisher / creator identifies 62 vendors, includes contact information, and details about each firm. For the $1,600, the information hungry buyer receives a 34 page report and — hang on to your hats — an Excel spreadsheet. One enthusiastic reviewer reports that vendors included in the report are:
Anomali
DarkOwl
Intsights
LookingGlass Cyber Solutions
Recorded Future acquired by Insight Partners in 2019
Sixgill (named after a type of fish)
SpyCloud
ZeroFOX
Factoids from the report include:
Funded companies had healthy growth despite the headwinds; for example, Sixgill almost doubled in size.
Headcount among the sample grew at an astounding three percent.
And revenue across the 62 companies, more than $500 million by December 31, 2020.
Want more information? Navigate to IT Harvest.
One minor point, DarkCyber could not rely on the firm’s blog posts through September 21, 2020. Here’s what was available in that service:
Yep, nothing. What’s that say about the firm’s attention to detail?
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2020
Efficiency: Modern Analytic Techniques Are Logical
September 21, 2020
I don’t pay much attention to writing about motion pictures. The title “Why Christopher Nolan Actually Blew Up A Real Plane For Tenet” was a bit of a baffler. I did not recognize the name “Christopher Nolan.” I knew the meaning of the word “tenet” but I had zero clue it was entertainment. When I looked him up, I did not recognize his cinematic masterpieces. Nevertheless, the premise of the essay was interesting:
Skip using a computer to fake blowing up a large airplane. But a 747 and just blow it up.
Interesting. Were there environmental costs? Were their additional safety related costs? Were there clean up costs? Were there additional legal costs associated with making sure that someone would have to pay if the whole deal went south? Maybe a post explosion maintenance worker catching on fire or just getting sick from breathing fumes?
Hey, breathing. What’s the big deal?
The write up does not address these questions, and my hunch is that expert cinema professionals think much about these problems even if some bright young sprout asked, “What happens if we screw up, kill a bunch of people, and maybe pollute the creek running next to the shoot?”
Hey, ducks and fish. Who cares? These folks are creating art for real people. Ducks? Or, “Hey, don’t rain on my parade” could well have been the response.
Thinking and acting efficiently is the way of the world among a certain cohort of professionals. If movie makers cannot ask, “How much will it cost if we screw this up?”, what other intellectual shortcuts have been taking place.
My hunch is a lot. Efficiency? Love it. Do large technology companies think in the manner of an esteemed, powerful creator of motion pictures? Yeah, good question.
Stephen E Arnold, September 21, 2020
Thought Leaders Thought Lead: Better Late Than Never
September 8, 2020
I read “Scale Digital Technologies to Thrive in New Reality: KPMG.” This document is what I would characterize as a “thought leader piece.” The idea is that consulting firms have to give the impression that their sales pitches are in step with most business thought just a tiny bit ahead. Then the thought leader becomes an expert on the subject and can use that perception to sell consulting work. The method has worked since the efficiency studies of Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Gnostic message of the buggy whip case study.
This particular blue chip consulting firm output tackles the importance of being digital by Oscar Obvious Wilde, who wears upscale casual clothing, has a family confident in its wealth and connections, and a day time TV star smile. What’s not to like?
The write up states:
Improved decision-making is the top criteria for investments in emerging technologies…More than 90 per cent of companies are investing across emerging technologies as enterprises believe more in combined use of emerging technologies.
I think this means invest to make better decisions. Don’t worry about silver bullet technologies. Combine technologies.
Let’s go back to “what’s not to like”.
Sticking or combining technologies together is not magnetic. Two magnets will either snap together or push one another away. Now dump 12 magnets on the table and push them together. What happens? That’s tough to predict, so one has to be prepared to run tests, then fit the data to a pattern.
Does that sound like a sure fire way to spend a lot of time without having a result on which one can depend?
Yep, that’s the purpose of being a thought leader. Sell time and services. Does the approach create improved decision making. Sometimes. The client learns to be less accepting of some experts’ pronouncements.
Transformation can be hard and digital ones can be harder if we are not bold to question the status quo. It is a reboot/reset moment for all of us. We either ride the wave or get drowned.
There is an alternative, particularly for firms which embraced digital solutions years ago. Another option is to stay out of the water. Not everyone wants to be a surfer writing big checks.
Stephen E Arnold, September 8, 2020
Windows and Its Fan Boys: Sound Problems Plague Podcast
September 4, 2020
At the gym yesterday, I was listening to a new to me podcast called Windows Central. The program focused on the two phones stuck together. About 15 mintues into the podcast, one of the experts on the program could not turn off sound from another program running on his Windows 10 computer. There was muttering; there were unhelpful suggestions from a co-host; and there was the sound of clicks and sighing. Most amusing was the fact that the expert could not figure out from whence the unwanted sound was coming. Ah, Windows 10.
But there is a fix for our intrepid Windows’ cheerleader. “PowerToys Now Lets You Mute Your Webcam or Microphone on Windows 10” provides a link to a free but experimental control that allegedly may have solved the expert’s quite shallow mastery of Windows 10. (I mean an expert who cannot mute sound communicates a great deal about “experts” and, of course, about the Byzantine, increasingly exciting Windows 10 operating system.)
I want to point out that the $0.99 codec for HEVC which I downloaded from the Windows Store (!) did not install. But that was a minor problem compared to forced updates that killed my printer not long ago. Yes, Microsoft is a JEDI knight, but the fancy engineering powering the system has some — how shall I phrase it — issues. What happens in a battle when the sound does not work on a JEDI powered laptop? Telepathy? Luke Skywalker suddenly appears?
And for experts who cannot figure out why two sound streams are playing on a podcast? That will be a boost for these wizards’ credibility. No, I don’t understand why I want two phones held together with a hinge.
And, no, I did not listen to the entire program. I mean an expert who cannot control his machine’s audio. Amazing stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2020
Blue Chip Black Eye?
September 2, 2020
DarkCyber spotted “Accenture India Staff to Face Brunt of Layoffs.” The write up reports:
Technology major Accenture is expected to lay off around 25,000 people or least 5% of its global workforce…
Interesting. The received wisdom in the consulting world of blue-chip firms is that when the economy goes down, consulting revenues go up.
Is this a black eye for Accenture’s sales executives or a signal that “received wisdom” may not work in the Rona Era?
Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2020
McKinsey? Not Wonderful? What?
September 1, 2020
Our esteemed leader (who is now Lord Stephen E Arnold. Believe it or not.) used to be a management consultant. Although I have worked on his research team for more than eight years, I have no idea what he did or does. Every time we meet, he’s playing with his computers. Helpful, right?
What do management consultants do? Slate knows and reports that management consultants “sell what you’re buying, as opposed to what they’re selling” in the article “How McKinsey Helps Companies Avoid Responsibility.” At least the only management company that is following this modus operandi is McKinsey and Company. McKinsey and Company is a top blue chip management company and has been in business for almost a century.
Accounting professor James McKinsey founded his namesake company on basic accounting principles: use financial records to project future revenue and costs. This concept is standard today, but no one practiced it in 1926. McKinsey was selective about his client list and become legendary among top-tier clients. When Marvin Bower took over the company he added another mantra to the company: always putting clients’ interests above McKinsey’s.
In the 1950s, a new slew of problems arrived with the postwar economic boom and McKinsey took it upon themselves to help companies succeed even more, This included wading through middle management and telling companies to fire people if needed. McKinsey consultants are happy to be scapegoats for downsizing:
“‘And the McKinsey consultant who gives the manager that advice also gets to avoid having to feel responsible for putting people out of work. ‘If I’m working at McKinsey, when I decide to give the best professional advice I can, following the principles of integrity that McKinsey insists on for its workers, I don’t characterize myself as having fired 50,000 people,’ [Yale professor Daniel] Markovits explains. ‘What I’ve done is give the best professional advice that I can. And that’s a perfectly apt way to think about your life, but from a systematic or a structural perspective, it insulates everybody from responsibility for terrible outcomes.’”
This led to massive layoffs from the 1970s-1990s, but it did keep companies afloat and cemented the concept that a company’s only responsibility is to maximize the value of shares. McKinsey expanded into government and public sector work, including the Trump Administration, and foreign countries: China, Turkey, Russia, and South Africa, Saudi Arabia. McKinsey consultants advised corrupt regimes about “better business practices” that resulted in harming humans and quality of life.
McKinsey is always interested in serving their clients’ best interests, but it has dirtied their hands to the detriment of harming others. How evil is DarkCyber own Lord Stephen? He pays for lunch, but that may be his sole saving grace. (Yes, he wants to be called Lord Stephen. Maybe he will tell the team how he went from rural Kentucky to “lord”?
Whitney Grace, September 1, 2020
Silicon Valley Style Journalists Want to Be Digital Peter Druckers
August 27, 2020
I wrote about the New York Times’ journalists who wrote about one another. I suggested that these “real” news professionals were taking a short cut. Boy, I mischaracterized what was happening. The problem is escalating because Silicon Valley-style journalists want to be like Peter Drucker. The management guru had a Ph.D. and a knack for nailing trends. Perhaps his most timely today is the phrase “knowledge worker.” Today’s “real” journalists want to skip the Drucker trajectory of management by objectives and thought leadership over decades. The Silicon Valley journalists want to get right to it: Stories about technology to grand statements about the way life should be. Not just tech life, but life in general.
The most recent example, in my opinion, is “Why People Can’t Stand Tech Journalists: An Interview with Casey Newton.” Mr. Newton lit up my radar when he suggested that Jeff Bezos give a weekly speech to explain Amazon. After viewing the Congressional hearings, I am not confident Mr. Bezos knows what is going on at Amazon, but I know that a “real” journalist telling the world’s richest man is the journalistic equivalent of Google’s sense of entitlement.
Once again we have two “real” journalists talking to one another. And what do we learn?
The spine of the “real” journalists’ baseline assumption is, “People don’t like us.” Once again a big generalization created to make “real” journalists into underdogs. I noted this statement:
The tech press, I think, has done probably the best work of its life collectively over the past four years.
Let’s do a quick show of hands. Who thinks that this statement from the “real” journalist pundit person will resonate like Dr. Drucker’s knowledge worker or management by objectives phrases? Here’s the Sillycon Valley statement:
I’ve been thinking about what we’ve lost because everything is so noisy and spicy.
Memorable. Noisy and spicy. Like a budget quasi ethnic restaurant and its comidas?
Several observations:
- The merging of entitlement, social justice, and inside baseball produces information that in some ways is as destructive as the output of nation states seeking to influence behavior in the US
- The laziness of talking to someone in the next cubicle or while standing on line at Philz Coffee is evidence of a serious problem. Thought leadership does not flow from unsubstantiated opinions.
- Journalism, whether at the New York Times, the Murdoch outfits, or zippy Silicon Valley-type “real” news producers is becoming indistinguishable from the yammerings of mid-tier consulting firms and student who couldn’t get an “A” from Dr. Drucker.
That’s a less-than-positive situation in my view. Has Mr. Bezos attended to the demand that he give a weekly speech? The answer is, “No.”
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2020
IDC Has a New Horse to Flog: Artificial Intelligence
August 26, 2020
Okay, it is official. IDC has a new horse to flog. “Artificial Intelligence” will be carrying a load. Navigate to “Worldwide Spending on AI Expected to Double in 4 Years, Says IDC.” Consulting firms and specialized research outfits need to have a “big thing” about which to opine. IDC has discovered one: AI. The write up states:
Global spending on artificial intelligence (AI) is forecast to double over the next four years, growing from US$50.1 billion in 2020 to more than US$110 billion in 2024, according to the IDC. Spending on AI systems will accelerate over the next several years as organizations deploy AI as part of their digital transformation efforts, said IDC. The CAGR for the 2019-2024 period will be 20.1%.
In the Age of Rona, we have some solid estimates. A 2X jump in 48 months.
Why, pray tell, is AI now moving into the big leagues of hyper growth. Check out this explanation:
Two of the leading drivers for AI adoption are delivering a better customer experience and helping employees to get better at their jobs.
Quite interesting. My DarkCyber research team believes that AI growth will be encouraged by these factors:
- Government investments in smart weapons and aggressive pushes for projects like “loyal wingman”
- A sense that staff must be terminated and replaced with systems which do not require health care, retirement plans, vacations, and special support for issues like addiction
- Packaged “smart” solutions like Amazon’s off the shelf products and services for machine learning.
These are probably trivial in the opinion of the IDC estimators, but DarkCyber is not convinced that baloney like customer experience and helping employees “get better at their jobs” are providing much oomph.
Stephen E Arnold, August 26, 2020
Gartner Group: Planning Its Next Generation of Marketing Pitches
August 25, 2020
If you are a fan of Gartner, a mid-tier consulting firm, you will want to navigate to “Gartner Hype-Cycle Adds 20+ New Technologies.” Now the “new” part interests me. Examples include:
- AI-assisted design (maybe Eli Attia’s method or Google’s approach?)
- Biodegradable sensors
- Differential privacy (like having one work mobile and one personal mobile?)
- Composable enterprise (I have zero clue what this means)
- Health passports (like a receipt for passage to Poveglia (a Plague Island in 1793?)
- Social distancing technologies.
The write up reports:
Trust models based on responsible authorities are being replaced by algorithmic trust models to ensure privacy and security of data, source of assets and identity of individuals and things. Algorithmic trust helps to ensure that organizations will not be exposed to the risk and costs of losing the trust of their customers, employees and partners. Emerging technologies tied to algorithmic trust include secure access service edge (SASE), differential privacy, authenticated provenance, bring your own identity, responsible AI and explainable AI.
When will AI create the Gartner hype cycle? Will use of that technology generate “trust”? Gobble down a biodegradable sensor and social distance. The future of consulting is … no human consultants. That might be a step forward? Come to think of it. An AI generating a hype chart might actually use numbers and data, not opinions of those good enough to work at a mid tier consulting firm.
Stephen E Arnold, August 25, 2020
CB Insights Is Moving Fast with VentureSource Acquisition
August 23, 2020
CB Insights is a market intelligence and business analytics platform that provides insights for venture capitalists, startups, angel investing, and more. Companies use CB Insights’s data to make business decisions, develop products, and project long term goals.
CB Insights wants to remain one of the top market intelligence and business analytics platforms. The firm has upped its game by investing in machine learning and AI algorithms to its platforms. CB Insights’s biggest selling points are the quality/quantity of data.
CB Insights recently acquired the Dow Jones VentureSource dataset, announced in the blog post: “Our First Acquisition: CB Insights Acquires VentureSource Data From Dow Jones.” The VentureSource acquisition adds more information to CB Insights’s platform:
“The VentureSource data assets will significantly expand our private markets coverage and strengthen our position as a leader in emerging technology information and private market data.”
It means instead of searching through various market intelligence platforms, the Dow Jones data sets are now available through CB Insights. CB Insights promotes itself as moving fast so its clients can too. They are quickly integrating the VentureSource data set into the CB Insights.
CB Insights is probably using its own data and AI to power their own business decisions. At least they get it for free.
Whitney Grace, August 23, 2020
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