Searching Google Drive Is Easier than Ever
December 29, 2015
Google search is supposed to be the most reliable and accurate search, so by proxy Google Drive should be easy to search as well, right? Wrong! Google Drive is like a cartoon black hole. It has an undisclosed amount of space and things easily get lost in it. Fear not, Google Drive users for Tech Republic has posted a nifty guide on how to use Google Drive’s search and locate your lost spreadsheets and documents: “Pro Tip: How To Use Google Drive’s New And Improved Search.”
Google drive can now be searched with more options: owner, keywords. Item name, shared with, date modified, file type, and located in. The article explains the quickest way to search Google Drive is with the standard wildcard. It is the search filter where you add an asterisk to any of the listed search types and viola, the search results list all viable options. The second method is described as the most powerful option, because it is brand new advanced search feature. By clicking on the drop down arrow box in the search box, you can access filters to limit or expand your search results.
“For anyone who depends upon Google Drive to store and manage their data, the new search tool will be a major plus. No longer will you have to dig through a vast array of search results to find what you’re looking for. Narrow the field down with the new Drive search box.”
The new search features are pretty neat, albeit standard for most databases. Why did it take Google so long to deploy them in the first place?
Whitney Grace, December 29, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Another Good Reason for Diversity in Tech
December 29, 2015
Just who decides what we see when we search? If we’re using Google, it’s a group of Google employees, of course. The Independent reports, “Google’s Search Results Aren’t as Unbiased as You Think—and a Lack of Diversity Could Be the Cause.” Writer Doug Bolton points to a TEDx talk by Swedish journalist Andreas Ekström, in which Ekström describes times Google has, and has not, counteracted campaigns to deliberately bump certain content. For example, the company did act to decouple racist imagery from searches for “Michelle Obama,” but did nothing to counter the association between a certain Norwegian murderer and dog poop. Boldon writes:
“Although different in motivation, the two campaigns worked in exactly the same way – but in the second, Google didn’t step in, and the inaccurate Breivik images stayed at the top of the search results for much longer. Few would argue that Google was wrong to end the Obama campaign or let the Breivik one run its course, but the two incidents shed light on the fact that behind such a large and faceless multi-billion dollar tech company as Google, there’s people deciding what we see when we search. And in a time when Google has such a poor record for gender and ethnic diversity and other companies struggle to address this imbalance (as IBM did when they attempted to get women into tech by encouraging them to ‘Hack a Hairdryer’), this fact becomes more pressing.”
The article notes that only 18 percent of Google’s tech staff worldwide are women, and that it is just two percent Hispanic and one percent black. Ekström’s talk has many asking what unperceived biases lurk in Google’s algorithms, and some are calling on the company anew to expand its hiring diversity. Naturally, though, any tech company can only do so much until more girls and minorities are encouraged to explore the sciences.
Cynthia Murrell, December 29, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Latest Perspectives Version from Tom Sawyer
December 29, 2015
Data visualization and analysis firm Tom Sawyer announces the latest release of their flagship platform in, “Tom Sawyer Software Releases Tom Sawyer Perspectives, Version 7.1, .NET Edition.” There is a new “timeline” view, and they promise a boost to layout performance. The press release specifies:
“Users can dynamically manipulate sliders in a timeline view to choose a specific time period. Once a time period is chosen, the elements within other views are filtered and updated accordingly to hone in on events based on time of occurrence.
“Users can now see how data progresses through time and focus on the events they are most interested in. Visualize the spread of an epidemic, the progression of crime in a city, or uncover how information disseminates across an organization’s departments.
“Tom Sawyer Perspectives, Version 7.1 also includes enhanced examples and user experience. New Crime Network, Commodity Flow, and Road Safety example applications are included, the look and feel of the tutorial applications is modernized, and neighborhood retrieval is improved. In addition, many quality and performance enhancements have been made in this release, including up to 16 percent improvement in layout performance.”
The write-up includes screenshots and links to further information, so interested readers should check it out. Founded in 1992, Tom Sawyer helps organizations in fields from intelligence to healthcare make connections and draw conclusions from data. The company maintains offices around the world, but makes its headquarters in Berkeley, California. They are also hiring as of this writing.
Cynthia Murrell, December 29, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
New Credit Card Feature Prevents Fraud
December 28, 2015
December is lauded as the most wonderful time due to that warm, fuzzy feeling and also because retail chains across the world will be operating in the black at the end of the year. Online shopping has shown record sales this year, especially since shoppers do not want to deal with crowds and limited stock. Shopping online allows them to shop from the convenience of their homes, have items delivered to their front door, and find great deals. Retail chains are not the only ones who love the holidays. Cyber criminals also enjoy this season, because people are less concerned with their persona information. Credit card and bank account numbers are tossed around without regard, creating ample game for identity theft.
While credit card companies have created more ways to protect consumers, such as the new microchip in cards, third party security companies have also created ways to protect consumers. Tender Armor is a security company with a simple and brilliant fraud prevention solution.
On the back of every credit card is a security code that is meant to protect the consumer, but it has its drawbacks. Tender Armor created a CVVPlus service that operates on the same principle as the security code, except of having the same code, it rotates on daily basis. Without the daily code, the credit card is useless. If a thief gets a hold of your personal information, Tender Armor’s CVVPlus immediately notifies you to take action. It is ingenious in its simplicity.
Tender Armor made this informative animated to explain how CVVPlus works: Tender Armor: CVVPlus.
In order to use Tender Armor, you must pay for an additional service on your credit card. With the increased risk in identity theft, it is worth the extra few bucks.
Whitney Grace, December 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
They Hid in Plain Sight
December 28, 2015
Those who carried out last November’s attacks in Paris made their plans in the open, but intelligence agencies failed to discover and thwart those plans beforehand. TechDirt reveals “Details of How The Paris Attacks Were Carried Out Show Little Effort by Attackers to Hide Themselves.” To us, that means intelligence agencies must not be making much use of the Dark Web. What about monitoring of mobile traffic? We suggest that some of the marketing may be different from the reality of these systems.
Given the apparent laxity of these attackers’ security measures, writer Mike Masnick wonders why security professionals continue to call for a way around encryption. He cites an in-depth report by the
Wall Street Journal’s Stacy Meichtry and Joshua Robinson, and shares some of their observations; see the article for those details. Masnick concludes:
“You can read the entire thing and note that, nowhere does the word ‘encryption’ appear. There is no suggestion that these guys really had to hide very much at all. So why is it that law enforcement and the intelligence community (and various politicians) around the globe are using the attacks as a reason to ban or undermine encryption? Again, it seems pretty clear that it’s very much about diverting blame for their own failures. Given how out in the open the attackers operated, the law enforcement and intelligence community failed massively in not stopping this. No wonder they’re grasping at straws to find something to blame, even if it had nothing to do with the attacks.”
Is “terrorism” indeed a red herring for those pushing the encryption issue? Were these attackers an anomaly, or are most terrorists making their plans in plain sight? Agencies may just need to look in the right directions.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Cyber Threat Intelligence Across the Enterprise
December 28, 2015
A blog series from iSightPartners aims to help organizations make the most of Cyber Threat Intelligence. The series is introduced in, “How CTI Helps Six Groups Do Their Jobs Better: A New Blog Series!” Writer Christina Jasinski explains:
“The importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) has become more widely recognized in the past year. But not many people realize how many different ways threat intelligence can be utilized across an enterprise. That’s why now is a good time to drill down and describe the wide range of use cases for employing threat intelligence for many different functions within an IT organization.
“Are you a CISO, SOC Analyst or an Incident Responder? Stay tuned….
“This is the first post in an iSIGHT Partners blog series that will delve into how IT security professionals in each of six distinct roles within an organization’s information security program can (and should) apply threat intelligence to their function. Each post will include 3-4 use cases, how CTI can be used by professionals in that role, and the type of threat intelligence that is required to achieve their objectives.”
Jasinski goes on to describe what her series has to offer professionals in each of those roles, and concludes by promising to reveal practical solutions to CTI quandaries. Follow her blog posts to learn those answers.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Desktop Web Searches Began Permanent Decline in 2013
December 28, 2015
The article on Quartz titled The Product that Made Google Has Peaked for Good presents the startling information that desktop web search is expected to remain in permanent decline. The main reason for Google’s prestige and growth peaked in 2013, the article suggests, and then declined for 20 out of the last 21 months. The article reports,
“Google doesn’t regularly disclose the number of search queries that its users conduct. (It has been “more than 100 billion” per month for a while.)… And while a nice chunk of Google’s revenue growth is coming from YouTube, its overall “Google Websites” business—mostly search ads, but also YouTube, Google Maps, etc.—grew sales 14%, 13%, and 16% year-over-year during the first three quarters of 2015. The mobile era hasn’t resulted in any sort of collapse of Google’s ad business.”
The article also conveys that mobile searches accounted for over half of all global search queries. Yes, overall Google is still a healthy company, but this decline in desktop searches will still certainly force some fancy dancing from Alphabet Google. The article does not provide any possible reasons for the decline. The foundations of the company might seem a little less stable between this decline and the restless future of Internet ads.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Index and Search: The Threat Intel Positioning
December 24, 2015
The Dark Web is out there. Not surprisingly, there are a number of companies indexing Dark Web content. One of these firms is Digital Shadows. I learned in “Cyber Threat Intelligence and the Market of One” that search and retrieval has a new suit of clothes. The write up states:
Cyber situational awareness shifts from only delivering generic threat intelligence that informs, to also delivering specific information to defend against adversaries launching targeted attacks against an organization or individual(s) within an organization. Cyber situational awareness brings together all the information that an organization possesses about itself such as its people, risk posture, attack surface, entire digital footprint and digital shadow (a subset of a digital footprint that consists of exposed personal, technical or organizational information that is often highly confidential, sensitive or proprietary). Information is gathered by examining millions of social sites, cloud-based file sharing sites and other points of compromise across a multi-lingual, global environment spanning the visible, dark and deep web.
The approach seems to echo the Palantir “platform” approach. Palantir, one must not forget, is a 2015 version of the Autonomy platform. The notion is that content is acquired, federated, and made useful via outputs and user friendly controls.
What’s interesting is that Digital Shadows indexes content and provides a search system to authorized users. Commercial access is available via tie up in the UK.
My point is that search is alive and well. The positioning of search and retrieval is undergoing some fitting and tucking. There are new terms, new rationale for business cases (fear is workable today), and new players. Under the surface are crawlers, indexes, and search functions.
The death of search may be news to the new players like Digital Shadows, Palantir, and Recorded Future, among numerous other shape shifters.
Stephen E Arnold, December 24, 2015
GoDaddy and Search
December 23, 2015
Years ago, I understood that GoDaddy, the domain name outfit, purchased a search company doing business as Innerprise. The press release issued in September 2004 said:
[GoDaddy] will incorporate Innerprise’s search products, including Enterprise Search 2004 and Innerprise Hosted Search, into the GoDaddy product catalog, augmenting the Company’s complete line of Web development tools including domain name registration, hosting, email systems, SSL certificates, and other complementary products and services that assist customers in building and maintaining a presence on the Internet.
I learned in “Why GoDaddy Built Its Search Engine from Scratch”:
GoDaddy, seeking to improve customer service, built a custom search engine that generates domain names on the fly for its small business customers. Building it wasn’t the best option, the company’s executives say. It was the only option.
The write up points out:
Custom software development is the preferred approach among online businesses.
How did GoDaddy meet its need for a search system:
… The engineering feat required GoDaddy to create search crawlers that can traverse hundreds of international registries, including in South Africa and Indonesia, generating tens of thousands of potential domain names in near real-time. The company also built machine-learning algorithms, in conjunction with open source Hadoop data processing software, to help surface the best domain names it can.
The write up does not reference the Innerprise solution. There is no hint of the cost of the system. The message is that an enterprising Yahoo alum can build a search engine from scratch, and you should too. There’s a new project for your New Year’s resolutions list.
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2015
RankBrain, the Latest AI from Google, Improves Search Through Understanding and Learning
December 23, 2015
The article on Entrepreneur titled Meet RankBrain, the New AI Behind Google’s Search Results introduces the AI that Google believes will aid the search engine in better understanding the queries it receives. RankBrain is capable of connecting related words to the search terms based on context and relevance. The article explains,
“The real intention of this AI wasn’t to change visitors’ search engine results pages (SERPs) — rather, it was to predict them. As a machine-learning system, RankBrain actually teaches itself how to do something instead of needing a human to program it…According to Jack Clark, writing for Bloomberg on the topic: “[Rankbrain] uses artificial intelligence to embed vast amounts of written language into mathematical entities — called vectors — that the computer can understand.”
Google scientist Greg Corrado spoke of RankBrain actually exceeding his expectations. In one experiment, RankBrain beat a team of search engineers in predicting which pages would rank highest. (The engineers were right 70% of the time, RankBrain 80%.) The article also addresses concerns that many vulnerable brands relying on SEOs may have. The article ventures to guess that it will be mainly newer brands and services that will see a ranking shift. But of course, with impending updates, that may change.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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