The role of IT decision makers in purchasing new technology
IT decision makers (ITDM) in the EMEA region serve as their company's "gatekeepers" and primary influencers, when it comes to choosing new technology purchases for the company. This is according to a new report by Spiceworks, which digs deeper into the roles of ITDMs and business decision makers (BDMs) when it comes to purchasing new technologies.
The study, "ITDM vs. BDM: Tech Purchase Superheroes," says BDM’s role is to "give final approval for technology funds and purchases."
5 things to keep in mind when building an Alexa skill
A team of us at Red Badger, which consisted of myself, Marcel, Graham and Roman, had two weeks to play around with Amazon’s Alexa and build a sommelier skill to recommend wine pairings to your food. We’re writing a four-part series to take you through what we learned from our varied perspectives.
There’s been so many blog posts written about the rise of chatbots and Voice User Interface (VUI), some even marking 2017 to be the year of the bots.
User-Agent based attacks are a low-key risk that shouldn't be overlooked
Old, unpatched vulnerabilities allow hackers to take over systems using the User-Agent string -- an elementary part of virtually every HTTP request.
It is a known fact that while the majority of vulnerabilities discovered or reported are fixed by the vendor and a patch is issued, many systems end up not being patched in a timely manner or even at all, for that matter. There are many possible reasons for that, the most common being:
Three penetration testing tips to out-hack hackers
It should come as no surprise that hackers have been busy lately. According to my go-to resource on hacking stats, the Identify Theft Resource Center, breaches jumped from 780 in 2015 to 1,093 in 2016. Is there a way to take a proactive approach to data security that doesn’t involved investing in more firewalls or virus protection software and ultimately get to the real-source of vulnerabilities?
Yes and yes. The answer is penetration testing, or pen testing for short. It’s a white-hat approach that challenges organizations to expose the vulnerabilities inside their own systems by understanding how a cybercriminal could exploit their internal information.
Three UK suffers new data breach
A couple of bizarre incidents happened to Three users in the UK recently, and the media are suspecting the company might be facing a new data breach.
According to a report by The Guardian, some customers, logging into their accounts, were "presented with the names, addresses, phone numbers and call histories of strangers."
Businesses make automated security a part of DevOps
Mature development organizations make sure automated security is built into their DevOps practice early, everywhere and at scale, according to a new report by Sonatype.
The report, entitled 2017 DevSecOps Community Survey, is based on a poll of 2,292 IT professionals, and also says IT organisations continue to struggle with data breaches.
IBM announces price-competitive cold storage solutions
IBM is jumping on the cold storage bandwagon, offering a service and trying to take Amazon, Microsoft, and Google a piece of their pie. The company recently announced the launch of IBM Cloud Object Storage Cold Vault, which basically stores data that only needs to be accessed every once in a while.
There will also be a cold storage service with "pay as you use" model, called IBM Cloud Object Storage Flex, coming later this year.
ARM introduces new architecture for artificial intelligence and machine learning
ARM, the Cambridge-based microprocessor company has just announced a new processor architecture that it promises will give a significant boost to artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.
The new technology, announced this Tuesday, is called DynamIQ and ARM describes it as "probably the biggest micro-architectural shift since ARM announced 64-bit ARMv8-A in 2011." This "monumental shift in multicore microarchitecture" is not the processor itself -- new Cortex-A processors will be built by ARM’s partners, both of which will be announced later this year.
Analytics alone aren't enough to guide your business
Everywhere you look, businesses of all shapes and sizes are looking to transform themselves into digital businesses. This digital transformation tidal wave is often predicated on building a more robust, data-driven organization.
Executives want to make more informed, more strategic decisions, and see analytics technologies, from big data to predictive analytics to good old fashioned business intelligence, as the silver bullet to do so. It’s no secret that businesses are buying in big. Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics are expected to grow 50 percent, up from $122 billion in 2015 to $187 billion in 2019, according to research from IDC.
VR's potential in the workplace
In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has captivated our imagination, filling the minds of the masses with potential use cases that seemed straight out of the pages of science fiction films.
While you may instantly think of gaming and entertainment in association with VR, it has tremendous promise for corporate innovation and the workplace of the future. Virtual Reality technology is steadily becoming one of the most sought after pieces of technology that could change the way we host conference calls, present information and collaborate with each other.
Who's liable for decisions AI and robotics make?
Reuters news agency reported on February 2017 16 that "European lawmakers called [...] for EU-wide legislation to regulate the rise of robots, including an ethical framework for their development and deployment and the establishment of liability for the actions of robots including self-driving cars."
The question of determining "liability" for decision making achieved by robots or artificial intelligence is an interesting and important subject as the implementation of this technology increases in industry, and starts to more directly impact our day to day lives.
IBM announces Hyperledger Fabric-based Blockchain-as-a-service
It was a big day for IBM today, as it unveiled its first Blockchain-as-a-service. Unveiled at the Interconnect conference, this commercial blockchain service is based on the open-source Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, built by The Linux Foundation.
In a nutshell, IBM Blockchain allows customers to build their own secure blockchain networks. It took the company a year to bring it from the initial announcement to a finished product.
SAS: Open source software comes with hidden costs and problems
Open source technologies are great for organizations, but they're far from perfect. As a matter of fact, many of the open source technologies in use today come with hidden costs and problems. This is according to a new report by SAS, which was created on a poll of 300 executives across the UK and Ireland.
These costs and problems mostly revolve around training staff, as well as recruiting, or replacing employees with essential data science skills.
The challenges and promise of the connected car
The data from connected cars could reach a revenue potential of $1.5 trillion by 2030, according to a study from McKinsey. This connectivity will have a transformative effect on both consumer and commercial vehicles, well beyond previous advancements such as on-board diagnostics or airbags. Employers such as cable companies and delivery firms are very eager to further implement connectivity to monitor drivers and improve safety.
In the coming years connected cars will be a standard, acting as both hotspots and sending out information to other vehicles, toll booths, and various other sensors.
Seven year-old Linux vulnerability now patched
An old vulnerability was just discovered in the Linux kernel, potentially allowing hackers to gain privilege escalation, or cause a denial of service. The vulnerability was quickly fixed and there have been no signs of it in the wild, although that does not necessarily mean it went unnoticed.
According to Positive Technologies expert Alexander Popov, the CVE-2017-2636 vulnerability is seven years old and has affected the majority of popular Linux distributions, including RHEL 6/7, Fedora, SuSE, Debian, and Ubuntu.
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