Customer Data Isn’t Always an Asset: Lessons from the Marriott Data Breach
As data analytics have improved, the massive amounts of data that companies acquire from their customers has only gained in economic value. In the corporate world of today, this data can be a real asset for companies. However, as today’s news, that the records of over 500 million guests of Marriott International’s Starwood division hotels were involved in a data breach, makes clear, corporate thinking about the value of customer data needs to be reevaluated.
Especially when it comes to corporate acquisitions, companies need to start treating customer data as a potential liability, as well as an asset.
In September 2016, Marriott International acquired Starwood for $13.6 billion. When Marriott International sought to buy the Starwood hotel chain, Starwood’s customer data, played a central role in their reasoning for the acquisition. Citing higher income and better brand loyalty among program members, Arne Sorenson, the Marriott CEO, specifically referred to Starwood’s loyalty program as a “central, strategic rationale for the transaction.” Loyalty programs, in addition to attracting repeat customers, also “provide hotels with a wealth of information on their guests” which hotels can use to “create laser focused marketing campaigns for various different kinds of guests.”
While Continue reading
SDxCentral Weekly Wrap: Amazon Embraces Hardware, Dumps Oracle
SDxCentral Weekly Wrap for Nov. 30, 2018: Nokia creates access networks group, and more.
T-Mobile Customer Service Reps Use AWS to Predict Why You’re Calling
The company uses AWS SageMaker Ground Truth to create natural language understanding models for customer service conversations.
VMware, Dell Tech Report Revenue Surge Ahead of Tracking Stock Vote
The elephant in the room on both earnings calls was the VMware-AWS relationship. The latest offering — AWS branded servers running in customers’ on-premises data centers — could hurt legacy hardware vendors like Dell.
Weekend Reads 113018
To hear the moans on Wall Street, you’d think the end of the world is no longer coming—it has arrived. Successive waves of selling have pushed share prices down this year. To about where they were at the beginning of the year. Hardly a catastrophe for investors. Continue reading
SDxCentral’s Weekly Roundup — November 30, 2018
Google Cloud lands in Hong Kong; Infinera adds optical network to its open line system; and plenty of news from AWS re:Invent.
BiB 063: Can An SD-WAN Device Replace A WAN Router?
Let’s examine the assertion from Silver Peak that they can replace WAN routers. Is an SD-WAN device able to be a drop-in replacement for a WAN router from Cisco or whomever? Probably, but it depends.
The post BiB 063: Can An SD-WAN Device Replace A WAN Router? appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Weekly Show 418: A Real-World Network Design Session
Today we discuss actual network design challenges with two network engineers at the University of Idaho, including firewalling and microsegmentation, identity management in the wireless network, and a home-grown network management system.
The post Weekly Show 418: A Real-World Network Design Session appeared first on Packet Pushers.
[Sponsored] Short Take – Anuta Networks
Anuta Networks joins Network Collective for a second time, again entrusting the message to those who use their products in the real world. In this Network Collective Short Take, Ryan Lynn of Trace3 joins us to talk about the general state of network orchestration and why Trace3 is excited about what Anuta’s ATOM provides to their customers.
Thank you to Anuta Networks for sponsoring today’s episode and supporting the content we’re creating here at Network Collective. If you would like to learn more about Anuta’s ATOM platform, you can head to https://anutanetworks.com/collective for lots of great information, white papers, case studies, and to try the ATOM platform out for yourself.
Ryan Lynn
Vice President of Emerging Architecture - Trace3
Jordan Martin
Host
The post [Sponsored] Short Take – Anuta Networks appeared first on Network Collective.
Cisco, AT&T, Intel Promote Best Anti-Botnet Practices for Companies
The anti-botnet guide provides best practices for service providers, enterprises, and software and device manufacturers.
A Critical First Step for IoT Security in Senegal
As barriers to entry start to fall, the Internet of Things (IoT) industry could provide Africa with an opportunity to build a brighter economic future.
Several countries are already establishing tech hubs that could supply the infrastructure to fuel IoT, and while there is still a wide gap between the haves and have-nots of Internet access, with more than 60 per cent of Africa still offline, it’s easy to build a case for connectivity.
Mass urbanization is on the rise, and investing in the infrastructure needed to fuel future smart cities and connect more Africans to the opportunity the Internet offers is a logical step forward. But it’s also important that security is in place to support this promising new economy.
Unfortunately, many IoT devices are rushed to market with little thought for basic security and privacy protections. In a world with so many newly connected things, it’s hard for consumers to keep up – and to know if manufactures are protecting their privacy and security.
To address this, Senegal has taken a critical first step. They’ve signed a memorandum of understanding with the Internet Society to strengthen IoT security. Together, they will develop an IoT Security Framework for Senegal Continue reading
The Magic of the CCIE
I stumbled across a great Reddit thread this week: Is the CCIE as impossible as it seems? There are a lot of great replies on that thread about people passing and the “good old days” of Banyan Vines, Appletalk, and more. It’s also a fascinating look into how the rest of the networking industry sees exams like the CCIE and JNCIE. Because those of us that have the numbers seem to be magicians to some.
Sleight of CLI Hand
Have you ever seen the cups and balls magic trick? Here’s an excellent example of it from the recently departed Ricky Jay:
Impressive, right? It’s amazing to behold a master craftsman at work. Every time I watch that video I’m amazed. I know he’s doing sleight of hand. But I can’t catch it. Now, watch this same video but with annotations turned on. SPOILER ALERT – The annotations will tell you EXACTLY where the tricks are done:
Is it more impressive now that you know how the tricks are done? Check out this demonstration from Penn and Teller that shows you exactly how they do the tricks as well:
Okay, so it’s a little less mystifying now that you’ve Continue reading
Worth Reading: Back to Basics
I’m not the only one ranting about the need to get a firm grasp on fundamentals before doing the sexy stuff. Found an old blog post by Joel Spolsky (of the Law of Leaky Abstractions fame) on the exact same topic from programming perspective.
If you ever had to deal with a programming language, it’s definitely worth reading… but some of the details might make your head explode. You’ve been warned ;)