Think twice before you hire a chief AI officer

SAN FRANCISCO -- Artificial intelligence (AI) will become so instrumental to corporate revenue growth that businesses should hire a chief artificial intelligence officer to spearhead AI initiatives, says Andrew Ng, who drives global AI strategy at Chinese search giant Baidu. Not so fast, says Neil Jacobstein, chair of artificial intelligence and robotics at Singularity University, who isn't a fan of companies centralizing leadership for AI functions.The two clashed on the topic here last week at the WSJ's CIO Network, where Ng and Jacobstein spoke on a panel. Although they disagreed on the organizational approaches to AI, Ng and Jacobstein both said that the technology is a potentially game-changing way to harness the vast amounts of information corporations collect.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware picks off broader targets with greater severity

If you thought it was bad when the FBI reported last year that ransomware was on the rise, you should read the forecasts for this year. According to SonicWall’s most recent Annual Threat Report, “ransomware attacks grew 167 times since 2015, from 3.8 million in 2015 to 638 million in 2016.”This year, TrendMicro sees a 25-percent growth in the number of new ransomware families available for use in breaches. Reports of the encroachment of ransomware on government, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, and health and safety are already climbing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware picks off broader targets with greater severity

If you thought it was bad when the FBI reported last year that ransomware was on the rise, you should read the forecasts for this year. According to SonicWall’s most recent Annual Threat Report, “ransomware attacks grew 167 times since 2015, from 3.8 million in 2015 to 638 million in 2016.”This year, TrendMicro sees a 25-percent growth in the number of new ransomware families available for use in breaches. Reports of the encroachment of ransomware on government, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, and health and safety are already climbing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 tips to strengthen online security

Seeing the lightImage by PexelsA lightbulb. We can connect a lightbulb in our house to the internet in case we need to turn the lights on or off while we’re away – or if we’re too lazy to walk to the light switch. The more lightbulbs, devices, apps and online services we use and connect with on a daily basis, the more we expose ourselves to security risks. This is the nature of how our digital lives have evolved and it requires more active participation as individuals to protect ourselves and minimize exposure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 tips to strengthen online security

Seeing the lightImage by PexelsA lightbulb. We can connect a lightbulb in our house to the internet in case we need to turn the lights on or off while we’re away – or if we’re too lazy to walk to the light switch. The more lightbulbs, devices, apps and online services we use and connect with on a daily basis, the more we expose ourselves to security risks. This is the nature of how our digital lives have evolved and it requires more active participation as individuals to protect ourselves and minimize exposure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to reduce your smartphone use without missing out

Even if you haven’t walked into a pole or driven your car into a pond because you were staring at your smartphone, there’s a chance you’ve wondered if it’s time to cut back.If you enjoy Android phone as much as I do, there’s little doubt it’s your most personal device and hardly leaves your side. You’re not alone. A Pew study from 2015 pointed to how much the smartphone is central to most people’s lives in important ways, like looking up a medical condition, real estate listings, or a job search.All those messaging apps and handy tools from Google make your phone the ideal companion. And as trendy and cool as going on a “digital detox” may be, it’s just not practical. The right path is to go for the middle road. There are smart ways to curtail your use that won’t mean disconnecting from the people and events that are important in your life. Here are some tips to get you started.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Catalyst for Cloud Networking with Containerization

Today’s applications are connected both to users and other applications, increasing traffic and profoundly affecting performance. Recently, there has been much discussion around the Application Performance Management (APM) category. This got me thinking about new cloud migration versus legacy application tools. Is the industry being myopic and dealing with silos? Wouldn’t it be amazing if...
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My ITIL Experience In An Org Chart

Some time back, someone challenged me to explain how ITIL impacted my workflow.

ITIL Blows

The diagram is largely inspired by my time working for a Top 5 IT Consultancy which was utterly convinced that more managers and project managers would improve the efficiency of the work performed because we could improve the process. In the end there were twelve project managers plus three manager-managers to schedule the work for just three engineers.

I pointed out that hiring another another engineer would improve work output by 33% but none of the ITIL project managers could understand this. It wasn’t about productivity, the customer, or address the need, the only focus was about hitting the deadlines, planned work hours and budgets.

ITIL is a disease. Kill it with fire.

The post My ITIL Experience In An Org Chart appeared first on EtherealMind.

Cybersecurity and National Elections

The European Union today faces a number of serious challenges including growing levels of populism and the threat of foreign intervention through cyber-attacks. Last year’s alleged Russian-led cyberattacks on US Democratic Party servers as well as Chinese government cyber espionage against other governments and companies have provided worrying precedents. Although it is hard to measure the actual impact these attacks had on the election results in the US, concerns are growing amongst European leaders that their electoral procedures are vulnerable to manipulation.

Frédéric Donck

CA to acquire security testing firm Veracode for $614M

CA Technologies is acquiring application security testing company Veracode for US$614 million in cash, in a bid to broaden its development and testing offering for enterprises and app developers.The acquisition is expected to be completed by the second quarter of this year.Privately-held Veracode has offices in Burlington, Massachusetts and London, and employs over 500 people worldwide. The company has around 1,400 small and large customers.Offering a software-as-a-service platform, Veracode is focused on technologies that let developers improve the security of applications right from inception through production.“Embedding security into the software development lifecycle and making it an automated part of the continuous delivery process means that developers can write code without the hassles of a manual and fragmented approach to security,” CA’s President and Chief Product Officer Ayman Sayed wrote in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM-Salesforce deal will bring Watson data into applications

Watson and Einstein are teaming up, and IBM and Salesforce hope the pairing proves as smart as it sounds. The two companies are working together to bring information from IBM systems into Salesforce’s products through a series of integrations announced Monday.As part of the partnership, joint customers will be able to combine Watson's insights from their unstructured data with Einstein's insights about information stored with Salesforce. That comes alongside other integrations that bring weather and application data into Salesforce.Both Salesforce and IBM have massive customer bases that could be reached by this partnership. It's an interesting deal given IBM's historic strength in on-premises computing and Salesforce's cloud focus. Each tech titan has been focused on machine intelligence, so collaborating makes sense. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Linux Migration: Creating Presentations

Long-time readers of my site know that I’m a fan of Markdown, and I use it extensively. (This blog, in fact, is written entirely in Markdown and converted to HTML using Jekyll on GitHub Pages.) Since migrating to Linux as my primary desktop OS, I’ve also made the transition to doing almost all my presentations in Markdown as well. Here are the details on how I’m using Markdown for creating presentations on Linux.

There are a number of tools involved in my workflow for creating Markdown-based presentations on Linux:

  • Sublime Text 3 (with the Markdown Extended and Monokai Extended packages) is used for editing the “source” files for a presentation. Three “source” files are involved: a Markdown file, a HTML file, and a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file.
  • Remarkjs takes the Markdown-formatted content and converts it into a dynamic HTML-based presentation, formatting it according to the styles defined in the CSS file. This gives tremendous flexibility in formatting the presentation. (Check it out on GitHub.)
  • I use a web browser to display the HTML output generated by Remarkjs (in my case, I’m using Firefox on my Fedora laptop).
  • To help with creating a PDF version of Continue reading

Consumers are wary of smart homes that know too much

Nearly two-thirds of consumers are worried about home IoT devices listening in on their conversations, according to a Gartner survey released Monday.Those jitters aren’t too surprising after recent news items about TV announcers inadvertently activating viewers’ Amazon Echos, or about data from digital assistants being used as evidence in criminal trials. But privacy concerns are just one hurdle smart homes still have to overcome, according to the survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Consumers are wary of smart homes that know too much

Nearly two-thirds of consumers are worried about home IoT devices listening in on their conversations, according to a Gartner survey released Monday.Those jitters aren’t too surprising after recent news items about TV announcers inadvertently activating viewers’ Amazon Echos, or about data from digital assistants being used as evidence in criminal trials. But privacy concerns are just one hurdle smart homes still have to overcome, according to the survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GE favors SaaS for non-differentiated apps, moves away from MPLS, has big plans for IoT

GE is rethinking many aspects of IT, including its internal reporting structure, where and how it supports apps, and how it networks its 4,500 offices.  Network World Editor in Chief John Dix got an update from Chris Drumgoole, Chief Technology Officer of IT. GE  Chris Drumgoole, GE Chief Technology Officer of IT As Chief Technology Officer for GE IT (GE also has a CTO on the product side), how do you work with the IT teams in the business units?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GE favors SaaS for non-differentiated apps, moves away from MPLS, has big plans for IoT

GE is rethinking many aspects of IT, including its internal reporting structure, where and how it supports apps, and how it networks its 4,500 offices.  Network World Editor in Chief John Dix got an update from Chris Drumgoole, Chief Technology Officer of IT. GE  Chris Drumgoole, GE Chief Technology Officer of IT As Chief Technology Officer for GE IT (GE also has a CTO on the product side), how do you work with the IT teams in the business units?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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