Sunday, June 25, 2017

Annoying, but probably no real threat to the government.  Unless someone uses “password” as a password?
The British Parliament has been hit by a cyberattack
   Authorities discovered unusual activity on the computer networks this morning, and have moved to take steps to protect them, which appears to include preventing access outside of the Palace of Westminster.  In an e-mail to Members of Parliament, parliamentary authorities say that they have “confirmed that hackers were carrying out a sustained and determined attack on all parliamentary user accounts in an attempt to identify weak passwords.”

(Related).  Very Trump-esque. 
Tweet frim: Henry Smith MP
Sorry no parliamentary email access today - we're under cyber attack from Kim Jong Un, Putin or a kid in his mom's basement or something...


The cost of a security breach…
Anthem will pay $115 million in largest data breach settlement in history
Anthem Inc. agreed to pay $115 million in a deal to end a court battle over the 2015 data breach where hackers gained access to sensitive records for nearly 80 million Americans.  The funds will go toward credit monitoring and reimbursement for customers, in addition to as much as $38 million in attorneys’ fees.
The 2015 breach saw hackers access records including Social Security numbers, birthdays, addresses, detailed employment information and income data.  Chinese state-sponsored attackers were suspected in the attack but there has been no official attribution.
The settlement requires Anthem to guarantee “a certain level of funding for information security and to implement or maintain numerous specific changes to its data security systems, including encryption of certain information and archiving sensitive data with strict access controls,” according to a statement by the plaintiffs’ attorneys . “The settlement is designed to protect class members from future risk, provide compensation, and ensure best cybersecurity practices to deter against future data breaches.”


I think he may have a point.  I’d like to see his tweets arranged like a diary.
I Found Trump’s Diary—Hiding in Plain Sight
Legally risky, undiplomatic and sometimes wrong, Trump’s Twitter feed is a document for the ages.  And historians don’t want to lose it.


Interesting summary.
What Amazon taught us this week: Data-centric companies will devour competitors
   The Wall Street Journal was one of the few publications to emphasize this vital aspect of the proposed buyout.  The Journal rightly points out that the deal would enable the new company to combine its online and in-store knowledge to better predict what goods to carry in-store and to offer cross-sell promotions to customers who shop at both venues.
All true.  But there’s a deeper principle involved here.  In general, a web company with high-quality data on its customers (Amazon, in this case) will have a much higher enterprise valuation than an equivalently sized “real economy” company with a less robust data set.  For example, Walmart has four times the revenue but only half the valuation of Amazon.
   As I see it, here are the key lessons we should draw from the deal:
·         This is just the beginning.
·         Deep data confers competitive advantages that may be unassailable.
·         It’s the depth and accuracy of the data that counts.


Somewhat misleading, but clearly this one will be big!
A game that isn't even out yet has already racked up $100 million in revenue
   "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" is available only on PC so far (it's coming to Xbox One later this year).  It has only one game mode, and no single-player campaign.  It's not even fully complete — the game is available in "early access" through the online game platform Steam, which means it isn't finished but you can buy it early and start playing now.  
As it turns out, over 4 million people have already done that after just four months of availability.  At $30 apiece, that's quite a bit of revenue for an unfinished game — somewhere in the ballpark of $100 million, according to the folks at Bluehole Games. 

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