Sunday, February 25, 2018

It’s hard to get your head around the scope of security breaches. Michelle Post sent me this article to help me explain it to my students.
The cost of a data breach in 2018
58 data records are stolen every second at an average cost of $141 each.
… The 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study from the Ponemon Institute, sponsored by IBM, puts the global average cost at $3.6 million, or $141 per data record. That’s a reduction on the average cost in 2016, but the average size of data breaches has increased. It’s also worth noting that the average cost of a data breach in the United States is much higher at $7.3 million.




Don’t expect complete or even substantial improvement in election security.
Homeland Security's tall order: A hacker-free election
… The agency declared the US election system, which is run by a fragmented group of officials in all 50 states as well as dozens of smaller local governments, to be a part of the nation's "critical infrastructure" in January 2017. The agency doesn't have any legal authority over election officials, but it offers programs to help them keep hackers out of voting machines, voter registration databases and public-facing election websites.
… Manfra told us that, so far, 32 states and 31 local governments have taken part in at least the most basic cybersecurity help offered by Homeland Security, and the agency will have finished 14 deeper assessments by the end of April.




No details in the article.
Martha Stoddard reports that the Nebraska legislature passed LB 757 on a 46-0 vote.
The measure requires any individual or commercial entity holding personal information to implement and maintain security procedures. The same requirement would apply if the information is given to a third party.
If a breach does occur, LB 757 would prohibit credit reporting entities from charging affected consumers to place, temporarily lift or remove security freezes.
Read more on Omaha.com.




Will ‘outrageous’ replace ‘visionary?’ The advantage of a business-like approach to ad purchasing? Or, is the Facebook algorithm changing how politicians communicate?
How Trump Conquered Facebook—Without Russian Ads
.. Like many things at Facebook, the ads auction is a version of something Google built first. As on Google, Facebook has a piece of ad real estate that it’s auctioning off, and potential advertisers submit a piece of ad creative, a targeting spec for their ideal user, and a bid for what they’re willing to pay to obtain a desired response (such as a click, a like, or a comment). Rather than simply reward that ad position to the highest bidder, though, Facebook uses a complex model that considers both the dollar value of each bid as well as how good a piece of clickbait (or view-bait, or comment-bait) the corresponding ad is. If Facebook’s model thinks your ad is 10 times more likely to engage a user than another company’s ad, then your effective bid at auction is considered 10 times higher than a company willing to pay the same dollar amount.




How can you regulate what you can’t accurately measure?
The FCC’s New Broadband Map Paints an Irresponsibly Inaccurate Picture of American Broadband
… Back in 2011 the Obama FCC announced the creation of a $300 million broadband map using the Form 477 data ISPs provide the agency. At the time the map was heralded as a novel way to highlight the coverage gaps and competitive shortcomings of what is pretty clearly a broken US telecom market.
But users quickly discovered that despite the project’s steep price tag and good intentions, the map itself was almost useless. Before the map was mothballed due to a lack of funding, it spent a few years hallucinating competitors out of whole cloth, over-stating both speed and availability, while failing utterly to mention service pricing whatsoever.
… Fast forward to this week when the Ajit Pai run FCC announced they were relaunching a “new” version of the map as part of Pai’s (already arguably hollow) dedication to closing the digital divide. You can check out the updated map here.
… While the “new” map has received a modest graphical overhaul, all of the problems inherited from its initial iteration remain. Users were quick to highlight on Twitter that the map still dramatically overstates available ISPs (often to a comical degree), inaccurately lists the speeds they can provide, and fails to mention service pricing whatsoever.




Perspective. How companies will use (and abandon) tech.
Customer Experience Revolution Ahead: Gartner
Enterprises have begun overhauling the way they handle customer experiences, suggested Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner, at the firm's customer experience event in Tokyo earlier this week.
Twenty percent of brands will abandon their mobile apps by 2019, he predicted, choosing consumer messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WeChat instead.
By 2020, Alvarez said, we can expect to see the following changes:
  • 25 percent of customer service and support operations will have integrated virtual customer assistant or chatbot technology across engagement channels;
  • 20 percent of large enterprises will have evaluated and adopted augmented, virtual and mixed reality immersive solutions; and
  • 30 percent of all B2B companies will have employed artificial intelligence to augment at least one of their primary sales processes.




I’d like to think we prepare our students to cover their tracks.
Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Because He Couldn’t Figure Out How to Convert PDFs to Word Files
There are two types of people in this world: those who know how to convert PDFs into Word documents and those who are indicted for money laundering. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is the second kind of person.


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