Monday, January 04, 2021

One way to explain your security…

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/customer-data-security-5-pillars-to-keep-customer-information-safe/

Customer Data Security: 5 Pillars To Keep Customer Information Safe

It is crucial to taking the right precautions when it comes to data management. Today’s world of big data and mass collection of consumer information has resulted in a significant rise in cybercrime. Consumers now look for a deeper level of trust when it comes to internet security.





Oh, right… Analytical purposes. Remember that Ethical Hacking students.

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-web-scraping-tools/

The Best Web Scraping Tools Online

Need to collect data from websites for analytical purposes? These web scraping tools make it easy.





Forecasts to guide your 2021 planning?

https://threatpost.com/2021-cybersecurity-trends/162629/

2021 Cybersecurity Trends: Bigger Budgets, Endpoint Emphasis and Cloud

Insider threats are redefined in 2021, the work-from-home trend will continue define the threat landscape and mobile endpoints become the attack vector of choice, according 2021 forecasts.

After shrinking in 2020, cybersecurity budgets in 2021 climb higher than pre-pandemic limits. Authentication, cloud data protection and application monitoring will top the list of CISO budget and cybersecurity priorities. According to experts, these are just a few of the themes to dominate the year ahead.

Here is round-robin of expert opinions illuminating the year ahead.





Looking for new lawyers because the old ones couldn’t answer these questions?

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3601991/5-questions-cisos-should-ask-prospective-corporate-lawyers.html#tk.rss_all

5 questions CISOs should ask prospective corporate lawyers

Where can you find an attorney with the knowledge and insight to help you navigate thorny privacy and security issues? These five questions will help you find the right match.





Now fix all those databases that came before the math.

https://www.bespacific.com/differential-privacy/

Differential Privacy

Harvard University Privacy Tools Project – “…Differential privacy is a rigorous mathematical definition of privacy. In the simplest setting, consider an algorithm that analyzes a dataset and computes statistics about it (such as the data’s mean, variance, median, mode, etc.). Such an algorithm is said to be differentially private if by looking at the output, one cannot tell whether any individual’s data was included in the original dataset or not. In other words, the guarantee of a differentially private algorithm is that its behavior hardly changes when a single individual joins or leaves the dataset — anything the algorithm might output on a database containing some individual’s information is almost as likely to have come from a database without that individual’s information. Most notably, this guarantee holds for any individual and any dataset. Therefore, regardless of how eccentric any single individual’s details are, and regardless of the details of anyone else in the database, the guarantee of differential privacy still holds. This gives a formal guarantee that individual-level information about participants in the database is not leaked. The definition of differential privacy emerged from a long line of work applying algorithmic ideas to the study of privacy (Dinur and Nissim `03; Dwork and Nissim `04; Blum, Dwork, McSherry, and Nissim `05 ), culminating with work of Dwork, McSherry, Nissim, and Smith `06. See our educational materials for more detail about the formal definition of differential privacy and its semantic guarantees…”





My car hates me?

https://www.pogowasright.org/insecure-wheels-police-turn-to-car-data-to-destroy-suspects-alibis/

Insecure wheels: Police turn to car data to destroy suspects’ alibis

Olivia Solon reports:

On June 26, 2017, the lifeless body of Ronald French, a bearded auto mechanic with once-twinkling eyes, was mysteriously found in a cornfield in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
French, a grandfather of eight who always tried to help people “down on their luck,” his daughter Ronda Hamilton told NBC affiliate WOOD of Kalamazoo, had disappeared three weeks before. According to the police report, a cord had been wrapped around his neck, his face and his feet. He had been dragged behind a vehicle so forcefully that he had abrasions along his back, and his skull had been partly flattened. The medical examiner attributed French’s death to “homicidal violence.” But then his grieving family heard nothing about arrests.

Read more on NBC.

There’s really nothing shocking or new about this. PogoWasRight.org started reporting on the issues and concerns back in 2010 (search this site for “black box” and “EDR” to find about four dozen other stories over the years. But it’s something that seems needs to be repeated for new generations of drivers or car owners. And of course, it remains something that needs to be addressed in the context of surveillance. If law enforcement can use my car’s recording system to get evidence against me, do they need a warrant? What if someone else is driving my car? Do they then have no expectation of privacy in car recordings? There’s still a lot to unpack….





It might have been cheaper to stuff 100 Rupee notes into everyone mouth… But then, no politicians are sane.

https://thenextweb.com/in/2021/01/04/indias-misguided-internet-shutdowns-cost-the-country-2-7b-in-2020/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29

India’s misguided internet shutdowns cost the country $2.7B in 2020

According to a new report by Top10VPN — a site that tracks VPN and privacy tools –India lost nearly $2.7 billion due to internet shutdowns in 2020 — more than the combined total of the next 10 countries in the chart. India was also stayed offline for longer than any other country, at 8,927 hours last year. As per internetshutdowns.in — a site that tracks internet blockages in India — the country had 83 shutdowns in 2020.





But can the AI testify in its own defense?

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=fd9190bb-21e5-460e-87a4-143034e12e49

When AI goes wrong, how will the courts determine why?

When decisions made by artificial intelligence (AI) are challenged, the court may need to determine the knowledge or intention which underlay such decisions. The UK Supreme Court is confident that these types of challenge can be met; 'the court is well versed in identifying the governing mind of a corporation and, when the need arises, will no doubt be able to do the same for robots' Warner-Lambert Co Ltd v Generics (UK) Ltd [2018] UKSC 56, at [165] - but as yet the issue has not arisen in UK courts so we do not know what approach will be taken.

Some guidance may be gleaned from the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC), and subsequently Singapore Court of Appeal, which, in B2C2 Ltd v Quoine Pte Ltd [2019] SGHC(I) 03 and [2020] SGCA(I) 02, considered knowledge and intention in the context of ‘deterministic’ AI (where the AI simply follows pre-programmed instructions) and held that it is the programmer’s knowledge that counts. However, that may not be an appropriate approach where the decision was made by machine learning (ML). ML learns and improves from examples without all its instructions being explicitly programmed so the programmer’s intention or knowledge before the ML was deployed may only help so far. The nature of ML and the difficulty, or impossibility, of understanding how the decision was made – the ‘black box’ problem – means there may only be limited benefit of hindsight.

This article looks at the approach taken in B2C2, identifies areas which mean it may not be appropriate where the decision is taken by ML, and explains how the risk of litigation emphasises the importance of explainable ML.





...only if this has never, ever happened before. So now that excuse is gone!

https://www.bespacific.com/google-docs-versus-microsoft-word-attorneys-blame-technical-incompatibilities-for-late-filing/

Google Docs versus Microsoft Word: Attorneys blame ‘technical incompatibilities’ for late filing

ZDNet – “…The American legal system runs on deadlines. As one practicing attorney wrote in an official publication for the American Bar Association, “[M]issing any filing deadline is a lawyer’s worst nightmare.” That’s especially true if you’re representing the plaintiffs in an “Emergency Complaint For Expedited Declaratory And Emergency Injunctive Relief” involving the United States Presidential election before a Federal District Court. For those keeping score at home, that’s two Emergencies and one Expedited in a single motion. All of which makes this weekend’s filing from the plaintiffs’ legal team in Gohmert v. Pence particularly eye-catching:

Plaintiffs’ Unopposed Motion to File Responsive Brief Late – Come now the Plaintiffs, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-1), Tyler Bowyer, Nancy Cottle, Jake Hoffman, Anthony Kern, James R. Lamon, Sam Moorhead, Robert Montgomery, Loraine Pellegrino, Greg Safsten, Kelli Ward, and Michael Ward, by and through their undersigned counsel, and request that this Court allow Plaintiffs to file their responsive brief one hour late. In support thereof, Plaintiffs state: Plaintiffs have employed a team of lawyers to prepare their responsive brief. During the course of preparation, Plaintiffs’ counsel have encountered numerous technical incompatibilities in the software versions between Google Docs and Microsoft Word resulting in editing difficulties and text problems. WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs request an extension of one hour of the deadline for filing their responsive brief. [emphasis added]

I read that and had to rub my eyes and reread it about five more times to make sure I was really seeing a Federal court filing in which the attorneys for a sitting member of the United States Congress, suing the Vice President of the United States, told a Federal District Court that they needed a one-hour extension because they were having trouble getting Google Docs and Microsoft Word to play nicely together…”





For people who don’t love to read, but think they should?

https://www.makeuseof.com/read-more-books-develop-habit-of-reading/

5 Ways to Read More Books and Develop a Habit of Reading Regularly





I like lists, but not in slide format…

https://www.bespacific.com/the-best-free-software-for-your-pc-2/

The best free software for your PC

PC World – Start off right with solid security tools, productivity software, and other programs that every PC needs.





An eye on the competition, but look who is number one…

https://successfulstudent.org/best-online-artificial-intelligence-degrees/

BEST ONLINE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEGREES FOR 2021

… This college ranking is for students wanting an online degree in Artificial Intelligence. It is an up-to-date list of all online degrees currently available. This list includes online Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

We determined this degree ranking by extensive research into online degree programs. All schools are accredited, degree-granting universities.



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