Outsourcing the hack.

https://www.bespacific.com/this-is-the-perfect-ransomware-victim-according-to-cybercriminals/

This is the perfect ransomware victim, according to cybercriminals

ZDNet: “On Monday, KELA published a report on listings made by ransomware operators in the underground, including access requests — the way to gain an initial foothold into a target system — revealing that many want to buy a way into US companies with a minimum revenue of over $100 million. Initial access is now big business. Ransomware groups such as Blackmatter and Lockbit may cut out some of the legwork involved in a cyberattack by purchasing access, including working credentials or the knowledge of a vulnerability in a corporate system. When you consider a successful ransomware campaign can result in payments worth millions of dollars, this cost becomes inconsequential — and can mean that cybercriminals can free up time to strike more targets. The cybersecurity company’s findings, based on observations in dark web forums during July 2021, suggest that threat actors are seeking large US firms, but Canadian, Australian, and European targets are also considered…”

How would this impact your liability? Would the lawsuits cost more than the ransom?

https://www.databreaches.net/hacker-puts-stolen-data-online-because-college-refuses-to-pay/

Hacker puts stolen data online because college refuses to pay

Cybercrimeinfo.nl reports:

The hacker who earlier this month stole data from students and employees of the Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen (HAN) has put it on the internet. RTL Nieuws reports this on Tuesday after viewing the data. The hacker demanded a ransom, but the university previously said it would not pay. The person, who uses the pseudonym ‘masterballz’ on the internet, then decided to put the data online. According to RTL News, the stolen data is now distributed via a popular download service.

Read more on Cybercrimeinfo.nl.

Tools for employee surveillance.

https://www.bespacific.com/bosses-turn-to-tattleware-to-keep-tabs-on-employees-working-from-home/

Bosses turn to ‘tattleware’ to keep tabs on employees working from home

The Guardian: “…Remote surveillance software like Sneek, also known as “tattleware” or “bossware”, represented something of a niche market pre-Covid. But that all changed in March 2020, as employers scrambled to pull together work-from-home policies out of thin air. In April last year, Google queries for “remote monitoring” were up 212% year-on-year; by April this year, they’d continued to surge by another 243%. One of the major players in the industry, ActivTrak, reports that during March 2020 alone, the firm scaled up from 50 client companies to 800. Over the course of the pandemic, the company has maintained that growth, today boasting 9,000 customers – or, as it claims, more than 250,000 individual users. Time Doctor, Teramind, and Hubstaff – which, together with ActivTrak, make up the bulk of the market – have all seen similar growth from prospective customers… ”

Gartner often has the pulse of the industry.

https://venturebeat.com/2021/09/07/ai-focus-shifts-to-small-and-wide-data/

AI focus shifts to ‘small and wide’ data

AI innovation is occurring at a fast clip, with a number of technologies on the “hype cycle” reaching mainstream adoption within two to five years. That’s according to Gartner, which today released a report identifying four trends driving near-term AI innovation in the enterprise. It finds that while the AI industry remains in an “evolutionary state,” technologies including edge AI, computer vision, decision intelligence, and machine learning are poised to have a transformational impact on markets in coming years.

… Increased trust, transparency, fairness, and auditability of AI technologies continues to be of growing importance to a range of stakeholders, according to Gartner. “Responsible AI” can help to achieve a semblance of fairness, trust, and regulatory compliance — even if biases are baked into the data and explainability methods fall short. For this reason, Gartner expects that all experts hired for AI development and training work will have to demonstrate competence in responsible AI by 2023.

At the same time, Gartner predicts that emerging “small and wide data” approaches will enable more robust analytics and AI, reducing organizations’ dependency on big data. Wide data allows analysts to examine and combine a variety of small and large, unstructured and structured data, while small data is focused on applying analytical techniques that look for useful information within small, individual sets of data.

According to Gartner, by 2025, 70% of organizations will be compelled to shift their focus from big to small and wide data, providing more context for analytics — and making AI less data-hungry.

… “[Our] research has found that only half of AI projects make it from pilot into production, and those that do take an average of nine months to do so,” Svetlana Sicular, research VP at Gartner, said in a statement.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkb4ng/meet-the-self-hosters-taking-back-the-internet-one-server-at-a-time

Meet the Self-Hosters, Taking Back the Internet One Server at a Time

Tired of Big Tech monopolies, a community of hobbyists is taking their digital lives off the cloud and onto DIY hardware that they control.