Makes me wonder if law
enforcement is doing anything else?
Brian X. Chen reports:
Verizon
Communications on Wednesday published
a so-called transparency report describing when and why it
receives requests for customer data, like phone records or emails,
from law enforcement and government agencies.
Verizon
is the first major phone carrier to publish a report of this kind —
other carriers, like AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile US, have yet to
take a similar step.
[...]
Verizon
said it received roughly 320,000 requests for customer
information last year from law enforcement agencies in the United
States, including 164,000 subpoenas, 36,000 warrants and 70,000 court
orders. It also received 1,000 to 2,000 requests from the National
Security Agency.
Read more on the New
York Times.
Perspective for Student
Privacy Day...
DJ Pangburn reports:
The
Online Trust Alliance (OTA) yesterday announced its 2014
Data Protection & Breach Readiness Guide, and within it were
some statistics that truly boggle the mind. Working on data from the
Open Security Foundation and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the
OTA estimated that over 740 million online records were exposed in
2013, the worst year for data breaches in history. That’s
stark news in advance of Data Privacy Day, which is coming January
28.
Read more on
Motherboard.
If not new, at least a
summary of what everyone (else) is (or should be) doing?
Staying
Safer in Cyberspace: Cloud Security on the Horizon
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on January 22, 2014
Staying
Safer in Cyberspace: Cloud Security on the Horizon, January 2014.
Karen S. Evans, Julie M. Anderson, Brian D. Shevenaug.
“Cloud computing
brings with it both risks and rewards. In recent years, senior
Federal officials from the Secretary of Defense to the Director of
National Intelligence and even the President have stressed that
securing our information systems and computer networks is a crucial
element of the nation’s security architecture. At the same time,
the Federal government is turning to cloud computing to resolve some
of the problems that have chronically plagued its information
technology (IT) environment. But until now, efforts to implement
cybersecurity and cloud computing initiatives have been too
fragmented and lacked the type of overarching coordination needed to
mitigate the risks while reaping the rewards. This paper
offers a plan to help agency CIOs realize the benefits of cloud
technology while meeting current Federal cybersecurity requirements.”
Perspective
MIT
Technology Review – Data and Decision Making
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on January 22, 2014
“In this
business report, MIT Technology Review explores a big
question: how are data and the analytical tools to manipulate it
changing decision making today? On Nasdaq, trading bots exchange a
billion shares a day. Online, advertisers bid on hundreds of
thousands of keywords a minute, in deals greased by heuristic
solutions and optimization models rather than two-martini lunches.
The number of variables and the speed and volume of transactions are
just too much for human decision makers. When there’s a person
in the loop, technology takes a softer approach (see “Software
That Augments Human Thinking”). Think of recommendation
engines on the Web that suggest products to buy or friends to catch
up with. This works because Internet companies maintain
statistical models of each of us, our likes and habits, and use
them to decide what we see. In this report, we check in with
LinkedIn, which maintains the world’s largest database of
résumés—more than 200 million of them. One of its newest
offerings is University Pages, which crunches résumé data to offer
students predictions about where they’ll end up working depending
on what college they go to (see “LinkedIn
Offers College Choices by the Numbers”). These smart systems,
and their impact, are prosaic next to what’s planned. Take IBM.
The company is pouring $1 billion into its Watson computer system,
the one that answered questions correctly on the game show Jeopardy!
IBM now imagines computers that can carry on intelligent phone
calls with customers, or provide expert recommendations after
digesting doctors’ notes. IBM wants to provide “cognitive
services”—computers that think, or seem to (see “Facing
Doubters, IBM Expands Plans for Watson”). Andrew Jennings,
chief analytics officer for FICO, says automating human decisions is
only half the story. Credit scores had another major impact. They
gave lenders a new way to measure the state of their portfolios—and
to adjust them by balancing riskier loan recipients with safer ones.
Now, as other industries get exposed to predictive data, their
approach to business strategy is changing, too. In this report, we
look at one technique that’s spreading on the Web, called A/B
testing. It’s a simple tactic—put up two versions of a Web page
and see which one performs better (see “Seeking
Edge, Websites Turn to Experiments” and “Startups
Embrace a Way to Fail Fast”)…”
For my students
eCampus:
Easily Rent or Buy Affordable Textbooks, And Sell Them Back
Another
outrageously-priced textbook? You’ve got to be kidding! How much
of this are you going to take? You know there’s a better option
than getting ripped off by your university bookstore, right? There
are several reputable websites
for saving students money on textbooks, eCampus
being one of the very best.
Did you know you can
rent textbooks, instead of purchasing them? Or
perhaps you have a pile of textbooks you no longer need, eCampus will
buy them from you. Whether you want to buy, rent or sell your
textbooks, eCampus
is one way to beat
college on a budget.
For my MBA students.
Dilbert on instinctive (follow your gut) management.
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