For
my Computer Security and Ethical Hacking students: business is good!
Global
cyberattacks on big business up 40 percent in 2014
Cyberattacks
and cybercrime against large companies rose 40 percent globally in
2014, according to Symantec's
annual Internet Security Threat study published Tuesday.
Five
out of every six large companies – those with over 2,500 employees
– were targeted with spear-phishing attacks or e-mail fraud in
2014, up 40 percent on year, the report showed. Attacks on small-
and medium-sized companies, which accounted for 60 percent of
targeted attacks, increased 26 and 30 percent, respectively.
…
ransomware attacks, which restrict access to the computer systems
they infect, increased 113 percent, driven by an over
4,000 percent increase in crypto-ransomware attacks.
(Related)
What will you do when the hackers turn out the lights?
Attacks
Against SCADA Systems Doubled in 2014: Dell
Cyber
attacks against supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
systems doubled in 2014, according to Dell’s annual threat report,
released Monday.
Dell
SonicWALL saw global SCADA attacks increase against its customer base
from 91,676 in January 2012 to 163,228 in January 2013, and 675,186
in January 2014.
…
Whereas
the motive behind data-focused attacks is typically financial, SCADA
attacks tend to be political in nature,
since they target operational capabilities within power plants,
factories, and refineries, rather than credit card information, Dell
said.
…
“Because
companies are only required to report data breaches that involve
personal or payment information, SCADA
attacks often go unreported,”
Dell said in its report. “As a result, other industrial companies
within the space might not even know a SCADA threat exists until they
are targeted themselves.”
A
recent report
published by the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response
Team (ICS-CERT) showed that while ICS vendors have been targeted by
various types of malicious actors, over half of the attacks reported
to the agency in 2014 involved advanced persistent threats (APTs).
…
The
full report is available
online in PDF format.
I
remember reaching the same conclusion in one of my MBA classes.
Everyone else was trying to work around a hypothetical change in law,
I found it much cheaper in the long run to move out of France.
Zack
Whittaker reports:
A number of prominent French tech companies are threatening to pull
out of the country in the wake of the introduction of a bill that
they argue will put the entire French population “under
surveillance.”
Seven companies, including web hosting and technology companies OVH,
IDS, and Gandi have said in
a letter to the French prime minister Manuel Valls that they will
be pushed into de facto “exile” if the French government goes
ahead with the “real-time capture of data” by its intelligence
agencies.
Read
more on ZDNet.
For
my Statistics and Analysis students.
Here’s
What Scientists Learned In The Largest Systematic Study Of Email
Habits
…
Even though email has been around for about two decades, researchers
didn't have a good idea of how people were using it. For example,
what is the average number of emails a person receives? Do people
get overwhelmed by too much email? How long do threads go on?
To
answer these questions, researchers from Yahoo labs looked at emails
of two million participants who sent more than 16 billion messages
over the course of several months--by far the
largest
email study ever conducted. They tracked the
identities of the senders and the recipients, the subject lines, when
the emails were sent, the lengths of the emails, and the number of
attachments. They also looked at the ages of the participants and
the devices from which the emails were sent or checked.
They
found that the length of a reply and the number of messages sent in a
thread were so predictable
that algorithms could anticipate it very accurately.
Younger people send faster, shorter replies, and men send shorter
messages than women. Unsurprisingly, people respond more quickly to
messages sent during working hours, and their responses are longer
then, too. Emails tapped out on mobile devices were shorter. The
more email a person received, the smaller percentage of messages they
responded to, and those responses were shorter.
Should
amuse my Data Management students to see that their Analysis will
have to be “pushed” to mobile devices.
5
Mobile Trends That Are Changing the Way Business Is Done
(Infographic)
…
According to the Pew Research Center, 64
percent of Americans have a smartphone, up from 35 percent in
2011.
As
those numbers continue to rise, an infographic from HR services
company Randstad
Technologies details some of the mobile
trends to watch out for.
…
For more on how businesses will work to reach their ideal customers,
check out the infographic below.
Homogenizing
EU laws? Summarized in one page.
Fair
Copyright Reform for Libraries and Archives in Europe
by
Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 13, 2015
The
London Manifesto: “Fair copyright across Europe is essential.
Without it we will fail to adequately support research, innovation
and growth, and hinder the ambition for a digital single market.
With it we will better foster knowledge across borders, meet the
needs of disabled people and take full advantage of the digital age.
We are calling for fair copyright that is fit for purpose and will
benefit every European citizen.”
For
when my students ask, “Why?”
The
Economy Goes to College: The Hidden Promise of Higher Education in
the Post-Industrial Service Economy
by
Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 13, 2015
College-Educated
Workers Now Produce More Than Half of the Nation’s Annual Economic
Value, According to New Georgetown University study: “The
findings contradict the fear that good manufacturing jobs of the past
are being replaced with low – paid, dead-end service jobs
(Washington, D.C., April 13, 2015) – College-educated
workers make up only 32 percent of the workforce but now produce more
than 50 percent of the nation’s economic output, up from
13 percent in 1967, according to a detailed historical analysis of
industry data by the Georgetown University Center on Education and
the Workforce. The dramatic increase in the economic value generated
by college-educated workers is directly linked to the rise of a
college-educated service economy. The Georgetown study finds that
the mass production of standardized goods and services has been
replaced by more complex consumer demands that include quality,
variety, customization, convenience, production speed, innovation,
and novelty. College-educated workers and flexible technologies have
allowed the United States to achieve this rich mix of economic value
at reasonable prices. The study also provides an explanation for the
collapse of high-wage manufacturing jobs that on offered opportunity
to high school graduates and the rise of an even greater number of
high-wage service jobs that require college degrees. Since the end
of World War II, the share of goods-producing jobs plummeted from 50
percent to less than 20 percent of all jobs while the overall economy
added more than 80 million new jobs—meaning that the entire growth
was due to new jobs in high – wage high – skill service
industries such as finance, insurance, advertising, consulting,
computers, education, and healthcare. This transition from a
goods-producing to a service-oriented economy would not have been
possible without tremendous increases in manufacturing productivity.
Output per person in manufacturing almost tripled from $100,000 to
$300,000 in real terms, while manufacturing employment decreased from
40 percent to 10 percent of all jobs. In turn, manufacturing’s
productivity was driven by its better – educated workforce: the
proportion of college – educated manufacturing workers grew from 20
percent to more than 50 percent. While the share of jobs in
goods-producing industries declined overall since 1967 in the U.S.
workforce, the share of workers with a four-year college degree or
more increased from 13 percent to32 percent. Over 60 percent of the
workforce now has at least some college education, up from just
one-quarter of adults. High-wage jobsfor workers with no more than a
high school education disappeared with the decline of manufacturing.
During the same period the share of college jobs more than doubled
and the college wage premium–the average salary of a college
graduate compared to a high school graduate–went from 40 percent to
80 percent.”
(Related)
Start thinking of LinkedIn as an EdTech company?
Data
and Diplomas: On LinkedIn's Acquisition of Lynda.com
There's
gotta be something here, I just need to take the time to look for it.
Our
top-50 education apps: maths and numeracy
For
my “Make your own textbook” students.
What
Makes a Good Programming Tutorial?
Should
I turn my Blog into a “talkie?”
Host
your Podcasts on Google Drive for Free
…
Where do you host the podcast files? If you have signed up for a
web hosting account, you can use the rented space to host the podcast
files else you may consider using Google Drive – it
is free, you can host both audio and video podcast files
and there are no known
bandwidth restrictions.
For
my toolkit. (Okay, maybe I'll tell my students too)
5
Sites with Printable Graph Paper, Puzzles, Maps, & More
PaperKit:
Print Your Own Lined Paper
Jauntful:
Printable City Guides
Saulify.me:
Make a Clutter-Free Version of Any Site
GitPrint:
Simple Tool for Printing Markdown
Printable
Puzzles: Crosswords, Sudoku and More
Dilbert
on “future awesomeness?”
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