For my Computer Security managers. An ounce of prevention can save a ton of repair costs.

https://www.cyberscoop.com/berlin-emotet-kammergericht/

Berlin’s high court should rebuild computer system after Emotet infection, report finds

Berlin’s highest court should completely rebuild its computer infrastructure after hackers ran roughshod through the network and likely stole data in the process, according to a forensic report released Monday.

Poor security controls allowed the attackers to install two types of information-stealing malware last fall, said the study conducted by an IT subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and released by German lawmakers investigating the incident.

“A motivated attacker would have been able to use this network structure to infect almost every device,” the report states.

A ransomware minimum?

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/480146-federal-agency-publishes-guidelines-for-businesses-to-defend-against

Federal agency offers guidelines for businesses defending against ransomware attacks

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published draft guidelines Monday providing businesses with ways to defend against debilitating ransomware attacks.

The two draft practice guidelines to help firms create strategies to protect data in the event of an cyberattack.

Should th US do less?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/iot-security-your-smart-devices-must-have-these-three-features-to-be-secure/

IoT security: Your smart devices must have these three features to be secure

Proposed laws from the UK for Internet of Things security mean vendors will need to follow new rules to be considered secure.

… the legislation would require that IoT devices sold in the UK must follow three particular rules to be allowed to sell products in the UK. They are:

• All consumer internet-connected device passwords must be unique and not resettable to any universal factory setting
• Manufacturers of consumer IoT devices must provide a public point of contact so anyone can report a vulnerability and it will be acted on in a timely manner
• Manufacturers of consumer IoT devices must explicitly state the minimum length of time that the device will receive security updates at the point of sale, either in store or online

Architecture for AI.

https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/01/27/ai-is-driving-storage-down-new-avenues/

AI IS DRIVING STORAGE DOWN NEW AVENUES

Storage systems are inherently data intensive. But the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence as a standard datacenter workload has storage vendors scrambling to design platforms that better meet the more stringent performance needs of these applications.

… Our recent conversation with Panasas storage architect Curtis Anderson, shows how AI has is driving these designs in new directions. The full interview filmed live at The Next HPC Platform can be found below.

(Related)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mohanbirsawhney/2020/01/27/why-apple-and-microsoft-are-moving-ai-to-the-edge/#4a46c9f62570

Why Apple And Microsoft Are Moving AI To The Edge

Artificial intelligence (AI) has traditionally been deployed in the cloud, because AI algorithms crunch massive amounts of data and consume massive computing resources. But AI doesn’t only live in the cloud. In many situations, AI-based data crunching and decisions need to be made locally, on devices that are close to the edge of the network.

Another look at ethics.

https://warontherocks.com/2020/01/day-zero-ethics-for-military-ai/

DAY ZERO ETHICS FOR MILITARY AI

Examining the legal, moral, and ethical implications of military artificial intelligence (AI) poses a chicken-and-egg problem: Experts and analysts have a general sense of the risks involved, but the broad and constantly evolving nature of the technology provides insufficient technical details to mitigate them all in advance. Employing AI in the battlespace could create numerous ethical dilemmas that we must begin to guard against today, but in many cases the technology has not advanced sufficiently to present concrete, solvable problems.

To this end, 2019 was a bumper year for general military AI ethics. The Defense Innovation Board released its ethical military AI principles; the National Security Commission on AI weighed in with its interim report; the European Commission developed guidelines for trustworthy AI; and the French Armed Forces produced a white paper grappling with a national ethical approach. General principles like these usefully frame the problem, but it is technically difficult to operationalize “reliability” or “equitability,” and assessing specific systems can present ambiguity — especially near the end of development.