Category: Information Security

Big Data, Little Decision-making

Are you ready for the coming revolution? That is in the wings by way of the data deluge that will cripple your ability to accomplish anything because you’re overwhelmed with data (“information” quod non!) to act upon in masses so vast you can’t even begin to use actionable results from analysis of it in a way that actual decisions are reached, communicated, and put into actual action.
Yes, yes, some of you will say that AI will arrive just-in-time to save the day. But that is much more wishful thinking out of fear than realistic futuring. And no, the exponential growth of data cannot be caught up with by exponential growth of AI capabilities and -spread before you’ve drowned.

Anyone see a way out, other than just ignoring or stifling data growth until by the skin of our teeth we can continue..?

Oh well, this:
Kopie van DSCN7982
[Reckon you’ll win ..!? in Berlin]

Predictions Wish List 2016

Now that you have drowned in predictions about … < fill in your favourite subject and colour the pictures > for 2016, it’s time to not only read through them and see whether you can agree — which you don’t need to as the truth is already here — it’s time to turn your Yes I Can See That / No I Don’t Think So into something of the more outspoken kind, not being outspoken but outwritten. As follows (mine, hence, yours if you’re smart…):

  • Blockchain (-like) methodologies and technologies delivering an app that shakes up the accountancy industry so thouroughly that the Big$/4 halve in size and influence (even further).
  • A breakthrough in the translation of Information to Value and vice versa, by means of being able to have the value of information one processes, on the books. Not necessarily in monetary terms, but somehow, comparable.
  • Some form of APT management/containment methodology.
  • A unified implementation/interoperability / API / management framework for IoT. Open, all-encompassing, like the OSI stack.
  • A breakthrough in the sobering up over the quod non of normative value of SOx/TLD/Basel-OpsRisk and all standards (ISO and others).
  • Similar, a sobering up (but deepening and intensifying for the solutions part) over cyberhere, cyberthere, cybereverywhere.

OK, going out into 2016 (not just yet!) with:
DSCN8004
[On a winter’s day … how many wished for unification of this city, mere decades back?]

Prediction16

Yawn. Or not. The following will get real serious in 2016. Like,

Well, for the list with everything and their dog:

  • Some Exits: Green Egg, ‘Cyber’everything, disruption/uberization, privacy, and, certainly and very much hopefully, “Like us on Facebook” … and very, very certainly hipsters let alone their ‘beards’ (quod non).
  • Entrat to replace the latter, hopefully, some actual non- or anti-bureaucratic frameworks of mind.
  • Also out, to be replaced by … [as yet unknown]: Vlogging or what have we, in socmed space, with 100k-1M+/++ followers as being he thing to aim for. As it becomes clearer and clearer in 2016 that only the 10M+/++ leaders (??) can make a dime from it, or barely a living. Who are the big winners, in all of this? User data / experience farmers?
  • Risk Management 3.0 will grow to be the Next Thing in managementspeak. If you’d need any proof, go read back the ton of posts on your perennial Truth site.
  • Also, we might get a last blip from SMAC(T) as a trend summary.
  • All of the points made by The (some) Man. Obviously. And some of this as well though this may all show to be overblown.
  • Still a wave of interest in Rise of the Robots. Combined with AI through and through, like in this. With support at an angle, from this.
  • A further blend of cloudsourcing and deperimetrisation putting your infra and all of your data naked and out there in the cold.
  • Oh almost forgot: A lot more on APTs, 3D printing (when will we finally get 4D printing …!?), MehhDrone stuff, blockchain, IoT, et al.
  • But we may hope, the latter two get much more innovative applications; one the one hand with simpler explications, on the other, truly innovating e.g., into the DAO realm.
  • Ah, DAOs; let’s first see more of this in 2016.
  • Offering a simple list copy from HBR:
    • Algorithmic personality detection: Yes
    • Bots: Yes
    • Glitches: Mwah; we indeed will see scores of them, ever bigger and more impactful (also b/c complexity explosions of the mixed e and physical worlds), but they’re somewhat of the mehhh category for the purpose of Here.
    • Backdoors: See APTs et al; much more of them yes but again, mehhh
    • Blockchain: As mentioned
    • Drone lanes: Hmmm, interesting…
    • Quantum Computing: Probably hung in there from previous (many) years’ lists; mine, too. May, might, but for the same token may not
    • Augmented knowledge: Definitely. Hopefully, in a good way. But maybe even hopefully, steered towards safe use, after a hopefully indicative but small-enough dystopian-style mishap ..?
  • CloudIAMming. IAM, renewed, for federated use in ‘the’ cloud. Yes, this will have a whole new lease of life, as a management field, and a consultancy field as well.
  • This just in: Forgot to mention VR as a thing in 2016. Definitely.
  • I may want to do an update halfway through the year…
  • Oh, and of course our motto for 2016: A CEO with you, is still a CEO.
    #gosubstitute[ _X, _Y | fool, a tool ]

After which there’s only:
DSCN7943
[Purposefully unsharp. Berlin, some years ago.]

One-sided mirror

Hopefully just in time for your last-minute (huh?) holiday season shopping: This masterpiece; excellent for edukaizjionel purposes and general divertissement, including Be-ing Warned…

Because, it spans so much of interest; from humble (?) ‘computer’ components all the way up till Topsight.
Read, learn and weep over humankind’s future.

Now then, for a short departure:
DSCN7994
[Unk Berlin]

IoThreat level rising

Oh the waxing and waning of the security (or not) that we understand and can see. In, traditional, actual security versus stupid’s attacks with AK-47s.
Oh the failure to see that the vulnerability surface grows much quicker, unseen, out of sight; and only partially, backlogging style, being managed somewhat. This surface expansion being in IoT, as the current implementations (in two ways, labelled such or not…!) are spreading much faster than the awareness, let alone proper implementation of, security is.

And oh yes, some are concerned. But their concerns appear to remain Boy Cried Wolfs compared to the clear and present dangers, that may be much smaller, qua chance and/or impact, than IoT risks. As in the physical, the class break aspect seems to be considered and covered reasonably well, by natural countering culture, the same may not be said about B/Society-CM planning for class breaks in the IoT sphere. Maybe already WWIII would be fought with sticks and stones (Einstein’ish).

Oh well. This post will not change the world. But still, be warned, and/or Be Prepared. And:
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[Maybe pray. For luck. Or salvation. Not your common altar piece; Noto]

Common meltdown

Ah, indeed a meltdown is approaching; maybe not even of the common kind of just something breaking down in ‘IT’ — the inverted s… hits the fan scenario — but a larger-scale one. Being the lack of budget / approval for IT staff to do continuous education of all sorts. [As in here, in Dutch.]
Which will inevitably lead to ever larger of the small- to midsize collapses mentioned, possibly one triggering the other till past the critical point where the chain reaction feedback loop switches from negative to positive.

By which time it will be too late, much too late, to hyperventilatingly engage in counteractions. Both against the root cause problems in IT, as in the edjucayzional category within those. Because, au fond, so many of IT’s ails were and are, increasingly, driven by lack of (continued) education. Causing problems in the user’s specs (at the highest levels) and subsequently, 2nd Law of thermodynamics, spawning all of the subsequent complexity developing into unmanageability, and error stacking that breeds like viruses.

Even more poignantly in InfoSec corners. You know, the outposts of IT — yes, yes, I know that the I is of so much greater import than the T but get real, instead of 20% InfoSec is 85-95% T still, these days ..! — where the real commandos and fancy-dancy ‘Delta teams’/SEALs operate.

Can we all please get our act together ..? If we don’t turn this supertanker around quickly, we don’t even need to bother about global warming because we’ll have no industrialised world to worry about…

Après nous la deluge …
DSC_0196
[Mosquito hunt; Edinburg]

Software Defined Everything, not your monkey’s business

Lately, we have been reading a lot about Software Defined Everything (haven’t you …?), in particular sw-def networking. As the flexible way to the future.
Now, it turns out that humans may have had an edge over monkeys (and apes) by, for quite some time already, having had just that bit more software-defined Brain work than the competition. Though research is out also (since about half a year+) that apes using tools, have entered the Stone Age with that, for some 4300 years at least already. Now I will not refer here to the mix-up that your boss is, in this all.

But I will note that the Software Defined Everything, in similar vein is where the Singularity starts to take over, as the System evolves away from the human brain limitation to adapt to its environment. Yes, that’s a bit of thought stretch but you’ll manage. Still…

DSC_0174
[At least the apes among you might figure out the Three-Body Problem at the table …; Nicolaci, Noto]

The Season of Innovation

Anyone has stats on when, during the year, most actual innovations are dreamt up, or brought to light ..?

Just wondered, pondered, looking outside into a greyish dawn, and thought: Where are this year’s Innovations that make late fall / winter time more amicable ..?
Just because seasons are only a quarter of the year ;-| doesn’t sound like a good explanation; whereas any year, or innovation’s adoption wave, is a one-time thing only, seasons tend to re-appear quite regularly over and over again through the ages. So any real innovation might stick even better. [Will now halt this silly argument.]
Then again, can we pinpoint the exact moment an innovation is conceived, even when delivery may take some time (possibly, spanning a year) ..? Can we spot seasonal patterns ..? One could imagine that Nature’s recurrence and bloom, impacts the mind in similar ways. *waves.

So, if any of you Big Data lovers out there would have a nice graph, I’d welcome it. Plus:
DSCN4507
[Yes, that’s Spring, in Antwerp. Other corners are, in no particular order, Summer, Fall, and Winter]

A simple link to a profound article

Today, just a simple link to an article you’ll find interesting — or find yourself not that.
As in: this here piece.

After which:
ubx15

Uhhh okai then: The point of the matter is that here, we still have that idealistic vision in which AI would augment us, improve us, near-eugenetically though with prostheses, leaving so-hard-they-become-easy-by-not-being-recognized choices of the Hobson kind for the ones with least ethical scrupules, the early adoptors to collateral on the others. Early adoptors through the need for compensation of already lacking (basic…) capabilities…

Before becoming too negative, this:
DSC_0026
[Think, self-rule, et al.; Dunedin again]

Hard coating emaille

If you’re well-seasoned, you may have turned a bit sour by all the silver bullet news even when that was targeted at point problems/solutions. And, you may even be old enough to recall Why Johnny Can’t.
Seems there’s a new version of the latter, with a similar conclusion. Too bad for all of us.

Oh well…:
DSCN0414
[Also ‘old’, also of a ‘no photo allowed inside’ site. Guess which]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord