Tag: disruption

AI Blue-on-Blue

We keep on hearing these great things about how AI will help us in the battle against no-gooders qua information security. Like, in hunting for bugs in software (as asked for here, borne out in various much more recent cases or rather, news items hinting at pilot prototype vapourware) or hunting for fraudsters, possibly hiding in plain sight (superrrintelligent anomaly detection; unsure how false positives / false negatives are handled…).
Where on the Other side, great strides are also feared to be made. Deploying AI to improve (better fuzzify) attack vectors, and help with improvements in evasion and intelligence gathering in various other ways.

Pitted against each other …
When you know what Blue On Blue stands for (first of this), you will now see it coming, inevitably. What if autonomous (for speed of response!) retaliation kicks in …?

Never mind. I’ll like the fireworks show. Plus:

[Yeah, yeah, ships are safe in harbour but that’s not what they’re made for – I’ll just enjoy this view from a truly excellent restaurant; Marzamemi Sicily]

Nationalistic AI fuzzing

No his is not about fuzzing data. It is about accidentally giving away that you don’t understand a subject, and not the stats involved.
It is about this report. That was reacted on in various press – though not nearly enough and I don’t even have shares – by some boiler room country-by-country comparison, even without much of conclusional calls to action, for all…

Also, hardly anyone notices the gross error in it all. Which is the lack of proper definition of ‘AI’, or more expectedly, the widespread panicking brainfreezes of the interviewed.
Which, summa summarum for brevity, created such massive distortions that the figures are grey noise at best.

“Isn’t that harsh ..?” Nope. I did some asking around, for a different purpose, and when even 1% of organisations would do anything with AI yet, that 1% would be rounded up. Ppl were just too afraid to tell the interviewers / pollsters that they had (have, probably) no. single. clue., and babbled their way out of it.

So, what was this title again of the infamous Public Enemy hit ..?
And:

[A prettified prison is your ASI future; Zuid-As Ams]

Deviate for Resilience

Well there’s an imperative. Deviate for resilience. Which goes waaay beyond mere ITCM or its linkage into BCM. What I mean here, though, is a reflection from the B side into the IT side.
Once encountered when it was still supposedly somewhat ‘cool’ (as it was called in the grandpa’s days) or so to work on … can you believe it, $AAPL infra. Where the Infosec staff had carved a corner for themselves: That they’d actually need to deviate from corp policies (the devolved kind) of using M$ stuff for alibi reasons of needing in ITsec par excellence, a fall-back that would actually work when all of the M$ infra would’ve collapsed due to some class breaking glitch exploit. Yeah. That meant that you did need a substantial budget to your own discretion without much transparency towards effectiveness of spend and no gadget and toys buying, right?
Nowadays, the coolness if ever it truly was (stupid sheeple), has worn off totally and is a tell for no comprendre qua cost/benefits analysis, sufficient tech-savviness to cut it in today’s world, and forward compatibility even to the cable mess (costing you tons). Predicting which unicorns will succeed, or fail, is easy; the former are on M$, the latter on … you guessed correctly. Nevertheless, the resilience argument still holds.

Which goes beyond the mere platform choice. It goes for global/local deviations as well. IF yes that’s a big if, if done right, not for NIH purposes (both ways ..!) but for resilience purposes. It’s not efficient to the max, but if you strive for that, you’ve done so much wrong already it might be irrecoverable. E.g., mission, organisational culture, risk management (incl analysis), control choices and implementations (case in point: multiple malware scanners), etc.

But remember: When done right, you very probably do need to deviate all over the place for resilience…

Just remember that to defend yourself, OK? And:

[If telecom fails due to clock synchro errors, it’s still a sun dial (really it is); Barça]

Fizzle disruption

Since the whole, Original and profound, concept of Creative Destruction was latter-day transformed into something much devolved [using that in a most pejorative way; ed.] called ‘disruption’ and applied in even worse ways to outright illegal stuff that had to be allowed still for … well, for no valid reason at all, certainly not morally or ethically improving society in any way only making things worse or much, much worse for all but the 0,1%,
it deserves some attention that the major true disruptions over the past two decades… either weren’t recognised as such but were straighforward Innovations, rightly so characterised (‘Internet’, anyone ..?) or have yet to come to full fruition, in a balanced new future (profitability of ‘Amazon’, anyone ..?).

Where, also, quite some of the announced disruptions have withered into oblivion. Upstart protagonists, most certainly. But also where complete industries have either resisted the ‘attacks’ or transformed themselves just enough to withstand the onslaught, the Barbarians At The Gate.
My point being: Can the latter variants be characterised, and show predictive value, through the outset sort-of situations not only qua industry (culture) but also qua country culture that the industries were pointed-of-gravity ..? The prediction part of course being the most interesting …

Would love to receive your pointers to the stacks of scientific research done already …
And:

[Art, of old but disruption-resistant: The old stays, the new attempts but is accepted and encapsulated…; Paleis het Loo]

Your conference improver

If you’re Irish. Or have some travel budget for them, out of Dublin. This outfit admitted to sometimes do conference ‘reports’ that do grasp the essentials for a change.
And have perfect gifts for any (business-, too) occasion.

Shadow IT – no problem

In the upheaval of the last decade or so on the rush to the cloud (no, not that cloud though rush-related), a similar development preceded it – and still runs on. It is the spectre not only hunting Europe (and certainly the deviant [all manners? ed.] off the coast, splitting but not drifting away like an Iceberg would. should…), but everywhere else as well, the spectre depending on who you ask of Shadow IT.

Which is facilitated through XaaS (SaaS/PaaS/IaaS/…) availability. But which hardly ever is allowed… — allowed through being compliant with organisational standards. From anyone’s perspective but the IT club’s, it is not about breaking the in-house IT vendor lock-in barriers. That were breached becaused the bounds were straight-jackets. Don’t try to break those, just sneak out the back door. But it’s about the latter, seeking what wasn’t provided in-house on one’s own account, previously not having been ‘allowed’ but it was IF the solutions sourced, complied with the security (mostly) requirements set at the organisation-wide level, and set from the business side of the organisation.
Controls in or out of IT, required by IT to be implemented elsewhere, are about the particular IT solutions chosen. Solutions to the problems identified in control objectives and controls, always having alternatives in the latter. So, when through these IT-dictated controls, your preferred solution cannot be made to fit (or only near-unusably awkwardly so), they do allow you, even in a sense require you, to go for shadow IT.

Which, hence, is permitted If ad only if being (security) controlled at at least the same level of control objectives achieved. So, some department might have to re-build all of the IT department’s load of overhead qua systems management, all of ITIL or even CObIT, all of … wait, not ISO 2700x – that is an organisation-wide thing already or it is of fact a crappily implemented thing. So covers the shadow IT as well, fitting in the latter under the umbrella of the former. That’s where the battle would need to be fought, if at all since the shadow runners may very well have done a good job at running an outsourced-portfolio coordination team, neatly sheltering under the umbrella already. Showing the IT department how that’s done.
Possibly [hey I’m over-using the em-tag or what; ed.] doing it both proper and cheaper. Usually doing not the former, hardly the latter and certainly not the latter if the former is corrected. But sometimes, showing how; when IT told them that was impossible, they just did it. As good / better, and cheaper. Yes you can, to paraphrase some sorely missed leader.

In the interest of the organisation, sometimes shadow IT should be the preferred solution direction…
I’ll stop now before angering too many. And:

[The (black) details, are they essential? In a way, but could they be different or would you have chosen these in the first place …!? Prague]

Copying it bluntly, for you

Just like that, a full page of niceness and arguments to consider. Guess which one I’m switching to. So should you. Competition, leading to improvement.

Neo is right

When it is about the way The Neo-Generalist, Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin, is:

The Neo-Generalist is both specialist and generalist, often able to master multiple disciplines. We all carry within us the potential to specialise and generalise. Many of us are unwittingly eclectic, innately curious. There is a continuum between the extremes of specialism and generalism, a spectrum of possibilities. …
Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, our society has remained in the thrall of the notion of hyperspecialism. This places constraints on the way weare educated, the work we do, how we are recruited, how our career progression [say what? ed.] is managed [not; ed.], how we label ourselves for the benefit of others’ understanding. …
Our workplaces, governments, intelligence agencies and other communities and institutions constantly complain of silos, but that is an inevitable consequence of our promotion of hyperspecialism. So too the myopia of expertise that prevents us from seeing properly what is right in front of us, or connecting it in meaningful [sic; ed.] ways with other information, other people. [Preface, almost completely]

The institutionalisation of the label, and the constraints it demarcates, both physical and psychological, is an unfortunate legacy of the Industrial Revolution and its effects on society. The scientific management practices popularised at the turn of the twentieth century retain an insidious hold on how people think and organise themselves for manufacturing and knowledge work, even extending into Healthcare and education. It is a dehumanised and mechanical approach that views individuals not as people with unique charcteristics, knowldge and expertise but as replaceable parts. Their very humanity is occluded by the labels they are forced to bear. We remove this welder and replace them with that welder. When this accountant leaves, we will hire another accountant. Our project managers, nurses, teachers, bus drivers, are considered entirely interchangeable.

In the meantime, however, we have set up a conveyor belt of humanity that is geared towards squeezing people into the correctly shaped holes, ensuring that the label fits. Hyperspecialism is the end goal. … Educational choices made during our impressionalble teen years can have a lasting effect. To select is also to exclude. Opting for certain academic disciplines during high school limits what can be pursued at university or as a trade. For those who aspire to it, a higher-education specialism then narrows workplace possibilities. Qualifications lead to employment, whcih in turn leads to the constraints of a role and job description, the path towards increasing functional expertise. Measurement and performance assessments impel us to sharpen our skill set within the restricted field. The myopia of the expert sets in. The boundaries within which the specialist operates get narrower still.

The funneling has an inevitable consequence: it fosters silo-based practices and behaviours. Corporations, government departments, intelligence agencies and a host of other types of organisations bemoan the disjointness of their departments, the lack of interoperability between IT systems, the hoarding and protection of knowledge. Yet this is the end result of a system that encourages hyperspecialism and narrow, deep expertise. [pp. 24-25]

And so it goes on, with relevance. We may interject a full Book by Quote later, but for now leave it at this and encourage you to Study the work. To weep and learn, how you should not do it. I mean, tag along. Resist!

Oh, plus:

[Cordoníu the Beautiful (~ design by Puig i Cadafalch), San Sadurní d’Anoia Catalunya]

Where art thou, APT ..?

In line with some previous posts, about e.g., the Maker Movement, I’d like to ask if anyone knows the whereabouts of all those pesky APTs that were around a couple of years ago. Oh, yes I do know they’re in your infra everywhere all the time, but qua publicity, qua countermeasures ..?
I would like to hope that in this case, more contrary to its nature you can’t get, it would indeed bebecause (sic) of having been dealt with sufficiently in the past. Or the whole APT thing turned out to be a [any country’s] TLA move – of a side with ample publicity-suppressive powers everywhere.
But that would be day-dreaming. So, I’d like to ask your insights…

And:

[[Fuzzyfied] Oh, just some storage room in my house. Or, somewhat more, at the Royal palace, Dam, Amsterdam]

Tech-brittle society

Anyone already studied the brittleness of society re technology ..? Of course, we all do know there’s a lot of ‘critical infrastructure’ out there. But do we realise enough, that it’s not only those somewhat-well-defined (not) industries that might suffer from any form of e-attack (incl EMP; what was it with those old low-band radars that the Russian had stacked behind the Ural and were found to be very effective in picking up F-117s because the latter had never been back-tested so far ..? Same, here ..?), and society as a whole might be blown into disfunctionality when some, not critical-industry-confined but ‘class break’-like attack were to be attempted ..?
I’d think not. The more complex society becomes and (hence !) the more interdependencies there are that already work with ever slimming margins, the more brittle our society becomes, the more it is like a giant house of cards, ever more critically stable before one wind collapses the whole shazam. And the less people there will be, that remember from long times ago how one would run a society in a much less complex way… If anyone still uses ‘shazam’.

Plus:

[Even those were, are complex machines to operate. And what if your coal is delivered just-in-time by some networked drone delivery in the ‘chain cloud or so and none of that still exists ..? Utrecht]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord