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earth2050 robot, Illustration of intelligent robot protesting for robots' rights

What will the future of work be like by 2050?

  • min read
    • The world of work in 2050. If you're unlucky enough not to have retired by then, the working world will be a very different place to how it is today. The vision of the future for workers tends to scale from a nilistic view of the robots taking our jobs (leaving us permanently trapped indoors, living entirely from Amazon Prime supplies), through to the utopia of the eradication of repetitive tasks using artifical intelligence. This will leave humans free to think, create and act (while never needing to leave their home…thanks to improved remote work options and those highly convenient Amazon delivery drones). But what do the experts think it will really be like? Robots have rights too Predicted by: Ian Pearson. Ian has been a full-time futurologist for over 25 years, tracking and predicting developments across a wide range of technology, business, society, politics and the environment. We see a picket line of robots in the city center. Their placards are plastered with slogans written in binary code. The widespread development of robots and artificial intelligence have necessitated the creation of a legal framework to protect them to regulate the rights of intelligent robots. Subsequently, this code is constantly updated and improved so robots have improving rights in our society. Personal assistants for life Predicted by: Alexey Malanov Personal assistants (PAs) have rapidly developed throughout the 21st century. To begin with, they could only answer primitive questions: in 2019, voice assistants were as dumb as a box of rocks. But by 2025, they'd mastered the art of recognizing and transcribing speech (with punctuation marks too); they could understand the meaning of a text and recite it so realistically that it was almost indistinguishable from a human. This led to half of all office activities being automated: PAs began to take minutes, write post-meeting reports, summarize lengthy documents, and consciously digest and recapitulate the contents of messages. They also plan your day, schedule meetings and even order lunch. Thanks to machine learning, PAs are fully adapted to their owners' personalities, increasingly penetrating every aspect of their lives. It all began with assisting with office work, and by the mid-2040s, PAs had become an integral part of everyday life by monitoring their owners' diets, planning trips abroad, buying gifts for friends and family, and more. But it's not as rosy as it seems: the human-PA relationship has spawned a plethora of psychological issues and communication difficulties between real people. However, a specially trained AI psychologist is on hand to help us cope. Paradoxically, it's just another voice assistant. The power is in your hands Predicted by: Mersey Shelley is a pseudonym of Alexey Andreyev, writer and futurologist, who works for Kaspersky. This prediction is from his cyberpunk novel '2048' published in 2004. In decades past, palms and fingers were scanned for identification. Now, hands with implanted sensors become the scanners themselves. These implants come in different models with two main variations: first, a simple scanner for daily use. It helps to read different tags and product codes, and to exchange digital business cards via the handshake ritual (you can use face recognition to identify a stranger but this is considered indecent; besides, many people use protection to prevent recognition. Hats with special veils are popular). Second, sophisticated scanners for technicians and other professionals. For example, a doctor's hand includes various medical sensors for diagnostics – even a portable endoscope with a direct video stream to the doctor's visual cortex. A flexible workforce Predicted by Jacob Morgan is a best-selling author, speaker, futurist and founder of Future of Work University. In the year 2050, technology will dominate the workplace with artificial intelligence and smart assistants being commonplace, while the use of augmented and virtual reality continues to increase. Everything will be 'smart' – connected and data-driven. The vast majority of us will continue working the same way we are today, but the jobs on offer will be ones that haven't yet been invented. Emotional intelligence and 'human' skills such as perpetual learning will be crucial for leaders to possess, as well as fluency with the latest technologies. Work will increasingly become more fluid as some employees will be virtual, some will be full-time, some will be bots, and we will all be working non-fixed hours. As with any kind of change, there will be pros and cons. Those who work in routine jobs are likely to struggle to make sure they can stay relevant in the new world of work. The advantage is that this will give us more time to focus on the human aspects of work such as building relationships, being creative, deep thinking, and practicing skills like empathy and self-awareness. Technology will help us make organizations more personable. This also means that we need to get more comfortable with using technology such as bots and AI in our work, a cause of tension and fear for some. And what about working hours? It depends if you're a knowledge worker or working in industries like retail. Flexible work arrangements are already being implemented at organizations around the world. The advantages are far-ranging, from improving employee satisfaction, productivity and tenure, to being able to attract and retain top talent. The potential disadvantages here are making sure that employees can stay accountable for delivering high-quality work while feeling like they're a part of the team, dealing with isolation, and ensuring effective communication and collaboration. I think the pros outstrip the cons: when managed effectively, flexible work arrangements can be a huge benefit to the organization and its people. Focus on the user experience Predicted by: Edney Souza, digital culture and business and technology teacher, speaker and entrepreneur, Brazil. For sure, work will become more fun and those repetitive activities in our day-to-day life will be done by robots and artificial intelligence. Knowing programming logic will be as important as English and mathematics. User experience design (UX) will be more important than other technical components of a project to ensure its success with customers. Skills in solving problems and serving customers will continue to be competitive advantages for the work of the future. Read more predictions about our technological future from scientists, futurologists and cybersecurity experts at Earth 2050 by Kaspersky.
Professionally dressed man and woman standing in a field surrounded by greenery, solar panels and bees

Can tech help fight climate change? Five innovations making a difference today

  • min read
    • As we say goodbye to the last decade, we usher in a new and crucial one for our planet. According to research, Earth has warmed around 1c since the industrial revolution, which is wreaking havoc on the planet we call home. This is just the start, according to this fun, but terrifying sliding scale. Since the 2016 Paris Agreement – which aims to keep global temperature increases under 2c – climate change has become a critical conversation for all nations and industries. But, as the research of agricultural economist Ester Boserup shows, humankind has the potential to adapt using technology to overcome its problems. These five technologies are designed to help us combat the number one issue we face as a species: global warming. Vacuuming gas from the atmosphere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63S0t4k_Glw Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere have risen 48 percent since the start of the industrial revolution. We need to start reducing it, with the help of direct air capture (DAC) technology. But what is it? Giant vacuum cleaners remove CO2 from the atmosphere, sequestering it underground and, in some cases, supplying it back to specific industries, like fertilizer for farmers or bubbles for drinks companies to carbonate their products. One of the companies already using Direct Air Capture tech is Climeworks. They're removing and sequestering thousands of tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. The CO2 fighting resilient crop Arborea has developed the world's first BioSolar Leaf – which puts a whole new spin on natural photosynthesis. Using unique, photovoltaic-like panels, coined 'bionic leaves,' BioSolar Leaf uses sunlight to grow microscopic plants which can grow in high concentrations within arid and infertile ground. These tiny plants, in turn, produce healthy food ingredients while generating oxygen and sequestering high amounts of CO2. Bees glorious bees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6HLWS86-Y8&feature=emb_title Bees. You'd be hard pushed to find someone who doesn't appreciate them. But you'd have an equally tricky time sitting down for a coffee with one (the bee, not the person). They are vital to a healthy environment, but unfortunately, their numbers are declining globally. It's time to save these winged wanderers. The World Bee Project and Oracle have teamed up to do just that. Their Hive Network uses cloud technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and smart sensors to collect information about honey bee decline to protect them better. The Hive Network allows researchers to 'listen' in on honey bee enclosures, analyzing data like wing movement, temperature and honey yield. By monitoring bee colonies at this level, conservationists and beekeepers can detect patterns and predict bee behaviors, giving them vital information to keep our (real-world) honeypots alive. Lab-grown cuisine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iv0857U3UE Not a new technology by any stretch, but a new way of looking at a traditional industry. Meat has a much higher energy footprint than any other food type. It takes 75 times more energy to produce than corn and an area seven times the size of the European Union (EU) to produce enough food for the region's cattle and livestock to eat. In an attempt to curb our carnivorous habits and save our planet from total annihilation, start-ups like Impossible Foods are rearing fake meat – in labs. They've discovered that both animals and plants share a common protein – heme. In plants, this is leghemoglobin, whereas in animals, like cows, this would be hemoglobin. By taking heme from leghemoglobin and growing it in a lab, the product can be colored, shaped and even cooked like a piece of meat because they share the same properties. But there's more. Solar Foods are now turning water into different foods by taking bacteria from soil and multiplying it using hydrogen extracted from water – the result (in this case): flour. Although the flour isn't licensed for sale currently, it's been used to make an edible pancake. Not a bad start. Eventually, the flour will be used to replace fillers in thousands of food products. It can be modified to mimic milk and eggs, and can even be manipulated to create lab-grown fish with all those healthy omega-3 acids. The power of energy storage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmrwdTGZxGk&feature=emb_title Many countries around the world have committed to a 100 percent carbon-free future, but how exactly will it happen? With renewables, in the first instance. But we also need to manage better the energy we produce to power the right tech to help us, like electric cars. The stage is set for interconnectors. These power lines not only move energy across long distances between regional power grids but also store excess energy for later use using lithium-ion batteries – those used in mobile phones and electric cars. The use of these interconnectors is expected to grow tenfold by 2024. They help to store energy for longer to transport it to places where there's less produced – a win-win. Right now, current storage tech can handle four hours of storage. But, technology firms aim to improve that drastically like Energy Vault, a Swiss start-up. They use windy days and automated cranes to stack bricks, recapturing the kinetic energy generated when the bricks fall back to the ground. Watch the video to see it in action. Smart cities are the next port of call The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that climate change could increase deaths by air pollution by hundreds of thousands between 2030 and 2050. One of the big problems: congested cities. Now with advances in artificial intelligence, internet of things (IoT) and smart sensors, smart cities are being designed to help keep earth-defiling emissions down and citizens' lungs healthy. Hamburg is a case in point. A prominent port city in Germany, it's bustling with shipping containers, cruise ships and other sea vessels – but struggling to manage increasing air and noise pollution. Air pollution is due to ships burning marine fuels for on-board equipment while they're docked in the harbor. After Hamburg Port Authority teamed up with Siemens and adopted the Siharbour technology (a mobile-operated generator), Hamburg's ports can now hook incoming ships onto the mainland power supply, stopping them from burning unnecessary fuel and keeping emissions down. What happens next? The teams behind these innovations (and countless others) are working around the clock for a better chance of saving our planet. Which ones do you think will help make a difference? And what innovations could your business develop now that could help protect our world?
Small man wearing clothes associated with crime climbs into a trapdoor in another man's head

What does the rise of deepfakes mean for the future of cybersecurity?

  • min read
    • Imagine you're holding a video conference with a colleague or business partner in another city. You're discussing sensitive matters, like the launch of a new product or the latest unpublished financial reports. Everything seems to be going well, and you know who you're talking to. Maybe you've even met them before. Their appearance and voice are as you expected, and they seem to be pretty familiar with their jobs and your business. It might sound like a routine business call, but what if the person you thought you were talking to is actually someone else? They might seem genuine, but behind the familiar imagery and audio is a social engineering scammer fully intent on duping you into surrendering sensitive corporate information. In a nutshell, this is the disturbing world of deepfakes, where artificial intelligence is the new weapon of choice in the scammer's arsenal. What exactly are deepfakes? Among the newest words on the technology block, 'deepfake' is a portmanteau of 'deep learning' and 'fake.' The term has been around for two years, when it first appeared on a Reddit community of the same name. The technology uses artificial intelligence to superimpose and combine both real and AI-generated images, videos and audio to make them look almost indistinguishable from the real thing. The apparent authenticity of the results is rapidly reaching disturbing levels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0 One of the most famous deepfakes of all was created by actor and comedian Jordan Peele, who made this video of Obama delivering a PSA about fake news. While this one was made for the sake of humor and to raise awareness to this rapidly emerging trend, deepfake technology has, unsurprisingly, been misappropriated since the very beginning. Its implications for credibility and authenticity have placed it squarely in the spotlight. The worrying consequences of deepfakes Wherever there's technology innovation, there's nearly always pornography, so it's little surprise that the first deepfakes to make waves on Reddit were videos which had been manipulated to replace the original actresses' faces with somebody else's – typically a well-known celebrity. Reddit, along with many other networks, has since banned the practice. However, as actress Scarlett Johansson said of deepfake pornography, while celebrities are largely protected by their fame, the trend poses a grave threat to people of lesser prominence. In other words, those who don't take steps to protect their identities could potentially end up facing a reputational meltdown. That brings me to the political consequences of deepfakes. So far, attempts to masquerade as well-known politicians have been carried out largely in the name of research or comedy. But the time is coming when deepfakes could become realistic enough to cause widespread social unrest. No longer will we be able to rely on our eyes and ears for a firsthand account of events. Imagine, for example, seeing a realistic video of a world leader discussing plans to carry out assassinations in rival states. In a world primed for violence, the implications of deepfake technology could have devastating consequences. Purveyors of fake news seeking to make a political impact are just one side of the story. The other is the form of social engineering that business leaders are all too familiar with. As the video conference example illustrates, deepfakes are a new weapon for cybercriminals. The world's first deepfake-based attack against a corporation was reported in August 2019, when a UK energy firm was duped by a person masquerading as the boss of its German parent company. The scammer allegedly used AI to impersonate the accent and voice patterns of the latter's CEO, someone the victim was familiar with, over a phone call. The victim suspected nothing and was duped out of $243,000. These uses of deepfake technology might seem far-fetched, but it's important to remember that social engineering scammers have been impersonating people since long before the rise of digital technologies. Criminals no longer have to go to such lengths as studying targets in great depth and even hiring makeup artists to disguise themselves; they now have emerging technologies on their side, as businesses do for legitimate purposes. Previously, successfully impersonating a VIP was much more difficult. Now, the ability to create deepfake puppets of real people using publicly available photos, video and audio recordings is within everyone's grasp. Can you protect your business from deepfakes? The common misassumption, that synthetic impersonation can never be nearly as convincing as the real thing, is the biggest danger of all. We live in a world where it's getting harder to tell fact from fiction. From the hundreds of millions of fake social media profiles to the worrying spread of fake news and the constant rise of phishing attacks – it's never been more important to think twice about what you see. Perhaps, after all, there is a case for a return of face-to-face meetings behind closed doors when discussing important business matters. Fortunately, there are other ways you can prepare your business for the inevitable rise of deepfakes without placing huge barriers in the way of innovation. To start with, 'seeing is believing' is a concept you'll increasingly want to avoid when it comes to viewing video or listening to audio, including live broadcasts. To untrained eyes, deepfakes are getting harder to tell apart from the real thing, but there are, and likely always will be, some signs due to the fundamental way AI algorithms work. When a deepfake algorithm generates new faces, they are geometrically transformed with rotation, resizing and other distortions. It's a process that inevitably leaves behind some graphical artifacts. While these artifacts will become harder to identify by sight alone, AI itself can also be used as a force for good – it can detect whether a video or stream is authentic or not. The science of defending against deepfakes is a battle of wills: as deepfakes increase in believability, cybersecurity professionals need to invest more in seeking the truth. A team of researchers in China recently published a method for using AI itself to expose deep fakes in real time. Another paper published by the same team figured out a way to proactively protect digital photos and videos from being misappropriated by deepfake algorithms by adding digital noise, invisible to the human eye. As the threat of deepfakes edges ever nearer, we can hopefully expect more countermeasures to follow suit. This article represents the personal opinion of the author.
climate edge farm

The future of farming: The start-up digitizing agriculture in developing nations

  • min read
    • As part of Kaspersky's Bring on the Future series, we're meeting businesses around the world who are changing their industry, and society, for the better. Farming isn't easy – fact. It's even trickier for smallholder tea or coffee farms in developing nations. Why? Lack of affordable infrastructure and the intensifying effects of climate change to name a couple of factors. But things are changing. Since 2015, the good people of Climate Edge have been helping farmers in developing nations fight common problems – from lack of affordable farm insurance to jumping through hoops to join cooperatives – by digitizing their day to day. I spoke with James Alden, co-founder and CEO, to find out more. Ryan: Why did you start Climate Edge, and how did you come to found it? James: We started it from a social perspective – my business partner Paul and I were studying environmental technology at Imperial College. When it came to our dissertations, Peter Baker, now our business partner, was running a project on how to prepare smallholder coffee farmers for climate change. We liked the sound of it, so went to Honduras to get involved. Almost instantly, we realised that farmers were really up against it. Climate change was impacting their ability to grow crops massively and not much was being done to support them. As part of our dissertation, we were required to collect yield data manually every day. Which, as you can imagine, was tedious. We thought, "If this is hard for us, how hard is it for the farmers, and what knock-on effects will it have if they don't do it?" After doing some digging, we realised that by not having data from the farm readily available, it was impacting everything from the way farmers insure themselves to understanding climate change and selling their products. That was how we could help, by giving farmers the means to digitize their everyday work. Helping farmers digitize their everyday processes, got it. So who's behind Climate Edge? Myself, Paul Baranowski and Peter Baker. Both Paul and I are from an environmental tech background – with exposure to policy, business and management – whereas Peter is the academic. Since beginning in 2015 we've brought on a product designer, a developer and someone to specifically focus on partner relations. You're building quite the team, what's the big vision? To be honest, our vision has changed quite a bit since we first started. Originally, we set out to help farmers adapt to climate change conditions by giving them a simple, easy-to-use digital system to record key farming data, how that affects their farm, and how best to prepare against changing environmental conditions. Now, we want to open up the market so that farmers can get access to the services and the value they need, to address the problems they have, which go beyond preparing for climate change. For example, insurance. Without recorded data – which most smallholder farms don't have – insurers don't know the risk of each individual farmer. They end up estimating, which results in small farms being lumped onto policies that either don't fit them, or are too expensive altogether, so if a fire comes and wipes out their crop, they're finished. We also want to move away from helping farmers at a localized level, to helping their cooperatives. In developing nations, a handful of farms form 'cooperatives', which are groups of farms that club their exports together to sell on – the benefits of which are tenfold, from fair prices to guaranteed sales. However, cooperatives need to be certified by organisations like Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade, otherwise traders won't buy from them. All well and good, but to be accredited, these small farms need to show a series of markers, from biodiversity measures, to pesticide use or even crop history, something that's increasingly difficult to do by hand, and can often be a barrier for these farms to join cooperatives. Climate Edge helps farmers store this data digitally, instead of on thousands of sheets of paper – or not at all! Must be a huge weight off their minds. So how does the technology work? In the first instance, we use Nexo – a weather station – to collect data from farms. The Nexo monitors everything from soil temperature to humidity and everything in between. Then our analytical software takes this data and logs it. By measuring air temperature, soil temperature, air humidity, precipitation and more, we can monitor the key conditions determining yield and quality. Our back-end system then takes this raw data, analyses it and provides farmers and their cooperatives, if they have one, with actionable, tailored information so they can implement the right solutions. Climate Edge gives smallholder farmers globally the information needed to adapt to a devastating changing climate. Our agricultural weather stations and blended satellite imaging identify how yield and quality of crops are being impacted by key climatic variables, at an affordable price for the market we are working in. Remarkable! So how does Climate Edge differ from similar technologies on the market? Right now, future forecasting in agriculture is huge. Future forecasting is the ability to know if the prices for different things are going to go up or down depending on yields. Our technology and operation differs because we use Climate Edge-affiliated farmers to collect very high quality data, then use that data to make conclusions from the surrounding farmland and other farmers. Climate Edge also has the power to affect the agricultural supply chain. For example, our climate data enables micro-insurers to make accurate pay-outs, our farm management data gives micro-financers the ability to identify reliable investments and the two combined provide the information needed to manage supply chains securely. Through this accessible approach we can provide the 500 million global farmers growing the world's most valuable crops the necessary information to grow stable and profitable businesses. That has the potential for a huge impact. How does it work when a farm signs up? What's the process? We currently work with farmer cooperatives who have a big data burden, but little in the way of automating any of their processes. The biggest burden for cooperatives is maintaining their certification standards (meaning that they can sell their crops under value-adding marks, such as Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade). Without this certification it can be very difficult, if not impossible, for the cooperatives to sell the crops, which is why this is such an important issue. Climate Edge supports cooperatives through this process by providing an app which integrates into the current data collection and reporting process, making this far less time consuming and complicated.  We provide this service for free to the farmers. Climate Edge benefits as the data collected through this process is often the same as the data needed for processes done by other businesses in the supply chain. For example, one service we have been delivering recently is conducting impact assessments for NGOs (non-governmental organizations). If an NGO does a project with a cooperative, how much impact did they achieve with the money they were given?  There has been a great push from funding donors to know more about the impact that has been achieved using their money, but for many NGOs this requires a huge amount more money to be spent paying for staff on the ground to visit farms and survey farmers. We can cut out that process as we are already on the ground collecting the data they need. It can't have been smooth sailing the whole way. What big challenges have you faced so far? Our biggest challenges are probably the same as most other start-ups; making sure that what we commit to building is correct, that we grow efficiently but also as quickly as possible, and making sure we don't run out of money. This is a delicate balance to achieve and it is often difficult to make sure you are spending enough time on validating product market fit versus fundraising.  Both are incredibly important, but when you only have a certain amount of hours in the day and a small team, you have to make decisions on what is most important at that moment in time. Smallholder farming is built on narrow profit margins and often low incomes. This means it is difficult to develop technologies which add sufficient value whilst still being affordable. As a result, there is little innovation in the market. We believe creating products which benefit a number of stakeholders, including farmers, is key to spreading the cost between users, and achieving a suitable price point for each.  I'm sure you've had your fair share of positive stories. What's been your biggest success? Our greatest success is that we have been able to start generating revenue very early on in our journey.  This is not common among many start-ups, who want to make sure everything is perfect before offering it to customers. But that's dangerous because building a client base and building trust takes time, and as we all know, time is money. We've been able to offer our service in broken-down chunks to initial clients and partners, which is extremely beneficial in two ways. Firstly, it brings in money which means we don't need to fundraise as much, saving us time and equity, and secondly, it means that we can move quicker by understanding exactly what it is our clients want and how we can give it to them. It's been quite the journey so far. What do you think the future opportunities are for smart farming, or specifically, big data use in farming? The opportunity in our market is enormous. Agriculture in developing nations hasn't seen any significant innovation since the green revolution, but the demand for the crops produced has risen dramatically. We won't be able to learn how we can make sure supply keeps up with demand without innovating significantly. Of course some of this will come from breeding new crops which can yield more, or can withstand more extreme conditions, but it will also involve making agriculture more investible, or understanding where the greatest supply chain risks are and how to mitigate them. Smallholder farming is currently a number of steps behind other global agricultural systems, particularly in the tropics. Many of the farmers we have worked with are incredibly isolated from high-tech products which improve efficiency, up-to-date agronomic models and finance management software – all of which are mainstays of European and US agriculture. The technology to provide data-driven farming is not the problem, which is a great position to be in. The challenge is in creating business models that allow these technologies to be fostered in the market. Once this has been achieved in a scalable way, I see data-driven farming practices completely changing the global agriculture market, as much more information (and therefore power) will be put in farmers' hands. Previously, you've said that Climate Edge can 'provide significant value to other sectors'. Which sectors could this have a positive effect on? Our goal is to become a big data broker for the developing agriculture sector. This data can have a lot of value for a lot of different people. This includes NGOs, insurance providers who need data on the risk profile of farmers or of an area, or banks who need data to understand the likelihood of a client defaulting on their loan.  It also helps input providers who need to understand market drivers and demand so that they can pre-emptively make products which meet that need, and investors who speculate on commodity markets want to make sure their investments are most likely to pay off. The value of data is being seen in many different industries and agriculture is no different.  We are making this happen in a place it hasn't been done before. Impressive! What does the future hold for Climate Edge? Scaling up. We are currently consolidating our efforts and increasing our scale in two key areas.  The first is East Africa, starting with Kenya.  The second is Latin America, starting with Colombia.  We are moving from a scattergun approach where we were trying to better understand the landscape of different sectors, to now expanding within the most promising. We have a number of very exciting partnerships and clients, like Unilever and Producers Direct, which are starting to scale to lead this expansion.
Security Awareness

How to build a better cyber-aware culture at work

  • min read
    • Your employees are one of the biggest risk factors when it comes to your business and cybersecurity. You can lecture them, make them take online tests, even install software on their machines, but one rogue click on a phishing email could cost your business dearly. The answer: build a robust cybersecurity awareness culture to keep your business safe. When was the last time you inspired your employees about cybersecurity? You might've given a presentation, or delivered a series of online tests for people who, most probably, didn't pay it their full attention. Ask yourself, if you said "cybersecurity awareness session," would employees A: be excited and engaged, B: see it as a chance to switch off, or C: be more worried about pressing deadlines to pay full attention? If you answered A, well done – you're already building a cyber-aware organization. If you answered B or C, you need to change the dynamic from one-off training to a more embedded cultural of cyber-awareness. Culture, not lectures I worked at a firm years ago, one of their biggest rules: the phone never rings a fourth time. So for every member of staff, as soon as we stepped into that office, we knew the drill. And nobody had to teach new members of staff to do it – they could see for themselves what was expected of them. We just did it instinctively. It was part of our culture which became a habit. Think of cybersecurity best practice like clearing out your cupboards – you do it once, but inevitably you'll need to repeat it on a regular basis. Or to get more specific, it's like putting anti-virus software on a computer and never updating it. Strong cybersecurity cultures aren't built on one-off lectures about how dangerous the cyber-world is, they're built on engagement and habit. How to engage your employees and protect your business Firstly, if you have the funds, invest in IT talent. By appointing someone who's in charge of protecting your business, monitoring threats and educating your staff, your business will be better equipped to deal with cyberattacks. And make sure your IT teams have the training in threat intelligence and the right technologies in hand to spot and act on threats. But what if you're a small medium-sized businesses (SMB) with limited resources, and perhaps none or few dedicated IT specialists? Think bite-sized: small, but frequent. As you build momentum in the office, people will become more aware of what you're trying to do. For example, a poster with five ways to stay cyber-safe will catch people's eyes if you put it somewhere public, like the kitchen sink – next to your other safety at work signs. Or think about your procedures. As spear phishing emails – in which hackers assume the identity of a member of your staff – become more prevalent in targeted attacks. Giving multiple people the responsibility to sign off financial transactions, could stop identity thieves in their tracks. Rewarding colleagues and employees can go a long way too. Who has reported the most phishing emails, for example? A gift voucher prize should keep everyone keen to report them. And while you're at it, encourage other more security awareness practises in the workplace, like questioning when unknown people are in the building, and avoiding digital clutter like confidential information on the printer or unsecured data sticks. Ultimately, the most effective way to build a better cybersecurity culture is regularity. My top tip: run short activities often – lessons, tests, simulations, even treasure hunts or a meeting room transformed into a 'cyber-escape room' for the day. Frequently give employees a digestible amount of information. They'll get small enough bites of information to integrate into their daily work while building a foundation for a strong cybersecurity culture. The result? Stronger protection for your business.
why lack data about women

Why are we lacking data about women?

  • min read
    • When my sister-in-law Louise was studying fashion design, her required course materials included a specific brand and model of dressmaking scissors. She could scarcely believe how big they were, compared with her hands. They were difficult and slow to use, and it never got easier. Risking losing marks for having the wrong equipment, Louise replaced them with a pair that fit her hands. Fashion design is dominated by women, but Louise's course requirements had been designed around people with much larger hands than hers – I would guess, men. This failure to account for women and men having physical differences cost Louise, and probably most of her classmates, at the very least, time and money. Perhaps marks. You might hear a story like this and think, that's just one fashion school with outdated requirements. But increasingly, we're asking where the data came from that we use to develop things like medicines, tech and safety equipment, and finding often, it came solely, or mostly, from men. The gender data gap Author and researcher Caroline Criado-Perez coined the term, "gender data gap" to describe when research used to develop products for both men and women, or women alone, uses only (or almost entirely) male subjects. This can mean the resulting product performs more poorly for women. And 'to perform more poorly' may mean fatally so. Looking behind statistics that might seem hard to explain, like women's higher rate of injury and death in car accidents, Criado-Perez found cars are safety tested with crash test dummies designed around an average male's weight and measurements. Similarly, the UK's Trade Union Council (TUC) lists multiple examples of workplace safety equipment not designed to fit women, alongside cases of serious injuries and fatalities directly linked to poorly fitting equipment. It's not uncommon to find medicines trialed only on men, even when the drug is only for women. The significance of this topic is such that Criado-Perez's book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed For Men won the Royal Society's Science Book Prize in 2019 and Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Several conferences to be held in 2020 (for example, Gender Data Gap Conference in Stockholm and Measure what Matters in Canberra) aim to educate participants to think about, and act on, the gender data gap. Where are the gender data gaps? Everywhere you look, according to Criado-Perez's research. But since we're in cybersecurity, let's draw some examples from tech, software and the internet. Software doesn't identify women's voices or faces so well Researcher at MIT Media Lab Joy Buolamwini found facial recognition software was more likely to misidentify women, and especially Black women. Voice recognition systems also fail more frequently for women's voices. University of Washington's Dr. Rachael Tatman found YouTube's auto-captioning accurately identified men's speech 13 percent more often than women's. Twitter reports many women are in fact, men When Head of Social Insight at OgilvyOne in 2015, Karin Robinson analyzed her own Twitter following. She found Twitter's algorithm that supposedly identifies users' age, gender and income (for marketers' use in targeting ads) was out by a significant margin when it came to her followers – under-counting women and over-counting men. While the consequences of misidentifying users' gender for marketing purposes might seem trivial, it may also mean analyses Twitter performs on its own data, like checking whether they're handling online abuse or bullying complaints in a gender-neutral way, will be compromised. AI taught itself to discriminate against women Amazon realized in 2015 that the AI it created to shortlist candidates' resumes had developed bias similar to that of humans when shortlisting candidates for roles. The technology had learned its ways from patterns of employment over the past 10 years. Amazon no longer uses the AI for shortlisting, in part because of this finding. What can business leaders in tech do? Even if you think you don't perform or use research, you probably do, somewhere along the line. From user testing software, to customer satisfaction surveys, if you're not looking to understand how well you're doing and how to improve, you should be. There are several things you can do to reduce gender bias in the data you rely upon to do your work. 1.   Consider women a potential market you've not yet reached Many businesses are now starting to realize that determining your potential audience by your current audience limits growth. If you make design software, for example, and know it's currently most popular with men ages 35 to 45, rather than aiming to increase your market by reaching more of the same people, there may be bigger gains in catering to groups you're not reaching. Many brands once thought altering their product or marketing to reach more women would always alienate an existing male market, but prominent examples show the male market is not so easily threatened. For example, when a number of movie studios started releasing action films centered around female characters, like Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, their box office success now eclipses the concerns that preceded their release – that the popular franchises were taking a huge risk with an existing male fan base. 2.   Check where your data comes from One reason voice recognition software fails more often with female voices may be that popular speech and language open data sources, such as TED talks, are male-dominated. Asking your researchers, or companies you commission research from, where their data comes from, and whether broader sources are available, will make results less likely to favor groups already over-represented. 3.   Research your cold audiences People who love what you do are always easiest to research, but they'll teach you the least. You shouldn't be trying to improve your product or expand your market by always asking fans, or existing customers, what they think. It's much harder to connect with 'the one that got away' (or even, the one who's never heard of you) but they're who you most need to talk to. 4. To recruit more women, change your strategy Caroline Criado-Perez notes in her book that one reason for the gender data gap is women step up to take part in research less often than men and more often drop out of studies. What reasons lie behind this? It's hard to say, but we know women are more likely to face financial pressure and have caring responsibilities, so they'll naturally struggle more to give up their time. Considering how you design research, and whether it's equally appealing to men and women, could help. Here are some research design factors to consider. Recruitment methods Asking staff to share an invitation on social media will likely reach people like your staff. If requested to do so, a good research company will be able to find you participants matching a balance of profiles, such as age, profession and gender. Inviting women specifically in the advertising description can also help. Timing A lunchtime focus group might be easier for women with caring responsibilities, rather than one held after work. Time commitment A 20-minute interview will attract more participants than a one-hour interview. Safety Review and reduce any potential personal safety risks for those who take part. For example, how are you making sure participants never see each other's personal data? If you're asking people to go somewhere to take part, do the lighting, parking or connections to public transport feel safe? Women may feel more comfortable meeting a researcher in a public place, like a coffee shop or library, rather than going to an unknown office building. Travel Even with studies that are well paid, more people will be able to take part if they don't have to travel. Consider whether the researcher can go to the participant or meet over video conferencing rather than face-to-face. 5. Delineate data for men and women, and analyze it separately In Invisible Women, Criado-Perez says sometimes the gender data gap problem isn't that the data on women is missing, but that it's mixed in with men's data or not analyzed separately to see if there are differences. This hides when something isn't working for one gender or another. For example, if your male users are having an above-average experience and your female users are having a below-average experience, without delineating the data according to which subjects are men, and which are women, the results will tell you it's fine for everyone. By gathering gender information about participants and making sure any analysis looks for potential differences between men and women, you can identify gender-related problems early. The notion of the gender data gap has given consumers a language to identify and object to the gender data biases behind products, from software to scissors. Business leaders can build a better reputation, and better products, by asking the right questions. Make sure the research you rely on is representative and allows for the possibility that the gender of the person using your product might change how good it is for them.
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