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Start-ups in space: Six out-of-this-world business opportunities

  • min read
    • Does space present a business opportunity for the everyday entrepreneur? You might not be such a 'space cadet' if it's your dream to set up in space tech. Reaching for the stars is no longer the preserve of business giants with staggering budgets. Here are six areas where space tech entrepreneurs have seen a business, environmental or humanitarian opportunity, and set about filling the gap. 1.   Understanding the developing world needs accurate data Swedish start-up Ignitia uses satellite data to solve a problem that affects farmers in tropical countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Mali. Weather forecasting techniques designed for northern latitudes don't work so well here because there are fewer ground observation stations, and tropical weather behaves differently. Ignitia runs simulations of tropical convective patterns on a cluster of supercomputers, using satellite data to pinpoint farmers' locations. They send each farmer a 48-hour forecast by SMS, accurate to within 3 km. A study found farmers who used Ignitia reported a 65 percent increase in yields. Climate Edge is a social enterprise with similar aims but different methods. They realized farmers in areas hard hit by climate change found it hard to adapt without digitized data. Climate Edge uses a small weather station to collect data about farm conditions, like soil temperature and humidity, and transmits it through the 2G cellular network. With the ability to log and monitor conditions that determine farms' yield and produce quality, NGOs could make the right investments to make a difference. 2.   Making tech because you can, then figuring out who needs it While Climate Edge and Ignitia were inspired to do something about environmental problems, successful businesses sometimes come out of developing technology without knowing who needs it. A group of ex-military and space program scientists, CyStellar first created a platform that combined satellite, airborne and ground sensor data. Later, they developed a series of products that applied the information in useful ways for industries from wine to shipping. One of their products, InsurTech, detects and monitors objects and geographic features over time, reporting even minor changes. It means insurance companies can more accurately determine risk, charge more appropriate rates and detect fraud. For customers, it means they can claim more quickly, as the system provides evidence and information the customer would otherwise need to collect. 3.   Revealing what's previously been hard to see Entopy is working to make the supply chain more efficient by using geolocation and GPS. They aim to give logistics managers full visibility of their supply chain, breaking down the silos of different companies involved, such as factory, shipping, warehouse and retailer – all without any party having to change their tracking system. Finland's ICEYE has an eye on shipping safety, among a range of other applications. They use small satellite synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) technology to give ship captains detailed information on the sea ahead, which may be hidden by fog or darkness. The technology also tracks icebergs and predicts their future movement. 4.   Helping cities reduce congestion and environmental impact As cities change and grow, so too must their infrastructure. Teralytics use mobile signal data to help make transport more reliable, efficient and sustainable. Aggregating (grouping individuals' data together with others) for privacy, they report on how people are moving around cities and the journeys they're taking. Organizations that supply public transport, build roads or provide for niche transport needs can buy the data to use in designing and redesigning their networks to reflect better where people go and when. https://vimeo.com/390004849 Teralytics explain how space data helps understand how people travel. Start-ups are trying to expand mobile, data and GPS coverage too. Swiss start-up Astrocast has designed, built and operates its own constellation of nanosatellites, aiming to bring stronger connectivity between regions and expand coverage. Smarter cities will need secure networks to enable internet of things (IoT) devices – for example, autonomous cars – to communicate so they can behave in better ways, like reducing congestion. Satellite data can also give cities insights into environmental concerns like air quality. London-based space start-up 4 Earth Intelligence provides data that helps cities plan to reduce pollution. 5.   Realizing what satellite owners need With so much crucial data coming from satellites, there's high demand for services that support, maintain and protect the satellite network. The Airbnb of space data, Japan's Infostellar lets satellite owners sell surplus capacity to others. It's costly and only makes more space junk to be a hazard to others. Leo Labs specializes in tracking low-earth orbit satellites. They map satellite paths and work out if space debris could collide with satellites. Satellite operators who buy access to the data can adjust their satellites' flight paths to avoid a damaging crash. 6.   Reducing the environmental impact and cost of getting satellites into space As demand increases and tech gets cheaper, we're building and launching more satellites. Someone has to get them into orbit, and start-ups are involved there too. Scottish engineering company Skyrora design rockets especially for launching smaller satellites. Meanwhile, Leo Aerospace aims to reinvent the satellite launch with balloons, planes and other rocket alternatives. The booming satellite 'taxi' market involves companies like Nanoracks ("concierge to the stars") that gather small satellites from multiple customers to piggyback on a larger launch. Once dropped off from the main vehicle, the taxi takes each small satellite to its orbit slot. Space tech isn't just transforming industries the world over. Led by a new breed of innovators and entrepreneurs, it's an industrial revolution in the stars.
data toxic waste

Data – the new oil, or potential for a toxic oil spill?

  • min read
    • Both of these statements were once controversial, but today, they're commonsense. If Equifax, the CIA, the NSA, The Office of Personnel Management, Facebook and dating sites can't keep our secrets secret, then neither can your business. In truth, industry's old, ill-placed confidence in the security of data was always an example of motivated reasoning. Collecting data is so cheap and storing it is so easy, and there were so many analysts and investors and hustling grifters exclaiming that "data is the new oil" that it seemed fiscally irresponsible not to collect everything you could, and retain it forever. Who knew how that data could be put to profitable use in the future? It was raining soup, so it was time to fill your boots – even if you couldn't find a market for soup-in-a-boot today, there was no doubt that such a market would appear in the foreseeable future. Given such a value proposition, it's not surprising that the people doing the collecting and the retaining of data talked themselves into the idea that both activities could be undertaken safely. But of course, they were wrong, and as history has caught up with them – as breach after breach has hit in ever-increasing waves – the rationale has changed. Now, rather than arguing that breaches are inevitable, the story goes that breaches aren't a big deal: every time there's a data breach, company spokespeople recite the catechism: "We take our customers' privacy very seriously. None of the data that leaked was compromising." Some of that is "privacy nihilism" – it was all going to leak eventually, so what's the difference? But there's a more insidious version of this, which argues that breach data isn't a problem because bad people can't do much with it. This isn't just nihilism; it's denialism. Breach apologists argue that the data they leak isn't compromising because it's anonymized, or because key identifiers were removed from it. This profoundly misunderstands how data is used – and abused. Re-identification of anonymized data-sets is a hot research topic for computer science today, with researchers creating automatic tools that piece together disparate data-sets to identify the people in them: for example, you can merge a health authority's database of anonymized prescribing data (doctor, medicine, date and time) with a breached database of taxi journeys that includes trips to hospitals that coincide with the prescribing times to infer who is taking antipsychotic medications, or antiretrovirals or cancer therapeutics. Many data-protection vendors have promised that they can inject noise into data-sets to prevent re-identification, but those promises rarely survive contact with security researchers who evaluate their claims. It's been years since the first significant re-identification theoretical work was done, and things keep getting worse for those who insist that anonymization is possible. Re-identification methods tell us a lot about how digital criminals operate and their incredible frugality and resourcefulness. Usernames and passwords can be recycled in credential-stuffing attacks that allow them to break into security cameras from Ring and Nest, order takeout, or track and immobilize entire fleets of corporate vehicles. Breach identities can be used to overwhelm regulatory proceedings with plausible fake comments or to create fleets of Twitter identities. Criminals operate by combining and recombining data-sets, using one company's breach in combination with a public data source, and a third company's anonymous data release to wreak incredible havoc. They might even get enough data fragments to fraudulently obtain a duplicate deed for your house and sell it to someone else while you're on holiday. Never mind that no one can point to a specific piece of data you're liable to lose control over someday and say, "That, that's the data-point that will cost someone their house, or let their stalker find them or expose their retirement savings to thieves." It's similarly true that no one can point to a specific droplet of dioxin in a factory's illegal effluent pipe and say, "That, that is the carcinogen that will kill a young mother of three, some five miles downstream of the pipe." This doesn't stop companies that poison the water or the air from paying the price. The harms from breaches are stochastic (i.e., randomly determined), not deterministic. So far, remedies for those who have been injured by breaches have been severely limited, but they're getting stiffer. Home Depot's 2014 breach cost it $0.34/customer in direct compensation. But that was then. Breached Yahoo! customers may get compensated $100 each. Facebook just got hit with a $5B fine, and the party's just getting started. The harms from breaches are cumulative: like toxic waste in nature, breaches build up in the information environment, and they are effectively immortal in their potential for damage. As the public – and the law – come to grips with this, we're likely to see greater and greater remedies for those whose data has been released into the wild (forever). Remember, breaches affect everyone alike – all political persuasions, rich and poor, including the governing classes and lawmakers themselves. Inevitably, we will see the framework for breach remedies transformed to look more like the remedies for other probabilistic harms, such as environmental harms. When that happens, it might be too late for you: the data you're warehousing today might already have been ex-filtrated from your network without you even knowing that it's happened – until one of your customers finds out the hard way that you've compromised them, and seeks legal remedies. Your insurer isn't going to write policies for you – or errors and omissions policies for your board – if you're warehousing all this digital toxic waste in leaky digital barrels, not once the penalties for losing control over it start to turn into real money. Maybe you could still justify all that risk if the profits from all that data were commensurate with it. But as researchers keep discovering, the benefits from data are wildly oversold – the efficacy of ad targeting based on users' behavior is almost identical targeting based on the content of the pages where the ads appear, which requires no user data. But if you're an ad-tech company or a Big Tech platform like Facebook or Google, the mystique about the ability of data to convert customers allows you to sell your product as a massive premium, while intimidating potential competitors who think that they will never get started because they can never collect as much data as the companies that are already in the space. The people who claim data is the new oil are people who are selling the data, and the claims they make about the ways that this data lets you do amazing things are sales literature, not peer-reviewed studies. Data was never the new oil. It was always the new toxic waste: pluripotent, immortal – and impossible to contain. You don't want to be making more of it, and you definitely should be getting rid of the supply you've so unwisely stockpiled so far. Data minimization isn't just good practice; it's good business. Collect as little data as you can, and keep it as briefly as you can. If your privacy policy fits on the back of a napkin – because you're collecting almost nothing and processing it only for specific purposes, and then deleting it forever – you're on the right track! This article reflects the opinions of the author.
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.
Threat intelligence drive SOCS

Use threat intelligence to find the needle in your cybersecurity data stack

  • min read
    • According to Benjamin Franklin, nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. And in our advanced technology age, we can add a new inevitability: cyber-threats. Before you even take your first sip of coffee on a Monday morning, a new threat that could have a severe impact on your infrastructure and data may already be in your system. You just haven't found it yet. Monitoring threats around the clock: powering your Security Operation Center So in a world where threats are everywhere, what are your options? Well, if business continuity and protection of data are a top priority for your enterprise, you've probably already invested, or are planning to launch, a Security Operation Center (SOC). Your SOC will monitor threats around the clock, so you can trust your security team to monitor and act to keep the most significant risks at bay. Rest easy. It's time to enjoy that delicious, hot coffee. Well, not quite. If data is the new oil, today we live in the aftermath of an oil spill. And data overload is as much a problem to your InfoSec team as it is to your marketing or customer operations. With the continued growth of more interconnected devices and the internet of things, having data on the many threats hitting your perimeter is all well and good. But understanding which are false positives and which need immediate action to quash is like finding a poisoned needle in your data stack. To find and immunize against that one-in-a-million alerts, you need threat intelligence. Why you need threat intelligence Threat intelligence is the overlay that turns seeing threats into knowing when and how to act. Gartner defines threat intelligence as: I'm not arguing with that. But no two battles against cyber-threats are quite the same. Using threat intelligence, you can join the dots between related attacks to pinpoint who your adversary is, then adjust your defense strategy to block them. Every day, we face more threats. Since Kaspersky was founded in 1997, we've added over 700 million new malicious files, a growth of 8,400 times. These range from everyday commodity threats – easily detected, known malware – to advanced threats and targeted attacks using known TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures), and rare but deadly advanced persistent threats (APTs). The data paints an interesting picture, often referred to as a "threat pyramid." Mundane and known threats – common malware and so forth – make up 90 percent of all threats we see. Advanced threats and targeted attacks make up 9.9 percent. These hit small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises hardest, with attacks like banking trojan malware Emotet, which is very active nowadays. A mere 0.1 percent of all threats are APTs, affecting few organizations but with the most devastating consequences. These are the most poisonous needles in our data stack. You need a strategy, not a platform Good threat intelligence is more than just buying a platform and hoping for the best. Like all effective cyber-prevention, it blends technology, strategy and effort. Good threat intelligence gives you the insight you can act on – from real-time alerts of a potential breach to helping paint a bigger picture that educates your senior stakeholders about the ongoing risks. This, in turn, indicates what software and investment you need to keep harm at bay. At the basic level, threat intelligence provides alerts and blocking for indicators of compromise (IOCs). Contextual alerts and e-signature management help determine the validity and severity of attacks to form your incident response approach. Another use case is fusion analysis – pulling together and evaluating disconnected data feeds to help identify which threats pose a danger. And threat intelligence can inform your cybersecurity strategy too. By using intelligence relevant to your risk posture, security planning informs architecture decisions and helps you refine your security processes to better defend against known threats. If you're working with a managed service provider (MSP) to run your security operations, ask how they'll install and run your threat intelligence service, and how much time and effort you're getting. Its round-the-clock nature means it's not the easiest service to outsource. Threat intelligence's big three When planning and buying your solution, you'll need three components: IOC (indicator of compromise) IOC is the basis of threat intelligence. It's evidence we can measure and recognize like a fever is the outward sign of disease in the body. There are many IOC services. To choose the right one, you'll need to know which threats you're most likely to face. Threat data feeds These provide integrated intelligence by analyzing adversaries and the wider threat landscape. There are many on the market, both free and paid. To choose the best one for you, ask: do we need an APT data feed if we're not a likely target for APT groups? Where is the best place in the IT infrastructure to add the feeds? Should we block threats or just alert the team? Your answers will depend on your organization's security posture and IT strategy. Threat intelligence platform A threat intelligence platform lets you manage a range of specialist software that supports the different components. What you choose and how you integrate services comes down to your budget and business needs. Although there are open-source data feeds out there, you can buy more sector-specific intelligence. It's essential to drill down when you purchase threat intelligence services to make sure the vendor provides a responsive service – both in the quality of data feeds and speed if they're providing incidence response. With careful planning, while choosing a vendor and a well-thought-out strategy, your SOC can benefit from the full protection and power of threat intelligence. The needles will still be in your data stack, but you'll have the tools to find and break them.
5G opportunities

The rise of 5G: Tech’s time to shine

  • min read
    • A need for speed: how 5G will transform business forever We've seen 1G, 2G, 3G and more recently, 4G… Now things are about to kick into overdrive, as 5G powers up for worldwide uptake, bringing with it the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but what impact will it have on business? 5G. Sounds classy, right? It also, more importantly, boasts a strength that we as humans haven't seen since Arnie in The Terminator movies. From download speeds as high as 20 gigabits-per-second (that's 60 episodes of The Wire in just over four minutes), to finally bringing coverage to rural areas, developing nations and less-connected communities – 5G is, on paper, the hero technology we've been waiting for. What is 5G? 5G is fifth-generation mobile network technology enabling exceptional latency speed (the time taken for devices to respond to each other over the wireless network). In essence, it's a constantly evolving network of connections for more than mobile phones, or to the less technical among us, the life-force of the internet of things (IoT). This is very important, because as our technology advances – think precision medicines, autonomous cars, augmented reality – it relies on being connected to different devices which, up until now, wasn't possible (damn you 4G!). Finally, 5G is powerful enough to drive the next generation of tech that will power consumer and industrial-grade technologies. How will 5G benefit business? Qualcomm have estimated that by 2035, 5G could underpin $12.3 trillion worth of goods and services across different industries in the United States alone. And there are many benefits for businesses: Increased network speeds It's quick. It's reaaaaal quick. Speed, minimal latency and enhanced data handling means people and systems in different organizations and offices can communicate in a flash. Cue near-seamless integration between different communications tools and business software. Greater network capacity 5G will be able to cope with more applications running concurrently – from connected cars and IoT devices to virtual reality experiences and simultaneous HD video streaming. It's essentially going to facilitate most next-generation technology, which will make mass uptake of new services easier than in the age of 4G. Greater coverage In short, 5G will close the mobile coverage gap, opening up opportunities for businesses in traditionally hard-to-reach areas. In Africa, for example, 3G networks cover only 50 percent of the population. Without appropriate coverage, many rural businesses can't access the infrastructure they need to grow, and even today's standard services experienced in many countries like streaming video are out of reach. 5G will sort that right out, enabling better connections between rural and urban areas, right across the globe. Which industries are most likely to see those benefits? Every. Single. One of them. But here are a few that are in for a real shake up: Healthcare: watch out for wearables Hospitals, surgeries and drop-in centers across the globe are usually overrun with sick patients looking for help. 5G has the power to change that. It will give the able-bodied and the housebound faster access to services – think online portals and different digital devices – reducing pressure on health infrastructure. One of the biggest advancements 5G will facilitate for this industry is wearable tech. From MedMinder's automated pill dispensers to SpiroSmart's ability to turn mobile phones into respiratory meters, 5G will mean a proliferation in disruptive healthcare devices designed to monitor our health and even use artificial intelligence and tele-presence consultations to diagnose us. It will also completely change the way we look at smart homes. Weihua Sheng, associate professor at Oklahoma State University and director of the Advanced Sensing, Computation and Control Lab, has been working on bringing health sensors into our homes. Sheng's team is developing a cloud-based smart home platform for healthcare monitoring that includes environmental sensors, wearables and a robot assistant. For example, using different sensors, the system can detect whether the user is dehydrated. The robot assistant can then prompt them to drink more water. The platform can also determine whether a person has fallen and call for help. Agriculture: big data means big business Smart farming. It denotes the use of IoT applications in agriculture – from big data to crop sensors – which are going to be facilitated by the 5G network. Allmeteo is a shining example of how important data will be for the future of farming; it's a weather station that uses sensors to gather information from across farms, giving farmers analytics from which to choose the appropriate crops, and take the required measures to improve their capacity. But there are more innovations to come. Many more. One in particular is GreenIQ. In short: it's an automated irrigation and fertilizer system that uses sensors to dictate when farmers water their crops, and by how much. From water management to optimum fertilizer dispensers, 5G will give farms the ability to monitor, track and improve their systems in a way they've never known before. Transport: greasing the gears of change Three words: Self. Driving. Vehicles. Now that's a shake-up. Uber? Car insurance? McDonalds drive thru? Much to think about, and potentially lots of transport businesses who may take a hit. A study in the US shows that self-driving vehicles will potentially reduce the need for parking space by over 5.7 billion square meters. That could free up vital resourcing for housing, or even urban farms to meet our increased food needs. But it's not just driverless cars that 5G will impact, it's going to make traffic lights more intelligent – reducing the time waiting in traffic – and boost public transport connectivity. Yes, the hideously slow train Wi-Fi you sometimes use for work, it's on the up. In Japan in 2018, Samsung completed a 5G demonstration on a moving train in partnership with Japanese telecommunications carrier KDDI. We're talking peak speeds of 1.7 Gbps. Just the right pace for working on the world's fastest bullet trains. But what are the security risks? There are tremendous benefits to 5G, but it has the power to take many businesses out of their comfort zones. As with all new technologies, there are risks. 5G is the first generation of mobile network designed for machine-to-machine (M2M). But it poses major security challenges for privacy, with personal data collected relating to our health, driving habits and more. Connected devices will capture more and more data, which could be a rich bounty for malicious actors. And as 5G needs more mobile sites, it may mean it's easier to geo-locate users, which presents additional risks. There are a couple of things you can do to get ahead of the curve. Firstly, you may want to move sensitive documents onto the cloud, as 5G will rely heavily on virtual infrastructures. But regardless of where you store your data, it's paramount to make sure it's well secured. Secondly, you might want to instate a '5G guardian'. It's someone who really knows their tech, an internal expert and champion for integrating the technology into business as usual. From how it affects your services, to finding ways in which it can improve your day-to-day. They may want a pay rise, though.

Why clearing your digital clutter can boost your office’s data security defenses

  • min read
    • If you work in a digital environment, you know what it's like. Creating and storing sensitive documents every day, then sharing them with colleagues, suppliers, suppliers' employees… The list goes on. But did you know that without adequate encryption, access rights and secure storage, these documents can threaten your company's data security? We call it digital clutter – disorganized data that, left unchecked, can help hackers access your systems and expose your business's confidential customer and personal data. Let's take a look at why digital clutter can expose your business and what you can do about it. Why a fridge can talk about the threat of digital clutter I'll explain more after this video of comedian Josh Pieters pulling a (related) office prank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wYXx35Av_k&feature=youtu.be Imagine a fridge. Filled with glorious, unlabeled and – in some cases – rotting food. Now, without those labels and someone to regulate what goes in or out – or a system to get rid of the dangerously out-of-date goods – people are free to take whatever they please. While that might be great (or not) for a hungry chancer, it's not good for the owner of the food. Or, in this case, the owner of the files – your business. Payroll information, photos of your cat, blueprints for a takeover or acquisition – whatever is on your server or cloud, it's easy for hackers or angry ex-employees to use it against you if not labeled, organized or encrypted properly. How digital clutter can affect data security Imagine: a group email chain at work. You bought a few people pizza last week. You send your bank details out for these lucky colleagues to pay you back. Has everyone deleted the email with your banking information? Probably not. This could leave your company, and your bank account, open to a cyberattack. Or your recent news of a pay rise. Congratulations! Have you stored the details somewhere safe on the server or the cloud? Is it password protected? If not, there's a high chance that one of your team members could find it. Swap the word 'team member' for 'organized hacker' and there's a problem. Organized hackers, malicious insiders, disgruntled ex-employees: digital clutter can help any of them to compromise your data security. There's also a chance that exposing your business's customer or personal data could lead to prosecution under local data regulations, like GDPR. The good news? You can skip all that stress with a few simple steps. Sort out your digital clutter today For the IT managers or IT security managers amongst you, we recommend telling your employees about the risks of digital clutter. Why? Because education is the most powerful form of defense. According to Kaspersky's Dmitry Aleshin, training your colleagues on how to prevent digital clutter will help you find your digital feng shui. In a nutshell: for every digital document and folder, you need to consider who has access, how long for and whether it needs to be encrypted. Customer data and financial plans, for example, need encrypting to the highest level. Bonus tip: just because you've lost a device or it's been stolen, it still needs encrypting, which a lot of endpoint security products offer. Find out more about the issue and how to fix it in Kaspersky's report on digital clutter. You can find a bucketload of stats to impress your colleagues with and help them secure their personal data. Lunchtimes will never be the same again.
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Secure Futures magazine is your go-to business guide for opinions, trends and insight into the world of technology and cybersecurity. We help your business to bring on the future. Brought to you by Kaspersky, the global cybersecurity experts.

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