Artificial intelligence becomes a necessity

             Artificial intelligence becomes a necessity

We’re reaching the point where businesses absolutely need to adopt AI in order to stay relevant. Voice-activated home assistants, smartphones, Big Data, and Insight-as-a-Service vendors will all have big years as a result of this AI adoption. But the biggest winners this year are data scientists and Chief Data Officers (CDO) who will be in high demand for a long time.

Forrester predicts that AI will blur the boundaries between structured and unstructured data, and 50% of CDO’s will start to report directly to the CEO. As a result, over 13% of data-related jobs on Indeed.com are for data engineers, compared to 1% for data scientists. This reflects the need for practical, action-oriented data pros that can directly impact the bottom line.

AI will most likely have consequences that reach beyond business. Already, visionaries like Elon Musk and world leaders like Vladimir Putin believe AI has the power to alter the world landscape. This is something to keep an eye on, to say the least.

The Oculus Go standalone headset will start at $199. Source: CNET

cybersecurity reaches an inflection point

Cybersecurity reaches an inflection point

With a focus on Equifax, WannaCry, Uber, and National Security Agency, 2017 has beenan awful year for private information on the web. That’s saying something, considering the election hacking fiasco a year before. Security is top-of-mind for every enterprise, organization, and government in the world, which means resources will be flowing to develop new solutions.

Cybersecurity initiatives can be divided into two categories: Internal and external. Internally, businesses will be focused on building security into their software. DevOps teams should focus on automating security testing into their software development lifecycle. This will help ensure that vulnerabilities are not introduced during development.

Externally, venture capitalists are flooding cybersecurity startups with capital, to the tune of $3.4 Billion in 2016. According to the Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard, there are currently 5 cybersecurity startups worth over $1B, and we should see more emerge in 2018.

While funding might not be a problem, a lack of cybersecurity talent is. The Enterprise Security Group conducted a study and found that 45% of organizations say they have a problematic shortage of cybersecurity talent. This shortage has consequences beyond big business. Jon Oltsik of the ESG believes that the cybersecurity skills shortage, “represents an existential threat to our national security.”

Like blockchain and edge computing, cybersecurity represents another green pasture for developers who want their skills to stay in-demand for the foreseeable future. It could also be some of the most important work of our generation.

DevOps moves toward NoOps

DevOps moves toward NoOps

We all agree devops is critically important for helping developers build new applications and features fast, while maintaining high levels of quality and performance. The problem with devops is developers needing to spend 60 percent of their time on the ops side of the equation, thus cutting into the time devoted to development. Developers are having to integrate various continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) tools, maintain those integrations, and constantly update the CI/CD tool chain as new technologies are released. Everyone does CI, but not too many people do CD.  Developers will insist on cloud services to help the pendulum swing back to the dev side in 2018. That will require more automation for real CICD.

Docker gives you packaging, portability, and the ability to do agile deployments. You need CD to be a part of this Docker lifecycle. For example, if you are using containers, as soon as you commit a code change to Git, the default artifact built should be a Docker image with the new version of the code. Further, the image should automatically get pushed into a Docker registry, and a container deployed from the image into a dev-test environment. After QA testing and deployment into production, the orchestration, security, and scaling of containers should be taken care of for you. Business leaders are putting pressure on developers to deliver new innovations faster; the devops model must free up more time for developers to make that possible

B2B transaction leveraging blockchain go int production

B2B transactions leveraging blockchain go into production

Businesses have begun to understand the security, reliability, and efficiency to be gained from blockchain-enabled transactions. Developers will implement many blockchain use cases across financial services and manufacturing supply chains in the coming year. Blockchain is a technology that enables efficient, secure, immutable, trusted transactions among organizations that might not fully trust each other, eliminating intermediaries.

Consider a company ordering products from an offshore manufacturer. These products get shipped via a shipping company, come through customs, through another shipping company, and finally to the buyer. Today, the verification and reconciliation of each step mostly happens through emails and spreadsheets, with a lot of people and processes involved. Blockchain eliminates manual processes and reconciliation by irrevocably recording updates to the blockchain ledger when a minimum number of parties say, “Yes, this part of the transaction happened.”

Blockchain cloud services will bring scalability, resiliency, security, and pre-built integrations with enterprise systems, making it much easier for developers to focus on the business use case as opposed to underlying hyperledger fabric implementation.

Hacker attack methods

Diverse Hacker Attack Methods

The stereotyped image conjured up by most people when they hear the term "hacker" is that of a pallid, atrophied recluse cloistered in a dank bedroom, whose spotted complexion is revealed only by the unearthly glare of a Linux box used for port scanning with Perl. This mirage might be set off by other imagined features, such as dusty stacks of Dungeons and Dragons lore from the 1980s, empty Jolt Cola cans, and Japanese techno music streaming from the Net.

However, although computer skill is central to a hacker's profession, there are many additional facets that he must master. In fact, if all you can do is point and click, you are a script kiddie, not a hacker. A real hacker must also rely on physical and interpersonal skills such as social engineering and other "wet work" that involves human interaction. However, because most people have a false stereotype of hackers, they fail to realize that the person they are chatting with or talking to on the phone might in fact be a hacker in disguise. In fact, this common misunderstanding is one of the hackers' greatest assets.

Social Engineering

Social engineering is not unique to hacking. In fact, many people use this type of trickery every day, both criminally and professionally. Whether it be haggling for a lower price on a lawn mower at a garage sale, or convincing your spouse you really need that new toy or outfit, you are manipulating the "target." Although your motives might be benign, you are guilty of socially engineering the other party.

Wireless Hacking Techniques

A typical hacker attack is not a simple, one-step procedure. It is rare that a hacker can get online or dial up on a remote computer and use only one method to gain full access. It is more likely that the attacker will need several techniques used in combination to bypass the many layers of protection standing between them and root administrative access. Therefore, as a security consultant or network administrator, you should be well versed in these occult techniques in order to thwart them. This chapter, which will be a review for advanced users, will introduce the main types of hacker attacks. Expert users will want to skip ahead to the next chapter (Chapter 7, "Wireless Attacks") and go straight for the goodies.
The following techniques are not specific to wireless networks. Each of these attacks can take multiple forms, and many can be targeted against both wired and wireless networks. When viewed holistically, your wireless network is just another potential hole for a hacker. Therefore, this chapter will review hacking techniques from a generic perspective

Security hacker

A security hacker is someone who seeks to breach defenses and exploit weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge, recreation, or to evaluate system weaknesses to assist in formulating defenses against potential hackers. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground.

There is a longstanding controversy about the term's true meaning. In this controversy, the term hacker is reclaimed by computer programmers who argue that it refers simply to someone with an advanced understanding of computers and computer networks, and that cracker is the more appropriate term for those who break into computers, whether computer criminal (black hats) or computer security expert (white hats). A 2014 article concluded that "... the black-hat meaning still prevails among the general public.