Safely Detonate That Malware

I like the potential of the FireEye Malware Protection System (MPS).

Unlike traditional signature-based malware protections like antivirus, firewalls, and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), FireEye is an additional security layer that uses a dynamic Multi-Vector Virtual Execution (MVX) engine to detonate even zero-day attacks from suspicious files, web pages, and email attachments. 

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Target's implementation of FireEye detected the malware attack on Nov 30, 2013 and it alerted security officials, but allegedly "Target stood by as as 40 million credit card numbers--and 70 million addresses, phone numbers, and other pieces of personal information--gushed out of its mainframes"over two weeks!

In fact, FireEye could've been set to "automatically delete [the] malware as it's detected" without human intervention, but "Target's team apparently "turned that function off."

FireEye works by "creating a parallel computer network on virtual machines," and before data reaches its endpoint, they pass through FireEye's technology.  Here they are "fooled into thinking they're in real computers," and the files can be scanned, and attacks spotted in safe "detonation chambers."

Target may have been way off target in the way they bungled their security breach, but using FireEye properly, it is good to know that attacks like this potentially can be thwarted in the future. ;-)

[Note: this is not an endorsement of any product or vendor]

Safely Detonate That Malware

Magic Computer Displays

This is some awesome technology from Tactus Technology.

It is called a dynamic tactile touchscreen. 

Here's how it works:

When you want to type with a tablet or other touchscreen display, not only do you see a QWERTY keyboard, but also the buttons actually rise out of of the flatscreen display--for a tactile typing experience. 

Using microfluidics, the fluids in the screen actually change shape--and form buttons.

When your done typing, the keyboard buttons melt away back down into the screen. 

It all happens in a split second and has negligible impact on power consumption (i.e. less than 1%). 

This type of tactile experience with computer displays can be used for tablets, smartphones, gaming devices, and I would imagine even SCADA devices (e.g. for turning a dial, pulling a level, etc. all virtually on a monitor).

Goodbye physical controls and hello magic touchscreen--presto chango.  ;-)

Magic Computer Displays

Sweet Sweat, Bitter Blood

General George S. Patton had a saying that "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

And while we shouldn't sweat the small and unimportant stuff in life, we also can't afford to overlook those things that are really important like our health, spiritual well-being, modest prosperity to care for ourselves and loved ones, and of course ensuring freedom and justice for all people. 

It's a balancing act to do everything and it takes hard work to try and be successful on so many fronts of life.  

Some success strategies:

- Be aware of what's going on around you--we live in a dynamic world and things are constantly changing.

- Work hard to always have a positive impact--it's too easy to be negative and cynical, give up trying, and throw in the towel.

- Learn from mistakes--everyone makes them.

- Hope for the best, but also train and prepare for the worst--because you never really know. 

Overall, I think the picture above says it well: It's better to sweat in training, than bleed in battle. 

So listen to the General: sweat now--really work it and don't be afraid to push your limits--you'll be glad you did, when the time comes and it really counts. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Sweet Sweat, Bitter Blood

Strategy, Blue and Red and Successful All Over

Recently, I was reading about something called “Blue Ocean Strategy.”

The notion is that in pursuing differentiation, an organization’s aim is “not to out-perform the competition in the exiting industry [and to fight it out turning the oceans blood red), but [rather] to create a new market space or a blue ocean, thereby making the competition irrelevant.”

While I like the ocean’s metaphor and agree with the need for organizations to innovate and create new products and services (“blue oceans”), I think that competition (“red oceans”) is not something that is inescapable, in any way.

In profitable industries or market spaces, competition will enter until supply and demand equilibrium are met, so that consumers are getting more or less, the optimal supply at the requisite demand. The result is that organizations will and must constantly fight for survival in a dynamic marketplace.

Moreover, as we know, any organization that rests on its past successes, is doomed to the trash heaps of history as John Champers, the CEO of Cisco stated: It’s “easy to say we’re the best…we don’t need to change, but that’s exactly how you disappear.”

In essence, while we may wish to avoid a duke-it-out, red ocean strategy, every successful innovative, differentiation-driven, blue ocean strategy will result in a subsequent red ocean strategy as competitors smell blood and hone in for the kill and their piece of flesh and cut of market share, revenue, and profit hide.

To me, it is naïve to think that blue ocean and red ocean strategies are distinct, because every blue ocean eventually turns blood red with competition, unless you are dealing with a monopoly or unfair competitive environment that favors one organization over any others.

The key to success and organizational longevity is for innovations to never cease.  When innovation dries up, it is the moment when the organization begins their drowning decent into the ocean’s abyss.

So as with the lifecycle of all organizations, blue ocean strategies will eventually result in red oceans strategies.  Once this occurs, either the organization will leverage their next blue ocean strategy or bleed red until their body drains itself out and dies off—leaving the superior organization’s blue ocean strategy to carry the day.

Together, blue oceans and red oceans—drive the next great innovation and healthy competition in our dynamic, flourishing market.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to freezingmariner)

Strategy, Blue and Red and Successful All Over

The User-centric Web

David Siegel has written a book called “Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web To Transform Your Business” (Dec. 2009).

The main idea is that businesses (suppliers) need to adapt to a new world, where rather than them “push” whatever data they want to us when they want, we (consumers) will be able to get to the information we want and “pull” it whenever we need it (i.e. on demand).

Siegel identifies three types of data online of which less than 1% is currently visible web pages:

• Public Web—what “we normally see when searching and browsing for information online: at least 21 billion pages indexed by search engines.
• Deep Web—includes the “large data repositories that requires their internal searches,” such as Facebook, Craigslist, etc.—“about 6 trillion documents generally not seen by search engines.”
• Private Web—data that “we can only get access to if we qualify: corporate intranets, private networks, subscription based services, and so on—about 3 trillion pages also not seen by search engines.”

In the future, Siegel sees an end of push (i.e. viewing just the Public Web) and instead a new world of pull (i.e. access to the Deep Web).

Moreover, Siegel builds on the “Semantic Web” definition of Sir Tim Berners-Lee who coined the term in the 1990s, as a virtual world where:

• Data is unambiguous (i.e. means exactly the same things to anyone or any system).
• Data is interconnected (i.e. it lives online in a web of databases, rather than in incompatible silos buried and inaccessible).
• Data has an authoritative source (i.e. each piece of information has a unique name, single source, and specified terms of distribution).

While, I enjoyed browsing this book, I wasn’t completely satisfied:

1. It’s not a tug of war between push and pull—they are not mutually exclusive. Providers push information out (i.e. make information available), and at the same time, consumers pull information in (access it on-demand).
2. It’s not just about data anymore—it’s also about the applications (“apps”). Like data, apps are pushed out by suppliers and are pulled down by consumers. The apps make the data friendly and usable to the consumer. Rather than providing raw data or information overload, apps can help ready the data for end-user consumption.

All semantics aside, getting to information on the web is important—through a combination of push and pull—but ultimately, making the information more helpful to people through countless of innovative applications is the next phase of the how the web is evolving.

I would call this next phase, the “user-centric web.” It relies on a sound semantic web—where data is unambiguous, interconnected, and authoritative—but also takes it to the next level, serving up sound semantic information to the end-user through a myriad of applications that make the information available in ever changing and intelligent ways. This is more user-centric, and ultimately closer to where we want to be.

The User-centric Web

The Editable Society

If you’re using a book reader like the Kindle or iPad and are downloading books to read, they are just like real paper books, except that the written word is now dynamic and the text can be changed out.

Wired Magazine, May 2010, has an article by Steven Levy called “Every Day They Rewrite the Book.”

“When you are connected to an e-reading device, the seller does have the capability to mess with the content on your device, whether you ask it to or not.”

Mr. Levy tells how “people were shocked to discover this last summer when Amazon, realizing that it had mistakenly sold some bootlegged copies of George Orwell’s 1984, deleted all of them from customers’ Kindles.”

Since them, Amazon “notifies customers of an update to the book they purchased; if a buyer wants the changes made, the company will replace the old file with the new one. In other words, the edition you buy remains fixed unless you agree otherwise.”

Changes on the fly—with the owner’s consent—is a positive thing when for example, publishing mistakes get corrected and new developments are updated, as Levy points out.

I guess what is amazing to me is that things that we take for granted as always being there…like a book, a song, a document, a video, a photo are not static anymore. As bits and bytes on our computers, e-readers, iPods, smartphones, and so on, they are every bit as dynamic as the first day they were created—just go in and edit it, hit save, and voila!

Documents and books can be edited and replaced. Songs, videos, and photos can be cropped, spliced, touched up and so on. There is no single timeless reality anymore, because all the material things that is being digitized or virtualized are subject to editing—or even deletion.

On the one hand, it is exciting to know that we live in a dynamic high-tech society, where nothing is “written in stone” and we can change and adapt relatively easily, by just logging on and making changes.

On the other hand, living in such a malleable electronic wonderworld means that with some pretty unsophisticated and common tools these days, pictures can be doctored, books can revised, and history can be literally rewritten. For example, just think about how anyone can go on Wikipedia and make changes to entries; if others don’t cry foul and undo the revisions, they stick.

It seems to be that with the technology to quickly and easily make changes electronically, comes the responsibility to protect what is true and historically valuable. No one person should decide what is fact or fiction, a valid change or a distortion of reality—rather it is a mandate on all of us.

I think this is where the importance of democracy and things like crowdsourcing comes into play—where as a society we together direct the changes that affect us all.

It is a frightening world where files can erased or doctored, not just because your own work can be changed, deleted, or destroyed, but because everyone’s work can be—and nothing is long-lasting or stable anymore.

I may be particularly sensitive to this being the child of Holocaust survivors, where the notion of a world where holocaust deniers can just “edit” history and pretend that the holocaust never happened is a scary world indeed.

But also a world, where malevolent people like hackers and cyber terrorists or dangerous devices like e-bombs (electromagetic pulses or EMPs) can damage systems and storage devices, means that electronic files are not secure from change or erasure.

We’ve become a society where everything is temporary—our marriages, our jobs, our stock portfolios, our homes, and so on—everything is disposable, changeable, and editable. We have truly become an editable society.

We need to balance our ability to edit with the necessity to create order and stability, and like Amazon learned, not change out files at random (without notifying and getting permission).

In IT, this is the essence of good governance, where you plan a structure that can breathe and adapt as times change, but that is also stable and secure for the organization to perform its mission.

The Editable Society