ChatGPT’s impacts will be social, not technical - ITREALMS

ITREALMS ... making leadership SENSE with digital news!


The technology world was on fire about the latest artificial intelligence demonstration by OpenAI in the waning months of 2022, ChatGPT.

It is truly a remarkable achievement, an artificial intelligence (AI) that you can have a conversation with and ask it to do everything from write essays to code computer programs.

Sophos report showcases 2020 cyberthreat impacts - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

Leader in cloud-enabled next-generation cybersecurity, Sophos has launched its 2020 Threat Report providing insights into the rapidly evolving cyberthreats landscape, reports ITREALMS.

The latest report, ITREALMS gathered, was produced by SophosLabs researchers, and explored changes in the threat landscape over the past 12 months, uncovering trends likely to impact cybersecurity in 2020.

“The threat landscape continues to evolve – and the speed and extent of that evolution is both accelerating and unpredictable. The only certainty we have is what is happening right now, so in our 2020 Threat Report we look at how current trends might impact the world over the coming year. We highlight how adversaries are becoming ever stealthier, better at exploiting mistakes, hiding their activities and evading detection technologies, and more, in the cloud, through mobile apps and inside networks. The 2020 Threat Report is not so much a map as a series of signposts to help defenders better understand what they could face in the months ahead, and how to prepare,” said John Shier, senior security advisor, Sophos.

The SophosLabs 2020 Threat Report, which is also summarized in a SophosLabs Uncut article, focuses on six areas where researchers noted particular developments during this past year. Among those expected to have significant impact on the cyberthreat landscape into 2020 and beyond are the following:

Ransomware attackers continue to raise the stakes with automated active attacks that turn organizations’ trusted management tools against them, evade security controls and disable back ups in order to cause maximum impact in the shortest possible time.

Unwanted apps are edging closer to malware. In a year that brought the subscription-abusing Android Fleeceware apps, and ever more stealthy and aggressive adware, the Threat Report highlights how these and other potentially unwanted apps (PUA), like browser plug-ins, are becoming brokers for delivering and executing malware and fileless attacks.

The greatest vulnerability for cloud computing is misconfiguration by operators. As cloud systems become more complex and more flexible, operator error is a growing risk. Combined with a general lack of visibility, this makes cloud computing environments a ready made target for cyberattackers.

Machine learning designed to defeat malware finds itself under attack. 2019 was the year when the potential of attacks against machine learning security systems were highlighted. Research showed how machine learning detection models could possibly be tricked, and how machine learning could be applied to offensive activity to generate highly convincing fake content for social engineering. At the same time, defenders are applying machine learning to language as a way to detect malicious emails and URLs. This advanced game of cat and mouse is expected to become more prevalent in the future.

Other areas covered in the 2020 Threat Report include the danger of failing to spot cybercriminal reconnaissance hidden in the wider noise of internet scanning, the continuing attack surface of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), and the further advancement of automated active attacks (AAA).

Nenye Dom/Editor

*JOIN our alert's group | Share stories with us | Advert placement: WhatsApp | SMS: +2348033592762 *Twitter: @ITREALMS *Email: itrealms.dsa@gmail.com*

How GDPR impacts negatively on ventures, creates headache for telcos - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

The latest research note from the Strand Consult has lamented how the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has impacted negatively on venture investments in Europe and will be headache for telecommunications industry, reports ITREALMS.

Many European politicians, Strand Consult said, have touted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as “leveling the playing field” against the American internet companies and empower European consumers.

Strand Consult was skeptical of these claims, having seen similar un-evidenced policymaking before on net neutrality. Indeed Strand Consult has documented how this policy has had the opposite of its intended effect. Net neutrality rules were supposed to create the next Google or Facebook from an EU country. Instead the only countries which have platforms that rival Google or Facebook are Russia and China, countries with no net neutrality rules.

As for GDPR, Strand Consult predicted in its report Understanding the GDPR and Its Unintended Consequences that the largest firms would benefit at the expense of small players and that consumers would experience either no improvement or a decline in utility. The report also describes how pseudo pro-consumer policies are a front to increased government power at the expense of consumer freedom. Strand Consult's predictions have proven true according to a variety of sources, as noted below.

The unintended consequences of GDPR are bad news for the telecom industry. They will have a negative impact on the value chain of companies that will develop and deliver services on top of the upcoming 5G networks in Europe. Strand Consult observes how the EU is already behind on pre-5G products and services, and that GDPR only makes it worse. The US and China are racing ahead on 5G and Europe continues to fall behind on network investment and 5G product and service development. Moreover Europeans are missing out on the social and technological transformations already afoot in the US and China where consumers have adopted pre-5G products and services.

Just as hard net neutrality regulation has been shown to have a negative impact on mobile app innovation, GDPR has shown a negative impact on venture capital investment. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the leading economic institute in the USA, has published research by the former chief economist of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and two academics at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Using Crunchbase data from VC deals in the US and EU from July 2017-Septeber 2018, it analyzes the post-GDPR effects on EU ventures, relative to their US counterparts. The negative effects manifest in the overall dollar amounts raised across funding deals, the number of deals, and the dollar amount raised per individual deal.

Specifically this has translated into a $3.38 million decrease in the aggregate dollars raised by EU ventures per state per catetory per week, a 17.6% reduction in the number of weekly venture deals, and a 39.6% decrease in the amount raised in an average deal following the rollout of GDPR. These declines are associated with losses projected between 3,000-30,000 jobs.

The paper was featured at a public hearing by the American competition authorities FTC which is conducting a process over many months to determine the actual impact of data regulation. The open and transparent policy process in the US makes a stark contrast to the EU where policy influencers can mask their identities. Unlike the US where filings to the policymaking process are collected online and made freedly available, no such database is available for the GDPR in the EU. As such, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know how and who influences policy in the EU.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

*JOIN our alert's group | Share stories with us | Advert placement: WhatsApp | SMS: +2348033592762 *Twitter: @ITREALMS *Email: itrealms.dsa@gmail.com*

IPCC Report: Nwafor decries impacts of climate change in Africa - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

The Pan Africa Director of Oxfam International, Mr. Apollos Nwafor, has decried the rising negative impacts of climate change on the continent of Africa, reports ITREALMS.

Reacting to the recent report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which detailed progress and pathways to global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Oxfam International boss said that natural disasters such as droughts and floods have been thwarting development in the African continent.

He highlighted fluctuations in agricultural production due to climate variations along with inefficient agricultural systems have caused food insecurity, one of the most obvious indicators of poverty. 

“The 2016 El Niño phenomenon, which was super charged by the effects of climate change, crippled rain-fed agricultural production and left over 40 million people foods insecure in Africa. Without urgent action to reduce global emissions, the occurrence of climate shocks and stresses in the Africa region are expected to get much worse,” he said.

For him, why African government should get real worried includes that on 5 July this year, Africa registered its hottest reliable record temperature in Ouargla, northern Algeria, of 51.3C (124.3F).

Pointing out that there is mounting evidence that higher temperatures linked to climate change have worsened drought and humanitarian disaster in East Africa, including last year’s drought which left over 13 million people dangerously hungry.

Also, he said that even at 1.5 degrees of warming, climate impacts in West Africa, for instance, would be devastating, just as wheat yields could fall by up to 25 percent and at 1.5 degrees Lagos in Nigeria could become a newly heat stressed city like Delhi in India.

In sub-Saharan Africa, he said, 1.5 degrees warming by the 2030s could lead to about 40 percent of present maize cropping areas being no longer suitable for current cultivars, and significant negative impacts on sorghum suitability are projected. Under warming of less than 2 degrees by the 2050s, total crop production could be reduced by 10 percent.

Further, he said that at 2 degrees of warming heat extremes never experienced before could affect 15 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s land area in the hot season, causing deaths and threatening farmers’ ability to grow crops.

“If global temperature rises by more than 2 degrees by the end of the century, by 2050 this could see daytime temperatures in North Africa (and the Middle East) rise to 46 degrees on the hottest days, which can be deadly,” he warned.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!