Daily Archives: February 22, 2021

Big tech companies have a lot of potential to change the messy healthcare industry, and they're trying.

Whether it's funding startups, building wearables, or powering research on the cloud, giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are already making their mark. And the coronavirus pandemic has made digital tools more important than ever before.

But this group of companies, for all its cash and resources, has seen a lot of mishaps and failures while establishing meaningful businesses in the industry they'd like to disrupt.

Most recently, Haven, a joint health venture between Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway, disbanded after just three years of largely aimless projects. Alphabet's Verily has been known to butt heads with Google Health. Amazon's primary care business is being pressured internally to scale nationally in 2021.

Insider spoke to more than a dozen tech employees, healthcare executives, analysts, and investors to find out why these otherwise well-oiled machines can come up short in this particular industry. They pointed to common, internal problems in the way big tech sets up and funds healthcare bets.

For one, the healthcare teams have to maintain corporate goodwill even while their projects can bring scrutiny to the mothership.

All the while they're racing the clock to prove they can generate revenue and coordinate resources across a company that's not primarily designed to solve healthcare problems.

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Are you a tech insider with more to share?Contact Blake Dodge via encrypted email (dodgeblake@protonmail.com) or on the encrypted messaging app Signal (1-252-241-3117).

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Big tech is struggling to upend healthcare. The wounds are usually self-inflicted. - Business Insider

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the extent to which we all rely on the internet in our day-to-day lives. Its also highlighted the unfortunate fact that many Canadians in remote northern communities cannot depend on reliable internet for essential tasks such as downloading homework or conducting business meetings by video, or for leisure activities like watching Netflix and keeping up with friends on Facebook.

There is, in short, a deep digital divide between remote communities and the rest of the country.

Historically, network service providers have been the primary stakeholders tasked with ensuring that Canadians are well-connected. However, service providers have so far struggled to provide adequate internet service to remote communities, and it is only getting more difficult with the increasing requirements and complexities of modern web content and applications.

To solve this problem, we argue that other technical stakeholders, including major content providers and application developers like Netflix, YouTube and Facebook, must now lend a hand as well.

To understand why remote communities pose a unique challenge to network service providers, its important to understand how these communities get online. Due to their isolation, remote communities depend on satellite to access the internet and other telecommunication services. In most of the country, network links are largely built alongside pre-existing, wired TV and telephone infrastructure.

Satellite-based internet connections have several challenges that limit their performance relative to wired connections.

First, satellite connections have very high latency (the time it takes for an individual data packet to travel between the two end points of a connection) due to the distance at which a satellite orbits the Earth.

Next, due to costs, they have limited bandwidth, restricting the amount of data that can be sent over a given instance.

Lastly, the bandwidth must be shared by all users served by the same satellite. These limitations result in slow website load times and low quality video streams, making for an overall inconsistent and frustrating online experience.

Bridging the digital divide is about providing remote users with the same quality of experience as users elsewhere, despite satellite limitations.

To accomplish this, service providers can try to add more bandwidth to the satellite link, but bandwidth is very costly and limited. They can also use shared web caches so that when users download content it can be saved in the community, allowing future users who request the same content to access it locally instead of via the satellite link.

Read more: Building back better, during and after COVID-19, with faster broadband

Additionally, service providers can use specific protocols on the satellite link to better manage latency and data rates.

Why, then, are large content providers and app developers needed to help?

First, there is a trend towards richer web content and more complex applications, such as high-resolution multimedia and advertisements, which demand more and more bandwidth. Second, websites and apps are increasingly adopting deeper levels of encryption to hide not only private user data, but connection-related data as well, making it impossible for service providers to use caches and specific protocols on the satellite link.

That all means major content providers and app developers, which dominate internet traffic today, have direct influence over how successfully service providers can manage their networks and improve service to remote users.

If the digital divide is to be successfully bridged, content providers and application developers must deliver content to remote communities differently than they do elsewhere.

They should continue providing rich content to users as long as its useful, but make connections lighter weight by foregoing unnecessary data that wastes bandwidth. This includes a lot of advertisements, which have questionable relevance to individuals in hard-to-reach locations.

They should also scale back deep encryption that prevents service providers from employing caches and specific protocols. Encryption is still necessary to protect users, but it must not be too deep for service providers to continue relying on the tools theyve conventionally used to efficiently manage the satellite link.

Some content and application providers may be motivated to adopt this approach out of goodwill indeed, both YouTube and Facebook have previously adopted lightweight approaches in some developing regions of the world. Nonetheless, we cannot rely on their good will alone since it may conflict with their business interests.

For this reason, its time to create a special remote status for communities with unique connectivity challenges. This status could be controlled by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union, and content providers and application developers could be mandated by governments to recognize remote communities and help them accordingly. The UN, after all, declared internet access a human right five years ago.

Its realistic to expect that large content providers and application developers would be receptive to this proposal. Theyve willingly helped developing regions in the past, and they would only have to change their practices for the most disadvantaged communities meaning its a win-win for both big tech giants and citizens alike.

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Tech giants need to step up to help close Canada's digital divide - The Conversation CA

Britain's regulatory response to the digital economy needs to focus on network monopolies, which charge nothing upfront, but harvest and use customer data to make money instead. That's the view of John Penrose MP, who was invited by the government in September 2020 to conduct an independent review of UK competition policy and has today published his findings.

Penrose's report - entitled Power to the people' - warns that the UK's new regulatory digital unit should have its powers ring-fenced tightly, so as to prevent regulatory creep, which could impact every digital sector of the economy.

It is advising that the the new unit, which is set to sit within the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), be called the Network & Data Monopolies Unit (NDMU) and only apply to individual firms that own and run new network and data mopolies, rather than the rest of the sector in which they work.

The government said that it will respond to the report's recommendations, with Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng stating:

The UK's competition laws and institutions are highly regarded across the globe, however as we build back better from the pandemic and start life as an independent trading nation, we have a golden opportunity to strengthen that reputation.

I want to thank John Penrose for his hard work on this independent report, which considers how the UK's competition regime can promote productivity, reward and encourage innovation and, most importantly, get consumers a better deal.

We will consider John's recommendations and respond in due course.

The discourse around monopolies forming online is well known. The opportunity for technology giants - such as Apple, Google, Facebook - to create network effects (where people gravitate towards a platform that is used by everyone else) and then use data to build dominant positions, has been discussed for the best part of a decade.

This is coupled with the fact that these platforms typically have high fixed costs and low marginal costs, giving them huge economies of scale, making them far more profitable than their smaller rivals. Development times are much quicker as a result, as is the ability to acquire any smaller competition.

All of this equates to a harsh environment for new entrants.

Penrose highlights a couple of examples of how these problems can erode competition and consumer power too. They include:

How Google paid Apple approximately 1.2 billion in 2019 to be the default search engine in Safari in the UK alone, as holding this default buys it significant market share.

Limiting interoperability between market-leading incumbent firms or products and their rivals (for example Android and Apple) makes it harder or more expensive for customers to switch easily between rivals, or for challenger firms to make their products and services easily accessible for many customers either.

The report outlines how these restrictions have a real and detrimental effect on consumers. For example, free' products and services offered by these monopolies' typically come with a price of some form, usually in the form of consumers exchanging their data. Penrose notes that it is impossible for anyone to know the price we are paying for these products, if we don't know the value of the data we're signing away.

This means that it's impossible to know if we are being ripped off or getting a bargain, or to compare it to a rival offer which might be better.

Switching is also harder for consumers if services are less interoperable. This could also mean that firms take their users for granted, because they know it will be hard to move profiles and data to a new or rival service.

The result? A distinct lack of competition and choice. The report states:

The monopolies and barriers to entry mean innovative new companies can't get a look in. While the early years of the internet saw dynamic competition with new and better products and services launching all the time, things are now much slower.

The major players have remained largely the same for the last decade, and their products have changed at a much lower pace. Potentially-exciting new challenger products and services are being blocked or throttled, so consumers have less choice than in the past.

As noted above, Britain is creating a new digital markets unit that will be created within the CMA, with powers to create extra-strong upfront regulations to deal with competition in digital markets. Penrose argues that this is "exactly the right thing to do", as every sector is digitising and new entrepreneurial firms could emerge to create new digital network monopolies at any time.

However, the new unit also poses a threat that needs to be avoided too, he adds. Penrose writes:

It will have modern versions of the same extra-strong upfront powers as long-established sector regulators like Ofwat, Ofcom and Ofgem. Because these upfront powers are so strong, and usually quicker and easier to use than normal competition and consumer laws as well, the temptation for any regulator is to use them more and more, and the workaday competition and consumer ones less and less.

So upfront powers are a headily-addictive drug for regulators to use, but they come with a high cost because they add far more red tape costs and regulatory burdens than traditional competition and consumer powers too. As a result, upfront powers create a high risk of regulatory creep' which adds red tape costs steadily over time; the huge growth in cost, time and complexity of price control decisions in the long-established sector regulators over the last 30 years shows what can happen.

As such, the new digital unit - which Penrose argues should be dubbed the NDMU, as highlighted above - should have its extra-strong upfront powers tightly ring-fenced, in order to prevent this regulatory creed. Otherwise there is a risk that they could spread to cover every digital sector of the economy.

NDMU should focus on individual firms that own and run network and data monopolies, rather than to the rest of the sector in which they work, and only apply to problems which CMA's existing competition and consumer powers can't solve already.

It's an important time for the UK to be considering this work. The pandemic and Brexit have created a distinctly challenging environment for the British economy. Balancing the desire to have these internet monopolies invest in the UK, whilst creating a competitive environment that allows for British entrants to thrive is not easy. However, there are standards that Penrose addresses that can help consumers. For example, helping consumers understand where their data is and what it is worth to these companies, for starters. Equally, regulating for the interoperability of these services, to allow for easy switching (as has been done with banking), should bolster competition in the market. None of this will be a quick fix, however, and there will be an ongoing battle of wills (and power) for years to come.

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UKs digital competition unit should focus on tech giants that own and run network and data monopolies - Diginomica

Applying the nondiscrimination principle to Facebook and YouTube could play out in various ways. Congress has broad authority to regulate the business model of public utilities, and it could ban targeted advertising or any form of algorithmic amplification. Another option would be to ban all advertising, targeted or not, meaning that the platforms would be funded either by non-targeted ads or a subscription service. Instead of ads, YouTube might cost $10 a month, roughly as much as Amazon Prime. Instead of picking and choosing what content is likely to appeal to usersor, put more cynically, to addict usersFacebook would serve up content in the order that it was put on the platform. The upshot of public-utility regulation is that citizens would have their choice among a handful of platforms administered by technology companies and, separately, news outlets run by (hopefully) responsible publishers.

Big Tech doesnt want any reform. It will spend billions of dollars trying to persuade us all to do nothing. And, because the tech companies finally decided to throttle Donald Trump, and to kick off anti-vaxxers, progressives may be tempted to believe that doing nothing is, in fact, the best option. So long as Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and Googles Sundar Pichai make the decisions that progressives might like, we are relieved of either justifying a governmental ban, or allowing speech that we might not want to exist. It allows us to pay lip service to the expansive mid-20th-century version of the First Amendment, and the importance of a thriving, open, public sphere, instead of proposing a more curbed First Amendment or defending the right of those with horrific views to speak. Facebook, in particular, understands this dynamic, and even hired a group of elite academics and journalists and made a large public show of giving them power to override a fraction of Zuckerbergs decisions. The goal of the Facebook Oversight Board is clearly to give the public comfort that speech decisions are made by philosopher kings, not investors who want to maximize behavioral-targeting profitsand to stave off legal reforms.

Read: Facebook is a doomsday machine

Those who are drawn to this apparent safety should be aware that they are effectively endorsing an alternative to a democracy. The jurist Louis Brandeis famously said, We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cant have both. That statement is even more apt when it comes to communications: We can have democracy, or we can have editing power in the hands of a few ad moguls, but we definitely cant have both.

Break up the ad moguls, break up the publishers, reinstate the rule of law, recognize the public-utility role of big, networked social-media companies, and we have a fighting chance. In other words, follow the communications policy that defined American law until the 1970s: Regulate the infrastructure, enforce the common law of libel and defamation, and otherwise maximally disperse power.

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The Government Needs to Find Big Tech a New Business Model - The Atlantic

Ransomware attacks are truly disappointing. It can damage the networks of organizations of different industries. Ransomware attacks automatically produce negative results.

With this, you must do something about it. One of todays efficient technologies against ransomware attacks is Zero Trust. Are you not familiar with this solution? Dont worry because this post will guide you about the Zero Trust Model.

Zero Trust Model was established by John Kindervag way back in 2010. During that time, Kindervag was a principal analyst of Forrester Research Inc. It is a security concept that focuses on the idea that companies must not trust anything automatically inside or outside their perimeters. Instead, verify things and those trying to connect the systems before providing access.

The belief in Zero Trust is dont trust anyone. It means that you should not give access to machines, IP addresses, and others unless you know the user and if theyre authorized. The Zero Trust Model promotes more innovative technologies, including identity and access management, multi-factor authentication as well as next-generation endpoint security technology. These technologies assist in the verification of the identity of the user and keep the security of the system.

Take note that Zero Trust can be successful if the company is consistent in monitoring and validating that the users and their devices have the right attributes and privileges. User attributes and threats may change continuously, so you must not stop monitoring to ensure your security.

The policies of Zero Trust rely on real-time visibility of the attributes of the user, including the following:

Zero Trust can solve your problems when it comes to your data and system security needs. In todays modern and digital generation, the rate of cybersecurity breaches continues to increase. If you dont take immediate action, it can negatively affect your business.

The technology offers a secure environment for organizations by utilizing ongoing infrastructure transformation. They provide more strategic plans to step ahead against hacks to serve a more secure and safer environment for companies.

The model makes sure that the security department uses multi-factor authentication to use different micro-segments of the network to attain a higher level of security. With that, it can be hard for hackers to get the information they need when accessing someones account.

Another feature of the Zero Trust Model is that they have a higher level of a risk management philosophy that establishes data analytics and anomaly detection. It can be the best solution to prevent security threats and helps to detect threats quickly. In addition, theres also a fast response against a security breach.

If you suspect a malicious insider is trying to access system processes and sensitive data, Zero Trust is the perfect solution. Aside from using the latest technologies, the model also creates security parameters by knowing its processes, stakeholders, and mindsets. So, organizations that use the Zero Trust model will have inside and out security, which is essential to protect their companys important data and systems.

With the continuous rise of attacks to enterprise data and systems, tech giants begin to use Zero Trust to enhance their data and systems protection. Besides offering companies a more secure environment, Zero Trust security also solves the limitations for perimeter-based security and firewalls for networks.

It integrates the usage of perimeter encryption and protection to secure targeted systems. Zero Trust is considered as a barrier to protect the processes, applications, and data from hackers and malicious insiders. With proper implementation, the Zero Trust model can successfully create a cybersecurity paradigm.

To help you know more about Zero Trust Model, the following are some of the frequently asked questions about the technology.

What is BeyondCorp security?

The BeyondCorp is Googles Zero Trust security framework. It can change the access controls of the perimeter to individual devices as well as users. It will lead the employees to securely work from any place without the use of a traditional VPN.

What is the Zero Trust Architecture?

The Zero Trust Architecture is also called the Zero Trust Network. It defines the security concepts and the threat model that dont already assume that systems, actors, or services operating in the security perimeter must be trusted automatically.

Why is Zero Trust important?

Zero Trust is important if you want to level up your security level. If you dont want to lose essential data or systems in your organization, this security model is the best solution. It utilizes technologies to ensure that you can have a more secure environment to maintain your systems and data free from security threats.

Does Zero Trust a form of continual authentication?

Zero Trust incorporates concepts of continual authentication. However, it is not a form of continual authentication in itself.

Is Zero Trust worth it?

If you wonder whether Zero Trust is worth it to use, the answer is yes. It is a reliable tool to maintain data and systems security. It is a fact that data security is essential for the success of every business. Thats why it is a good decision to have an efficient security technology like the Zero Trust model.

Conclusion

To sum it up, Zero Trust is a good investment to enhance your data and systems security. In this way, you can maintain good operations and keep data safe, which can bring positive results for your business.

Are you ready to enhance your business security? If yes, the Zero Trust model can be a good option. You dont need to worry because even giant techs use this security model. It provides excellent features to give you peace of mind against hackers, malicious insiders as well as other security threats.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to ourTwitterorFacebook.

Originally posted here:

Cybersecurity: Why all tech giants recommend the zero trust model - KnowTechie

The citizens must defend the Earth.

A man turned up at my door a couple of weeks ago.

He was wearing a large oblong backpack and looked for all the world like a millennial Ghostbuster.

And then I remembered what was going on. I'd seen this headline: "Help Defend the Planet by Detecting Infamous Asteroid Apophis!" and was naturally intrigued.

Actually, it was my wife who was even more stirred. She's a scientist whose idea of relaxation is to scroll through Space Instagram.

The dire planet defense warning -- and encouragement for citizen scientists to come together for mankind -- had come via a company called Unistellar.

It's the creator of the eVscope, a digital telescope that has "unprecedented power and simplicity." If only America could claim the same.

Many telescopes just don't see that much. My wife's basic Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ struggles terribly with clouds.

The eVscope's creators claim it can see far more.

Which is where it may come in useful this Sunday at 11.50pm Central Time. That's when Near-Earth Asteroid 99942 Apophis passes in front of a star and is visible, so says the Observatoire de Paris, along a path traced from roughly the north-west to the south-east of the US.

Unistellar asks a disturbing question about this asteroid: "Will it destroy spacecraft and satellites, or make catastrophic, direct contact with Earth?"

PR fluff and bunkum, surely. And anyway, this potentially hazardous asteroid is supposed to come (vaguely) our way only in 2029.

But I wanted to see for myself whether this telescope could make a difference for people in spotting it on Sunday, just in case.

Movement isn't easy right now, so I asked Unistellar's Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Franck Marchis if he'd perch himself on our deck, sip a glass of socially-distanced wine (Cabernet Franc, naturally), get something to eat and demonstrate the company's portable, digital telescope.

Dr. Marchis slipped off his backpack with the same ease he sipped his Cabernet. He set the telescope up within seeming seconds.

Next, he demonstrated how you could control it with your iPhone.

He toggled and the telescope obeyed.

The eVscope's makers make outlandish claims. Unistellar says this portable thing is 100 times more powerful than a regular telescope.

The results, however, were extraordinary. Says my wife.

You see, the clouds came over, but she still announced with a rare excitement: "I've just seen Orion's penis!" That, apparently, is how some astronomers mirthfully refer to Orion's nebula.

The eVscope pinpoints any object in the sky so that you can stare at it and realize just how insignificant a speck in the firmament you really are.

When I took a look through the viewfinder, I confess it was the sharpest and most imposing image I'd seen through a telescope.

There is, of course, a slight drawback with this machine. It costs around $2,999. Which isn't the sort of sum that can be afforded by every citizen defender of the planet.

Still, I asked Dr. Marchis what were the chances of Apophis bringing a little apocalypse to one or two satellites -- or even to our planet.

"We can't answer this until we have a refined orbit of Apophis," he told me.

Oh, but come on. Frighten us a little Dr. Marchis.

"Currently its orbit places it inside the geosynchronous orbit, less than 36,000km from Earth, in 2029," he said. "So it will cross this virtual sphere made of around 400 satellites twice. However, its orbit is inclined away from the equator so the likelihood of an impact is small. If its orbit is bringing it even closer to Earth, then the probability of impact will increase since we have more satellites at lower orbit."

We have been warned and Dr. Marchis should know. He's actually had an asteroid named after him.

Continued here:

An asteroid is approaching, so I invited one of Earth's defenders to dinner - ZDNet