Lifeboat Foundation

Ireland has real opportunity to benefit from increased global investment and establish itself as a world-class hub for cyber security practices, solutions and investment, according to a new report from Deloitte. Conducted in association with the International Sustainability and Investment Centre, the report found that Ireland has proven itself to be an innovative centre for technology and has the potential to become a world leader in cyber security.

Respondents to a survey for this report identified increased regulation on data privacy (73%), more sophisticated scamming and phishing (59%), and growth in identity theft (53%) as the major trends in the cyber area over the next five years. This will force businesses to change how they organise and manage their data security.

More than one third (36%) of respondents believe there will a trend towards outsourcing cyber management to third party organisations, and 27 percent think that businesses will establish global/regional centres of excellence for managing this function. The implication of this will be that a small number of locations will be preferred for basing these centres of excellence.

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Law Firms are prime targets for hackers.

Law firms are considered by many hackers to be soft targets with a wealth of valuable information. Data from social security numbers, credit cards, and client confidences is enough to make the criminal mind salivate with malicious intent. Between 31–45% and 10–20% of firms have been infected by spyware or experienced security breaches respectively. But what can a private practitioner or law firm do to prevent these trespasses on their networks?

Continue reading “Cyber Security: How to Protect Your Firm and its Clients” »

I must admit that appears that almost anything in tech is being called out as a threat. FB, Twitter, Smartphones, CRISPR, AI, etc. Tech advancements do bring greater freedoms & opportunities to express one’s ideas and beliefs as well as enable a greater access to people, information, and geographical locations; however, and that does pose some level of risk in small pockets of the greater poulation. Nonetheless, I hope that the government spying pendullum swing doesn’t go overboard.

Who tweets at you, what you tweet back, and why can predict your next protest act on social media.

Just as the single-crystal silicon wafer forever changed the nature of electronics 60 years ago, a group of Cornell researchers is hoping its work with quantum dot solids – crystals made out of crystals – can help usher in a new era in electronics.

The multidisciplinary team, led by Tobias Hanrath, associate professor in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and graduate student Kevin Whitham, has fashioned two-dimensional superstructures out of single-crystal building blocks. Through directed assembly and attachment processes, the lead selenide quantum dots are synthesized into larger crystals, then fused together to form atomically coherent square superlattices.

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Portland computer science research company Galois snagged a $6.2 million grant from the Department of Defense for a project that, if successful, could make the current battle between the FBI and tech giant Apple obsolete.

The three-year research contract comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and will fund research into quantifying privacy preservation systems.

‘Can you quantify how private a system is or isn’t and can you make a judgment about it,’ said Galois CEO Rob Wiltbank,…

Continue reading “Portland firm DARPA research could make disputes like Apple v FBI obsolete” »

Personally, I thought they already had one.

The U.S. government eyes cryogenically cooled circuitry for tomorrow’s exascale computers.

Google’s Deep Mind at work in hospitals — very nice.

A smartphone app piloted by the NHS could improve communication between hospital staff and help patients get vital care faster.

Boston Dynamics, a robotics company that Google bought back in 2013, has routinely wowed the world by releasing videos of robots that are growing ever closer to resembling the humanoid robots we see in science fiction movies. The company this week released what might be its craziest robot video yet that shows its next-generation Atlas robot opening doors on its own, walking through snowy terrains, and picking up 10-pound boxes. This is the move impressive robot design I’ve seen from Boston Dynamics yet, which is really saying something.

FROM EARLIER: Man buys $700 battery, discovers it’s just $30 worth of batteries stuffed in a big case

Continue reading “Google robot opens doors, picks itself up after getting knocked over in crazy video” »

Considering how many of these things have snuck up on us over the last few years, you’d think we’d be pouring money and resources into NASA’s manned space flight programs. But, no. NASA is still a criminally underfunded agency.

*sigh*

A meteor flew over the Atlantic earlier this month. But no one saw it.

Continue reading “Massive Fireball Meteor Lights up Night Sky Over the Atlantic, but No One Noticed” »