October 06, 2020

What is Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) in the Tech Industry?

Blockchain is becoming more and more popular not just in Cryptocurrency but in the financial transactions where security and transparency is a must. However, it is very expensive and technologically complicated to create, maintain, and operate a blockchain. That is why many smaller and mid-level companies are hesitant to invest fully in blockchain even though its advantages are obvious. However, Blockchain as a Service can easily resolve this problem. This is based on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model where a company specifically invests in creating, maintaining, and operating a blockchain. This company can then offer the advantages of blockchain to other companies as a service while charging a fee. They can offer blockchain on any of the available distributed ledgers like Ethereum, Bitcoin, R3 Corda, Hyperledger Fabric, Quorum, etc. along with the peripheral services such as system security, bandwidth management, resource optimization, etc. In this way, many smaller and mid-level companies who don’t want to build and maintain their own blockchain systems from scratch can still obtain the advantages of blockchain for a nominal fee. These companies can focus on their core business and obtain value addition from the blockchain without needing to become experts in the technology.

How companies can overcome the content processing drawbacks of RPA

While the need to enlist assistance from additional software is valid, organisations must be careful about overspending, and ensure that the tools they invest in are for a clear, specific purpose. ... “There’s a couple of different ways for customers to overcome these shortcomings. One is to buy a tailored point solution like an OCR tool, which can extract data from documents, or they could invest in a workflow tool to help them orchestrate robots and humans, or perhaps buy some machine learning from Google to try and extract insights from their complex documents. These tools are designed to solve a very narrow set of problems, within tight parameters. “However, each of these has its own technical challenges; when embarking on one of these projects, you face significant cost, plus you need the right skills and tech to support each initiative. Each use case needs to be treated as an individual project, because you’re effectively buying for that particular need, and if you have lots of different types of data in your organisation, lots of different processes that have this level of unstructured data, you need to start again each time and buy the right solution to fix each individual problem.

Red Hat Envisions Linux Operating System As More Than ‘Just A Commodity’

Enterprise Linux company Red Hat has wanted users to think more of their operating ‘engines’ for some time now, long before the company’s acquisition and integration into the IBM family back in 2018. The company released its Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 software back in June 2014 and followed up with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 in May last year. Known affectionately among the developer cognoscenti as RHEL (pronounced ‘rel’, as in relate, relish or relax), Red Hat has been building its software to specifically align to cloud-native computing, containers (a way of breaking application functions into smaller discrete blocks) and all forms of automation and AI-fuelled autonomous computing. Underpinning all the individual functions that it puts into its enterprise operating system is a desire for departments, teams and individual users to consider the OS as a performance vehicle in and of itself i.e. something more than just a commodity engine. If that sounds like marketing spin, then it probably is… so can the company substantiate any of that gloss and explain how the engine in your computer system might actually change the way we work?

T2 security chip on Macs can be hacked to plant malware; cannot be patched

The attack requires combining two other exploits that were initially used for jailbreaking iOS devices — namely Checkm8 and Blackbird. This works because of some shared hardware and software features between T2 chips and iPhones and their underlying hardware. According to a post from Belgian security firm ironPeak, jailbreaking a T2 security chip involves connecting to a Mac/MacBook via USB-C and running version 0.11.0 of the Checkra1n jailbreaking software during the Mac’s boot-up process. Per ironPeak, this works because “Apple left a debugging interface open in the T2 security chip shipping to customers, allowing anyone to enter Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode without authentication.” “Using this method, it is possible to create an USB-C cable that can automatically exploit your macOS device on boot,” ironPeak said. This allows an attacker to get root access on the T2 chip and modify and take control of anything running on the targeted device, even recovering encrypted data […] The danger regarding this new jailbreaking technique is pretty obvious. Any Mac or MacBook left unattended can be hacked by someone who can connect a USB-C cable, reboot the device, and then run Checkra1n 0.11.0.

Classifying Your Third Parties: An Essential Third Party Due Diligence First Step

Of course, this brings us to ask when a company “knows” that a third party will make an improper payment. Under the FCPA, a person has the requisite knowledge to be liable when he or she is aware of the potential wrongdoing, cognizant of a high probability of the existence of such wrongdoing, or intentionally ignorant of the potential wrongdoing. In other words, Congress did not want to allow people to “sneak around” the FCPA by using a third party. As Congress made clear, it meant to impose liability not only on those with actual knowledge of wrongdoing, but also on those who purposefully avoid actual knowledge: [T]he so-called “head-in-the-sand” problem – variously described in the pertinent authorities as “conscious disregard,” “willful blindness” or “deliberate ignorance” – should be covered so that management officials could not take refuge from the Act’s prohibitions by their unwarranted obliviousness to any action (or inaction), language or other “signaling device” that should reasonably alert them of the “high probability” of an FCPA violation.”

People-focused digital transformation: What benefit does it have for your employees?

“Digitally mature” companies, where leadership teams are proactively jumping on and implementing digital trends, are increasingly becoming a must-have for job-seekers. From attracting to retaining talent, organizations that are pioneering a digital strategy for their processes, efficiently using technology and adapting in line with digital, will undoubtedly see more success than organizations that don’t. The focus is no longer just on what an employee can bring to a company but also on what the company can deliver to the employee to develop their skill sets in preparation for the next step of their career. And, with research revealing that the benefits of a digital-first company include improved operational efficiencies as well as having a faster time to market, it’s clear why a prospective employee would opt for a digitally transformed company over one that still runs with mostly manual processes. Factors such as remote working, the use of technology to improve productivity and developing skills away from an office-based environment can lead to people enjoying their jobs more.

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