Today's Tech Digest - Jun 07, 2020

Data is Risky Business: The Data Crisis Unmasked

Allegations have emerged of different jurisdictions (such as the State of Georgia in the US) adjusting graphs to create a visual of a downward trend by putting time series data out of sequence. Florida removed the data scientist who was running their COVID-19 data reporting from her role, despite the reporting having been praised for its transparency. In addition, we have the ethical issues of data-driven responses to managing the pandemic, from contact tracing applications to thermal scanning. Deploying technologies such as these requires a balancing of privacy and public interest, but also requiring objective rigour in assessing whether the technology will actually work for the purpose for which they are proposed. For example, thermal cameras sound like great idea. Anyone registering a temperature over 38 degrees Celsius can be denied entry to the building to keep everyone safe. Only, what do you do about false positives and negatives with those technologies? Are there other things that might cause someone to run a high skin temperature (for that is what they measure) from time to time? Any hormonal conditions? Do any of your staff cycle or run to the office? Is there anything that could be done by a malicious actor (or an overly diligent staff member) that could fake out the scanner by suppressing their temperature, like taking paracetamol?

Fighting Defect Clusters in Software Testing

Using metrics like defect density charts or module-wise defect counts, we can examine the history of defects that have been found and look for areas, modules or features with higher defect density. This is where we should begin our search for defect clusters. Spending more time testing these areas may lead us to more defects or more complex use cases to try out. ... Defect clustering follows the Pareto rule that 80% of the defects are caused by 20% of the modules in the software. It’s imperative for a tester to know which 20% of modules have the most defects so that the maximum amount of effort can be spent there. That way, even if you don’t have a lot of time to test, hopefully you can still find the majority of defects. Once you know the defect cluster areas, testers can focus on containing the defects in their product in a number of ways.By knowing which features or modules contain most defects, testers can spend more effort in finding better ways to test it. They can include more unit tests and integration tests for that module. Testers can also write more in-depth test scenarios with use cases from the customers on how the feature is best used in production. Focusing on test data and creating more exhaustive combinatorial tests for variables can also lead to finding more computational or algorithmic defects sooner.

How to Design For Panic Resilience in Rust

It is always better to exit with an error code than to panic. In the best situation, no software you write will ever panic. A panic is a controlled crash, and must be avoided to build reliable software. A crash is not ever “appropriate” behavior, but it’s better than allowing your system to cause physical damage. If at any time it may be believed that the software could cause something deadly, expensive, or destructive to happen, it’s probably best to shut it down. If you consider your software a car driving at about 60 miles per hour, a panic is like hitting a brick wall. A panic unwinds the call stack, hopping out of every function call and returning from program execution, destroying objects as it goes. It is not considered a safe nor clean shutdown. Avoid panics. The best way to end a program’s execution is to allow it to run until the last closing brace. Somehow, some way, program for that behavior. It allows all objects to safely destroy themselves. See the Drop trait. ... Creating custom error types is valuable. When you use a bare enum as an error type, the data footprint can be tiny.

Good Business Processes Are Key to Resilience During Disruption

With current and future operational challenges bogging down company leadership, empowering all employees with better process management skills and resources ensures your whole organization, from frontline employees to the C-suite, has better visibility and control over responsibilities. Process mapping and oversight needs to be a priority for all businesses today, and preparing teams with tools and resources must come from the top down. Companies must act with a renewed sense of urgency to develop dynamic processes and create stable growth environments during uncertain times. To begin sharing operational knowledge and ownership across your organization, leaders must first identify, define and map key processes across their organization. Companies are no longer in a position to avoid process understanding. Work-related implications of COVID-19 emphasize our need for a renewed focus on process, as inefficient communications and workflows can make or break delivery of your product or service. The teams that will be most successful in the next year are prepared to execute on innovative ideas and adapt willingly.

Shift Your Cybersecurity Mindset to Maintain Cyber Resilience

As more companies expand their remote workforce, the number of endpoints with access to corporate resources is proliferating. Hackers are seizing the opportunities this presents: Phishing email click rates have risen from around 5 percent to over 40 percent in recent months, according to Forbes. With a strong cybersecurity mindset and some strategic planning, your company can position itself to survive these new working conditions and build up even more cyber resilience as you adapt. Because cybersecurity professionals are facing formidable adversaries, understanding how hackers think can go a long way in mitigating the threat they pose. Security expert Frank Abagnale is one of the foremost experts on the thought processes of threat actors, and he was kind enough to lend his expertise to this piece. Since the number of successful phishing attacks has skyrocketed, I asked him if this is more a function of hackers stepping up their game, or employees not possessing the right cybersecurity mindset to pay attention. “It’s both,” he explained. “Any crisis is a perfect backdrop to phishing attacks.

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