Don’t Get Bullied by IT

Feeling bullied by IT? Image: bnilsen/Flickr

In a modern world of self-service technology, enterprises have been introduced to a new technology — shadow IT. Shadow IT, also known as rogue IT or stealth IT, can be defined as IT systems and hardware and software solutions that are not approved or supported by an organization’s IT department. This includes, but is not limited to, technologies such as personal smartphones, cloud services, portable USB drives, external email servers such as Gmail, instant messaging, among other third party applications.

Shadow IT tends to come with a negative connotation because of the struggles it presents for enterprise IT departments and is usually avoided or prohibited. However, the reality is that with rampant increase of consumerizaton of IT, cloud adoption and BYOD, enterprise IT departments need to confront the challenges that come with shadow IT head on rather than ignore them.

One of the biggest issues that comes with shadow IT is enterprise security, especially when the applications being used are not subject to the same security measures applied to pre-approved technology. Depending on the industry, shadow IT can also cause a compliance concern, especially when employees use free third party cloud storage services, such as Dropbox, to store corporate data, making them more susceptible to malware and hackers.

Shadow IT can also create data silos because the application is not properly integrated into an organization’s existing network. IT departments are finding it difficult to maintain control of enterprise data due to the rapid adoption of public cloud storage. Because the public cloud rarely has an established relationship or connection with the company’s network and service provider, it is often difficult for IT teams to effectively monitor activity in these applications. If these applications are not set up to properly deploy on the company’s network, it can also negatively impact the bandwidth and software application protocols.

With all the challenges of shadow IT, awareness is key, and there is potential for an even bigger problem if CIOs and IT teams stick their heads in the sand or push back on the adoption of these technologies. If these issues are not addressed, IT departments lose control of their systems and network. Ultimately, they are opening up the possibility for the company’s assets, regulations and brand reputation to be irrevocably compromised.

Instead of ignoring the problem, IT experts should take the necessary steps to take control of shadow IT. The first step is for IT teams to properly educate themselves. Taking the time to understand the problems at hand will help them to audit their networks and solutions more actively and effectively. It will also help them to educate their employees about the inherent risks that come with these applications. In addition to education, IT must find a way to monitor and control the activity that takes place within these applications.

By overseeing application deployment and acquisition, IT is in the position to advise business units as to their various options and institute best practices. This knowledge exchange can only be built from IT’s engagement with the organization. Understanding those challenges and how they can be resolved is critical if IT is to leverage SaaS and users are to gain the kind of experience they expect from enterprise-grade tools.

SaaS and cloud services aren’t going away and IT departments would be wise to develop a cohesive IT strategy and a baseline set of regulations for the use of third party applications. They may be pleasantly surprised to find that these solutions increase employee efficiency and productivity.

Damon Ennis is SVP of Products at Silver Peak.

From Big Data to Actionable Data: Has Our Biology Failed Us, or Have We Failed to Use It?

Image courtesy of Thinkstock.

The 21st Century has seen technology contribute life-altering realities like getting from New York to Beijing in less than 14 hours or grandparents using Facetime to see their newly anointed “Princes” and “Princesses” of future generations. New technologies have not only democratized widespread access of information worldwide, it has created new ways of providing cheaper and better products to improve quality of life. Yet with all the advancements made, healthcare continues to operate through an outdated and archaic paradigm.

To be fair, a number of new discoveries have been made through technologies such as next-gen sequencing, high-throughput screening processes, and robotics — however they continue to be used on the same hypothesis-driven, chemical screening platform from 30 years ago. Why are we screening chemicals first and looking to biology last? Most drugs developed today are on the market for years before we can even fully grasp their impact or effect.

Simply put, we fail to engage the biology upfront in the process. Considering that on average it takes roughly $1.7 billion and 12-14 years to bring a single drug to market, this is a costly proposition. And our healthcare system is buckling under this burden.

The very nature of drug development today is based on chemical screening, but the body is primarily driven by biology. We have the means to enable cutting-edge technologies to create an elaborate and sophisticated cellular intelligence community.

This “back to biology”-approach can identify key biomarkers driving a disease microenvironment — and then create nonchemical treatments to normalize it. By listening to our own biology, our cells can take part in guiding the drug discovery process. The result? A system where the data generates the hypotheses, rather than the hypothesis blindly ‘seeing what sticks.’

Beyond looking to the data, we also need to go much deeper than our current system provides. Genomics has been heralded as the future for discovery, but on its own does not present the full picture of health and disease. We don’t put our roofs on a basement, so why would we truncate human biology to only one element in our cell’s metabolism? We need to enrich the data to include proteins, lipids, metabolites, RNA, and functional data to the point where we are represented by a deep understanding of our molecular profiles rather than a single gene mutation.

Technology is making it more possible than ever before to appreciate the whole story of the patient by capturing and analyzing every aspect of their cellular makeup. Removing bias through the use of mathematical algorithms and supercomputers will allow us to process this information — making it actionable data rather than just “big data.”

As an industry, we have to look inward and ask ourselves: can we do better? By going back to the biology and letting the data guide the discovery, progress is viable. Eliminating the need for chemical screening brings hope for cutting the time for drug development and cost for doing so in half. Additionally, using biology as the basis for drug compounds rather than chemicals means more holistic treatments with less side effects and comorbidities.

Eighteen percent of the US GDP is spent on healthcare and the current state of affairs has much room for improvement. Technology is creating a common sense approach to understanding human populations more effectively. Biology, coupled with computational power will create a powerful roadmap for our future.

Next generation medicine demands a new approach. The good news is that it is possible, the future is bright, and opportunities for tackling some of our most crippling diseases are directly in front of us. Steve Jobs once portended that the intersection of biology and technology will be the greatest discovery of our generation. The tools are all there. Now we just have to harness them to create the medicines of the future.

Niven R. Narain is the co-founder, President and Chief Technology Office of the biopharmaceutical company Berg.

Gadget Lab Podcast: Give Me Twittering or Give Me Death

Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

It’s been a crazy week in the data streams. Twitter has once again proven to be an empowering tool that lets bystanders become a multifaceted reporting force, as in the case of the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Mat and Mike use the recent events as a springboard to reflect on how social media affects our perception of the real world in both good and bad ways. How do Twitter and Facebook know what’s important to you? What’s better: curated streams or real-time firehoses? Should Twitter hide disturbing content or censor speech? And is Facebook in danger of losing its value as it becomes a cozier place for consumer brands? Mat has some answers to that last question, which he gathered during his recent “Like everything” Facebook experiment.

Listen to this week’s episode or subscribe in iTunes.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds (Mat Honan is @mat, Michael Calore is @snackfight) or to the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Game|Life Podcast: Legal Pinball, Free Infinity, 10 Million PlayStation 4s

The PlayStation 4 in repose. Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

Wrapup and analysis of this week’s news is the order of the day on the latest Game|Life podcast.

Disney is giving Disney Infinity away for free on Wii U, and all you have to do is buy the base and a figure to play it. Sony’s sold 10 million PlayStation 4s, and nobody’s sure why. Pinball is finally legal in Oakland, California. Peter Rubin, Bo Moore and I tackle each of these in turn. Plus more!

Game|Life’s podcast is posted on Fridays, is available on iTunes, can be

[dewplayer: http://ift.tt/1l1wfMZ]

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Why and How We Must Protect the Right to Film Cops in Ferguson

Getty Images photographer Scott Olson is arrested while covering demonstrators Monday, Aug. 18, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. AP/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, J.B. Forbes

The standoff in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson has had Americans, and many around the world, glued to their various screens. Two weeks after the shooting of teenager Mike Brown by a police officer, the Missouri National Guard is retreating from the city and the protests seem to be settling down. But the unrest in Ferguson stands as another painful moment in the history of the oppression of African Americans in the U.S., in which “Ferguson, 2014” will recall “Birmingham, 1963” and “Los Angeles, 1992.”

Protesters are too often restricted from using digital tools to exercise their rights to hold government accountable and participate in society.

In each case, local strife went global as U.S. communities protesting racial injustice confronted the kinds of military units that are often deployed abroad.

However, the people on the ground in Ferguson differ from the protesters in Birmingham or L.A. in one crucial way: Their ordeal is playing out on Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, while the mainstream media largely ignored the beginning of the conflict. Nearly every protester, journalist, and bystander at the scene is carrying a small recording device in her pocket, which is also able to signal a location, share images, and ping those nearby and around the world. In Ferguson and beyond, social media is central to citizens telling the story about what’s happening in their communities and hold governmental authorities to account.

It’s also a privacy nightmare. Recent protests around the world—like those in Iran, Egypt, London, Thailand, and Turkey—all stem from unique circumstances, yet in the digital age they share a similar problem: Protesters are too often restricted from using digital tools to exercise their rights to hold government accountable and participate in society.

Josh Levy

Josh Levy is Advocacy Director at Access, the international digital rights organization. He’s worked for more than a decade at the intersections of technology, politics, and activism.

In the last week, accredited journalists and others who sought to document the militarization of the local police were arrested and threatened, and had their equipment stripped apart. Even though it is completely legal to record the police. Other equipment, such as low-flying aircraft, was totally banned. Many in the digital rights community called for authorities to respect the hard-fought “right to record”—the constitutional right to hold government officials accountable via those small recording devices in our pockets. The ongoing arrests and harassment of people in Ferguson for the “crime” of documenting the police demonstrates the real need to keep fighting for this right.

Add to all of this long, sordid history of the U.S. government’s surveillance of civil rights leaders, dissidents, and pretty much everyone else—which has increased exponentially in the digital age—and it becomes clear that our internet-connected devices cut both ways: They help us get the word out, and yet they’re our weakest security links.

While we need laws and policies to better protect users and the values we hold most dear, including freedom of the press, it is difficult to think of legal reform when people are being beaten in the streets. There are steps that those on the ground—professional and amateur journalists, unarmed citizens, and peaceful protesters—can take right now to protect themselves.

We at Access and many of our friends have produced the Digital First Aid Kit, a one-stop-shop that offers a set of self-diagnostic tools for human rights defenders, bloggers, activists, and journalists facing online attacks. It provides guidelines for digital first responders to assist a person under threat, as well as contact information if you need digital security assistance.

When it comes to protecting the content on your phone, the Electronic Frontier Foundation just updated its Cell Phone Guide for U.S. Protesters, which offers advice on password-protecting your phone, using encrypted communication channels, taking pictures and video, and handling your phone if you get arrested. Protesters can consult both resources to protect their safety and security.

Though the nightly strife of tear gas in Ferguson may be coming to an end, the road to justice in Mike Brown’s shooting is just beginning. The rights of people on the ground to freely document what takes place there—and everywhere—must be upheld at all costs.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Is Beautiful, Gritty, and Near-Unwatchable

Courtesy The Weinstein Company

A lot can change in nine years. In the near decade that’s passed since director Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller brought Miller’s noir comic Sin City to the big screen, filmmaking technology has gotten better, comic book movies have become an official Big Deal, and 3-D has become a lot more palatable. What’s more surprising is that my ability to watch women being hit (or, to use the local parlance, watching dames get roughed up) has withered from Minimal to None. There were only a few moments when I enjoyed Sin City: A Dame to Kill For—but even then, I felt pretty bad about it.

Look, I get it. Sin City is about very bad people living in a very bad town. It’s escapism to a world in more disarray than our own; there are no heroes, and this isn’t Captain America. So yes, if you like gritty noir, problem drinking, car chases, awesome action, heavy bloodshed, and movies that look like comic books come to beautiful life, and you can handle some stereotypes and watching women get treated poorly—this movie is for you. If not, forget it. (Also, if you’ve been joining the chorus for more and better roles for women in comic-book/action movies, this might have you questioning what you wish for—but more on that later.)

A Dame to Kill For, in theaters today, opens on the same monochromatic Basin City you remember from 2005. Though this time around, probably thanks to even better computer-aided greenscreen tech, the images pop a little more strongly, and the simple color palette makes the 3-D legitimately great. Marv (Mickey Rourke, still giving it his all under all those face prosthetics) is going after some some frat-boy types who had harassed a man on the street. Naturally, they get dealt with. But as in the original Sin City, this is just a vignette to get you in the mood, a standalone story to remind you that Marv is still a loose cannon doling out justice (he got the electric chair in the last movie, but Dame‘s jump-around timeline means he’s alive and well here).

Marv is also the through-line to Rodriguez and Miller’s other stories. He’s at Kadie’s the night that card sharp Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, pulling out his best wise guy) beats Senator Roark (a bone-chilling Powers Boothe) at poker, only to lose in every other way possible. He’s also around as Nancy (Jessica Alba, even more fallen-angel than she was in 2005) plots revenge for the suicide death of Hartigan (Bruce Willis, pulling his best ghost acting out of the closet), who saved her from rape and death at the hands of Roark’s son Yellow Bastard. And, most centrally, Marv is there to help out his old friend Dwight (Josh Brolin, ably taking over for Clive Owen), who gets sucked back into the world of Ava Lord (Green, the titular “dame to kill for”). Over the course of the film’s 102 minutes, all of these loosely intertwining plots resolve themselves in bloody ways.

Eva Green as Ava Lord.

Courtesy The Weinstein Company

As with 2005′s Sin, the look is visually compelling and gorgeous. No one before or since Rodriguez has managed to make a film look more like a comic book come to life (as opposed to just a live-action adaptation) while also keeping the excitement of flipping its pages. He pulls off a similar feat here, but—like Johnny doing a one-handed card shuffle a with his left hand while cracking “I’m ambidextrous”—it ends up feeling like the same old trick. Fans of the first film will likely enjoy A Dame to Kill For for more scenes of Gail Running Old Town or Miho Slicing People or Nancy Dancing, but may be disappointed when those things become rote.

The thing that never seems perfunctory is Green, who would win the Oscar for Gracefully Acting Her Way Through a Lot of Bullshit, if there was such a thing. Ava Lord, a former lover of Dwight’s who pulls him (and Marv) into her web with tales of mistreatment by her husband and his man Manute (Dennis Haysbert, taking over for Michael Clarke Duncan), has always been a twisted character, and here she does much of the same manipulating she did in Miller’s book: lying to Dwight and seducing cops to get what she wants. Green goes all in on the role, and as one reviewer has already noted, her performance here sees her “claim membership in the pantheon of film noir leading ladies alongside Jane Greer, Gloria Grahame, Marie Windsor, Peggy Cummings, Lizabeth Scott…” She’s mesmerizing to watch. It’s just unfortunate that she has to be so compelling while making false rape accusations, while getting knocked across a room, and while kissing the man who did it. (Dwight has a skill for that, apparently—he did the same thing with Gail in the first Sin City.) It’s disheartening and she deserves better.

Which brings us back to the women of Basin City. Yes, there are amazing femmes fatales—Rosario Dawson as Gail, Jamie Chung (in for Devon Aoki) as the samurai assassin Miho, and Alba’s Nancy all give as good as they get. But there are also women handcuffed to beds and threatened with death, women called “skank,” women tortured by men who are trying to honor their son’s memories (if you know the first Sin City you know what this means). These things are all true to Miller’s original work, and readers of the comics know they are coming, but in a movie with so many great female actresses, it’s just unfortunate so few of them actually get much respect on screen.

Any of them could take a true heroine character and make her amazing. And in a climate where the conversation has turned to “When will we get a female-lead comic book flick?” it’s disappointing to see a comic-book movie with a lot of strong female performers…who all too often get treated like shit. Sure, Nancy may go all Katniss-with-a-crossbow at one point, but A Dame to Kill For far too often confuses women with weapons for women who are empowered. And no matter how strong Nancy is, the air gets sucked out of the room when Marv, the closest thing to a Lancelot here, watches her pull the trigger and says, “I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ this—you look hot.” (It’s only right to point out that the men of Sin City aren’t rendered very three-dimensionally, either. Mostly they’re just on a mission to out-man each other in all the usual alpha ways.)

Honestly, it’s probably wrong to expect more—all gratuitous everything is the Rodriguez/Miller brand to the core. Sin City stories aren’t meant to be deep, and aren’t here to be politically correct. That’s fine. A lot of un-PC material can be compelling, but what was compelling when Rodriguez and Miller released their first flick in 2005 gets little more than a re-tread here, and a lot has changed since then. As a cinematic venture, A Dame to Kill For is a perfectly fine Sin City adaptation, but Miller and Rodriguez are releasing this film in a time much different than when its predecessor—let alone its source material—were released. After nine years, it’s a shame they haven’t matured.

Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch Apple’s Awkwardly Wrong Prediction of the Future From 1987

Apple has a long history of weird, self-serving company videos that elevate its computer-and-gadget operation to nothing short of a global superpower. But this is something else.

In 1987, two years after founder Steve Jobs was run out of the company, Apple produced a video that predicted a phantasmagorically glorious future for the maker of the Macintosh. It may be the oddest, most brilliant, and horribly wrong prediction anyone has ever made. With the 7-minute clip, which you can enjoy above, CEO John Sculley, Apple II chief Del Yocam, Apple exec Mike Spindler, and that other cofounder—Steve “The Woz” Wozniak—envisioned what Apple would be like in the year 1997. And let’s just say they didn’t hit the bullseye.

In Cupertino’s vision of a future 1997, Apple dominates the news, the markets, even stand-up comedy. Wall Street loves the company, and its growth is skyrocketing. The original Macs haven’t changed all that much, and Apple computers are everywhere—in living rooms and kitchens, at the airport, on planes, in space, and, well, on your face.

Yes, history would play out somewhat differently than the Applemaniacs hoped it would. By the real 1997, Apple was in the gutter. Sculley had been kicked out of the company four years before, only to be replaced by Spindler, who would join him in the graveyard of ousted CEOs three years later.

In Cupertino’s vision of a future 1997, Apple dominates the news, the markets, even stand-up comedy.

Sure, Apple’s late-80s video was meant as a bit of a joke. But humor has never been the company’s strongpoint. Exhibit A: the video’s prediction that the Apple of 1997 would sell a version of its ancient Apple II desktop computer known as the V.S.O.P. Apparently, this stands for “Very Smooth Old Processor.” As Yokum puts it: “This being 1997, some people think the Apple II concept is getting old. We don’t agree.”

Other bits don’t miss the mark quite so badly. The video predicts something called VistaMac, which isn’t all that different from Google Glass, the digital eyewear that is now very much a reality. Of course, unlike the VistaMac, Google Glass doesn’t take floppy disks—and it doesn’t look so very late-80s.

The video also presages a few things we now take for granted, including recommendation systems and ubiquitous virtual assistants that help us navigate the world. “A computer that talks is no big deal. A computer that listens? That’s a breakthrough,” says Woz. “Apple computers have always been friendly, but we’ve gone from friendly to understanding.” Sounds a bit like Siri—though we hasten to add that even Siri doesn’t quite work as promised.

To be fair, Apple did have the last laugh. Though the company’s crazy predictions didn’t exactly come true, 1997 actually turned out be a very important year for the company. In 1997, Steve Jobs came back, as Apple purchased his new company, Next Computer. And he was smart enough to realize the V.S.O.P would never fly.