Tuesday, June 25, 2019

AI & Cyber security


Artificial Intelligence Cyber security
As the new ways & means are available to all bad hackers or Data theft resources we need to life the vial from such threats and build a tools to tackle these known & somewhat unknown threats.  The world of cyber security has improving day by day. Signature-based solutions, whitelisting, application controls, and heuristics fail in the modern threat landscape. As attackers have learned to automate malicious code and vary it to flood an enterprise until a breach occurs. And the reality is many enterprises, from mid-size organizations to multi-national brands, have likely been infiltrated without detection.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the attempt by humans to make machines smart. Intelligence is such an important part of what makes humans unique that until recently the embodiment of intelligence in a machine was almost always accompanied by a humanoid robot. Today, along with the development of smart devices that assist us, one of the important goals of AI is to provide answers we would never arrive at by finding those answers within our own massive archives of information.
AI may prove to be the largest advancement in human technology since the start of the industrial revolution. Once conceived only in science fiction, AI is finally here and impacting daily life.

For many years, traditional AV vendors operated using the same model: detect and respond. Now a data science company has introduces a new paradigm applying AI to pinpoint bad actors in your network, prevent malware and other threats, and protect against both known and unknown attacks.
We can achieve a level of security and endpoint protection previously unavailable when you employ AI based prevention. Moreover, you can attain a superior compromise assessment, ROI, and efficacy. AI and machine learning have reinvented endpoint protection by providing predictive, preventative security that proactively stops attacks before they impact critical systems. Traditional antivirus requires layers of technology and a first victim, and they can’t prevent never-before-seen or unknown threats. AI and machine learning predict and protect systems pre-execution, before an attack occurs, and without a sacrificial lamb. With fewer security layers, network traffic, and memory use, you can reach greater than 99% effectiveness against attacks, while saving time, money, and resources.
India Training Services provide services to audit such AI & all other security threats in a periodic manner at an economical rate. This helps an enterprise or Multi-national organization to relax and worry about more critical business goals.
Business Case: When you protect through AI based prediction and prevention, you allow cyber security to go from business inhibitor to business enabler. Let’s build some good segregated points on this. The means you elevate threat protection from a tactical objective to a strategic mission by supplying:
  • Streamlined Operations: Eliminate the need for EPP firewalls, device controls, host IPS, data loss prevention, and encryption, while stopping undetected malware and avoiding ransomware using one simple solution
  • Decrease Incidents and Prioritize: Transform your IT from reacting to events to proactively securing your environment. Remove mundane tasks that get in the way of strategic projects like virtualization, cloud security, and IT automation
  • Enhance Business Continuity: Fortify against enterprise attacks meant to breach your network, steal credentials, and exfiltrate data. Keep from making the next news headline, while ensuring service to customers
  • Improve Compliance: Meet government regulations, from healthcare to financial to critical infrastructure industries, as well your internal security policies, with greater protection efficacy

AI not only improves efficacy, but it also changes the deployment model and makes cyber security implementation and operation a seamless, smooth process. Because of the advanced features of machine learning, you no longer employ traditional AV technology and tactics, including:
  • Incremental storage
  • Scanning machines
  • Re-imaging machines

Moreover, you can remove large endpoint agents that create performance friction for enterprise users. You also eliminate the tedium of taking machines offline during periodic scans.
AI and Machine Learning Provide:
  •  A comprehensive assessment using science and big data analytics
  •  Greater ROI that eliminates tens of thousands of help desk tickets
  • Prediction and prevention of threats pre-execution without a cloud connection and time-wasting daily updates
  • A streamlined approach that removes layers of technology and redundant incident response tools


AI and Machine Learning Help You:
  • Use minimal system resources (1-2% CPU usage and 40-50 MB of memory)
  • Prevent attacks with superior speed (in milliseconds)
  • Replace ineffective traditional AV tools (or augment existing security)
  • Achieve efficacy rates of greater than 99% (compared to 50-60% with antiquated signature-based AV)


The benefits
Simple
Organizations can protect endpoints with fewer system resources and reduce network and user impact. When they change their cyber security approach to pre-execution, they begin to remove layers of technology. Thus, costs are significantly lowered and they begin to discover ways to consolidate infrastructure. Its easy to deploy and secure your entire enterprise, whether it is 100 or 100,000 endpoints.
Seamless
You can predict and protect across platforms, operating systems, file types, and devices with AI and machine learning. It easily integrates into existing SIEM platforms and works in OEM and embedded devices. In addition, it provides continuous protection for security from system- and memory-based attacks, malicious documents, zero-day malware, privilege escalations, scripts, and potentially unwanted programs.
Silent
You can reduce alerts, helpdesk tickets, re-imaging requests, and impact to users when you empower your endpoints with AI based security. You also diminish the need for fire drills and incident response because you eliminate the threat before it manifests. Bolster your endpoint security by using an intuitive web console and simple SIEM integration, with no need for inconvenient signature updates or scan schedules.

For some non-IT friends lets understand some techy mumbo-jumbos

Malware & Virus: These are the small programs that once they infect a computer replicate themselves and attempt to send the replicated version to another computer, much in the same way a biological virus infects its host.
Most of the virus programs impact the computers on which they find themselves by destroying or altering data.
The computer worm is a type of malware, which like a virus, does its best to replicate and spread itself. Unlike viruses that need a host program in which to be spread, worms are standalone programs that can spread completely on their own. They do the same kind of damage as a virus.

The Trojan is malware named after a mythical wooden horse used by the Trojans more than 2,700 years ago as a peace offering to Sparta. Once the Spartans brought the Trojan horse within the walls of Sparta, soldiers hidden inside were able to attack and defeat Sparta.

Trojan computer malware is often disguised as legitimate software programs. Any number of social engineering methods are used to get people to download and install the Trojan. Once installed, it usually works to give access to a malicious third-party. 

Unlike viruses, they don’t replicate themselves. They rely on the con game to get people to infect their own computers. 
Intrusion involves security breaches not caused by a program that has breached your defenses. I know it is probably improper to define something based on what it isn’t. But with non-malware intrusion that’s the easiest way to encompass such a broad arena of attack vectors. It generally doesn’t involve a virus, Trojan, or other malware file. Generally, a non-malware attack is an attempt to breach a computer or network using software you trust, like Microsoft Office or the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Even though the first two examples were
Windows-based the software commonly used in these types of attacks can run on many other operating systems, such as Linux (and all its variants).
SSH, the Secure Socket Shell, is a hacker’s dream. It’s the administrator’s “back door.” It provides remote command-level access to whatever operating system is running SSH. Today, that would be all of them.
Database Security : Structured Query Language (SQL) is the query language for many modern databases. Malicious instructions can be embedded into an SQL database, causing it to return the contents of the entire database (commonly referred to as an SQL injection). This can be done by entering the code into a user input field in a web form.  This code then gets embedded as a user field in the SQL sent to the database.
This is an old exploit, and today’s enterprises have updated their database query codes to eliminate this kind of attack. One method is using something known as parameterized SQL statements. This pulls the user input information out of the actual SQL statement itself and places it into parameters that are passed along.
This kind of programming has largely defeated the SQL injection attack. But, there are many unpatched systems out there. It’s a bit of work to go through and recode all those SQL calls in your program.

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Business Incubation

Lots of startup asking me to create a reference for a Business Incubator idea so summarizing this post / blog for them. A business incubator is a company that helps specifically new business and startup companies to develop by providing services such as Business alignment, management training or logistics such as office space as well.

There is lots of pondering debates on the building more entrepreneurs, and so their business in each society so that the work uplifting with employment and financial growth etc. etc. This study analysis gave rise to various models I am trying to share a few in here as well.
Incubators provide numerous benefits to owners of startup businesses. Their office and manufacturing space is offered at below-market rates, and their staff supplies advice and much-needed expertise in developing business and marketing plans as well as helping to fund fledgling businesses. Companies typically spend an average of two years in a business incubator, during which time they often share telephone, secretarial office, and production equipment expenses with other startup companies, in an effort to reduce everyone's overhead and operational costs.

Not all business incubators are alike, however, so if you have a specialized idea for a business, try to find the incubator that best suits your requirements.
Additionally to the entrepreneurs’ benefits, I would insist that incubator’s management should consider and possibly organize the program depending on main entrepreneur’s needs. This list includes in the early stages of a venture life cycle:

  1. Knowledge & Information            
  2. Concentration and focus, self-motivation            
  3.  Dedicated personal resources to venture (time, money, will, relatives support) 
  4.   Personal mentoring
  5. Market validation of an idea
  6. Relevant connections (industry, experts, investors, etc)  Relevant connections (industry, experts, investors, etc)
  7. Expertise to solve particular problems (access to mentors, experts, investors, entrepreneurs)
  8. Feedback mechanism for self-learning
  9.   Opportunity (problem) recognition
  10. Team building (finding relevant team members, selection high-quality people, formation of optimal size team and retention)
  11.  Technology commercialization assistance
  12. Help with regulatory compliance
  13. Help with presentation skills
  14. Links to higher education resources
  15. Links to strategic partners
  16. Comprehensive business training programs
  17. Advisory boards and mentors
  18.   Help with business etiquette
Lets Understand some famous models. India Training Services give all above 18 services to help to build a better business Incubator & start a new growing business effectively  

Smilor Model: Smilor created structure model in 1985 via describing main incubator affiliates, support systems and description of main outcomes of the incubation process. He considers an incubator as a transformation mechanism that assist entrepreneur in building a venture. Even though the representation of the model doesn’t provide extensive information about particular services that business incubator  supplies to tenants, Smilor categorizes the benefits that business incubators provide to their tenants through four dimensions:
  1. 1.       Credibility development.
  2. The shortening of the learning curve.
  3. Faster troubleshooting.
  4. Access to the network of entrepreneurs
Smilor was one of the pioneers in 80s who shifted the viewpoint on incubators (from provision of physical resources to the business expertise and services provision).
Smilor (1987) emphasizes that business incubator is a system which is constructed from different building blocks (support systems) and it seeks to identify the different components of the new business incubation process. The model was developed and proposed having in mind typical innovation-based entrepreneurs (which is not always the case for an incubator).  It conceptualizes the incubator as a system that gives incubatees the structure and credibility for the creation of new firms while ensuring a set of immediate, key resources for the setting up of the new undertaking. However, the systemic approach, encompassing the internal and external environment, seems to be lacking in Smilor’s (1987) model, as well as description of the process of transformation which happens with entrepreneur inside.
Nijkamp & Smilor’s Generic Incubator Model (1988) : This model is the combination of two. Firstly, Smilor introduced his model and then it was extended by Nijkamp. Nijkamp’s (1988) model is the interpretation of a generic business incubator. He argues that any  business incubator acts as a mediator between entrepreneurs and community. Thus, successful implementation of the incubator requires combination of at least these elements:
  1. Sources of entrepreneurs
  2. Recognition of opportunities by entrepreneurs
  3. Demand for business incubation service.

2000, Carter & Jones-Evans, white-box, process model, operations. This is a first true process model in a row. Carter & Jones-Evans (2000) proposed a typical five-step incubation process, as shown in the figure above. As it can be seen from Carter & Jones-Evans’ (2000) model the process is organized and focused on the needs of the incubatee, which will be supported by the services provided by the incubators during the incubation process. The incubation process according to the Carter & Jones-Evans consists of the following stages: idea formulation, post entry development, opportunity recognition, entry and launch, pre-start planning and preparation.


The model described by Lazarowich and Wojciechowski explains ‘new economy’ incubators. They are characterized by the following:
  1.  “Business incubators are private-sector, profit-driven with the pay-back coming from investment in companies rather than from rental income.
  2.   They tend to focus mainly on high-tech and internet-related activities and unlike ‘traditional’ incubators, do not have job creation as their principal.
  3. ‘New economy’ incubators often have an essentially virtual presence with financial and business services at the core of the offering unlike their ‘traditional’ counterparts that usually  center on the provision of physical workspace.”
2004, Hackett & Dilts Generic Incubator model, black-box, structure, operations: The model is a universal business incubation model which can be used both in public and corporate purposes. In short, it is structured as black-box: inputs of the process, process activities, and outputs of the process. Authors also present a formula of Business Incubation Process. We think that this is the most successful representation of business incubator among all in the series.

In India, Technology Business Incubator. Technology Business incubator (TBI) is an entity, which helps technology-based start-up businesses with all the necessary resources/support that the start-up needs to evolve and grow into a mature business. http://www.nstedb.com/institutional/tbi.htm
The National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), established by Government of India in 1982 is an institutional mechanism, with a broad objective of promoting gainful self-employment amongst the Science and Technology (S&T) manpower in the country and to setup knowledge based and innovation driven enterprises.

NSTEDB functions under the aegis of Department of Science & Technology. It has representation from socio-economic and scientific Departments / Ministries, premier entrepreneurship development institutions and all India Financial Institutions.


 India Training Services give all necessary services to help to build a better business Incubator & start a new growing business effectively  feel free to contact me Ravindra Pande, ravindrapande@gmail.com.

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