Pentagon Making Cybersecurity Progress

Worked at the Pentagon, but long before this level of analysis was being done, but like to see advances being completed.   It is now essential now that cyber security is fundamentally well done.  Here a brief overview.  

Pentagon making progress on cybersecurity amid challenges, watchdog says    By Colin Demarest

The U.S. Government Accountability Office published on May 19 a review of the Department of Defense's cyber efforts to secure controlled unclassified information, sensitive data either created or possessed by the government. (File/Provided) .... 

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense is making significant progress locking down sensitive networks amid cyber challenges from foreign adversaries bent on gaining access to intel, a report from a federal watchdog shows.

The department as of January recorded compliance at 70% or higher  in implementing four select protections for controlled unclassified information, which may include data tied to critical technologies or the development and operation of weapons and defense infrastructure, according to the Government Accountability Office.  .... ' 

Pulsing Networks in Simulations

Long time ago I needed to set up a simulation that included a pulsing network to support a solar astro model.    Found this interesting solution today.  Just for my own reference and possible the needs of others.  I like Wolframs broad application examples.

Building a Pulse-Forming Network with the Wolfram Language  In Wolfram Blog

May 6, 2022, Robert Mendelsohn, Product Manager, Strategic Initiatives

This has multiple applications in many physics- and electrical engineering–related systems, including radar, kicker magnets for accelerators and really any time a pulsed uniform voltage or current is needed. In my case, I needed this capability for a metal vapor vacuum arc plasma source that I’m using to study the properties of metallic plasmas in strong magnetic fields.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through some pulse-forming network theory along with how I used the Wolfram Language to quickly and easily design a cost-effective pulse-forming network by using circuit theory, the interactive Manipulate function and data from an electronics vendor to explore practical design options. This will also show off the Quantity function in the Wolfram Language, which has proven helpful and easy to use.n.... '  (detailed model) 

Polinode and Microsoft Teams

Just informed of this and taking a closer look.   Polinode and its advances have been mentioned here many times.   For more about Polinode, see here.

Polinode Connects with MS Teams and Slack

Announcing Integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack   By Andrew Pitts

Today is an exciting day at Polinode! We are thrilled to announce that we now have direct integrations with both Microsoft Teams and Slack. With so many organisations recently moving to a situation where most or a significantly increased proportion of work is now done remotely, we decided to accelerate these integrations a few months ago. For a number of years there has been a trend towards more internal communication taking place across Enterprise Social Networks such as Teams and Slack. And so, both in the current environment and because of this trend, we feel that the ability to tap into the natural network data that these tools produce will be particularly powerful and insightful for organisations. A handful of organisations who have been testing the integrations over the last couple of months have already proved this to be true! 

HOW DOES IT WORK?
The Teams and Slack integrations are available to any Enterprise and Partner customers who would like to take advantage of them. They sit alongside our existing integrations with Microsoft Active Directory, Office 365 Email, Office 365 Calendar and the Microsoft People API. All of these integrations are simple to setup - they just take a couple of minutes! All that is required is for an admin user of the tenant to provide authorisation to Polinode by clicking a button, i.e. oAuth approval.   .... " (Much more explanation at the link) 

Google's Tsunami for Network Security Scanning

Here is a new and somewhat unexpected thing I was just introduced to by TWIT.    See their generalized writeup below.    Note still in pre-alpha form, but would seem to be a very useful thing to be aware of and if appropriate, use.   Plan is to extend this via the community.   Technical.   Public release announcement. 

Tsunami
https://github.com/google/tsunami-security-scanner

About
Tsunami is a general purpose network security scanner with an extensible plugin system for detecting high severity vulnerabilities with high confidence.

Tsunami
To learn more about Tsunami, visit our documentation.   https://github.com/google/tsunami-security-scanner/blob/master/docs/index.md  
Tsunami relies heavily on its plugin system to provide basic scanning capabilities. All publicly available Tsunami plugins are hosted in a separate google/tsunami-security-scanner-plugins repository.

Current Status
Currently Tsunami is in 'pre-alpha' release for developer preview.
Tsunami project is currently under active development. Do expect major API changes in the future.

For TWIT's very useful not too technical write up on this see:
https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-775-Notes.pdf      Page 12 ... 

 ... Supports small manually curated set of vulnerabilities
● Detects high severity, RCE-like vulnerabilities, which often actively exploited in the wild
● Generates scan results with high confidence and minimal false-positive rate.
● Detectors are easy to implement.

● Is easy to scale, executes fast and scans non-intrusively. .... '

Human Dynamics in Decision Making

Have thought that we need better understanding of our decision making, at least if we believe in useful biomimicry to build intelligent systems.   Here an interesting, if very technical piece.   Can we use some ideas here to model and improve such systems?     Note that it starts with the statement that we do not understand the processing steps that lead to a decision. In Nature.

Human stereoEEG recordings reveal network dynamics of decision-making in a rule-switching task
Marije ter Wal, Artem Platonov, Pasquale Cardellicchio, Veronica Pelliccia, Giorgio LoRusso, Ivana Sartori, Pietro Avanzini, Guy A. Orban & Paul H. E. Tiesinga 
Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 3075 (2020) 

Abstract
The processing steps that lead up to a decision, i.e., the transformation of sensory evidence into motor output, are not fully understood. Here, we combine stereoEEG recordings from the human cortex, with single-lead and time-resolved decoding, using a wide range of temporal frequencies, to characterize decision processing during a rule-switching task. Our data reveal the contribution of rostral inferior parietal lobule (IPL) regions, in particular PFt, and the parietal opercular regions in decision processing and demonstrate that the network representing the decision is common to both task rules. We reconstruct the sequence in which regions engage in decision processing on single trials, thereby providing a detailed picture of the network dynamics involved in decision-making. The reconstructed timeline suggests that the supramarginal gyrus in IPL links decision regions in prefrontal cortex with premotor regions, where the motor plan for the response is elaborated. ... "

Cosmos Network: Interoperable Blockchains

Intriguing direction:  A network of Blockchains

Cosmos Network
The foundation for a new token economy
Join the most interoperable
ecosystem of connected blockchains

About
The Cosmos Network is a decentralized network of independent, scalable, and interoperable blockchains, creating the foundation for a new token economy.

Before the Cosmos Network, blockchains were siloed and unable to communicate with each other. They were hard to build and could only handle a small number of transactions per second. Cosmos solves some of the hardest blockchain problems of scalability, usability and interoperability.

The Cosmos SDK is a developer-friendly, modular framework, each powered by a Byzantine Fault-Tolerant consensus algorithm such as Tendermint BFT, allowing developers to fully customize their decentralized applications and focus on business logic.

At Cosmos, we’re building the "Internet of Blockchains." Join our growing network and plug into the most powerful blockchain ecosystem. ... ' 

Building Private 5G Networks

Assume we will be getting useful information from these tests.

German Industrial Firms to Build Private 5G Networks
The Wall Street Journal
Catherine Stupp

Automakers BMW and Volkswagen, chemicals company BASF, airline Deutsche Lufthansa, and other German industrial firms intend to build their own private 5G networks, now that the German Federal Network Agency has started accepting applications for that portion of the radio spectrum. The regulator said 33 companies have to date purchased 5G licenses. Private 5G networks are particularly useful for industrial applications like operating robots and driverless vehicles within factories, which experts say require fast, reliable connections that perform tasks in real time. The firms also claim the private networks will fortify cybersecurity, as they will be able to configure the networks to suit their needs, use customized security features like encryption, and avoid sharing bandwidth with other companies. ... " 

Build a Network of Teams

We did this by constructing teams that included specific skills, making sure they could communicate. Also document results and directions.

To weather a crisis, build a network of teams
This dynamic and collaborative team structure can tackle an organization’s most pressing problems quickly. Here are four steps to make it happen.

Sent from McKinsey Insights 

Private Micro Networks

Do that already in business with things like Slack and Teams.

Why private micro-networks could be the future of how we connect in Technology Review
Forget amassing likes or cultivating your online persona. Apps like Cocoon are all about being your true self with just a select few people.
by Tanya Basu  ... 

Networks in the Enterprise

Podcast and more about the use of internal networks.   Talking the podcast side we established some internal podcasts channels to talk to people about how emergent tech was being used.  Talked and experimented with automating the networking of insights among reports.

Internal Networks in the HBR
January 23, 2020

Do you wish you were more plugged-in at your organization? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Robin Abrahams, a research associate at Harvard Business School and the “Miss Conduct” columnist at Boston Globe Magazine. They talk through what to do when you want to network at a company retreat, your manager is bothered by your schmoozing with their peers, or you want to know about plum projects before they get assigned to someone else.

PODCAST  at the link

Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:

HBR: Learn to Love Networking by Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino, and Maryam Kouchaki — “A mountain of research shows that professional networks lead to more job and business opportunities, broader and deeper knowledge, improved capacity to innovate, faster advancement, and greater status and authority. Building and nurturing professional relationships also improves the quality of work and increases job satisfaction.”

Boston Globe Magazine: Miss Conduct’s all-in-one career fix-it guide by Robin Abrahams — “Censor your snarky inner voice and have the courage to ask seemingly obvious questions or draw offbeat analogies. Networking is about creating possibilities. Giving people a safe space to explore and connect ideas is a great way to persuade them you are a uniquely insightful genius.”

HBR: The Best Way to Network in a New Job by Rob Cross and Peter Gray — “Anyone who hopes to hit the ground running in a new organization must first cultivate allies — a network of people who can provide the information, resources and support needed to succeed. But few onboarding programs offer concrete advice on how to build those all-important connections.” ... " 

China Quantum Drones

Exactly what this means, claims should be followed.

First 'Quantum Drone' Takes Off
IEEE Spectrum
By Charles Q. Choi

Researchers at Nanjing University in China have developed a quantum drone to serve as an airborne node in a future quantum network. The eight-rotor, 35-kg. (77-lb.) octocopter is equipped with an onboard quantum communication system. During testing, the researchers demonstrated that the quantum drone can operate while hovering in midair for 40 minutes at a time. The device is capable of maintaining two air-to-ground links, each about 100 meters long, and can receive and transmit entangled photons during the daytime, on a clear night, and even on a rainy night. The researchers believe they can scale down the quantum communication system to fit in small consumer drones for on-demand local-area quantum networks, or scale it up for high-altitude drones that would serve as nodes in wide-area networks spanning hundreds of kilometers.  .... ' 

How AI will Improve Networks

Extensive first piece, more to follow, by Cisco on Networks and AI.  Click through below.

Enterprise Networks
Improving Networks with Artificial Intelligence

John Apostolopoulos, Ph.D.
June 5, 2019  

Artificial intelligence is changing how we manage networks, and it’s a change we need. Because as we rely more every day on networks and networked applications to keep businesses agile, secure, and competitive, we also need more advanced tools to keep on top of the networks themselves. AI will us make network operations simpler, smarter, safer, and speedier. They help us manage our networks at machine speed.

In this and upcoming blog posts I’m going to discuss how AI technologies will apply to networking.

Before I do, please keep in mind that AI is a large and growing field, with several branches. In networking, there are three subfields of AI that are most relevant:

Natural language processing (NLP), which includes speech recognition and natural language understanding.

Machine learning (ML), in which we use data to learn patterns, so we can form inferences on new data for tasks like classification or prediction.

Machine reasoning (MR), which includes using domain-specific knowledge bases (facts, relationships, and rules) and manipulations of the knowledge to answer questions.

I’ll refer to “AI” if I mean multiple of the above or related techniques. I’ll refer to a single technique if I want to be more specific. ... "

Scale Free Networks

Technical but interesting view here, we examined and experimented with the SantaFe Institute about using consumer networks to market and advertise,  To some success, but not as good as we wanted.   Hints and previous writings on this in the tags below.  Are there further capabilities to drive advantage in Barabasi's work?  This is about training, but consider an advertising angle.
.
Q&A: Albert-László Barabási on the diversity of networks
The author of Network Science talks about his foundational work in that field and developing resources for online learning.    By Melinda Baldwin  in Physics Today

Network science is a new and rapidly growing field, with applications ranging from protein interactions to the internet. However, the sheer breadth of areas in which network analysis might be useful presents a daunting challenge to potential textbook authors.

In Network Science (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Albert-László Barabási tackles that challenge. The result, writes reviewer Zoltán Toroczkai in the April issue of Physics Today, is “a hands-on and engaging textbook” that also makes good use of accompanying online resources, such as animations and other pedagogical tools.

Physics Today recently talked to Barabási about his pioneering contributions to network science, the challenges of writing a textbook in an interdisciplinary field, and his approach to developing online resources. ... "

Microsoft Makes Kaizala Free for 365 Subscribers

Kaizala seems to provide a number of network architectures for people working together.    Nice idea, how will it compare to the now popular Teams?    Do most people know the architecture that is needed, and will that architecture remain stable during the project?   Still like the idea.  Will be experimenting. 

Coordinate work across dynamic networks of people using Microsoft Kaizala    

 By Praveen Maloo  of Microsoft

Today’s workplace extends well beyond organizational boundaries, and there is an increasing need to connect your entire business value chain, including your Firstline workers, vendors, partners, suppliers, and customers. A disconnected value chain hinders productivity, slows down decision making, prevents the ability for insights to surface from the field, and creates potential for customer dissatisfaction. Today, consumer messaging apps are often used between people across the value chain, but this poses security, privacy and compliance risks to company data. Microsoft Kaizala aims to solve a lot of these challenges, especially in mobile-first, developing markets.

Microsoft Kaizala is a simple and secure mobile app, with easy sign-up using just a phone number. It enables networks of people to connect and coordinate work across their roles, spanning Firstline workers, vendors, partners, suppliers, customers, and citizens.  Many organizations are already doing amazing things with Kaizala.

Kaizala delivers on four key promises:

1. Communicate across dynamic networks: Kaizala supports diverse group types such as hub and spoke, hierarchies, and public groups – which model the communication needs of your organization. Use it to connect with your customers and partners or your Firstline workers. Temporal and geo-fenced groups make the set-up and discovery of groups easy, and large group size of up to 1 million users enables scenarios such as government-to-citizen communication .... "

(Apparently the 'free' version contains fewer capabilities than the full version, will examine)

And Facebook on your TV?

Taking over a channel rather than creating a new one?  Note how Facebook moving away from the other 'intelligent' assistant voice services.   Originally it was said they were building human augmented systems.  But could this be a way to insert those capabilities into video augmented by intelligence and the architecture of natural networks like family, workers and friends?   Facebook has these, as does Linkedin. 

Facebook is reportedly making a video chat camera for your TV
It would be Portal for the biggest screen in your home.

By Jon Fingas, @jonfingas in Engadget

Facebook's Portal cameras might just be the start of the company's plans to bring video chat to your home. Cheddar sources claimed that the social network is making a "camera-equipped device" that brings video chat and streaming services (including Facebook's own) to your TV. Nicknamed Ripley, it's tentatively slated to launch in spring 2019. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.  ... " 

Network Effects Mean Less

Quite interesting, complex in part because we now have so many devices competing for time and interaction.  I would imagine too there is a growing 'assistant effect' that attempts to drive people in a place and time and context towards some engagement goal.  Yet the network continues to grow.  Is the effect growing?

Why Network Effects Matter Less Than They Used To
By Catherine Tucker in the HBR

When we teach strategy to MBA students, our student want magic bullets, things they can do to make their companies thrive forever. For a long time we emphasized “network effects” as a potential secret sauce for business models. Economists use “network effects” to describe contexts where a good or service offers increasing benefits the more users it has. Network effects can be direct: for example, Slack becomes more useful as other people also use Slack. Network effects can also be indirect, meaning that one set of users benefits as more of another type of users joins a platform. For example, AirBnB would not be useful for travelers if there were no apartment-owners using the platform. Similarly, home-owners would not want to use AirBnB if travelers weren’t using it to find a place to stay.

We have long taught that network effects can provide market power and sustained or even self-reinforcing competitive advantage (the best kind). The more users you got, the larger your user base was, and the more compelling your proposition became for attracting new users.

At the tail end of the dot-com boom in Silicon Valley, I wrote my dissertation on network effects. Entrepreneurs and business leaders were excited about them too. But it now seems they are not the panacea we first thought.  .... " 

On Complex Network Analysis

Nicely done overview.  And its not only about Python applications, includes an intro look at accessible and free systems like Gephi.   Many network analysis concepts are described, gives you a view of the ultimate power of the idea.   It automatically visualizes the problem, should always be thought of  Right now looking at how knowledge graphs can be used to prepopulate assistant style systems with context.

Complex Network Analysis in Python: Recognize - Construct - Visualize - Analyze - Interpret 1st Edition   by Dmitry Zinoviev

They write: 

" ... Construct, analyze, and visualize networks with networkx, a Python language module. Network analysis is a powerful tool you can apply to a multitude of datasets and situations. Discover how to work with all kinds of networks, including social, product, temporal, spatial, and semantic networks. Convert almost any real-world data into a complex network--such as recommendations on co-using cosmetic products, muddy hedge fund connections, and online friendships. Analyze and visualize the network, and make business decisions based on your analysis. If you're a curious Python programmer, a data scientist, or a CNA specialist interested in mechanizing mundane tasks, you'll increase your productivity exponentially.  ... " 

Dynamic Networks

Not overly technical but thoughtful piece. I like any article that aims to deal with differing contexts over time, rately considered well in analysis.  Even in forecasts it is rare that we treat more than one dependent variable.   Look at it like a network.   This article does not do that, but it surrounds the problem.

Elements of the Theory of Dynamic Networks
By Othon Michail, Paul G. Spirakis 
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 61 No. 2, Page 72
10.1145/3156693

" ... A dynamic network is a network that changes with time. Nature, society, and the modern communications landscape abound with examples. Molecular interactions, chemical reactions, social relationships and interactions in human and animal populations, transportation networks, mobile wireless devices, and robot collectives form only a small subset of the systems whose dynamics can be naturally modeled and analyzed by some sort of dynamic network. Though many of these systems have always existed, it was not until recently the need for a formal treatment that would consider time as an integral part of the network has been identified. Computer science is leading this major shift, mainly driven by the advent of low-cost wireless communication devices and the development of efficient wireless communication protocols. .... " 

Polinode and NodeXL

Via Andrew Pitts and  Marc Smith (SMRF, NodeXL)  Podcast:

Polinode and the Social Media Research Foundation recently announced an integration between NodeXL Pro and Polinode’s Networks product. Polinode Networks is a tool for visualising and analysing network data in a web-browser. NodeXL Pro is an Microsoft Office Excel add-in that performs advanced social data acquisition .... "

Polinode Graph Analytics Updates

Been writing about the Polinode system for   "...  networking analysis capability in the cloud .. "   for some time.  They continue to update their offering.  See also, their blog.

" ... We are thrilled to announce that a number of major new features have recently been added to Polinode. In brief they are: 

Layers: You can now stack operations on top of each other (think "Photoshop for Networks");
Roll-up: You can now roll-up any network by any text attribute; 

Themes: With a single click you can change the visual appearance of a network; and
Labels: It's now possible to size, color and filter node labels in any network.

To read more about the above and see some animations demonstrating the new features click here to read our latest blog post.

For more information.
At the same time as introducing the above, we've also simplified our pricing for Networks. There are now four plans - Free, Basic, Standard and Enterprise. Paid plans start at the same low $20 / month. 

You can see a detailed summary of this new simplified pricing structure at www.polinode.com. 

For all the latest news about Polinode, please follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Google+. And of course, we'd love you to share our latest blog post on social media!   ... "