School administrators and IT staff can be super-vigilant, but the hackers are getting better and better at sneaking through security.
the most common cybersecurity threats, and how can school staff avoid them?
Eavesdropping / Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) Attacks
What they are:It’s likely that you sometimes use a school laptop or mobile device to gain internet access via Wi-Fi networks in public places like coffee shops or airports. If so, be aware that there may be hackers eavesdropping to try and gain entry to any two-party exchange you make so they can filter and steal data.
How to avoid them:Always use a school-verified SIM card, dongle or VPN(virtual private network) to access the internet in public places.
Social Engineering Attacks
According to Verizon’s 2018 Breach Investigations report, 92 percent of malware is delivered via email, often referred to as social engineering attacks. The aim is to interact with the user and influence and manipulate their actions to gain access to systems and install harmful software. Malware uses various guises. Here are some of the most common:
emotions can give you truly pertinent, useful data about business problems that need attention.
negative emotions are useful indicators of both your instincts and your beliefs:
If you’re feeling sad or down, you’re probably unhappy with your own behavior or the effectiveness of your response to events. You might be thinking that something has gone wrong and that it was your fault. Be careful not to leave sadness unattended or it can slide into hopelessness and the belief that you’ll never be able to make things better. Instead, let sadness prompt you to change: Look for small actions and steps to make headway and improvements.
If you’re angry, you may be experiencing a fairness issue of some kind, and the anger may be telling you about a sense of violation or something that needs to be set right.
If you’re afraid or don’t feel safe in some way, you may sense that something bad is going to happen but you’re not sure what it is or how it might damage you. Or perhaps you don’t trust upcoming events or the people involved. Your fear can alert you to do extra preparation and contingency planning so you’ll have your best shot at success.
At the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) this week, the UAE’s minister of state for Artificial Intelligence, Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, went so far as to declare that “Data is the new oil.”
according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author, economic historian and one of the world’s leading experts on the oil & gas sector; Daniel Yergin, there is now a “symbiosis” between energy producers and the new knowledge economy. The production of oil & gas and the generation of data are now, Yergin argues, “wholly inter-dependent”.
What does Oil & Gas 4.0 look like in practice?
the greater use of automation and collection of data has allowed an upsurge in the “de-manning” of oil & gas facilities
Thanks to a significant increase in the number of sensors being deployed across operations, companies can monitor what is happening in real time, which markedly improves safety levels.
in the competitive environment of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, no business can afford to be left behind by not investing in new technologies – so strategic discussions are important.
Storytelling with Data: An Introduction to Data Visualization
Mar 04 – Mar 31, 2019
Delivery Mode : Asynchronous Workshop Levels : Beginner,Intermediate Eligible for Online Teaching Certificate elective : No
Data visualization is about presenting data visually so we can explore and identify patterns in the data, analyze and make sense of those patterns, and communicate our findings. In this course, you will explore those key aspects of data visualization, and then focus on the theories, concepts, and skills related to communicating data in effective, engaging, and accessible ways.
This will be a hands-on, project-based course in which you will apply key data visualization strategies to various data sets to tell specific data stories using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Practice data sets will be provided, or you can utilize your own data sets.
Week 1: Introduction and Tool Setup
Week 2: Cognitive Load and Pre-Attentive Attributes
Week 3: Selecting the Appropriate Visualization Type
Week 4: Data Stories and Context
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to create basic data visualizations that are effective, accessible, and engaging. In support of that primary objective, you will:
Describe the benefits of data visualization for your professional situation
Identify opportunities for using data visualization
Use appropriate accessibility strategies for data tables
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets is required to successfully complete this course. Resources will be included to help you with the basics should you need them, but time spent learning the tools is not included in the estimated time for completing this course.
What are the key takeaways from this course?
The ability to explain how data visualization is connected to data analytics
The ability to identify key data visualization theories
Creating effective and engaging data visualizations
Applying appropriate accessibility strategies to data visualizations
Who should take this course?
Instructional designers, faculty, and higher education administrators who need to present data in effective, engaging, and accessible ways will benefit from taking this course
Between the creation of a social rating system and street cameras with facial recognition capabilities, technology reports coming out of China have raised serious concerns for privacy advocates. These concerns are only heightened as Chinese investors turn their attention to the United States education technology space acquiring companies with millions of public school users.
A particularly notable deal this year centers on Edmodo, a cross between a social networking platform and a learning management system for schools that boasts having upwards of 90 million users. Net Dragon, a Chinese gaming company that is building a significant education division, bought Edmodo for a combination of cash and equity valued at $137.5 million earlier this month.
Edmodo began shifting to an advertising model last year, after years of struggling to generate revenue. This has left critics wondering why the Chinese firm chose to acquire Edmodo at such a price, some have gone as far as to call the move a data grab.
as data becomes a tool that governments such as Russia and China could use to influence voting systems or induce citizens into espionage, more legislators are turning their attention to the acquisitions of early-stage technology startups.
NetDragon officials, however, say they have no interest in these types of activities. Their main goal in acquiring United States edtech companies lies in building profitability, says Pep So, NetDragon’s Director of Corporate Development.
In 2015, the firm acquired the education technology platform, Promethean, a company that creates interactive displays for schools. NetDragon executives say that the Edmodo acquisition rounds out their education product portfolio—meaning the company will have tools for supporting multiple aspects of learning including; preparation, instructional delivery, homework, assignment grading, communication with parents students and teachers and a content marketplace.
NetDragon’s monetization plan for Edmodo focuses on building out content that gets sold via its platform. Similar to tools like TeachersPayTeachers, So hopes to see users putting up content on the platform’s marketplace, some free and others for a fee (including some virtual reality content), so that the community can buy, sell and review available educational tools.
As far as data privacy is concerned, So notes that NetDragon is still learning what it can and cannot do. He noted that the company will comply with Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal regulation created in order to protect the privacy of children online, but says that the rules and regulations surrounding the law are confusing for all actors involved.
Historically, Chinese companies have faced trust and branding issues when moving into the United States market, and the reverse is also true for U.S. companies seeking to expand overseas. Companies have also struggled to learn the rules, regulations and operational procedures in place in other countries.
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Iran and Huawei top agenda as Pompeo meets Merkel for 45 minutes in Berlin
Blind Protocol, an alternate reality game created by two high school English teachers to help students understand online privacy and data security. This form of gaming blends fact and fiction to immerse players in an interactive world that responds to their decisions and actions. In a recent article on KQED, Paul Darvasi and John Fallon described how they chose the gaming format to help their students gain a deeper look at how vulnerable their personal data is.
James Dixon, the CTO of Pentaho is credited with naming the concept of a data lake. He uses the following analogy:
“If you think of a datamart as a store of bottled water – cleansed and packaged and structured for easy consumption – the data lake is a large body of water in a more natural state. The contents of the data lake stream in from a source to fill the lake, and various users of the lake can come to examine, dive in, or take samples.”
A data lake holds data in an unstructured way and there is no hierarchy or organization among the individual pieces of data. It holds data in its rawest form—it’s not processed or analyzed. Additionally, a data lakes accepts and retains all data from all data sources, supports all data types and schemas (the way the data is stored in a database) are applied only when the data is ready to be used.
What is a data warehouse?
A data warehouse stores data in an organized manner with everything archived and ordered in a defined way. When a data warehouse is developed, a significant amount of effort occurs during the initial stages to analyze data sources and understand business processes.
Data
Data lakes retain all data—structured, semi-structured and unstructured/raw data. It’s possible that some of the data in a data lake will never be used. Data lakes keep all data as well. A data warehouse only includes data that is processed (structured) and only the data that is necessary to use for reporting or to answer specific business questions.
Agility
Since a data lake lacks structure, it’s relatively easy to make changes to models and queries.
Users
Data scientists are typically the ones who access the data in data lakes because they have the skill-set to do deep analysis.
Security
Since data warehouses are more mature than data lakes, the security for data warehouses is also more mature.
Ubiquitous social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram—have created a venue for people to share and connect with others. We use these services by clicking “I Agree” on Terms of Service screens, trading off some of our private and personal data for seemingly free services. While these services say data collection helps create a better user experience, that data is also potentially exploitable.
The news about how third parties obtain and use Facebook users’ data to wage political campaigns and the mounting evidence of election interference have shined a spotlight on just how secure our data is when we share online. Educating youth about data security can fall under the larger umbrella of digital citizenship, such as social media uses and misuses and learning how not to embarrass or endanger oneself while using the internet.
Darvasi’s students in Toronto can pool together 55 faux bitcoins to purchase and launch the BOTTING protocol against an opponent. The student targeted at Fallon’s school in Connecticut would then have 48 hours to record audio of 10 words of Darvasi’s students choosing and send it back to them through an intermediary (Darvasi or Fallon). For a higher price of 65 faux bitcoins, students can launch MORPHLING, which would give the opponent 48 hours to record a one-minute video explaining three ways to stay safe while using Facebook, while making their school mascot (or a close approximation of) appear in the video in some way during the entire minute.