Survey Reveals Big Data Misconceptions, Security Concerns

Can you provide IT security for data if you don’t really understand what it is you're protecting?

The survey shows that there are still a lot of misconceptions about big data. 49% said they were somewhat or very concerned about managing big data, and 38% acknowledged that they do not have a clear understanding of what big data is. Furthermore, a majority of the respondents, 59%, lack the tools required to manage data from their IT systems, resorting to using separate, disparate systems and even spreadsheets.

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Samsung Galaxy Beam Is Both a Smartphone and Projector

Could this 50-inch beam be used for company presentations?

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona hasn't even officially kicked off yet, and Samsung is already on fire, announcing devices left and right. After the 10.1-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, next in line is a smartphone/mobile projector combo called Samsung Galaxy Beam. What makes it different from most other smartphones on the market is its ultra-bright, 15-lumen projector, which lets you project a 50-inch wide image on a wall – really handy for presentations.

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Four Technology Trends to Watch

The ‘consumerization’ of technology will affect member interactions.

Improper measure for social media, mobility, cloud computing, and data security/privacy can lead to data breaches. And when they do, they have profound effects on credit unions, including financial ramifications, loss of members, brand damage, regulatory scrutiny, and legal liability.

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What's the Big Deal about Big Data?

The ability by organizations to collect mountains of data offers a dream scenario for hackers, but if managed properly, large volumes of information also can present IT staff with unique and valuable insight into an organization's security posture.

The more data we generate and share, the greater the risk of that data being used against us. By leveraging these same trends and viewing them from a big data picture, organizations can extract tremendous value with a greater chance of detecting and responding to otherwise undetected security incidents.

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Identity theft, phishing top tax scams in U.S.

Identity theft and phishing top the federal U.S. tax service's list of "dirty dozen" scams, which tend to peak this time of year as millions of Americans gear up to file their tax returns.

"Scam artists will tempt people in person, online and by email with misleading promises about lost refunds and free money. Don't be fooled by these scams," Internal Revenue Service(IRS) Commissioner Doug Shulman said in a statement on Thursday.

While the "dirty dozen" schemes are common year round, many occur most frequently during tax filing season, the IRS said. The filing deadline for 2011 taxes is April 17.

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Why social media, mobile phones want your info

Living in the world of social networking and mobile smartphones means trading away some of your personal information. Experts on the issue admit that they don't have a full picture of the way personal information is collected and used on the Internet.

Read the full article for some basic guidelines to keep in mind.

Here's A Look At The New Breed of Phishing Scams

Maybe you think you can spot scam emails by the broken English, the pleas to wire money via Western Union and the references to Nigerian princes. Think again.
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How to cut 70 percent of your IT budget in one year

In our new structure, we needed applications that were scaled down and easier to support. We ditched the world of licensed software and annual commitments to large capital expenses on equipment — the traditional way of doing IT — in favor of cloud, SaaS and virtualization.

After a year-long migration of our IT infrastructure and applications to the cloud, we shaved more than $2 million, or 70 percent, from our annual IT budget.

Read the full article to see how they did it

Image courtesy of Flickr user AndyFitz.

Digital stick-up: Online account fraud

With court battles raging between small businesses and banks over which entity should be responsible for the massive losses that result from account fraud, ING Direct has adopted a line of thinking that not all financial institutions might agree with: Accept that the customer is going to stink at security.

While corporate account takeover remains prevalent, resulting in $87.5 million in losses last year, all banks can strive to prevent it says Rudy Wolfs of ING Direct.

Register for the report at SC Magazine

Watch Out Visa and MasterCard: PayPal Is Coming to a Brick-and-Mortar Store Near You

Products like Square and early mobile wallet innovations are already nipping at the heels of the traditional payment-processing infrastructure that merchants use every time you swipe a card to buy something at a store.

But online auction powerhouse eBay, owner of PayPal, thinks there’s room for one more competitor to bank-issued debit and credit cards with a logo such as Visa or MasterCard on the front: The company plans to roll out PayPal in brick-and-mortar retailers.

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Risky Places to Swipe Debit Cards

Would you give a thief direct access to your checking account?

No? Unfortunately, you may be doing just that by regularly using your debit card. Debit cards may look identical to credit cards, but there's one key difference. With credit cards, users who spot fraudulent charges on their bill can simply decline the charges and not pay the bill. On the other hand, debit cards draw money directly from your checking account, rather than from an intermediary such as a credit card company.

Because of that, even clear-cut cases of fraud where victims are protected from liability by consumer protection laws can cause significant hardship, says Frank Abagnale, a secure-document consultant in Washington, D.C.

He cites the example of the The TJX Companies Inc.'s T.J. Maxx data breach that exposed the payment information of thousands of customers in 2007. The incident resulted in $150 million in fraud losses, and much of it was pulled directly from customers' bank accounts. While credit card users got their accounts straightened out and new cards in the mail within a few days, the case created major problems for debit card holders who waited an average of two to three months to get reimbursed, Abagnale says.

While debit card fraud is always a possibility, being careful where you use it can help keep your checking account balance out of the hands of criminals.

Read more: Risky Places To Swipe Debit Card | Bankrate.com http://www.bankrate.com/finance/checking/risky-places-swipe-debit-card-1.aspx#ixzz1ljVNFbYl

Password Check

When it comes to Money, this magician know hows to handle it

What seems as a series of simple magic trick turns into a mind boggling illusion at the end.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=chinese+magic+coin+trick&mid=B473EA6EDE46D6FB74A7B473EA6EDE46D6FB74A7&view=detail&FORM=VIRE3 

Can you explain how he does it????

Meetings Technology Trends to Watch for 2012

The rate of technology change is increasing. Meetings and tradeshow technology continues to advance with technology products becoming better, cheaper and easier to use. Innovation is bubbling with new options. Here are some of the major meetings and tradeshow technology trends to watch for this coming year.

1. More free or low cost apps for events and trade shows.

The cost for the technology is being cut in half every year. Web software development is much faster and easier than ever before. What used to take $100,000+ and a team of programmers weeks or months to do, can now almost be accomplished by a gifted teenager in his/her bedroom over the weekend.

2. Mobile technology crosses the chasm from the early adopter to the early majority for events.

Recent data from MPI”s FutureWatch 2011 Survey and others indicate that more than 80% of meeting professionals use smartphones and other mobile devices in their jobs. Yet, relatively few planners (9%) have used mobile applications yet for their own meetings. This is about to change.

3. Do it yourself (DIY) mobile event apps will proliferate.

One of the hottest areas of mobile development is in the low-cost DIY arena. It is possible to create a fully featured, cross-platform business app (iPhone, android, iPad and mobile web) with customized logos, colors and content using BiznessApps.com for as low as $39.95/month. This DIY site is very easy to use with video tutorials throughout.

4. Conference recording and distribution is becoming cheaper, faster and much more capable.

Conference recording has been around for decades starting in the days that audio-cassettes of the presentations were mass-produced onsite and sold in the foyer. Recent technology advances have made it possible to quickly and relatively inexpensively distribute speaker video, audio and visuals over the web in real-time and on demand afterwards.

5. Hybrid meetings will extend the reach and broaden the impact of face-to-face events.

A hybrid meeting is an event that combines both face-to-face and virtual experience for local and remote attendees. It will become commonplace for many events in the next few years. Meeting professionals are recognizing that it has become much easier to extend the impact of an event beyond the four walls of the meeting room.

6. Near Field Communication (NFC) will provide streamlined connectivity and services for events.

NFC is a short-range wireless connectivity standard to enable communication between devices when they're touched together. It is expected to become a widely used system for making payments by smartphone in the U.S.

The applications for events are significant allowing for very fast, secure and simplified means of:

• Electronic ticketing

• Electronic business card exchange

• Credit card payment

• Easy pick up of conference literature, exhibit brochures, course notes, and other digital documents

7. YouTube and other social publishing tools will be used increasingly to promote and manage meetings and to engage attendees.

Much has been written about the power of Facebook.com and the other social networking sites to engage potential attendees before an event to increase attendance and networking onsite.WeI believe the wide range of free social publishing tools will also be used increasingly for similar purposes:

8. Social gaming tools will be used to engage face-to-face and virtual attendees at events.

People spend more than 3 billion hours a week globally playing online games! Jane McGonigal in her noted TEDTalk speaks of how gaming can make a better world by deeply engaging people and by encouraging collaboration and cooperation. She proposes to harness gamer power to solve real-world problems.

Online gaming engages people. It can immerse in a different reality. It can be very fun! …And it will find its way increasingly into events.

9. iPads and tablets will provide a new medium for accessing data at events.

The iPad is the most recent of the long-running, game-changing innovations from Apple. This and other tablet devices represent new ways to access information. Light weight, highly mobile, highly intuitive. The larger screen allow for bigger fonts, easier readability and more real estate to display material in a page-like format. The navigation is intuitive (with your fingers instead of a keyboard and mouse).

10. Free, easy to access Wi-Fi is increasing expected by meeting planners.

Free basic Wi-Fi broadband internet access is expected by planner in the meeting room, guest rooms and the lobby. Although some luxury properties are clinging to internet fees as a profit center, internet access is viewed by attendees as a utility similar to lights and water. Planners are saying “do not nickel-and-dime us with add-on charges for basic internet access.” If “Motel 6” can provide free Wi-Fi, so should meeting hotels and venues.

However, this does not mean unlimited access. Internet bandwidth can be expensive and most venues cannot handle unexpected, very large demands. If 500 event attendees pulled out their iPads to access HD video simultaneously, there are few venues in the country that could handle this without making special arrangements. If a group needs dedicated bandwidth, a dedicated IP address or other internet services, it is reasonable to charge for these. But basic, throttled access (with a minimum of 500kb/second download -- fast enough to access email and limited video streaming) should be free.

Additionally, venues need to make logging onto the Wi-Fi network easier. Opening the browser and clicking “OK” is all that should be required.

11. “Indoor Positioning Systems” will greatly assist in event and trade show way-finding and navigation.

Standard GPS does not work indoors. Standard Wi-Fi triangulation only gets to about a 100 foot (30 meter) accuracy -- not good enough for precise tracking though an exhibit hall, venue or for person-to-person finding at an event.

New technology from at least two companies (Wifarer.com and Sherpa-Solutions.com) promise to overcome these challenges to provide very precise positioning (as fine as 1 meter) by tracking Wi-Fi enabled smart phones, carried by an increasingly larger percentage of the population. These tools will be able to provide:

• precise positioning

• personal navigation through a venue/exhibit hall with optimized routing

• friend/contact finding and networking (with permission)

• location-based content delivery (exhibit discounts or video as examples)

• optimized exhibit hall viewing by product category

• exhibit hall “hot spot” and traffic flow analytics

• several other features will likely develop from this exciting technology.

In addition to venues and convention centers, this technology holds great promise for shopping centers, airports, hospitals and museums.