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iPhones Siri to replace call centers . Is it doable

March 21, 2012 10:56 am / Leave a Comment

I was wondering why the planet  spends  so much money in the $150-billion business process outsourcing industry, especially in voice calls to call centers.

If your iPhone Siri phone can be configured to answer any query, Why can’t it be configured to be  a virtual assistant, customer support, marketing outbound or even a super charged call center interactive voice response .

Can we  do and run some tests on this?

Analytics for Cyber Conflict

January 30, 2012 7:56 am / 2 Comments

 

The emerging use of Analytics and Knowledge Discovery in Databases for Cyber Conflict and Trade Negotiations

 

The blog post is the first in series or articles on cyber conflict and the use of analytics for targeting in both offense and defense in conflict situations.

 

It covers knowledge discovery in four kinds of databases (so chosen because of perceived importance , sensitivity, criticality and functioning of the geopolitical economic system)-

  1. Databases on Unique Identity Identifiers- including next generation biometric databases connected to Government Initiatives and Banking, and current generation databases of identifiers like government issued documents made online
  2. Databases on financial details -This includes not only traditional financial service providers but also online databases with payment details collected by retail product selling corporates like Sony’s Playstation Network, Microsoft ‘s XBox and
  3. Databases on contact details – including those by offline businesses collecting marketing databases and contact details
  4. Databases on social behavior- primarily collected by online businesses like Facebook , and other social media platforms.

It examines the role of

  1. voluntary privacy safeguards and government regulations ,

  2. weak cryptographic security of databases,

  3. weakness in balancing marketing ( maximized data ) with privacy (minimized data)

  4. and lastly the role of ownership patterns in database owning corporates

A small distinction between cyber crime and cyber conflict is that while cyber crime focusses on stealing data, intellectual property and information  to primarily maximize economic gains

cyber conflict focuses on stealing information and also disrupt effective working of database backed systems in order to gain notional competitive advantages in economics as well as geo-politics. Cyber terrorism is basically cyber conflict by non-state agents or by designated terrorist states as defined by the regulations of the “target” entity. A cyber attack is an offensive action related to cyber-infrastructure (like the Stuxnet worm that disabled uranium enrichment centrifuges of Iran). Cyber attacks and cyber terrorism are out of scope of this paper, we will concentrate on cyber conflicts involving databases.

Some examples are given here-

Types of Knowledge Discovery in -

1) Databases on Unique Identifiers- including biometric databases.

Unique Identifiers or primary keys for identifying people are critical for any intensive knowledge discovery program. The unique identifier generated must be extremely secure , and not liable to reverse engineering of the cryptographic hash function.

For biometric databases, an interesting possibility could be determining the ethnic identity from biometric information, and also mapping relatives. Current biometric information that is collected is- fingerprint data, eyes iris data, facial data. A further feature could be adding in voice data as a part of biometric databases.

This is subject to obvious privacy safeguards.

For example, Google recently unveiled facial recognition to unlock Android 4.0 mobiles, only to find out that the security feature could easily be bypassed by using a photo of the owner.

 

 

Example of Biometric Databases

In Afghanistan more than 2 million Afghans have contributed iris, fingerprint, facial data to a biometric database. In India, 121 million people have already been enrolled in the largest biometric database in the world. More than half a million customers of the Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank are are already using biometric verification at ATMs.

Examples of Breached Online Databases

In 2011, Playstation Network by Sony (PSN) lost data of 77 million customers including personal information and credit card information. Additionally data of 24 million customers were lost by Sony’s Sony Online Entertainment. The websites of open source platforms like SourceForge, WineHQ and Kernel.org were also broken into 2011. Even retailers like McDonald and Walgreen reported database breaches.

 

The role of cyber conflict arises in the following cases-

  1. Databases are online for accessing and authentication by proper users. Databases can be breached remotely by non-owners ( or “perpetrators”) non with much lesser chance of intruder identification, detection and penalization by regulators, or law enforcers (or “protectors”) than offline modes of intellectual property theft.

  2. Databases are valuable to external agents (or “sponsors”) subsidizing ( with finance, technology, information, motivation) the perpetrators for intellectual property theft. Databases contain information that can be used to disrupt the functioning of a particular economy, corporation (or “ primary targets”) or for further chain or domino effects in accessing other data (or “secondary targets”)

  3. Loss of data is more expensive than enhanced cost of security to database owners

  4. Loss of data is more disruptive to people whose data is contained within the database (or “customers”)

So the role play for different people for these kind of databases consists of-

1) Customers- who are in the database

2) Owners -who own the database. They together form the primary and secondary targets.

3) Protectors- who help customers and owners secure the databases.

and

1) Sponsors- who benefit from the theft or disruption of the database

2) Perpetrators- who execute the actual theft and disruption in the database

The use of topic models and LDA is known for making data reduction on text, and the use of data visualization including tied to GPS based location data is well known for investigative purposes, but the increasing complexity of both data generation and the sophistication of machine learning driven data processing makes this an interesting area to watch.

 

 

The next article in this series will cover-

the kind of algorithms that are currently or being proposed for cyber conflict, the role of non state agents , and what precautions can knowledge discovery in databases practitioners employ to avoid breaches of security, ethics, and regulation.

Citations-

  1. Michael A. Vatis , CYBER ATTACKS DURING THE WAR ON TERRORISM: A PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS Dartmouth College (Institute for Security Technology Studies).
  2. From Data Mining to Knowledge Discovery in Databases Usama Fayyad, Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, and Padhraic Smyt

App to App Porting

November 18, 2011 2:34 pm / Leave a Comment

I often wonder why bright, intelligent software programmers go out of their way to write turgid and lengthy words in documentation, do not make  step by step screenshot/slides for Tutorials, and practically force everyone to reinvent the wheel everytime they create a new platform.

Top of my wish list for 2012-

1) Better GUI  for APP CREATION-

example-A GUI utility to create chrome apps something similar to Android  App creator http://www.appinventorbeta.com/about/

2)  Automated Porting or Translation-

An automated appsot app for reading in an iOS app (or iPhone app) and churning out the necessary Android app code. This is similar to translating blogs from one blogging platform to another using Python at http://code.google.com/p/google-blog-converters-appengine/

 

but the woefully underpowered http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/ currently allows only downloads less than 1 MB, while WordPress itself allows 15 MB export files.

3) Better interaction between cloud and desktop apps

example – (google docs and libre office)  or webcams to (google hangouts and google voice /youtube)

Are we there yet? Not appy enough !

 

 

Text Analytics World in New York

September 11, 2011 12:37 pm / Leave a Comment

There is a 15 % discount if you want to register for Text Analytics World next month-

Use Discount Code AJAYNY11

October 19-20, 2011 at The Hilton New York

http://www.textanalyticsworld.com/newyork/2011

Text Analytics World Topics & Case Studies - Oct 19-20 in NYC

Text Analytics World NYC (tawgo.com) is the business-focused event for text analytics professionals,
managers and commercial practitioners. This conference delivers case studies, expertise and resources
to leverage unstructured data for business impact.
Text Analytics World NYC is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and
business thought leaders, including keynote addresses from Thomas Davenport, author of Competing
on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, David Gondek from IBM Research on their Jeopardy-Winning
Watson and DeepQA, and PAW Program Chair Eric Siegel, plus special sessions from industry heavy-
weights Usama Fayyad and John Elder.
CASE STUDIES:

TAW New York City will feature over 25 sessions with case studies from leading enterprises in
automotive, educational, e-commerce, financial services, government, high technology, insurance,
retail, social media, and telecom such as: Accident Fund, Amdocs, Bundle.com, Citibank, Florida State
College, Google, Intuit, MetLife, Mitchell1, PayPal, Snap-on, Socialmediatoday, Topsy, a Fortune 500
global technology company, plus special examples from U.S. government agencies DoD, DHS, and SSA.

HOT TOPICS:

TAW New York City's agenda covers hot topics and advanced methods such as churn risk detection,
customer service and call centers, decision support, document discovery, document filtering, financial
indicators from social media, fraud detection, government applications, insurance applications,
knowledge discovery, open question-answering, parallelized text analysis, risk profiling, sentiment
analysis, social media applications, survey analysis, topic discovery, and voice of the customer and other
innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

WORKSHOPS: TAW also features a full-day, hands-on text analytics workshop, plus several other pre-
and post-conference workshops in analytics that complement the core conference program. For more
info: www.tawgo.com/newyork/2011/analytics-workshops
For more information: tawgo.com
Download the conference preview:

http://www.textanalyticsworld.com/newyork/2011/preview

View the agenda at-a-glance: textanalyticsworld.com/newyork/2011/agenda

Register by September 2nd for Early Bird Rates (save up to $200):
textanalyticsworld.com/newyork/2011/registration
If you'd like our informative event updates, sign up at:

http://www.textanalyticsworld.com/subscription.php

To sign up for TAW group on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/e/gis/3869759

For inquiries e-mail regsupport@risingmedia.com or call (717) 798-3495.

OTHER ANALYTICS EVENTS:
Predictive Analytics World for Government: Sept 12-13 in DC – www.pawgov.com
Predictive Analytics World New York City: Oct 16-21 – www.pawcon.com/nyc

Text Analytics World New York City: Oct 19-20 – www.tawgo.com/nyc
Predictive Analytics World London: Nov 30-Dec 1 – www.pawcon.com/london
Predictive Analytics World San Francisco: March 4-10, 2012 – www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco
Predictive Analytics World Videos: Available on-demand – www.pawcon.com/video
Also has two sessions on R

Sunday, October 16, 2011


Half-day Workshop
Room: Madison

R Bootcamp
Click here for the detailed workshop description

  • Workshop starts at 1:00pm
  • Afternoon Coffee Break at 2:30pm – 3:00pm
  • End of the Workshop: 5:00pm

Instructor: Max Kuhn, Director, Nonclinical Statistics, Pfizer

[ Top of this page ] [ Agenda overview ]

Monday, October 17, 2011


Full-day Workshop
Room: Madison

R for Predictive Modeling: A Hands-On Introduction
Click here for the detailed workshop description

  • Workshop starts at 9:00am
  • Morning Coffee Break at 10:30am – 11:00am
  • Lunch provided at 12:30 – 1:15pm
  • Afternoon Coffee Break at 2:30pm – 3:00pm
  • End of the Workshop: 4:30pm

Instructor: Max Kuhn, Director, Nonclinical Statistics, Pfizer

The best of Google Plus this week

August 6, 2011 1:21 pm / Leave a Comment

Its been slightly over a month- and I noticed Google Plus stream is now getting to look like my Facebook stream as more of my friends join up. However there is no (share this on Google Plus button still!)

Top Meme’s this week on Google Plus

1) Points of View

(more…)

Hacking Hackers

June 22, 2011 2:22 pm / 1 Comment

This is a ten step program to fight hacking attacks. You may or may not choose to ignore it, laugh at it, or ponder on it.

1) Internet security is a billion dollar business which will only grow in size as cloud computing approaches. Pioneers in providing security will earn considerable revenue like McAffee  , Norton did in the PC era. Incidentally it also means the consulting/partner group that is willing to work with virtual workers and virtual payments to offshore consultants.

2) Industrial espionage has existed from the days the West stole Gunpowder and Silk formula from China (and China is now doing the same to its software). The company and country will the best hackers will win. Keep your team motivated mate, or it is very easy for them to defect to the other side of the (cyber) wall.

3) When 2 billion people have access to internet the number of hackers will grow in number and quality much more rapidly than when only 100 million people across the world had access. Thanks to Google Translate, Paypal, Skype video Call, Tor Project, and Google Voice i can and have collaborative with hackers almost in all geographies. You can only imagine what the black hats are doing.

4) Analyzing hackers is like reading Chinese Tea Leaves. If you have experienced analysts, you will slip up. recruit the hackers in the dormitory before China recruits them using Lulz Security as a bogus cover. or USA recruits them as cover for spreading democracy in the Arab countries.

5) get your website audited for security breaches. sponsor a hack my website contest. before someone else does it for you.

6) Fighting hackers was always tough. But now we have part time hackers , people with perfectly respectable jobs who look like Mr Andersen and hack like Neo from the Matrix. Every kid once wanted to be a firefighter. Every geek dreams  of the one ultimate hack.

7) if you cant beat hackers, join them.

8) the more machine data is generated, the more you need external experts and newer software interfaces. Investing in open data, datasets is good. Keeping Bradley manning naked in his cell is bad. ignore the bad PR at your own cost.

9) Stop blaming China for every hack attack. You are a techie not a politician

10) Hack hard. Hack well. If someone hacks you, you will need to hack them off offensively unless you just want to be an easy mark for the rest of your lives. Counter -hacking expertise needs to be strengthened and groomed. hacking is an offense not just a defense game.

 

 

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