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The key to a successful cybersecurity strategy is knowing what you need to protect. Here’s the proof: half of companies surveyed by MIT Technology Review Insights and Palo Alto Networks have experienced a cyberattack originally from an unknown, unmanaged, or poorly managed digital asset, and another 19% expect to experience one eventually.

Without a full inventory of internet-connected assets, organizations simply can’t identify and remediate exposures to cyberattacks. Yet only half of companies surveyed ensure continual monitoring of assets, and just slightly more (57%) cite asset inventory as a critical precautionary measure.

The clock is ticking: while Fortune 500 companies find one serious vulnerability every 12 hours, it takes attackers less than 45 minutes to do the same as they scan the vastness of the internet for vulnerable business assets.

Making matters worse, bad actors are multiplying, highly skilled IT professionals are a scarce resource, and the demand for contactless interactions, remote work arrangements, and agile business processes continues to expand cloud environments. This all puts an organization’s attack surface—the sum total of the nooks and crannies hackers can pry into—at risk.

“We’ve seen a pretty steady set of attacks on different sectors, such as health care, transportation, food supply, and shipping,” says Gene Spafford, a professor of computer science at Purdue University. “As each of these has occurred, cybersecurity awareness has risen. People don’t see themselves as victims until something happens to them—that’s a problem. It’s not being taken seriously enough as a long-term systemic threat.”

Organizations must understand where the critical entry points are in their information technology (IT) environments and how they can reduce their attack surface area in a smart, data-driven manner. Digital assets aren’t the only items at risk. An organization’s business reputation, customer allegiance, and financial stability all hang in the balance of a company’s cybersecurity posture.

NAM WebReadyFig1

To better understand the challenges facing today’s security teams and the strategies they must embrace to protect their companies, MIT Technology Review Insights and Palo Alto conducted a global survey of 728 business leaders. Their responses, along with the input of industry experts, provide a critical framework for safeguarding systems against a growing battalion of bad actors and fast-moving threats.

The vulnerabilities of a cloud environment

The cloud continues to play a critical role in accelerating digital transformation—and for good reason: cloud offers substantial benefits, including increased flexibility, huge cost savings, and greater scalability. Yet cloud-based issues comprise 79% of observed exposures compared with 21% for on-premises assets, according to the “2021 Cortex Xpanse Attack Surface Threat Report.”

“The cloud is really just another company’s computer and storage resources,” says Richard Forno, director of the graduate cybersecurity program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “Right there, that presents security and privacy concerns to companies of all sizes.”

Even more concerning is this: 49% of survey respondents report more than half of their assets will be in the public cloud in 2021. “Ninety-five percent of our business applications are in the cloud, including CRM, Salesforce, and NetSuite,” says Noam Lang, senior director of information security at Imperva, a cybersecurity software company,

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By: MIT Technology Review Insights
Title: A game changer in IT security
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/08/1034262/a-game-changer-in-it-security/
Published Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2021 12:00:00 +0000

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The Download: AI coding assistants, and China’s app disputes

This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Millions of coders are now using AI assistants. How will that change software?

Two weeks into the coding class he was teaching at Duke University in North Carolina this spring, Noah Gift told his students they’d no longer be working with Python, one of the most popular entry-level programming languages. Instead, they’d be using an AI tool called Copilot, a turbocharged autocomplete for computer code, to use Rust, a language that was newer, more powerful, and much harder to learn.

Gift isn’t alone. Ask a room of programmers if they use Copilot, and many now raise a hand. Like ChatGPT with education, Copilot is up-ending an entire profession by giving people new ways to perform old tasks.

With Microsoft and Google about to embed similar AI models into office software used by billions around the world, it’s worth asking exactly what these tools do for programmers. And just how big a difference will they make? Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

Chinese apps are letting public juries settle customer disputes

If you’ve ordered food through a delivery app lately, you’re probably familiar with the feeling of frustration when you have to wait too long for your order or, when you finally receive it, the food isn’t what you asked for. These feelings are then often exacerbated by the difficulty of trying to make things right via app.

Meituan, the most popular food delivery app in China, has proposed one solution: inviting ordinary users to serve on “juries” that weigh in on disputes between other customers and restaurants. It could be anything from missing rice to not-spicy-enough noodles to the food being completely cold.

And beyond helping resolve grievances for others, it turns out users are having quite a bit of fun being “cyber judges.” Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Earth is lurching toward catastrophic climate tipping points
Once we breach them, experts warn it’ll unleash untold, irreversible damage. (The Guardian)
COP28 could be on the verge of promising to ban fossil fuels. (BBC)
The flawed logic of rushing out extreme climate interventions. (MIT Technology Review)

2 How to avoid a second OpenAI breakdown
A better board structure might be a good place to start. (Wired $)
Has it really only been a year since ChatGPT was released? (NYT $)
What’s next for OpenAI. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Alibaba’s new AI model is trained on TikTok dancers
It’s ripping off their work and creating a worse AI version. (404 Media)

4 Twitch is shutting down in South Korea
It’s one of the world’s largest esports markets, but running Twitch there is proving too expensive. (TechCrunch)

5 The carbon credit market is on the brink of booming
But a lack of guardrails mean many of its trades could end up being far from fair. (FT $)
The war in the Congo has kept the planet cooler. (The Atlantic $)
The growing signs of trouble for global carbon markets. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Minnesota mail workers aren’t allowed to blame Amazon for delays
They’ve been warned by postal management to keep schtum—or risk repercussions. (WP $)
Amazon workers are quitting in droves right now. (Insider $)
The company’s pilots are fed up too. (Wired $)

7 Meet the man who developed drugs to treat his children’s deadly disease
Now John Crowley has set his sights on making drug reviews faster and smoother. (WSJ $)
This family raised millions to get experimental gene therapy for their children. (MIT Technology Review)

8 What are we looking for in space?
When we say ‘life,’ we don’t really know what that looks like. (The Atlantic $)

9 You should beware crossing delivery drivers in Brazil
Or you might just find your home being bombarded by fireworks. (Rest of World)

10 Why it feels like your phone is bankrupting you
Phones used to be one-off purchases. Now, they demand more and more money from us. (NY Mag $)

Quote of the day

“It’s a heartwarming story of love, of loss, of hope and of joy. But most of all, it’s a wonderful sleep story.”

—The AI-generated voice of actor Jimmy Stewart recites a bedtime story for sleep and meditation app Calm, the New York Times reports.

The big story

This is how AI bias really happens—and why it’s so hard to fix

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By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: AI coding assistants, and China’s app disputes
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/06/1084461/the-download-ai-coding-assistants-and-chinas-app-disputes/
Published Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2023 13:10:00 +0000

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The Download: Big Tech’s AI stranglehold, and gene-editing treatments

This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech

—By Amba Kak, Sarah Myers West and Meredith Whittaker, members of the AI Now Institute

Until late November, when the epic saga of OpenAI’s board breakdown unfolded, the casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that the ecosystem around generative AI was vibrant and competitive.

But this is not the case—nor has it ever been. And understanding why is fundamental to understanding what AI is, and what threats it poses. Put simply, in the context of the current paradigm of building larger- and larger-scale AI systems, there is no AI without Big Tech.

With vanishingly few exceptions, every startup, new entrant, and even AI research lab is dependent on these firms. Those with the money make the rules. And right now, they’re engaged in a race to the bottom, releasing systems before they’re ready in an attempt to retain their dominance. Read the full story.

I received the new gene-editing drug for sickle cell disease. It changed my life.

—By Jimi Olaghere, a patient advocate and tech entrepreneur

One day a few years ago, I received a package that would change my life. It was from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and it contained a consent form to participate in a clinical trial for a new gene-editing drug to treat sickle cell disease.

I’d lived with sickle cell my whole life—experiencing chronic pain, organ damage, and hopelessness. To me, this opportunity meant finally taking control of my life.

The drug I received, called exa-cel, could soon become the first CRISPR-based treatment to win approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. But many people who need these treatments may never receive them. Read the full story.

Fossil-fuel emissions are over a million times greater than carbon removal efforts

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record high by the end of 2023. And a new report shows just how insignificant technologies that pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere are by comparison.

Emissions are projected to reach 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, a 1.1% increase from 2022 levels, according to this year’s Global Carbon Budget Report. And it also found that one technology that’s sometimes touted as a cure-all for the emissions problems has severe limitations: carbon dioxide removal. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think

World leaders are currently in Dubai for the UN COP28 climate talks. But there’s one thing people aren’t talking enough about, and that’s the carbon footprint of AI.

One part of the reason is that big tech companies don’t share the carbon footprint of training and using their massive models, and we don’t have standardized ways of measuring the emissions AI is responsible for. That is, until now. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 America isn’t ready for future wars
As conflict becomes increasingly AI-powered, red tape is getting in the way. (Axios)
The internet is the new frontier of warfare. (Motherboard)+ Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines. (MIT Technology Review)

2 It’s a rocky time for renewable energy
Its costs are soaring, and the industry is in trouble. (Economist $)
Yes, we have enough materials to power the world with renewable energy. (MIT Technology Review)

3 We’re waiting for all those robot trucks we were promised
But companies are understandably nervous about automating massive rigs. (The Verge)
Cruise has been accused of withholding key details about its robotaxi accident. (TechCrunch)

4 IBM says it’s hit a quantum computing research milestone
The two new systems should be able to execute the most powerful quantum algorithms to date. (Ars Technica)
Though it appears to have made little progress on finding commercial uses for the technology. (FT $)

5 Internet censorship in US schools is a growing problem
And it’s preventing kids from finding out crucial info about their health, identity, and the subjects they’re studying. (Wired $)
AI is about to make spying a whole lot easier. (Slate $)
The book ban movement has a chilling new tactic: harassing teachers on social media. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Brain implants are helping people recover from traumatic injuries
The implants appear to help them regain the ability to focus. (NYT $)
A brain implant changed her life. Then it was

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By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: Big Tech’s AI stranglehold, and gene-editing treatments
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/05/1084425/the-download-big-techs-ai-stranglehold-and-gene-editing-treatments/
Published Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2023 13:10:00 +0000

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I received the new gene-editing drug for sickle cell disease. It changed my life.

MIT Oleghere Matt Odom Photo002c scaled

On a picturesque fall day a few years ago, I opened the mailbox and took out an envelope as thick as a Bible that would change my life. The package was from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and it contained a consent form to participate in a clinical trial for a new gene-editing drug to treat sickle cell disease.

A week prior, my wife and I had talked on the phone with Haydar Frangoul, an oncologist and hematologist in Nashville, Tennessee, and the lead researcher of the trial. He gave us an overview of what the trial entailed and how the early participants were faring. Before we knew it, my wife and I were flying to the study site in Nashville to enroll me and begin treatment. At the time, she was pregnant with our first child.

I’d lived with sickle cell my whole life—experiencing chronic pain, organ damage, and hopelessness. To me, this opportunity meant finally taking control of my life and having the opportunity to be a present father.

The drug I received, called exa-cel, could soon become the first CRISPR-based treatment to win approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, following the UK’s approval in mid-November. I’m one of only a few dozen patients who have ever taken it. In late October, I testified in favor of approval to the FDA’s advisory group as it met to evaluate the evidence. The agency will make its decision about exa-cel no later than December 8.

I’m very aware of how privileged I am to have been an early recipient and to reap the benefits of this groundbreaking new treatment. People with sickle cell disease don’t produce healthy hemoglobin, a protein that red blood cells use to transport oxygen in the body. As a result, they develop misshapen red blood cells that can block blood vessels, causing intense bouts of pain and sometimes organ failure. They often die decades younger than those without the disease.

After I received exa-cel, I started to experience things I had only dreamt of: boundless energy and the ability to recover by merely sleeping. My physical symptoms—including a yellowish tint in my eyes caused by the rapid breakdown of malfunctioning red blood cells—virtually disappeared overnight. Most significantly, I gained the confidence that sickle cell disease won’t take me away from my family, and a sense of control over my own destiny.

Today, several other gene therapies to treat sickle cell disease are in the pipeline from biotech startups such as Bluebird Bio, Editas Medicine, and Beam Therapeutics as well as big pharma companies including Pfizer and Novartis—all to treat the worst-suffering among an estimated US patient population of about 100,000, most of whom are Black Americans.

But many people who need these treatments may never receive them. Even though I benefited greatly from gene editing, I worry that not enough others will have that opportunity. And though I’m grateful for my treatment, I see real barriers to making these life-changing medicines available to more people.

grueling process

I feel very fortunate to have received exa-cel, but undergoing the treatment itself was an intense, monthslong journey. Doctors extracted stem cells from my own bone marrow and used CRISPR to edit them so that they would produce healthy hemoglobin. Then they injected those edited stem cells back into me.

It was an arduous process, from collecting the stem cells, to conditioning my body to receive the edited cells, to the eventual transplant. The collection process alone can take up to eight hours. For each collection, I sat next to an apheresis machine that vigorously separated my red blood cells from my stem cells, leaving me weakened. In my case, I needed blood transfusions after every collection—and I needed four collections to finally amass enough stem cells for the medical team to edit.

The conditioning regimen that prepared my body to receive the edited cells was a whole different challenge. I underwent weeks of chemotherapy to clear out old, faulty stem cells from my body and make room for the newly edited ones. That meant dealing with nausea, weakness, hair loss, debilitating mouth sores, and the risk of exacerbating the underlying condition.

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By: Jimi Olaghere
Title: I received the new gene-editing drug for sickle cell disease. It changed my life.
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/04/1084209/vertex-exacel-approval-gene-editing-sickle-cell-disease-patient/
Published Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2023 13:30:00 +0000

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