Capitalogix

Cyber Security: A Human Weakness

Last year, I shared an e-mail my son sent me about security.

With the Equifax breach, I was reminded of something else he told me. 

"It's not whether or not you've been hacked ... because you have ... it's whether you've been targeted."

As data becomes more valuable, and IP more coveted, security concerns grow, but the biggest security concern isn't where you would expect it to be. 

When people think of hacking they often think of a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack or the media representation of people breaking into your system in a heist.

In reality, the greatest weakness is people, it's you ... the user.  It's the user that turns off automatic patch updating.  It's the user that uses thumb drives.  It's the user that reuses the same passwords.

 

via xkcd

Whether it's malicious or unintentional, humans are often the biggest security weakness. 

As proof, watch the first few minutes of the video below to watch a social engineer find out this man's email and gain access to his cell phone account. She locks him out of his account at the same time.

I started the video at the interesting part so you don't have to search for it.

 

 

As for passwords ... I recommend not knowing them.  You can't disclose what you don't know.  Consequently, I recommend a password manager like LastPass or 1Password.

How many cyber security measures you take comes down to two simple questions ... First, how much pain and hassle are you willing to deal with to protect your data? And, second, how much pain is a hacker willing to go through to get to your data?

It doesn't make sense to put all your data in a lockbox computer that never connects to a network ... nevertheless, it might be worth it to go to that extreme for pieces of your data.

Think about what the data is worth to you, or someone else, and protect it accordingly.

What Do You Need To Know About Equifax's 143 Million Consumer Hack?

You probably heard that one of the biggest credit-reporting bureaus got hacked recently.  It was pretty bad.

Equifax, TransUnion and Experian are the big three providers of credit scores (and other data, including: social security numbers, full names, addresses, birth dates, and even drivers licenses and credit card numbers for some) to potential lenders and consumers. 

Hackers have had access to this information between May and July, and it's taken five weeks for the company to disclose the breach.

Equifax claims that they responded immediately, but three Equifax executives sold shares of their company before they publically announced the breach on Thursday.

Since the breach became public, Equifax's (EFX) stock is down over 13 percent.

 

via MarketWatch

How is Equifax responding to the risk? 

Equifax has made public statements that the leak has been fixed ... but that does not protect or remedy the data that already leaked. 

As a result of the breach, Equifax created a website for you to determine if you've been affected.

Regardless of whether or not you were affected, they are offering "Trusted ID Premier" monitoring free for a year as an extra layer of protection.  But, beware, TechCrunch has pointed out that agreeing to their ToS seems to waive your right to sue Equifax.

Situations like this are reminders to pay even more attention to your own online security.

Related articles

Fraud Expert Offers Advice In Wake Of Equifax Breach

ScamSafe: Equifax Data Breach - 3 Steps To Protect Yourself

Swarm Intelligence: The Power of Ants in Hurricane Harvey

Houston, Texas is currently recovering from Hurricane Harvey (which dropped an average of 30 inches of rain, and up to 51.88 inches in Cedar Bayou). 

To put it in perspective, if they weren't evacuating, residents were told to write their name and social security numbers in sharpie on their arms. 

Nature is the great equalizer, and in a disaster like this you the fight is for survival and escape ... and not just by humans. 

Check out this "raft" of ants banding together to survive the storm.

 

NBCNews via Youtube

An ant is pretty cool. It can lift more than 50 times its weight and handle pressures up to 5000 times its weight. 

But, what makes ants interesting is what they do when there's a colony (or swarm) of them. 

An ant can only be "so" smart - their heads are tiny - but a colony of ants is a superorganism whose collective intelligence is much greater than the sum of its parts. 

Ants release pheromones from glands all over their bodies that can tell their colony an array of things. It can tell them how many ants they need to accomplish a task, it can tell them where there's food or danger, and it can even be used to relocate their whole colony to a new geography.

Clearly, it can also be used to communicate that the best way to survive danger is to create a mass of each other and allow the most possible to survive ... there's no fear or greed, only what's best for the colony. 

In a very real sense, this is where technology and trading are starting to move.  I say starting, but swarm intelligence has been an area of research in technology since the late 80's.

There are many simple applications of swarm intelligence in creating CGI crowds, telecommunication networks and more, but technological advances are drastically increasing the power and uses of swarms. 

Using the communication of various systems in order to gain real-time data from their actions and interactions will create hidden opportunities that we couldn't capitalize on previously.

We're in a golden age of innovation ... How cool is that?

 

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - August 20th, 2017

Change is the only constant.

 

  

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• AI Beats the World's Best Gamers after Just Two Weeks of Learning. (NewAtlas)
• Russia-linked Hackers Targeted Hotel Guests across Europe: Security Firm. (Reuters)
• One Year after Rio: What's Left behind after the Flame Goes Out. (ESPN)
• Humans and Robots are on the Cusp of a Sexual Intimacy We May Never Reverse. (Quartz)
• Elon Musk Just Shared His 4-Step Plan for Mars - Colonists Should Be "Prepared to Die". (ScienceAlert)

 

Trading Links:

• Ray Dalio Urges Investors to Hedge Against Possible North Korea War. (FN)
• There Has Never, Ever, Been this Many Trades Betting on VIX. (ZH)
• Amazon Could Start Selling Event Tickets in the U.S. (TechCrunch)
• South Korea Introduces World's First Robot Tax. (ZeroHedge)
• The Number of Cash Payments Dipped 11 Per Cent Last Year - But It's Still the Most Used Payment Method. (CityAM)

Who Can You Trust? Ranking Your News Sources

Fake news this ... phony sources that ...

It is harder than ever to know what to trust.

"Noise Reduction" is important in this volatile geo-political climate.

The chart, below,  lists the least and most trusted news sources.

 

via RJI

As someone who reads a lot, this was interesting.

As a side note,  I was a little surprised to see the "Internet" on the list as source itself.  Darwin would be somewhat comforted to see that people don't trust everything they see on the internet. 

The following chart is a bit outdated (it's from 2014), but it's a good study with diverse leanings.  It presents the trust levels of various news sources by ideological group.   

 

via Journalism

Which of your news sources do you follow? Were they as trusted as you expected?

Another question worth asking yourself is "Am I getting an idea of what the other side is thinking?"  In trading, I always want to understand what the other side sees.

Finally, let me know if there are resources you think I should look at.  

You are either growing or dying.

AI Isn't Just Crawling Forward ... Now It's Learning To Walk

The pace of AI progress is awe inspiring.

We are entering a golden age of innovation, disruption, and new possibilities.

Here is a small example.  It's not the first time computers have learned to walk, but Google's DeepMind taught itself to walk with no human interaction.

Here is a video.

 

 

With very little structure around their knowledge, it's interesting to see how they developed movement - and where it seems distinctly artificial. 

For a more instructional video, you can check out "Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures" from 2013.  It shows the generational differences between their bots as well. 

AI is getting smarter, faster.  Soon it'll have knowledge that we don't understand. And that will still only be the beginning.

Cool stuff!

What Are The Top 100 Websites?

There are over 1 billion websites on the internet, and it is constantly growing.

In fact, Google only indexes about 16 percent of the surface Web – and misses all of the Deep Web. 

Not surprisingly, the most popular sites comprise the majority of internet usage. 

The list of the top 100 trafficked sites was somewhat surprising (and not just because there were only three porn sites that made the cut).  

Before looking, who do you think made the list?

Here is an infographic that shows who rules the Internet.

 

via Visual Capitalist

 

Leading the pack – Google, YouTube, and Facebook top the list (with Google, itself, getting an astonishing 28 billion visits per month) ...  For scale, that's over 500 times more visits than #100 site on this list.  

Pretty insane! 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 16th, 2017

Science, Art, or "PooPoo De Toro"...

  

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Ray Kurzweil: There's a Blueprint for the Master Algorithm in Our Brains (Futurism)
• Brain-training Games Don't Really Train Brains, a New Study Suggests. (WashPost)
• Why Men Don't Live as Long as Women. (Nautilus)
• What a Hunter-Gatherer Diet Does to the Body in Just Three Days. (CNN)
• Is Philosophy Simply Harder Than Science? (TLS)

Trading Links:

• Return of the Day Traders. (Forbes)
• The Unexpected Economic Consequences of Video Games. (Vox)
• Why Elon Musk's Early Adopters Take Risks. (Forbes)
• Nvidia Heads 50 Companies that Will Change the World. (Alphr)
• This is the Future of Investing, and You Probably Can't Afford It. (BizInsider)

Rich People Spend Their Time Differently: An Income Distribution in Americans' Pastimes

When it comes to American pastimes, many people focus on the big 3 sports: Football, Basketball, and Baseball. Nevertheless, there are a lot of different ways people spend their time.  It is interesting to see what they watch - and what they actually play. 

Nevertheless, there are a lot of different ways people spend their time.  It is interesting to see what they watch - and what they actually play. 

There is also a big difference based on income distribution.   Here is an infographic.

 

via VisualCapitalist

Apparently, rich people like golfing,  yoga and racquet sports ... while poorer people disproportionately liked relaxing, writing for personal interest, and having hobbies.

It is also kind of interesting to see when people tend to do certain activities.   Here is a chart showing the peak time for various sports and activities.

via Henrik Lindberg

You could build a business around data like that.

Interesting?

The Bezos Empire: Amazon, Whole Foods and More

Jeff Bezos is has acquired a lot of businesses since starting Amazon - Zappos, Audible, IMDB, and most recently Whole Foods (for $13.7 billion dollars).

On top of acquiring those businesses for Amazon - he also has diversified his own interests through Bezos Expeditions and as an angel investor. 

Here is a chart to put things in perspective.  Click on the image to see the whole infographic.

 

via VisualCapitalist

 

To grow the business, their customer base, and their competitive advantage ... Amazon and Bezos re-invest heavily by aggressively acquiring companies and technologies - even though that strategy virtually eliminates Amazon's profit.

Despite minimal profits (literally less than a handful of profitable quarters since it started in 1994), Amazon has a market cap of roughly $470 billion in market capitalization.  They've shown that there's a new algorithm for success - it's about vision and market domination. It is a long game with big stakes ... and it looks like he's winning.

They've shown that there's a new algorithm for success - it's about vision and market domination. It is a long game with big stakes ... and it looks like he's winning.

But You'd Still Call Them A Success

"Bezos recently told shareholders that the goal is to 'experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight.'" 

via Forbes

It's a similar idea to one that I've adopted - though on a different scale.

When people first look at Capitalogix they see a hedge fund – but that is just an application of our core capabilities.  Internally, we know that we are an innovation engine that uses domain expertise in algorithmic trading, data science, and high-performance computing to generate something new. 

Edges decay or disappear faster than ever before - that's what drives our pursuit of more ways to win.

When changing the way people play a game -  you can't play by the same rules people used to.