Category Archives: Quantum Computing
What’s New in HPC Research: Hermione, Thermal Neutrons, Certifications & More – HPCwire
In this bimonthly feature,HPCwirehighlights newly published research in the high-performance computing community and related domains. From parallel programming to exascale to quantum computing, the details are here.
Developing a performance model-based predictor for parallel applications on the cloud
As cloud computing becomes an increasingly viable alternative to on-premises HPC, researchers are turning their eyes to addressing latency and unreliability issues in cloud HPC environments. These researchers a duo from the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology and Benha University propose a predictor for the execution time of MPI-based cloud HPC applications, finding an 88% accuracy on ten benchmarks.
Authors: Abdallah Saad and Ahmed El-Mahdy.
Investigating portability, performance and maintenance tradeoffs in exascale systems
As the exascale era swiftly approaches, researchers are increasingly grappling with the difficult tradeoffs between major system priorities that will be demanded by such massive systems. These researchers a team from the University of Macedonia explore these tradeoffs through a case study measuring the effect of runtime optimizations on code maintainability.
Authors: Elvira-Maria Arvanitou, Apostolos Ampatzoglou, Nikolaos Nikolaidis, Aggeliki-Agathi Tzintzira, Areti Ampatzoglou and Alexander Chatzigeorgiou.
Moving toward a globally acknowledged HPC certification
Skillsets are incredibly important in the HPC world, but certification is far from uniform. This paper, written by a team from four universities in the UK and Germany, describes the HPC Certification Forum: an effort to categorize, define and examine competencies expected from proficient HPC practitioners. The authors describe the first two years of the community-led forum and outline plans for the first officially supported certificate in the second half of 2020.
Authors: Julian Kunkel, Weronika Filinger, Christian Meesters and Anja Gerbes.
Uncovering the hidden cityscape of ancient Hermione with HPC
In this paper, a team of researchers from the Digital Archaeology Laboratory at Lund University describe how they used a combination of HPC and integrated digital methods to uncover the ancient cityscape of Hermione, Greece. Using drones, laser scanning and modeling techniques, they fed their inputs into an HPC system, where they rendered a fully 3D representation of the citys landscape.
Authors: Giacomo Landeschi, Stefan Lindgren, Henrik Gerding, Alcestis Papadimitriou and Jenny Wallensten.
Examining thermal neutrons threat to supercomputers
Off-the-shelf devices are performant, efficient and cheap, making them popular choices for HPC and other compute-intensive fields. However, the cheap boron used in these devices makes them susceptible to thermal neutrons, which these authors (a team from Brazil, the UK and Los Alamos National Laboratory) contend pose a serious threat to those devices reliability. The authors examine RAM, GPUs, accelerators, an FPGA and more, tinkering with variables that affect the thermal neutron flux and measuring the threat posed by the neutrons under various conditions.
Authors: Daniel Oliveira, Sean Blanchard, Nathan DeBardeleben, Fernando Fernandes dos Santos, Gabriel Piscoya Dvila, Philippe Navaux, Andrea Favalli, Opale Schappert, Stephen Wender, Carlo Cazzaniga, Christopher Frost and Paolo Rech.
Deploying scientific AI networks at petaflop scale on HPC systems with containers
The computational demands of AI and ML systems are rapidly increasing in the scientific research sphere. These authors a duo from LRZ and CERN discuss the complications surrounding the deployment of ML frameworks on large-scale, secure HPC systems. They highlight a case study deployment of a convolutional neural network with petaflop performance on an HPC system.
Authors: David Brayford and Sofia Vallecorsa.
Running a high-performance simulation of a spiking neural network on GPUs
Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are the most commonly used computational model for neuroscience and neuromorphic computing, but simulations of SNNs on GPUs have imperfectly represented the networks, leading to performance and behavior shortfalls. These authors from Tsinghua University propose a series of technical approaches to more accurately representing SNNs on GPUs, including a code generation framework for high-performance simulations.
Authors: Peng Qu, Youhui Zhang, Xiang Fei and Weimin Zheng.
Do you know about research that should be included in next months list? If so, send us an email at[emailprotected]. We look forward to hearing from you.
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What's New in HPC Research: Hermione, Thermal Neutrons, Certifications & More - HPCwire
Preparing for the Jobs of the Future: The Coding School and MIT Physicists Are Making Quantum Computing Accessible to High School Students This Summer…
MIT physicists have come up with a solution to prepare students with the necessary skills for the next technological revolution: teach them quantum computing.LOS ANGELES-June 4, 2020- (Newswire.com)
Quantum computing has the potential to change the world, transforming fields such as artificial intelligence, medicine, and cybersecurity. Despite its growing importance, quantum is rarely taught to university students, let alone high school students. MIT researchers and The Coding School are changing that by offering a first-of-its-kind virtual quantum computing camp this summer to high school and first-year university students.
The goal of the camp is for students to develop foundational knowledge of quantum physics and practical skills in quantum computation. By the end of the camp, students learn how to program a quantum computer and run quantum circuits such as teleporting quantum information. Students globally can apply here.
The camp is led by Amir Karamlou, a graduate research fellow and instructor for MIT's Introduction to Quantum Computing. His research focuses on experimental quantum computation using superconducting qubits. Other instructors include Bharath Kannan, a PhD student researching microwave quantum optics, and Grecia Castelazo, studying Physics and Math at MIT.
"Today, we're at the dawn of a new era in computing technology. You don't need an advanced degree in physics to explore quantum computing. Over the next decade, quantum is likely to revolutionize the world in the same way the modern computer did in the mid-20th century. Students who develop knowledge in quantum now will be prepared for this world-altering technological movement," explained Karamlou.
The camp is part of a larger quantum initiative by The Coding School's codeConnects program, a leading tech education nonprofit. Fall 2020, The Coding School will offer an unprecedented year-long quantum course for high school students. The virtual course is being led by Francisca Vasconcelos, a Rhodes Scholar and MIT graduate.
The Coding School is dedicated to ensuring computer science education is accessible, supportive, and empowering. Pioneering high-quality online, live coding education since 2017, they've taught over 70,000 hours of coding instruction to students nationwide and across 40 countries.
"To ensure long-term employability and social mobility, it's critical to look forward to the tech skills of the future and prepare students with those now. Quantum computation is one of those skills. We're proud at The Coding School to be paving the way in equipping the next generation by making quantum education accessible for all," remarked Kiera Peltz, founder of The Coding School.
To ensure accessibility, scholarships are available to students with financial need and who have been significantly affected by COVID-19, including if a parent has lost a job or is an essential worker.
Besides quantum computing, The Coding School offers other virtual camps for students grades 3-12 including a TechTaster, Music+Tech, and CreativeTech. For more personalized instruction, they offer one-on-one coding lessons in 18 specialized curriculums, including AI and Cybersecurity.
Learn more: http://www.codeconnects.org/summercamps + [emailprotected].
Media Contact: Abeer Dhanani(323) [emailprotected]
QCI Achieves Best-in-Class Performance with its Mukai Quantum-Ready Application Platform – Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source
These performance benefits eliminate one of the greatest obstacles to the development and adoption of quantum-ready applications, since up until now they have been slower than traditional methods running classically. The results show that Mukai provides better results than currently used software to solve complex optimization problems faced by nearly every major company and government agency worldwide.
While future quantum computers are expected to deliver even greater performance benefits, Mukai delivers today the best-known quality of results, time-to-solution, and diversity of solutions in a commercially available service. This superior capability enables business and government organizations to become quantum-ready today and realize immediate benefits from improved performance.
Optimization problems can occur in logistics routing, where timely delivery, reduced fuel consumption, and driver safety all come into play. Optimization solutions can significantly mitigate the impact to revenue or business operations posed by events such as flooding or power outages. Companies can leverage the robust and diverse solutions offered by Mukai to minimize disruptive high-impact events in real-time.
Optimization can also be achieved in R&D contexts like drug design, where better predicted protein folding can speed the design process, increase the efficacy of drugs, and guide the search for patient cohorts who might benefit. Optimization of business processes generated by solvers like Mukai can result in savings of hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
The technical study used MITs MQlib, a well-established combinatorial optimization benchmark, to compare QCI qbsolv performance with those of a variety of solvers. QCI qbsolv delivered better quality or energy of results for most problems (27 of 45) and often ran more than four times faster than the best MQlib solver (21 of 45 problems).
In terms of diversity of resultsfinding, for example, logistics routes that are quite different from each otherQCI qbsolv often found dozens of binary results that were different in more than 350 different positions (i.e., route segments). Known also to researchers as Hamming distance, diversity of results is another important advantage expected of quantum computing.
The paper, QCI Qbsolv Delivers Strong Classical Performance for Quantum-Ready Formulation, describes the full results and discusses their impact, and is available at arxiv.org/abs/2005.11294
These results demonstrate that Mukai-powered applications can exploit quantum computing concepts to solve real-world problems effectively using classical computers, noted QCI CTO, Mike Booth. More importantly, the quality, speed, and diversity of solutions offered by Mukai means government and corporate organizations can use Mukai to adopt quantum-ready approaches today without sacrificing performance. Mukai is also hardware-agnostic, enabling adopters to exploit whichever hardware delivers the quantum advantage. Were confident that leading companies can leverage Mukai today to achieve a competitive advantage.
To be sure, we are very early in the quantum computing and software era, continued Booth. Just as the vectorizing compilers for Crays processors improved radically over time, we are planning to introduce further performance improvements to Mukai over the coming months. Some of these advancements will benefit application performance using classical computers as well as hybrid quantum-classical scenarios, but all will be essential to delivering the quantum advantage. We expect Mukai to play an integral role in the quantum computing landscape by enabling organizations to tap into quantum-inspired insights today to better answer their high-value problems.
The Mukai software execution platform for quantum computers enables users and application developers to solve complex discrete constrained-optimization problems that are at the heart of some of the most difficult computing challenges in industry, government and academia. This includes, for example, scheduling technicians, parts and tools for aircraft engine repair, or designing proteins for coronavirus vaccines and therapies.
QCI recently announced version 1.1 of Mukai, which introduced higher performance and greater ease-of-use for subject-matter experts who develop quantum-ready applications and need superior performance today. Local software connects users to the Mukai cloud service for solving extremely complex optimization problems. It enables developers to create and execute quantum-ready applications on classical computers today that are ready to run on the quantum computers of tomorrow when these systems achieve performance superiority.
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QCI Achieves Best-in-Class Performance with its Mukai Quantum-Ready Application Platform - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source
India and Australia pump $12.7 million into AI, quantum computing and robotics renewing their cyber and crit – Business Insider India
Maybe the next time can have hologram of your excellency, here in Australia You have always been a pioneer in the area of technology for India, and today is another good example of that, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the virtual summit interaction.
The new four-year agreement includes a corpus of $12.7 million to fund research and development for Indian and Australian businesses and researchers that will help both countries improve their cyber resilience.
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She explained that the cyber and critical technology partnership ties into the countries' endeavour to create a cyber-resilient Indo-Pacific region that is open, free and rules-based.
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The two countries also plan on exploring the possibility of launching the Indian RuPay Card in Australia.
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India and Australia pump $12.7 million into AI, quantum computing and robotics renewing their cyber and crit - Business Insider India
Spain’s CaixaBank Teams With IBM Services to Accelerate Cloud Transformation and Innovation in the Financial Services – AiThority
Red Hat OpenShift and AI engaged to help the bank to roll out new digital offerings delivering enhanced customer experiences
CaixaBank, a leading financial institution inSpainandPortugal, serving more than 15.5 million customers, has announced an agreement with IBM Servicesto help accelerate its hybrid cloud journey and continue their work to increase the banks capability to develop innovative, digital-first solutions to enhance client experiences.
CaixaBank will leverage IBM Cloud Pak for Applications running on Red Hat OpenShift to manage workloads and applications across its overall cloud infrastructure. The bank also agreed to continue to work with IBM in their joint innovation center to apply advanced technologies like AI, and additionally explore quantum computing and blockchain solutions. The companies will continue to seek to co-create new solutions for the banking industry with a goal to help quickly process a large number of transactions in an open, secure and scalable environment while delivering improved customer experiences.
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With a key focus on technological innovation for the industry, CaixaBank isSpainsleading digital financial services provider, serving more than 6.5 million digital clients. CaixaBank is also one of the pioneering banks in the application of artificial intelligence for financial services, developing one of the first virtual banking assistants created inEurope. Built with IBM Watson, the AI-based virtual assistant manages more than 1.5 million client conversations each month, handling a spectrum of tasks such as helping bank employees quickly obtain relevant detailed information about new client offerings and quickly assisting mobile customers via chat with day-to-day queries. This approach frees up employee time to focus on serving customers.
IBM has been a strategic technology provider for CaixaBank since 2011. Along with renewing their existing relationship, the recent agreements are also focused on accelerating innovation and digital transformation, while also strengthening the longtime collaboration between IBM and the bank, chaired byJordi Gualand CEOGonzalo Gortzar.
Our company, the leader in digital customers inSpain, has renewed our relationship with IBM to allow us to continue innovating and transforming the way we interact with our customers, said Gonzalo Gortzar, CaixaBanks CEO. By strengthening and expanding the collaboration with a company that is a global model in innovation for the finance industry, we will accelerate, even further, our digital capabilities to continue developing innovative projects and services.
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IBM is bringing its deep financial services industry experience to help generate long term value to CaixaBank and its clients. By leveraging IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, CaixaBank can modernize and create applications with increased agility and security while addressing compliance requirements within a hybrid cloud environment.
We are pleased to be on this digital transformation journey with CaixaBank, an innovation leader in the banking industry, said Juan Zufiria, Senior Vice President, Global Technology Services. With this collaboration, we are laying the foundation to build a model, not just for CaixaBank and its millions of customers, but also for the future of the industry. The open cloud environment can allow the bank to accelerate its innovation and offer a more agile way to bring new digital services to its customers with added flexibility and security.
The IBM Cloud Pak for Applicationssolution is designed to help reduce risk and improve operational resiliency with an estimated processing power and data storage capability of 105,000 terabytes, a capacity equal to 200 times the volume of a digital library with all the books listed in the world in all languages.
Researchers at the CaixaBank-IBM innovation center have previously been exploring technologies for the future of financial services and the recent agreement expands to include with blockchain and quantum computing. Recently, CaixaBank developed a prototype of a machine learning algorithm based on quantum computing to analyze customers based on credit risk.
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Spain's CaixaBank Teams With IBM Services to Accelerate Cloud Transformation and Innovation in the Financial Services - AiThority
Riverlane partners with biotech company Astex – Cambridge Network
Riverlane builds ground-breaking software to unleash the power of quantum computers. Chemistry is a key application in which quantum computing can be of significant value, as high-level quantum chemistry calculations can be solved far faster than using classical methods.
World leaders in drug discovery and development, Astex Pharmaceuticals applies innovative solutions to treat cancer and diseases of the central nervous system.The two companies will join forces to combine their expertise in quantum computing software and quantum chemistry applications to speed up drug development and move us closer to quantum advantage.
As part of the collaboration, Astex is funding a post-doctoral research scientist at Riverlane. They will apply very high levels of quantum theory to study the properties of covalent drugs, in which protein function is blocked by the formation of a specific chemical bond. So far in this field of research, only empirical methods and relatively low levels of quantum theory have been applied. Riverlane will provide access to specialised quantum software to enable simulations of the target drug-protein complexes.
Dave Plant, Principal Research Scientist at Riverlane, said: This collaboration will produce newly enhanced quantum chemical calculations to drive efficiencies in the drug discovery process. It will hopefully lead to the next generation of quantum inspired pharmaceutical products.
Chris Murray, SVP of Discovery Technology at Astex said: "We are excited about the prospect of exploring quantum computing in drug discovery applications. It offers the opportunity to deliver much more accurate calculations of the energetics associated with the interaction of drugs with biological molecules, leading to potential improvements in drug discovery productivity."
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Riverlane partners with biotech company Astex - Cambridge Network
Faujis Tour of Duty – The Statesman
The Indian Army is crying out for modernisation and assistance primarily for two major reasons. The Defence budget falls drastically short of meeting the needs of capability development of the Armed Forces in general and the Army in particular. Its revenue to capital expenditure ratio is around 87:13. Despite the Defence budget is grossly inadequate to meet the needs of the Defence Forces, it is four times the education budget and seven times the health budget.
The pie being the same other sectors get sacrificed too. We are paying a huge price for such low allocation in the health sector in the current COVID-9 pandemic which has been further heightened by the Amphan cyclone in Bengal, Odisha and Bihar. The Defence budget has grown upwards of 65 per cent in the last five years whereas salaries which includes defence civilians has grown by 75 per cent; but it is the pensions budget that has grown phenomenally high by about 140 per cent.
Our pension budget is almost twice the Pakistani Defence Budget. A silver lining of reduction in pension budget once Defence Civilian Personnel inducted from 2004 start retiring due to their pension coming under the National Pension Scheme may also not help as the number of Armed Forces Personnel will continue to grow due to better life expectancy and OROP commitment.
High revenue liability leaves the Indian Army with very little for capital procurement. The need today is to go in for niche defence modernization and technology development in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cyber Warfare, Space based systems, robotics, drones, Electronic Warfare (EW), Quantum Computing, high end communication technology.
These requirements need big money if we have to cater for a two and half front commitment. But where do we get the money if we are going to increase our revenue expenditure year on year by 15 to 16 per cent? Unless we save our big ticket expenditure of salaries by rightsizing and some out of the box innovation we are going to get reduced to a low end technology equipped army. Is this desirable? I am afraid not. The idea of Tour of Duty (ToD) seems to be an outof- the-box solution and we need to make it work without losing our operational effectiveness and preparedness.
The second issue confronting the Indian Army is career progression. ToD (Tour of Duty) to some extent may address this issue. Due to our pyramid shaped organisational structure career progression in the officer cadre is a humongous challenge. As per estimates the strength of nonempaneled officers (overlooked for promotion) in the Army is going to touch around 14,000 by 2030.
Criticism of ToD and to some extent rightly so is coming from many defence experts and retired senior officers on the grounds of lack of motivation of ToD officers due to their limited tenure and uncertain future after completion of ToD. In matters of war fighting and CT operations inadequately motivated officers will definitely affect the operational effectiveness.
But what is the current state of the Indian Army? Can we imagine what will be the state of the Army with 14,000 non-empaneled officers? It is a reality that barring a few, most of the non empaneled officers perform suboptimally. We also must consider that against the ideal ratio between permanent and support cadre officers for better upward mobility of 1:1.1 the ratio stands at 3.7: 1.
Should this idea succeed we could order an internal study and come up with an ideal ratio of officers between permanent cadre: SSCO (Short Service Commission Officers) : ToD. If the experiment fails we are at liberty to junk the plan. In any case the ToD officers will only fill up the deficient billets which are in the junior service bracket.
We must keep in mind that unit commanders as such are functioning with major deficiencies to the tune of 8 to 12 officers in respect of major combat and combat support unit depending on where the unit is located. So it may be worth trying young blood (ToD officers) and give them to young and dynamic COs to extract work out of them who as such are functioning with major deficiencies.
There is no harm in at least giving the idea a chance as a pilot project. If it succeeds we may look at setting right the permanent versus the support cadre ratio for better promotion avenues in the Army. Major benefits of the ToD will accrue essentially in savings in the defence budget and availability of officers in junior ranks in various units. These are two major issues confronting the Indian Army and by extension the country.
By rough estimates if we were to just induct 1000 soldiers on ToD we would end up saving more than Rs 20,000 crore. Likewise if we replace 1500 SSCOs with ToD (subject to success of pilot project say on 100 ToD officers) the net saving to the defence exchequer would be to the tune of 35 to 40,000 crore. These savings would further increase if we were to take the fitment factor of 2.5 and calculations for 40 years of pension for permanent cadre (50 to 60 per cent officers are awarded permanent commission).
In terms of savings this is a substantial amount and would definitely ease our constraints of modernizing the Indian Army. Criticism of the proposal on the grounds of inadequate training and professional skills do appear justified. But before rejecting the idea if we do an environment scan we would find that short three-year tenures have been very successful in the Israeli Defence Forces, South Korea, Russia and even the US although the conscription is not mandatory in the case of the US now.
The Russian tenure has over time been reduced from three years to just one year. Likewise South Korea has tenures ranging from 1 to 1.5 years. Israel has tenure of 32 months for men and 24 months for women. All these nations have achieved a fair amount of operational effectiveness with short tenures. In the case of India there would be a voluntary induction of personnel for ToD. As compared to a compulsory conscription, which is the case in most of the countries, voluntary service personnel should be better motivated.
This is likely to pay better dividends in operational effectiveness. Even if we look at the performance during the Kargil war, most of the officers who excelled were less than 3 years of service bracket. Finally, from what one has gathered, if ToD officers are facilitated better avenues for second career prospects by corporate houses (Mahindras have already offered to do so), given some good financial handshake package and tie-ups for preference through MoUs for category A MBA and Engineering institutions they will definitely be better motivated and serve to the best of their capability.
It is also learnt that there will be no compromise on the training of such officers. The duration and expenditure on training of SSCOs and ToD will be same i.e. 44 weeks. We need not shoot the idea even before it is born, lets for once give a good idea a chance.
(The writer, a retired Lieutenant-General (PVSM, AVSM), is former Chief of Staff, Eastern Command, former Corps Commander, former Commandant, Army War College, ex-IG Ops NSG, and former member of various National Level Emergency Response Committees)
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Faujis Tour of Duty - The Statesman
Why your website may be packed with malware – TechHQ
Earlier this year, White House officials announced plans to increase federal funding for the research and development of AI and quantum computing.
The proposed budget of US$4.8 trillion is set to help the nation advance in these emerging technologies, and ultimately, strengthen national security with the integration of AI and quantum computing into the cyber realm.
That declaration of war spoke the scale of the cyberthreat problem today, and its one that has continued to gather pace amid the pandemic.
The hike has led both Interpol and Europol to release a report underlining the rise of pandemic-themed social engineering attacks and the increased exploitation of teleworking vulnerabilities.
Despite stringent lockdown measures being lifted, the number of cyberattacks shows little sign of dropping.
Sitelock, a global cybersecurity and protection firm, has revealed that sites face up to 94 attacks per day. This is an increase of 52% from last year.
The figure is based on an analysis of more than 7 million websites, with the firm aiming to gain more insights into the cyberthreat landscape. The report enables businesses to better understand the invisible threats that their companies are up against.
Joining TechHQ in an interview, Logan Kipp, Director at SiteLock shared insights on the current cyberthreat landscape, going in-depth with the kinds of pandemic-induced cybercrimes that are on the rise and suggestions SMEs can follow to defend their digital sites.
When asked about the surge in web-based attacks, Kipp explained, a dramatic increase in attacks in the last year is that resources, such as powerful web servers, have grown increasingly accessible to the public.
Reduced cost in operations and solutions that require less technical skills to operate means that there are more web environments than ever before, making a green field of opportunity for adversaries.
With an ever-expanding web environment, Sitelock estimates that nearly 12.8 million sites are infected with malware worldwide thats about one out of every 100 sites.
Approximately nine out of ten of these infected sites are still not blacklisted by search engines, with users unknowingly clicking on them.
Search engines are only capable of scanning websites externally for malware, which at times is not enough to reveal symptoms of being compromised malware is increasingly intelligent and adept in disguise. It can be made to present itself as inactive to avoid detection.
Kipp added, Search engines will also often err on the side of caution when blacklisting websites to avoid reporting errors that could potentially cause business disruption.
Malware infiltrating or embedded in a system can remain hidden until real damage is done and the consequences visible, leading to mass monetary and productivity losses.
Sitelocks report also listed top cyberthreats that were commonly found in infected sites, among those most prevalent were backdoor (65%), filehacker threats (48%), and malicious eval request (22%).
Backdoor cyberthreats remain a popular approach for cybercriminals to gain administrative access to a targeted system. Kipp elaborated that backdoors are frequently left by attackers as a foothold after successfully breaching a website. The most common variations of backdoors can also be found readily available on the regular internet and dark web.
A subgroup of backdoor, filehacker threats aim to propagate malware throughout a websites hosting environment. Kipp added that file hackers focuses on modifying existing files or deploying brand new malware files. Another form of attack includes creating thousands of spam files on the server through a simple PHP upload script. In the end, file hackers are capable of modifying or injecting code into existing files on a website as well.
Malicious eval requests are then used to inject or run malicious code. Kipp elaborated that cybercriminals use this to unpack or decode other malicious software efficiently, often in a single line of code allowing an adversary to remotely execute arbitrary code on a breached site.
Since this type of malware is more lightweight than other backdoor types, it can easily go unnoticed by the naked eye because of their minimalist approach.
Recognizing the various modus operandi of malware threats, it is essential for businesses to not only be aware of these emerging cyberattacks but also translate insights into actionable plans.
Kipp shared with TechHQ some of the best cybersecurity practices SMEs can follow to strengthen their cybersecurity systems and empower their workforce amid a rise in pandemic-induced cyberthreats.
It begins with training and educating employees with fundamental cybersecurity best practices such as spotting phishing emails to utilizing two-factor authentication (2FA) along with a strong password.
By ensuring employees are taking all the necessary steps internally to protect themselves can go a long way, especially at a time where remote working is enforced. Kipp added, businesses can take a step further by establishing a standard operating procedure, or SOP, on how documents should be handled and how potential vulnerabilities should be reported when working remotely.
Besides that, SMEs can consider utilizing a virtual private network (VPN) as it protects data by encryption. In other words, sensitive data such as SSNs, passwords, and credit card numbers are transmitted securely across shared or public networks.
Even so, Kipp emphasized that SMEs should stay vigilant and careful when sharing data, such as inputting customer information into an online form or sending an email containing sensitive data.
Kipp noted, By being careful with sensitive information, businesses can limit the risk for catastrophic data leaks if they fall victim to a hack or breach.
Alongside employing these best cybersecurity practices, businesses should adopt a more proactive mindset when in face of cyberthreats.
Kipp explained SMEs should be routinely scanning their websites for malware and vulnerabilities. By being proactive with their cybersecurity hygiene, organizations can help to ensure that their customers and their data remain safe and secure.
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Why your website may be packed with malware - TechHQ
House Introduces the Advancing Quantum Computing Act – Lexology
On May 19, 2020, Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9) introduced the Advancing Quantum Computing Act (AQCA), which would require the Secretary of Commerce to conduct a study on quantum computing. We cant depend on other countries . . . to guarantee American economic leadership, shield our stockpile of critical supplies, or secure the benefits of technological progress to our people, Representative Griffith explained. It is up to us to do that.
Quantum computers use the science underlying quantum mechanics to store data and perform computations. The properties of quantum mechanics are expected to enable such computers to outperform traditional computers on a multitude of metrics. As such, there are many promising applications, from simulating the behavior of matter to accelerating the development of artificial intelligence. Several companies have started exploring the use of quantum computing to develop new drugs, improve the performance of batteries, and optimize transit routing to minimize congestion.
In addition to the National Quantum Initiative Act passed in 2018, the introduction of AQCA represents another importantalbeit preliminarystep for Congress in helping to shape the growth and development of quantum computing in the United States. It signals Congresss continuing interest in developing a national strategy for the technology.
Overall, the AQCA would require the Secretary of Commerce to conduct the following four categories of studies related to the impact of quantum computing:
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House Introduces the Advancing Quantum Computing Act - Lexology
The Role of Quantum Computing in Online Education – MarketScale
On this episode of the MarketScale Online Learning Minute, host Brian Runo dives into how quantum computing, the next revolutionary leap forward in computing, could apply to online education.
In particular, it can be used to epitomize the connectivism theory and provide personalized learning for each individual, as its not restricted by the capacity of an individual instructor.
In this way, each learner can be empowered to learn at their own pace and be presented with materials more tailored to them in real-time.
In fact, quantum computing is so revolutionary that the education world likely cant even currently dream up the innovations it will enable.
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The Role of Quantum Computing in Online Education - MarketScale