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Understanding Big Data – Why it matters.

March 19, 2018 By admin Leave a Comment

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If you simply think analytics and big data are the same thing and assume you know how to use big data, you are already one step behind in the game. Big data will present you with a series of relevant details about your customer. It will rely on the use of social media information, Steven Scott Bayesian believes you can gather details about how a marketing campaign is working, and details about how to integrate online coupons/promos, and other savings, in order to get the most out of your campaigns. Analytics on the flip side is going to give you client-specific information (i.e., how many times a visitor came on your site, turnaround, sales figures, and funnels, etc.).

Big data and analytics should be used side by side, but are not the same thing. Understanding big data means you are understanding a comprehensive view of your business, how it is working, what is working (and what is not working), and will provide you with essential details so you can implement changes, and implement new strategies, in order to ensure your business is going to function as it should. Understanding big data will provide you the resources you need, and the details your company requires, in order to take an integrative approach at implementing and changing your company, to ensure you are making the most out of your marketing dollars (and your spending budget in general).

Why is it important to ensure you are understanding big data? Some reasons include:

– It provides a company in-depth guidance/review of how their marketing tactics are working.

– It allows you to implement other marketing tactics and social media guides, in order to get the best results when offering a sale, or providing customers with coupons they are going to use.

– It gives you charts, graphs, and other graphic details, so you can better view how your company is working.

Basically, when you understand the ins and outs of big data, you understand the intricacies of how your company is working. You will understand why some projects/campaigns work, and why some do not work. You will be able to implement your social media campaigns, your sales teams, and integrate how you can implement further changes within your organization, in order to ensure you do what the customer is looking for and to get the returns you are hoping to get as a business owner.

Big data, especially in today’s competitive industry/online driven world, is what can differentiate your company from a local competitor. It can be the missing link that your company has been looking for, to help push you over the top when it comes to implementing a social media strategy. It can provide you the details you’ve been missing, so you can learn what your customer wants (versus what you think they want).

As a business owner, you have to utilize all resources presented to you. Big data is a major component to helping you grow, develop, and ensure your company gets the most out of the campaigns you implement, no matter how much you have to spend when marketing/targeting your audience.

Filed Under: Tech, Technology Tagged With: big data, computing, data, tech, technology

What you should know about the Meltdown and Spectre Bugs

January 24, 2018 By admin 1 Comment

2018 isn’t off to great start when it comes to cybersecurity. At the beginning of the year, a couple of vulnerabilities for CPUs were found that can have potentially devastating effects. The Meltdown and Spectre Bugs have not only increased security risks for computers, but also for tablets and smartphones. Applying fixes can reverse the security risk, but at the cost of processing speed. For example, you can find the Meltdown and Spectre Debian patches here.

What is Meltdown

This vulnerability allows for access of private memory in the Kernel, which can contain passwords and other secrets of the operating system, including other programs. This can leave you open to attacks, as malicious programs can easily find every password from the kernel’s private memory zone. Even running JavaScript from a website is a security risk when using an unpatched CPU.

Luckily, there are system updates that can fix this, as well, since Microsoft, Apple, and Google have rolled updates to fix the bugs, as well as the developers of several Linux Distributions.

What is Spectre

Even though Spectre also deals with kernel memory, it’s slightly different than Meltdown. Instead of directly accessing the private memory zone, Spectre allows a malicious program to trick another process to run on the same system in order to leak private information. This means that it can trick programs like your browser to reveal all currently used passwords.

This vulnerability is not exclusive to Intel, but it also affects AMD and ARM devices. In other words, practically any device, including tablets and smartphones. Spectre is difficult to patch, but also difficult to exploit, and currently, there are ongoing struggles to permanently patch the bug.

Intel was probably aware of Meltdown

As per Intel’s statement, even with Meltdown, everything is working as intended. Intel executives have also been accused of insider trading, and the engineers working to develop the chips had to sign NDAs that forbid them from talking about the bugs that can have excessive security risks.

Even Linus Torvalds – the creator of Linux – has accused Intel of not willing to provide a fix. The debacle resulted in a drop in Intel’s share prices, while AMD’s have gone up.

Protection against the exploits

Since this is a high-risk situation, there isn’t much to do than waiting for the updates to roll in. If you haven’t updated your system, this is a good time as any, since that’s the best way to protect your device from the bugs. Most, if not all, Linux distros should’ve already gotten the updates, and if not, they’ll get the fix soon.

Updating the browsers is also a must, because they pose a security risk too.

This has been a horrible event for security. Even if Intel wanted to appear to have faster CPUs than AMD, users shouldn’t be left vulnerable to exploits and bugs. Patching the bugs will slow down your CPUs significantly, from 10-30% so Intel users should be more careful when purchasing an Intel CPU next time.

Filed Under: Tech, Technology Tagged With: bugs, computing, hacking, internet, mallware, Meltdown and Spectre, online, tech