B1 - Group E - Angelina Castro

For this weeks blog post we were presented with a total of four topics to touch on: Future, Network, Sociology, and Database. I decided to go a little more in depth with only two of the topics rather than briefly reading about each one.

Future:
The notion of the future and how we will be living has always been a topic of the imagination of many. Back in the 1960s and 1970s the idea of the world in the year 2062 composed of technologies like hover crafts, robot butlers, jet packs, and many more technologies we could only dream about. Now in the year 2015, it appears we are getting closer to the type of world ...to a certain degree. This past consumer electronics show (CES) displayed all the new and upcoming electronics we will be seeing within the next few years. The chip making company Intel gave us a taste of the futuristic world we will soon be living in. Among the innovative technologies shown off by Intel included an autonomous drove, sight assisting jackets with chips the size of a button and intelligent doorways. Intel is making strides in the new field of wearables, or wearable technology, much like the sight assisting jacket. Wearbles range from things as simple as the cell phone watched as seen by Samsung and Apple or as innovative as the sight assisting jacket that aids blind people when navigating in public. I think it is interesting to see the world shifting and adapting with the invention of these new technologies. People now are within any moments reach of all the information in the world and connectivity to almost any person anywhere on the planet. We can make phone calls with watches or check email with Google glass. It is amazing to see how these ideas of "the future" are becoming reality. I don't think we will be flying cars by the year 2062 by any means but we will be pretty close at this rate.


Network:
The internet and the ever growing utilization of it has increased the necessity for a more secure and safe network. Multitudes of information is inputted and uploaded to the internet every second, people's credit card information, daily activities, bank accounts, security cameras, photos; all of this is at risk of being hacked or stolen by predators on the internet. Breaches of current modern network security can been seen from recent events from celebrity photos being leaked, credit card information being stole and even the recent hacking at Sony Pictures. A study done by FireEye showed exactly how vulnerable most companies actually are when it came to network protection and malware efficiency. The study had shown that no matter what it is nearly impossible to prevent malicious software from threatening a network. It also unfortunately showed the steps in order to minimize the damage are being neglected by many companies. It is common for companies to take a "set-it-and-forget-it" approach on security and will often not keep important information on a separate, isolated system. A simple step in the right in the direction was released at CES this past week with the release of a device called Bitdefender Box. The way Bitdefender works is by plugging into the router and it scans the network along with websites the user visits for potential harmful viruses. Although the Bitdefender is currently only available for home networks it will only be a matter of time before this sort of technology to be applied to a larger scale for companies and even government networks.







Sources:
-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/ces/11329790/Intel-shares-futuristic-vision-of-the-connected-world.html
-http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/technology/personaltech/ces-security-risks-from-the-smart-home.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
-http://www.cnet.com/news/modern-security-tactics-fail-to-protect-against-malware-new-study-finds/