No ratings yet.

Gaining access to information has been getting more and more easy over the past decades. Not only is more information available to us, but also accessing this information requires less work as technology evolves. Where we first had to travel to information in order to consume it, like going to the library, we now all carry our own libraries in our pockets in the form of a smartphone.

The idea of a smartphone, and having near instant access to a vast library of digital information is something that has long been unthinkable, but now is a reality for the majority of the worlds population. This makes you wonder how getting access to information will be made even easier in the future.

When thinking about getting even faster access to information, most people think about rapidly evolving technologies like virtual reality, where the user of the technology is submerged in an entirely digital world, that is nothing more than a graphical representation of digital information. Another technology is augmented reality, where information is overlayed onto the physical world, which means the user does not have to take their eyes off of what is happening in the real physical world in order to consume the information.

Something that is still being worked out however, is how to best control technologies like AR and VR. What often comes to mind are hand gestures, eye-tracking and voice command. However, there are technologies being developed that would make using these types of technologies even easier.

Neuralink is a company that does research into how brain activity can be translated to digital information. This digital information can then be used for all types of things, like controlling what you see through your AR or VR glasses, or even controlling a prosthetic limb by just thinking about moving it. While it is likely that this technology will not be used on humans within the near future, the technology is actually already being tested on monkeys. In the video below, a monkey can be seen playing games, by just thinking of making movements with its arm. The brain activity of the monkey is being translated to digital information and is then used to control the game.

Even though this technology is still in development and probably will not be seen used by humans in their daily lives within the near future, there are a lot of applications that can be thought off. If this technology develops further and is ready for human use, what would you like to see it being used for? Would you dare to integrate your brain with the digital world? Let me know in the comments!

Neuralink. (2021). Monkey MindPong. Accessed 15 October 2022 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ

Neuralink. (2022). Interfacing with the brain. Accessed 15 October 2022 from https://neuralink.com/approach/

Neuralink. (2022). Engineering with the brain. Accessed 15 October 2022 from https://neuralink.com/applications/

5/5 (1)

If you are not gathering, analyzing, and using data whenever and wherever you can, you are losing out. That seems to be the order of the day in most markets and industries right now. A result of this, is that all kinds of companies, both big and small, have more and more data stored within their systems. While all this data comes with infinite possibilities, there are also a lot of threats that go along with it. Especially if software is not regularly updated, or companies don’t stay up to date when it comes to the latest news around cybersecurity.

Because most companies do not develop (all) their own software, it is likely that these companies use software packages that are created outside of the company. This saves the company a lot in terms of time and money because the software can be bought and besides some minor configuration, often is ready to use off-the-shelf. The wide array of software available to companies comes with major benefits, like having a lot of options when looking for the perfect solution to your problem. However, using off the shelf software and integrating it with the company’s networks, servers, and other software packages, also involves a lot of risk.

In December 2021 this risk was once again brought to light when a security vulnerability with a CVSS rating of 10 was found in the log4j library within the Java programming language (Apache 2022). Log4j is a popular open-source logging tool and is very widely used. The vulnerability made an exploit available that allowed hackers to run any code they wanted on the target’s system and allowed for full server control, with an exploit that was quite easy to execute (NCSC, 2021; Wortley et al., 2021). To make things worse, the open-source nature of the log4j library, made it easy for people to gain an understanding of the vulnerability and increased the chances of a possible attack even further. These factors combined with the wide adoption of log4j, made for a very high threat within a lot of different companies all over the world. While fixes for the vulnerability were made available very quickly, these fixes only take effect once a company updates their software to the latest version. It is therefore of utmost importance for any company to stay aware of the latest news when it comes to cyber security, because otherwise they might become vulnerable for attacks, compromising not only their own business, but also their customer’s data.

References

Apache. (2022). Apache Log4j Security Vulnerabilities. Accessed 10 October 2022 from https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html

National Cyber Security Center. (2021). Log4j vulnerability – what everyone needs to know. Accessed 10 October 2021 from https://www.lunasec.io/docs/blog/log4j-zero-day/

Wortley, F., Thompson, C. & Allison, F. (2021). Log4Shell: RCE 0-day exploit found in log4j, a popular Java logging package. Accessed 10 October 2022 from https://www.lunasec.io/docs/blog/log4j-zero-day/