national institute of standards and technology

What is joy and happiness? This topic inspired me after having a conversation with someone.

Am I choosing joy based on my financial reality? Hear me out…. Maybe joy is choosing what my body would like. Joy doesn’t always have to be about money. Money follows joy, joy does not follow money.

Are you willing to up level your standard of joy?

I talk about the different ways we can choose happiness by shifting our standards.

IN THIS EPISODE, I TALK ABOUT:

• What is your standard of joy?
• How can you shift your standards? 
• Are you lying to yourself with your standard of joy? 
• What if joy is something your body wants?

👉 MY FUTURE EVENTS:

• “BOSS BRUNCH” In-Person Event: Sunday, February 19th 10am PST - Los Angeles area (DM me on  Instagram to register!) 
• Q2 PLAN WORKSHOP: In- Person Event- Sunday, March 26th 9am PST- Los Angeles area (DM me on Instagram to register/)

If you loved this episode, it would mean the world to me if you SUBSCRIBED to the podcast on your favorite podcast app and give it a 5 star review. I would be forever grateful! Thank you!! 

✅LET’S CONNECT:

• The Get Up Girl
• Instagram
• Facebook

Cyber threat intelligence is a conceptual term with an international impact. Agencies around the world are racing to identify and stop cybercriminals from infecting and infiltrating networks to use our data against us. In this episode of No Password Required, Dr. Sagar Samtani, assistant professor of information systems and decision sciences at the University of South Florida, explains the cyber threat intelligence (CTI) life cycle and what you and/or your organization should do to help protect data assets and prevent cyberattacks.

Data is the prime target of many cybercriminals, yet what data they are searching depends on their goals. Are they scraping for social security numbers? Obtaining passwords? Collecting credit card numbers? Or worse? And why? It’s hard to imagine all the ways that data can be exploited.

Your data is widely available depending on where and how you store your data and whom you give permission to access that information. Personal choices, like having a smartphone, can be a gateway to someone collecting your data. Being on the grid with a social security number, health insurance, financial accounts, all these bits of information are housed somewhere, and cybercriminals know this. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), cybercriminals are able to scrape data faster than ever before and with the launch of quantum machines, our security choices will be paramount to protecting our identity and data assets.

Cyber threat intelligence is helping individuals and industries protect themselves by understanding what is important, what are the exploits, and how to effectively respond. It is also helping to refine artificial intelligence algorithms to better assist in threat analytics. Dr. Samtani describes how industries are responding to industry-specific cybercrimes and developing response standards, protocols, and frameworks. He gives the example of the healthcare industry and HIPAA compliance as well as financial institutions and their evolving PCI compliance protocols. Understanding why a data asset is a target is a key facet to the cyber threat intelligence life cycle.

What are the Four Phases of Cyber Threat Intelligence?

1. Identify what assets you (an organization) possess that hold value, e.g., a social security number, and how to protect those assets
2. Data collection that is relevant to those critical cyber assets
3. Threat analytics – whether traditional or AI techniques are being utilized
4. Operational Intelligence – how is the compromised data actually used or exploited

Dr. Samtani explains there are two basic types of cyber threat intelligence analytics. First are the traditional threats, such as malware analysis. The second category is quickly changing as artificial intelligence evolves: data mining, text mining, and natural language processing based on pattern and techniques. Building systems that are designed to log and report data is crucial to discovering breaches and reporting them to prevent further penetration.

Once Data is Stolen, Where Does it Go?

Dr. Samtani discusses how hackers, cybercriminals, even geopolitical threat actors are using the data. He explains how the Dark Web is playing a role as a marketplace and toolbox for hackers. He details the four basic platforms--forums, Dark Web marketplaces, darknet carding shops, and internet relay chat--that cybercriminals use to complete their tasks and possibly grow their notoriety. Hacker behavior on the Dark Web is unlike traditional crime circuits where anonymity is preferred. There are tiers of hacker and they can use their screen names to build their reputation for monetization, credibility, and recognition. Artificial intelligence is being fine-tuned to help detect cybercriminals through intelligent predictions.

Security Protocols and the Danger of Oversharing

Individuals, organizations, developers, and even marketers play a role in security. Developers who were once tasked in racing product to market are now evolving to build-in and protect against exploits. Cultures are changing to bring awareness of the dangers of oversharing and learning from other’s breaches and incidents. Dr. Samtani and No Password Required host Bill McQueen discuss how oversharing can be as simple as a phone call asking what version a software is on and divulging that information, likening that to handing over the keys to a car.

The Study of Cybersecurity Science

As computing evolves, so do the crimes; the cybersecurity field is in the infancy of where it will be potentially. Developing talented professionals to stop cybercriminals, building frameworks and protocols, and advocating for strong cyber cultures at home and in the workplace will be essential to the future. There is ample opportunity for employment and research in the field of cybersecurity, cyber threat research, and cyber threat intelligence.

TIME STAMPS

1:12 Who is Dr. Sagar Samtani

1:30 How Does AI Automate Cybercrime and Cyber Threat Intelligence

3:08 The Four Phases of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Life Cycle

7:43 How Do You Rate and Respond to a Cyber Threat

10:03 Industry Specific Frameworks for Threat Identification and Mitigation

10:24 Data Characteristics in Cybersecurity

11:20 Defcon and AI Village

11:48 Tuning Algorithms for Cybersecurity

12:54 How are Hackers Fighting Against AI Detection

13:53 Developing Organizational Strategies to Counter Cybercrime

15:19 Cybersecurity/AI Ethics and Rules

18:40 Dark Web & Data

19:38 Dark Web Platforms

22:53 Access to Dark Web Platforms

23:50 Hacker Notoriety – Reputation, Monetization and Detection

27:40 Developers & Cyber Security Protocols

29:35 Double-Edged Sword of Sharing Cybersecurity Capabilities

30:40 Operational Intelligence and Risk Management

31:58 Hacker Behavior on the Dark Web/Darknet

33:40 What Can We Do to Protect Ourselves? Following the CTI Lifecycle

35:44 Cybersecurity Science as a Legitimate Field

In the name of preserving history, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used advanced imaging to create digital replicas of the bullets that killed President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. 

The bullets are typically stored at the National Archives, which brought the spent ammo to NIST so the ballistics team could make new perfect copies. 

Even though we're more than 56 years removed from the tragic event, the National Archives still receives many requests to access the bullets. The plan is to make the 3D replicas available to the public by early 2020 because the original photographs that were made available are aging. Now, everyone will have access to the microscopic details of each bullet. 

The new collection will include two fragments from the bullet that caused the president's fatal wound, as well as the "stretcher" bullet that struck both the president and Texas Gov. John Connally. The stretcher bullet was found near Connally at the hospital. 

The collection also includes two bullets test fired from the assassin's rifle, as well as one that is believed to have been used in a previous assassination attempt on an army major.

The ballistics team used focus variation microscopy to create a series of images at different focal distances at each location along the object's surface. As the lens moved across the bullet, it built a 3D surface map.

The team spent countless hours rotating the metal fragments to image every facet, and then stitched the images together, capturing every tiny scratch and anomaly in the metallic surface.

NIST performed 22 scanning runs just on the stretcher bullet, producing 1,699 individual measurements of the bullet's surface.

The NIST ballistics team members are familiar with bullet imaging. They often work on developing advanced forensic techniques that can identify firearms used in crimes.

The project wasn't without its challenges, as the bullet fragments were bent and distorted in ways that made them difficult to image. A single piece took more than 30 scans to image the entire surface.

Some of the techniques used throughout the process will be employed in future criminal cases. We'll see what new insight comes out once the public begins analyzing those bullets next year, but until then, and for the foreseeable future, the bullets that killed President Kennedy in Dallas will be returned to their temperature and humidity-controlled vault.

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