Welcome to our inaugural issue of “More than Quantum,” pulling intriguing data security articles that captured our attention over the last week or so. We hope you find these both informational and entertaining, and if you have any future recommendations, please let us know. Now on with the show!
A true random number generator built from carbon nanotubes
We are big fans of randomness, since quantum random number generators are built into all our products, so this definitely piqued our qubits. Some researchers are developing a novel way of creating true random, this time without using quantum effects. By using a special ink containing carbon nanotubes, they measure fluctuations in thermal noise.
Whether the technology becomes commercially successful will depend on whether they are able to improve the speed of the random bit generation dramatically to be of real practical use. Of course they will also have to win over sceptics challenging whether this thermal noise is truly random.
[via IEEE Spectrum]
Meet Alex, the Russian casino hacker who makes millions targeting slot machines
You may recall the story about Russian hackers who managed to beat a surprising number of casinos worldwide by exploiting inherent flaws in some of the pseudo-random number generators (PRNG) of slot machines. Well, WIRED recently did another story about the leader of the team “Alex,” and how he got bored with legitimate business and started tinkering with the PRNG algorithms. After cracking the code and unleashing an army of “employees” to milk slot machines around the globe, he decided to help the companies he targeted – but for a price!
[via WIRED]
Australia’s car industry needs cybersecurity rules to deal with the hacking threat
We know that cars are getting smarter and more connected as each day passes, leading to many recent stories about hacking. As smart cars continue to make their way to Australia, rather than wait for these complicated digital systems to be compromised, it might be time to introduce cybersecurity guidelines for these vehicles now. If we wait much longer, it might be too late.
[via The Conversation]
Microsoft adds two Australian data centres to lure sensitive government data to its cloud
Microsoft hopes to lure more Australian government agencies into its cloud by launching two Azure data centres in Canberra. The company will go live with the new regions, based in Canberra Data Centres’ Hume and Fyshwick facilities, in the first half of 2018, getting a leg up on competitor, Amazon Web Services. For its part, AWS has yet to launch a data centre in Canberra. Note to Satya Nadella, do let us know if you need help encrypting and securing all that data!
[via CRN Australia]
True Random Stories
Here is a “true random” story that doesn’t quite fit into the data security realm, but still caught our attention.
How and when to scale your customer success team
Modern business is built on product and service as an integrated package. Customers expect high quality and in our line of work, expect our products to help make their sensitive data more safe and secure. The people behind our product and brand are just as important as the quality product we built. This article shows why we emphasize customer success as a trusted partner, not just as another “commodity” provider.
[via Client Success]