The Asean-Australia Cybersecurity Workshop entitled “Strengthening Legal Implementation in Tackling Cybersecurity Challenges in the Region” was held in Bangkok and sponsored by Thailand’s ministries of Foreign Affairs, and Digital Economy and Society, along with Australia.

It was part of Thailand’s continued efforts to strengthen cooperation between Asean member states and dialogue partners as they seek to tackle cyberthreats through enhancing coordination between cybersecurity-related agencies.

Workshop participant nations and speakers focused on strengthening the implementation of existing legislation, legal frameworks, and offences related to cybercrime, and other transnational crime in Asean member states.

The workshop aimed to deepen understanding of each participating country’s legal mechanisms related to cybercrime and facilitate collaboration on criminal justice procedures on the issue.

Workshop participants took part in a tabletop exercise simulating a situation involving an imminent threat to the security and stability of countries in the region.

The exercise highlighted the need to identify appropriate points of contact at the policy and technical levels to address serious ICT incidents in a timely manner.

At the core of the success of K-pop or K-dramas are record labels or management agencies, allowing their artists‘ works to be distributed to global audiences and helping them earn their star status through vigorous marketing.

The commanding presence of such intermediaries in raising world-famous artists here may have been successful thus far, but it has also come with adverse effects and inefficiencies, such as frequent claims of artists being exploited or excessive financial burdens of agencies to train musician-aspirants.

A blockchain-powered decentralized platform can offer an alternative to the current system for the sake of both parties, by helping empower an individual artist and make local agencies more cost-effective, Zach Lebeau, chief executive and co-founder of SingularDTV, said in an interview with The Korea Herald during his recent brief stay in Seoul.

“(Blockchain) would raise the standard overnight in the K-pop industry here,” the 42-year-old Lebeau said. “It takes a visionary in the K-pop industry to do it, but the danger is if they don’t do it, they could lose the industry.”

The key to empowering artists is to bring the revenue flow of the intellectual properties under the control of the individual artists, instead of the intermediaries. Artists will be able to have their IPs represented and protected by issuing encrypted tokens.

One example is a token called GRMTK, issued by a musician using the stage name Gramatik, since November 2017. The copyright of his works is guaranteed on GRMTK, and those buying the tokens can have a fair share to the rights of music he created. Gramatik made the token public through a platform called Tokit that is within SingularDTV’s ecosystem.

Gramatik‘s works will be on Ethervision, a platform where users can access the artists’ content. It is set for launch in the second half this year,

“The number one thing we are building is a rights management system that gets rid of the need of gatekeepers and intermediaries.” said Lebeau, the head of Zurich-based operator of decentralized entertainment platform created on ethereum. Ethereum is a public blockchain designed to create a computer protocol to facilitate, verify and enforce the performance of a contract, called smart contract.

Such tokens cannot be purchased using fiat money, like the US dollar or the Korean won. Users have to pay using either SNGLS, a token by SingularDTV that was initially offered starting 2016, or ether, issued on ethereum blockchain.

Encrypted virtual tokens by the musicians or producers will trade on SingularX, a cryptocurrency exchange within SingularDTV ecosystem, which is undergoing an open beta test period.

Unlike coins, tokens can verify the copyright of the artist, as it can contain multiple layers of information other than financial ones, Lebeau said.

Lebeau expected that Korea could be one of the next destinations for his business in Asia, following China, Japan and Hong Kong, adding some Korean artists have been in talks with listing their works on SingularDTV blockchain.

But SingularDTV’s business entrance into Korea does not mean a challenge against the powerhouses leading the K-pop and K-drama industry, he said, as the decentralized platform will not only give artists a chance to be independent, but also will help cut costs of the talent management agencies in the long run.

“A lot of artists don’t want to deal with this responsibility of business in blockchain,” Lebeau said. “This is where the record companies or management companies, intermediaries can come on to the blockchain to help, because the distribution cost and the way of doing it is so expensive, while blockchain makes it cheaper.”

Formerly a globetrotting scriptwriter, musician and filmmaker, Lebeau in 2013 first met Kim Jackson, formerly involved in a film production industry, and began to lay out a concept of a decentralized entertainment industry.

At around 12:30 p.m. Monday, SingularDTV‘s token SNGLS was the 148th-largest cryptocurrency — including coins and tokens — in market cap worth $82.9 million out of over 1,200 of its kind, according to a global coin price tracker CoinMarketCap.

Of all, 60 percent of SNGLS are open to public, Lebeau said. The other 40 percent of the tokens belong to four co-founders — Arie Levy-Cohen, Joseph Lubin, Jackson and Lebeau — and the encrypted assets will have been frozen for two years in the ethereum-powered “vault contract” until October 2018.

“We wanted to show people that we weren’t doing this to get rich quick and it wasn’t a pump and dump.”

Lebeau stressed it‘s up to Korea on whether to embrace the blockchain platform to cope with what remains in the dark now.

“We are not going to come and plant our flag,” he said. “It’s a choice. We offer choice.”

The briefing was delivered by Siti Nurjauinah binti Haji Kula, Nor’adliatul Hidayah binti Haji Mohd Zaidi and Pengiran Hajah Nor’ Azmeena binti Pengiran Haji Mohiddin of the Criminal Justice Division of the Attorney General’s Chambers.

Nur’adliatul in her briefing highlighted on several well-known social media used for cybercrime including WeChat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Tumblr, WhatsApp and Telegram.

She explained that those social media platforms can provide the opportunity and easy path for cyber-bullying including online fraud and extortion.

She stressed that individuals who share their personal information on social networks should be aware of the danger of sharing doing so as others or strangers can easily take advantage of what they are sharing.

The briefing aimed to provide awareness and knowledge on matters related with cybercrimes increasingly widespread among teenagers and help the teenagers to be more cautions on sharing information while communicating with others through social media.

Last November, a high-level Chinese delegation had proposed to train at least 20 government engineers from the two departments.  According to Prakash Bhakta Upadhyaya, the training will facilitate concerned bodies in developing required expertise for expansion of railway in the country.

“Such trainings, especially in railway field, are necessary if we are thinking of developing our railway. This is how we are going to strengthen our capacity,” said Upadhayaya.

The department which is responsible for development of railway networks has no railway engineers. The department has 40 officials, including eight engineers– four civil, three mechanical and one electrical.

The government had also sent engineers from the DoR and the DoRW to China for training in railway technology last year. Although the railway department has said that it will soon send its technicians for training, the date of departure has not been fixed yet.

The DoRW officials blame the previous government for not taking the achievements of the visiting Chinese delegation last year seriously. The high-level Chinese delegation, led by Zheng Jian, the deputy director (Vice-Minister) of National Railway Administration of the People’s Republic of China, had come to Nepal to study the possibility of railway networks in the country.

Submitting their preliminary feasibility report, prepared after conducting field trips to Kerung, Pokhara and Lumbini, the team had concluded that two rail routes – Kathmandu-Kerung and Kathmandu-Pokhara-Lumbini–could be developed in the country.

The Chinese side had also pledged technical support, including training to Nepali engineers then. However, there could be no progress on the deal, largely due to the indifference on the part of Nepal government, said Upadhyaya.

“As per the understanding, both sides were to meet in China in December last

year, but that did not happen. The previous government did not do anything serious regarding the project,” he said.The DoRW is counting on the new government to realise the country’s railway dream.

A report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers sought to quantify what it called “malicious cyber activity directed at private and public entities” including denial of service attacks, data breaches and theft of intellectual property, and sensitive financial and strategic information.

It warned of malicious activity by “nation-states” and specifically cited Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

The report noted particular concern over attacks on so-called critical infrastructure, such as highways, power grids, communications systems, dams, and food production facilities which could lead to important spillover impacts beyond the target victims.

“If a firm owns a critical infrastructure asset, an attack against this firm could cause major disruption throughout the economy,” the report said.

It added that concerns were high around cyberattacks against the financial and energy sectors.

“These sectors are internally interconnected and interdependent with other sectors as well as robustly connected to the internet, and are thus at a highest risk for a devastating cyberattack that would ripple through the entire economy,” it said.

The report offered little in the way of new recommendations on improving cybersecurity, but noted that the situation is hurt by “insufficient data” as well as “underinvestment” in defensive systems by the private sector.

The document was issued a day after US officials blamed Russia for last year’s devastating “NotPetya” ransomware attack, calling it a Kremlin effort to destabilize Ukraine which then spun out of control, hitting companies in the US, Europe and elsewhere.

It said Russia, China, North Korea and other nation-states “often engage in sophisticated, targeted attacks,” with a specific emphasis on industrial espionage.

“If they have funding needs, they may conduct ransom attacks and electronic thefts of funds,” the report said.

But threats were also seen from “hacktivists,” or politically motivated groups, as well as criminal organizations, corporate competitors, company insiders and “opportunists.”

In an oft-repeated recommendation, the White House report said more data sharing could help thwart some attacks.

“The field of cybersecurity is plagued by insufficient data, largely because firms face a strong disincentive to report negative news,” the report said.

“Cyber protection could be greatly improved if data on past data breaches and cyberattacks were more readily shared across firms.”

These advances better enable brands to reach consumers across the full range of devices and channels, Adobe said in a press statement.

Adobe Sensei, the company’s AI and machine learning framework, further automates the delivery of personalized content, empowering marketers to work smarter and faster. New ways to pull creative content instantaneously from Adobe Creative Cloud into Marketing Cloud let brands integrate content and data more closely and deliver a seamlessly integrated experience, the statement added.

“Content will always play an integral role in building brand loyalty, with personalization, authenticity and design reigning supreme,” said Aseem Chandra, senior vice president, Digital Experience Strategic Marketing at Adobe. “The new content capabilities we are announcing today empower brands to deliver digital experiences that delight consumers and uniquely integrate content and data.”

Accoding to the statement, Experience Manager’s new intelligent content capabilities will be available next month and empower marketers to:

– Intelligently discover images: Smart Tags helps marketers discover relevant images in an instant. The capability leverages an algorithm to automatically add metadata keywords that can be easily trained to recognize a company’s image attributes and add relevant tag values. As a brand’s library and taxonomy expand, Adobe Sensei continues to learn and recognize business-specific image features more quickly.

– Automatically personalize content: Marketers can deliver content that intelligently adapts to individuals’ behavior and channels with new personalization capabilities. With Adobe Sensei, Smart Layout automatically generates the most effective layouts and assets for individuals. A restaurant can automatically serve up different images, menus and offers to someone who’s vegetarian or gluten intolerant, for instance. New fluid experiences combine Experience Manager’s ability to deliver content across marketing channels with Adobe Target for personalization and automatically adapts messages to specific situations. For example, a retailer can email customers to promote a store opening with personalized invitations to its launch party and targeted offers. That same content can be leveraged for Facebook and the retailer’s mobile app.

– Intelligently tailor images for different screens: With intelligent Dynamic Media capabilities, marketers can automate tasks in bulk and deliver experiences faster. Smart Imaging detects the type of device and available bandwidth, minimizing the file size of images by as much as 70 percent to ensure smooth and quick loading without loss of visual fidelity. Smart Crop uses Adobe Sensei to detect and crop to the focal point in any image, capturing the intended focus regardless of screen size. Within Smart Crop, marketers can automatically locate and generate high quality swatches from product imagery that show color or texture, for example.

– Adapt forms for a better experience: Filling out forms for enrollment can make or break a customer’s experience. With Automated Forms Conversion, organizations can automatically identify and quickly change input fields from a traditional PDF into a great mobile experience, reducing customer frustration and abandonment.

Adobe said new integrations between Marketing Cloud and Creative Cloud in 2018 will unify creative and marketer workflows:

– More easily access assets stored in Experience Manager from within Creative Cloud apps: Finding, modifying and reviewing enterprise assets requires creatives and marketers today to toggle back and forth between different solutions. To streamline collaboration, Adobe is enabling creatives to find the digital assets they need in Experience Manager Assets natively from Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator CC and Adobe InDesign CC through powerful search. Creatives can also enjoy cloud-based collaboration without leaving their creative apps as they work on work-in-progress to production-ready assets. Through this native flow of content, only Adobe lets brands seamlessly bring assets into the industry’s leading content management solution.

– Use 3D and source Adobe Stock content from Creative Cloud: To help marketers easily create and repurpose 3D models to bring new and engaging experiences to market faster, Adobe is integrating Experience Manager with Adobe Dimension CC. Marketers can seamlessly leverage 3D content designed in Creative Cloud and turn them into marketing assets. For example, a car manufacturer can upload a 3D model of a car in Experience Manager, make adjustments like changing the color and rendering the model into an image. Each rendered version can be saved as a marketing asset in minutes, bypassing costly photo shoots. Additionally, Experience Manager’s connection with Adobe Stock enables marketers to pull in Stock images and publish them across any channel.

Experience Manager, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, is leveraged by enterprise and mid-sized brands such as Hyatt, Mastercard, Nissan, Informatica, Philips, Manulife, Morningstar, Progrexion, UBS, Constellation Energy Group, Qantas Airlines and T-Mobile. Adobe’s leadership in content management is unrivaled (see Gartner and Forrester Research leadership rankings). Experience Manager integrates with Creative Cloud to seamlessly manage content and asset workflows at scale and Adobe Document Cloud to digitize document workflows. Integration with Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target provides deep insights into customer behavior and personalizes content.

He said Astra was highly impressed by Go-Jek’s effort to keep on innovating.

“I felt very proud when I read Fortune’s “Change the World” list and saw Go-Jek’s name there,” Prijono said, referring to the list of influential companies compiled by Fortune in 2017.

Go-Jek founder and CEO Nadiem Makarim said the investment from Astra was the largest the company had ever received.

“With this fund, our company will be able to create more innovations and make Indonesia a powerful country in Southeast Asia and the world,” he said.

Nadiem further explained that the partnership between Astra and Go-Jek will involve vehicle supply and financing.

Google announced through its blog on http://www.blog.google that it had invested in Go-Jek on Jan. 29.

Although the website did not specify the investment amount, two sources have told Reuters that Google was investing about $100 million in the company. (dpk/bbn)

 The event was attended by Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, as well as distinguished guests and former Olympians including Yao Ming (basketball) and Michelle Kwan (figure skating).

The Alibaba technology showcase is an interactive, future-looking experience that shows fans, athletes, organizing bodies and fellow partners Alibaba’s vision for a future Olympic Games – one that runs completely on the cloud. Visitors will explore different Games-related scenarios that illustrate the potential impact of Alibaba’s cloud services and e-commerce platform services on future Olympic Games.

“Our long-term partnership with the Olympic Games is the ultimate showcase for Alibaba, both in terms of what we stand for as a company and how we can use our technology to reimagine the Olympic Games for the digital era,” said Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba Group. “Like the Olympic Games, Alibaba believes in creating a level playing field, giving everyone the chance to compete on the global stage.”

“The IOC is entering into a new era of digitalization which we are doing in partnership with Alibaba,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “Alibaba is offering us a unique platform to expand the appeal of the Olympic Games and to keep our fans close. I am impressed by the company’s forward-looking, efficiently-driven work and look forward to ten more years of partnership and even more success.”The partnership between Alibaba Group and the IOC began in January 2017, when the two signed a historic, long-term strategic partnership to transform the Olympic Games for the digital era. Alibaba will serve as the official “Cloud Services” and “E-Commerce Platform Services” partner, and a founding partner of the Olympic Channel through the LA 2028 Games.

Alibaba Cloud ET Sports BrainAt today’s event, Alibaba Group chief marketing officer, Chris Tung, also unveiled Alibaba Cloud ET Sports Brain, a suite of cloud-based and AI-powered solutions that will drive the digital transformation of the Olympic Games to benefit fans, spectators, athletes, venues and organizers.Built on Alibaba Cloud’s high-performance infrastructure of world-class data centers, CDNs (content delivery networks) and market-leading security services, Alibaba Cloud ET Sports Brain merges data intelligence and machine learning to re-define engagement between fans, organizers, venues and athletes. Potential applications of Alibaba Cloud ET Sports Brain at the Olympic Games include:

Enhancing the Games Experience: Cloud-driven big data can transform the way fans engage with the Games, creating a seamless, mobile experience moving between offline and online. Fans and athletes would be able to get around the city, find their way to the best events, be prepared for the weather, and experience the Games in new ways with the latest immersive technology.

Smart City Planning for Host Cities: When future host cities start planning for Olympic Games venues, Alibaba Cloud can use AI to perform big data geospatial analysis to pick the optimal locations.

Safety and Security at the Games: Cloud-based biometric identification at sports venues that can improve access control, security and crowd management.

Improving Training Efficiency for Athletes: Deep machine learning can help model relationships between sleep, nutrition and the intensity of training as well as changes in temperature, wind speed, and other natural conditions to support athlete performance.

Expanding the Reach and Accessibility of Olympic Games Content: Cloudtechnology can improve storage, search and customization of content, making it easier for rights-holders to cover the Games and for fans to find and share their favorite moments anytime, anywhere.

“The opportunity for technology to positively influence, shape and reimagine the Olympic Games experience is tremendous and we haven’t even scratched the surface yet,” said Chris Tung, CMO of Alibaba Group. “Over the next ten years, Alibaba Cloud services will serve as the foundation of our efforts to drive the digital transformation of the Games, creating a more efficient and enjoyable experience for all audiences.”

As data continues to become even more distributed, dynamic and diverse, everything from IT infrastructures to application architectures to provisioning strategies will have to change in response to new realities in the hybrid cloud world. It’s in that context that we conceived our top five CTO predictions for 2018. We look forward to watching as the coming year unfolds.

1#: Data becomes self-aware

Today, we have processes that act on data and determine how it’s moved, managed and protected. But what if the data defined itself instead?

As data becomes self-aware and even more diverse than it is today, the metadata will make it possible for the data to proactively transport, categorize, analyze and protect itself. The flow between data, applications and storage elements will be mapped in real time as the data delivers the exact information a user needs at the exact time they need it. This also introduces the ability for data to self-govern. The data itself will determine who has the right to access, share and use it, which could have wider implications for external data protection, privacy, governance and sovereignty.

For example, if you are in a car accident there may be a number of different groups that want or demand access to the data from your car. A judge or insurance company may need it to determine liability, while an auto manufacturer may want it to optimize the performance of the brakes or other mechanical systems. When data is self-aware, it can be tagged so it controls who sees what parts of it and when, without additional time consuming and potentially error prone human intervention to subdivide, approve and disseminate the valuable data.

2#: Virtual machines become “rideshare” machines

It will be faster, cheaper and more convenient to manage increasingly distributed data using virtual machines, provisioned on webscale infrastructure, than it will be on real machines.

This can be thought of in terms of buying a car versus leasing one or using a rideshare service like Uber or Lyft. If you are someone that hauls heavy loads every day, it would make sense for you to buy a truck. However, someone else may only need a certain kind of vehicle

for a set period of time, making it more practical to lease. And then, there are those who only need a vehicle to get them from point A to point B, one time only: the type of vehicle doesn’t matter, just speed and convenience, so a rideshare service the best option.

This same thinking applies in the context of virtual versus physical machine instances. Custom hardware can be expensive, but for consistent, intensive workloads, it might make more sense to invest in the physical infrastructure. A virtual machine instance in the cloud supporting variable workloads would be like leasing: users can access the virtual machine without owning it or needing to know any details about it. And, at the end of the “lease,” it’s gone. Virtual machines provisioned on webscale infrastructure (that is, serverless computing) are like the rideshare service of computing where the user simply specifies the task that needs to be done. They leave the rest of the details for the cloud provider to sort out, making it more convenient and easier to use than traditional models for certain types of workloads.

3#: Data Will Grow Faster than the Ability to Transport It… and That’s OK!

It’s no secret that data has become incredibly dynamic and is being generated at an unprecedented rate that will greatly exceed the ability to transport it. However, instead of moving the data, the applications and resources needed to process it will be moved to the data and that has implications for new architectures like edge, core, and cloud. In the future, the amount of data ingested in the core will always be less than the amount generated at the edge, but this won’t happen by accident. It must be enabled very deliberately to ensure that the right data is being retained for later decision making.

For example, autonomous car manufacturers are adding sensors that will generate so much data that there’s no network fast enough between the car and data centers to move it. Historically, devices at the edge haven’t created a lot of data, but now with sensors in everything from cars to thermostats to wearables, edge data is growing so fast it will exceed the capacity of the network connections to the core. Autonomous cars and other edge devices require real-time analysis at the edge in order to make critical in-the-moment decisions. As a result, we will move the applications to the data.

4#: Evolving from “Big Data” to “Huge Data” Will Demand New Solid State-Driven Architectures

As the demand to analyze enormous sets of data ever more rapidly increases, we need to move the data closer to the compute resource. Persistent memory is what will allow ultra-low latency computing without data loss; and these latency demands will finally force software architectures to change and create new data driven opportunities for businesses. Flash technology has been a hot topic in the industry, however, the software being run on it didn’t really change, it just got faster.

This is being driven by the evolution of IT’s role in an organization. In the past, IT’s primary function would have been to automate and optimize processes like ordering, billing, accounts receivable and others. Today, IT is integral to enriching customer relationships by offering always-on services, mobile apps and rich web experiences. The next step will be to monetize the data being collected through various sensors and devices to create new business opportunities and it’s this step that will require new application architectures supported by technology like persistent memory.

5#: Emergence of Decentralized Immutable Mechanisms for Managing Data

Mechanisms to manage data in a trustworthy, immutable and truly distributed way (meaning no central authority) will emerge and have a profound impact on the data center. Blockchain is a prime example of this.

Decentralized mechanisms like blockchain challenge the traditional sense of data protection and management. Because there is no central point of control, such as a centralized server, it is impossible to change or delete information contained on a blockchain and all transactions are irreversible.

Think of it as a biological system. You have a host of small organisms and they each know what they’re supposed to do without having to communicate with anything else or be told what to do. Then you throw in a bunch of nutrients: in this case, data. The nutrients know what to do and it all starts operating in a cooperative manner, without any central control. Like a coral reef.

Current data centers and applications operate like commercially managed farms, with a central point of control (the farmer) managing the surrounding environment. The decentralized immutable mechanisms for managing data will offer microservices that the data can use to perform necessary functions. The microservices and data will work cooperatively, without overall centrally managed control.

That is the wish of the White House, which hopes to end funding for the costly program within a few years, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The US plan, the paper said, involves privatizing the ISS, a low-orbit space station piloted by the US space agency NASA and developed jointly with its Russian counterpart.

The station has allowed international crews — notably in collaboration with the Canadian, European and Japanese space agencies — to pursue scientific research in the environment of a low Earth orbit.

“The decision to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 does not imply that the platform itself will be deorbited at that time,” says an internal NASA document obtained by the Post. “It is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform.”

“NASA will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit,” the document says.

A budget request to be issued Monday by the Trump administration will call for $150 million to be spent on the ISS in the 2019 fiscal year, and more in succeeding years, “to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS… are operational when they are needed.”

To ensure a smooth transition, the White House would ask the private sector to provide market analyses and development plans, the Post reported.

The plan is expected to face stiff opposition. The United States has already spent some $100 billion to launch, operate and support the orbital station.

Beginning during the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009), NASA has subcontracted certain ISS support operations, starting with the supply flights now carried out by the SpaceX and Orbital ATK companies — a trend that gained speed during the Obama presidency.

It was not clear, however, how private companies might profit from taking over the aging station — its first section was launched in 1998.

NASA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.