"I think we're just seeing the beginnings of more consolidation in cybersecurity. The space is too crowded," said Rama Sekhar, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, based in Palo Alto, Calif. Deal value in the information-security market reached $21.6 billion in the first nine months of 2019, according to data from Statista Inc., exceeding 2018's total of $15 billion. Most of the consolidation is expected to affect companies that specialize in one aspect of cybersecurity and cannot scale to become a platform with multiple capabilities, Mr. Sekhar said. Some deal making will come from larger vendors picking off smaller competitors or seeking to add capabilities to their offerings.

As vehicles become smarter and more connected to Wi-Fi networks, hackers will have more opportunities to breach vehicle systems, warns a study. Connecting your smartphone through an USB port can give a hacker backdoor access to data from both your phone and your car. Additionally, Google Android users who can download apps from unverified sites are even more at risk. The research, published in the Journal of Crime and Justice, applied a criminal justice theory to current forms of vehicle security and provided recommendations for manufacturers and owners to improve safety. "The risk with vehicles isn't just personal data – though that is still a real concern," said Thomas Holt, Professor at Michigan State University in the US.

A NASA-operated satellite designed to hunt for distant planets may be gone for good. According to the agency, NASA lost contact with its Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics (ASTERIA), a briefcase-sized spacecraft designed to study planets outside our solar system. Communications were lost on December 5 according to NASA and the agency will continue trying to reach it until March 2020. 'The ASTERIA project achieved outstanding results during its three -month prime mission and its nearly two-year-long extended mission,' said JPL's Lorraine Fesq, current ASTERIA program manager. 'Although we are disappointed that we lost contact with the spacecraft, we are thrilled with all that we have accomplished with this impressive CubeSat.'

Security has been upgraded at the Capitol after the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and prompted vows of retaliation from Iran. "Never underestimate the Iranians," one senior congressional source told Fox News. "They have a very strong presence here." Another source added, "We don't know what they're going to do," noting that "raising the security levels to some degree is prudent." Fox News is told one area of constant concern on Capitol Hill is a potential cyberattack.

When applying for a job these days, there's a chance your interviewer could be a robot. A growing number of companies are embracing artificial intelligence technology to sift through job candidates. The state of Illinois has a new law, effective this week, that requires companies to disclose that AI is being used in interviews and how. When a job applicant sits down for a video interview, AI can pick up on a lot of things. "You know, if he twitches too much or if he moves too much, or if his voice changes," said Illinois state Rep. Jaime Andrade, who co-sponsored the law. He said we don't know yet whether AI really picks the best candidates, and he's not sure it's always fair to job applicants.

The sheer amount of data and its interconnectedness in 2020--along with the determination of cybercriminals to devise new ways to access it--will add up to trouble, cybersecurity experts warn. Clayton Calvert, a consultant at netlogx, an IT security and risk assessment firm, says 2020 will provide "an ever-evolving threat landscape." "There is no such thing as complete security, so enterprises are adopting cyber resiliency in order to bounce back quickly from continuous security breaches," Calvert says. He offers a number of ways that enterprises can be resilient. One way is to combine machine learning and automation with visibility to fight cyberattacks, such as through the use of security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) products. "This type of machine learning helps reduce operational errors and helps enterprises self-manage, self-defend, and potentially self-heal against risks and breaches," Calvert says.

Dominic Cummings, a senior adviser to UK prime minister Boris Johnson, has said he wants the UK government to hire "weirdos and misfits with odd skills" to apply science to the civil service. While primarily a quirky job ad, his blog post also offers a glimpse into how he sees scientific research transforming the government. As well as listing categories of people he would like to hire – including mathematicians and physicists – the blog post also focuses on the utility of data science, artificial intelligence and the "science of prediction". But does his vision make sense? Can policy-making really be improved by building digital models of reality, or applying machine-learning to government data, as Cummings appears keen on?

Puut Wallet is the world's first This is a major breakthrough that could save lives.

The U.S. Postal Service plans to reduce wait times on about 80 million customer calls fielded annually through a partnership with Google Cloud announced Thursday. USPS awarded Carahsoft -- Google Cloud's authorized distributor for public sector clients -- a cloud contract with a $50 million ceiling covering customer experience and mail delivery solutions. Increased delivery competition from new carrier services like Amazon has the postal agency reinventing itself, and call center customer experience is "one of the bigger pain points," Mike Daniels, vice president of global public sector at Google Cloud, told FedScoop. "Their call wait times are very unacceptable. They're limited in what they can do with respect to staffing; you can't just throw more people at it," Daniels said.

Allowing machines to select and target humans sounds like something out of an apocalyptic sci-fi movie. But as we enter another decade, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we're teetering on the edge of that dangerous threshold. Countries including China, Israel, South Korea, Russia and the United States are already developing and deploying precursors to fully autonomous weapons, such as armed drones that are piloted remotely. These countries are investing heavily in military applications of artificial intelligence with the goal of gaining a technological advantage in next-generation preparedness for the battlefield. These killer robots, once activated, would select and engage targets without further human intervention.