This has been a dark week in the world of technology, with WikiLeaks' mammoth'Vault 7' document release making for some deeply unpleasant reading. The 8,761 files published by the whistle-blowing organisation allegedly came straight from the CIA, which is believed to have been using a variety of hacking methods to secretly spy on people through their electronic devices. The agency is also said to be capable of pinning the blame for cyber attacks on other countries. WikiLeaks is set to follow this up by publishing the redacted details of all of the CIA's cyber weapons, but will give technology companies initial exclusive access to them, to prepare themselves against hackers. Fortunately, there are also a number of simple steps that ordinary people can take to protect themselves, without going off-grid.

Keen Footwear sells its iconic boots, shoes and sandals through thousands of retailers worldwide. But the Oregon manufacturer, which is working hard to honor its commitment to become "American Built," does not have the manpower to support a dedicated information security staff. With a team of six information technology professionals -- all but two focused on handling the day-to-day client issues of its 450 employees -- the IT staff would fall behind in triaging incidents the company's security software flagged. "We fit squarely in the realm that we have the problems of all the big players, but we don't have the resources of a large enterprise," said Clark Flannery, Keen's director of IT in Portland. To solve the problem, Flannery augmented his IT staff with machines.

Add one more to the growing tally of security funding deals in early 2017. RiskSense, an Albuquerque, NM cyber-risk management company, announced this week that it had raised $14 million in a Series A round of financing. "The funding raised by existing investors Paladin Capital Group, Sun Mountain Capital, EPIC Ventures, and CenturyLink and a new investor Jump Capital will enable RiskSense to expand sales and marketing, enter new markets such as cyber-security insurance, and broaden and accelerate product development," Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala, co-founder and CEO of RiskSense, told eSecurity Planet. Spun off from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and acting as advisors to the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Community, RiskSense uses of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly machine learning, to help governments and enterprise organizations identify and prioritize risks to their networks and data. "RiskSense is changing the way organizations detect and manage cyber risk," said Mukkamala.

Microsoft has become the latest technology giant to respond to WikiLeaks' release of 8,761 documents allegedly detailing the CIA's spying methods. The files forming the enormous Vault 7 release claim that the agency was able to exploit zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows, which it used to secretly monitor users. Microsoft has encouraged customers to update to the latest version of its desktop operating system, saying that most of the vulnerabilities allegedly used by the CIA have already been patched. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Artificial Intelligence offers a lot of advantages for organisations by creating better and more efficient organisations, improving customer services with conversational AI and reducing a wide variety of risks in different industries. Although we are only at the beginning of the AI revolution that is upon us, we can already see that artificial intelligence will have a profound effect on our lives. As a result, AI governance and Explainable AI are becoming increasingly important, if we want to reap the benefits of artificial intelligence. Data governance and ethics have always been important and a few years ago, I developed ethical guidelines for organisations to follow, if they want to get started with big data. Such ethical guidelines are becoming more important, especially now since algorithms are taking over more and more decisions.

There is a gaping hole in the digital defences that companies use to keep out cyber thieves. The hole is the global shortage of skilled staff that keeps security hardware running, analyses threats and kicks out intruders. Currently, the global security industry is lacking about one million trained workers, suggests research by ISC2 - the industry body for security professionals. The deficit looks set to grow to 1.8 million within five years, it believes. The shortfall is widely recognised and gives rise to other problems, says Ian Glover, head of Crest - the UK body that certifies the skills of ethical hackers.

Fresh advancements in IT can target a number of factors, these may include fluidity and navigation, storage and security, costs and resources, aesthetics and customer engagement - broadly speaking, making things much better. Yet with such advancements, comes a great responsibility, not only for the end-consumer adopting new tech but the IT professionals who have to make it happen! The onus is on them to learn new skills in order to support contemporary applications and maintain or upgrade their performance when required. Keeping up to date with the latest technology has never been so poignant for IT professionals. If there's a demand from commercial settings to harness the latest things, then there's a natural calling for people to install, maintain and enhance them.

Marie Kratz, Professor at ESSEC Business School and Director of ESSEC CREAR (Center of Research in Econo-finance and Actuarial sciences on Risk), shares her thoughts about how artificial intelligence will re-shape the actuarial profession. We've all experienced those minor, sometimes major, mishaps in life – your bike gets stolen, you have a car accident, you drop your computer or, worse still, you wake up one morning to find the living room swamped in 3 feet of muddy floodwater. And we have all witnessed the drama of natural catastrophe on the news. The camera covers the victims, some considering themselves lucky, others overcome by the emotion of losing their hard-earned belongings or loved ones – all of them in wait for the complications that will come, not least the financial ones. This is where the insurance company comes in.

A camera shield for a computer, which allows the user to block the camera when not in use. SAN FRANCISCO – So it looks as if the CIA could potentially break into most smart phone or computer networks, at least according to the stolen documents released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday. Whether you have anything to hide or not, it's a good reminder that in a digital age, keeping your life private requires some work. Here's a list of nine things everyone should be doing already to keep their information relatively confidential, plus four more for the truly paranoid. The most common way the CIA's cyber tools, and hackers for that matter, get into your devices are via phishing emails or texts.

With the CIA's ability to'breach almost anything connected to the internet' made public, many citizens have begun questioning their devices. A clip has surfaced showing an anonymous woman asking Amazon's Alexa a series of questions - starting with'would you lie to me' and finishing with'Alexa, are you connected to the CIA?' The virtual assistant swiftly responded to the first question, but shutdown after it was interrogated about its connections with the US government agency. A video appeared on Reddit that has people questioning their virtual assistants. A woman is seen asking Amazon's Alexa a series of questions. ' 'I am not always right, but I would never intentionally lie to you or anyone else,' responded Alexa. Alexa answered, 'The Unites States Central Intelligence Agency, CIA'.