WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Increased adoption of cloud applications, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, by private users has increased concern about use of cloud information for cybercrimes such as child exploitation, illegal drug trafficking and illegal firearm transactions. Researchers at Purdue University have developed a cloud forensic model using machine learning to collect digital evidence related to illegal activities on cloud storage applications. "It is crucial to detect illegal cloud activities in motion," said Fahad Salamh, a PhD student in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, who helped create the system. "Our technology identifies and analyzes in real time incidents related to these cybercrimes through transactions uploaded to cloud storage applications." Salamh worked on the technology with Marcus Rogers and Umit Karabiyik, professors in Polytechnic who specialize in computer and information technology.

Increased adoption of cloud applications, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, by private users has increased concern about use of cloud information for cybercrimes such as child exploitation, illegal drug trafficking and illegal firearm transactions. Researchers at Purdue University have developed a cloud forensic model using machine learning to collect digital evidence related to illegal activities on cloud storage applications. "It is crucial to detect illegal cloud activities in motion," said Fahad Salamh, a Ph.D. student in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, who helped create the system. "Our technology identifies and analyzes in real time incidents related to these cybercrimes through transactions uploaded to cloud storage applications." Salamh worked on the technology with Marcus Rogers and Umit Karabiyik, professors in Polytechnic who specialize in computer and information technology.

IBM's Watson supercomputer to fight real-world cyber security Seven months after first announcing that it was teaching its Watson cognitive technology platform to fight cybercrime, IBM Corp. has launched it into the real world, at least in test mode. The Watson for Cyber Security platform has been designed to discover behaviour patterns and evidence of hidden cyber attacks and threats that could otherwise be missed by existing security platforms. It does so by using Watson's ability to reason and learn from unstructured data, including the 80 percent of all data on the Internet that traditional security tools cannot process, including blogs, articles, videos, reports, alerts and other information. The software incorporates capabilities such data mining for outlier detection, graphical presentation tools and techniques for finding connections between related data points in different documents, including the ability to identify warnings of new types of malware from even obscure sources. In the initial beta phase, customers are not being charged for the service. Some 40 organisations signed on for the beta test, including Sun Life Financial, the University of Rochester Medical Center, Avnet, SCANA Corp., Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., California Polytechnic State University, the University of New Brunswick and Smarttech.

DeepMind has surpassed the human mind on the Go board. Watson has crushed America's trivia gods on Jeopardy. But ask DeepMind to play Monopoly or Watson to play Family Feud, and they won't even know where to start. Because these artificial intelligence engines weren't specifically designed to play these games and aren't smart enough to figure them out by themselves, they'll give nonsensical answers. They'll struggle greatly, and humans will outperform them--by a lot. Assaf Baciu is co-founder and senior vice president of Persado, a cognitive content-generation company in New York.

You may know Watson as IBM's Jeopardy-winning, cookbook-writing, dress-designing, weather-predicting supercomputer-of-all trades. Starting today, 40 organizations will rely upon the clever computers cognitive power to help spot cybercrime. The Watson for Cybersecurity beta program helps IBM too, because Watson's real-world experience will help it hone its skills and work within specific industries. After all, the threats that keep security experts at Sun Life Financial up at night differ from those that spook the cybersleuths at University of New Brunswick. IBM researchers started training Watson in the fundamentals of cybersecurity last spring so the computer could begin to analysize and prevent threats.

You may know Watson as IBM's Jeopardy-winning, cookbook-writing, dress-designing, weather-predicting supercomputer-of-all trades. Starting today, 40 organizations will rely upon the clever computers cognitive power to help spot cybercrime. The Watson for Cybersecurity beta program helps IBM too, because Watson's real-world experience will help it hone its skills and work within specific industries. After all, the threats that keep security experts at Sun Life Financial up at night differ from those that spook the cybersleuths at University of New Brunswick. IBM researchers started training Watson in the fundamentals of cybersecurity last spring so the computer could begin to analysize and prevent threats.