In cybersecurity and risk assessment, a threat actor (or threat agents, attackers, or adversaries) is a person, group, organisation, state, or other entity with the ability to cause, carry, transmit, support, or exploit a threat. Threat actors are commonly analysed according to their motivations, resources, technical capability, access to systems, relationship to a target, and degree of connection to state authority. They may exploit vulnerabilities, conduct social engineering, steal or monetise data, disrupt operations, or support other actors who carry out such activity. Because the term covers a wide range of actors, researchers and security organisations use taxonomies that distinguish between groups such as cybercriminals, state-linked actors, ideologically motivated actors, thrill seekers or trolls, insiders, and competitors. Threat actor classifications are used in risk management, cyber threat intelligence, and incident response to connect observed behaviour with possible objectives and likely future activity. The categories are not always mutually exclusive: the same actor may combine criminal, ideological, commercial, or state-linked motivations, and different organisations may use different names for similar actors. == Risk assessment and security management == In risk assessment, threat actor analysis is used to identify who or what may create, carry, transmit, support, or exploit a threat, and how that actor relates to the system being assessed. Rausand and Haugen classify threat actors by their relationship to the system, distinguishing between internal and external actors, and by intent, distinguishing between intentional and unintentional actors. Threat actor classification may also support incident investigation. Rogers argued that actor categories could be inferred from observable case points, such as tools used, messages left, data targeted, forensic knowledge, and the degree of damage, allowing investigators to assess likely motivation and skill level. Later work similarly linked actor classification to operational analysis. Chng, Lu, Kumar and Yau proposed a framework connecting hacker types, motivations and typical strategies, arguing that observed behaviour before or during an attack can help analysts infer the likely type of actor involved. At the strategic level, actor analysis may consider an actor's resources, capabilities, degree of state involvement, motivations and objectives. == Landscape == The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research has described the contemporary cyberthreat landscape as involving an increasingly diverse and interconnected set of actors, including state-led operations, cybercriminal syndicates, ideological hacktivists, commercial cyber mercenaries, private companies and civilian volunteers. Its 2026 report argued that these actors vary in resources, technical sophistication and relationships with states, making it traditional distinctions between state, civilian combatant roles, and legitimate and illegitimate conduct harder to apply. == Academic taxonomies == Early taxonomies classified hackers by activity, skill, motivation, or criminal profile. Landreth proposed six categories based on activity: novice, student, tourist, crasher, and thief. Hollinger classified computer misuse into pirates, browsers, and crackers, describing a progression from less-skilled activity to more technically serious offences. Chantler used attributes including activity, skill, knowledge, motivation, and duration of involvement to distinguish between an elite group, neophytes, and "losers and lamers". Parker proposed seven profiles of cybercriminals: pranksters, hacksters, malicious hackers, personal problem solvers, career criminals, extreme advocates, and malcontents, addicts, and irrational or incompetent people. In 2000, Marc Rogers proposed a taxonomy of hackers with seven, non-mutually-exclusive categories: newbie/tool kit users, cyber-punks, internals, coders, old guard hackers, professional criminals, and cyber-terrorists. Rausand and Haugen distinguish between internal and external threat actors, and between intentional and unintentional threat actors. Internal actors have some relationship with, access to, or position inside the system or organisation, while external actors operate from outside it. Intentional actors seek to create, exploit, or support a threat event, whereas unintentional actors may cause or enable a threat event through error, negligence, accident, or lack of awareness. Rogers later revised his hacker taxonomy into Novices, Cyber-punks, Internals, Petty Thieves, Virus Writers, Old Guard hackers, Professional Criminals, Information Warriors, and, more tentatively, Political Activists. In the model, motivation is grouped into four broad domains: curiosity, notoriety, revenge, and financial gain. A 2022 review by Chng, Lu, Kumar and Yau examined 11 hacker typologies published over three decades and proposed a unified framework linking hacker types, motivations, and strategies. The framework identified 13 hacker types and seven motivations, and argued that observed strategies during an attack can help analysts infer the likely type of actor involved. == Government taxonomies == Taxonomies of threat actors by governments are much more likely to include state-level threat actors. In the United States the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) uses the term threat source in its risk-assessment guidance: organisations are directed to identify and characterise threat sources of concern, including capability, intent and targeting for adversarial threat sources, and the range of effects for non-adversarial threat sources. NIST treats threat-source identification as part of the risk-assessment process, alongside identifying threat events, vulnerabilities, likelihood and impact. In the EU, European Union Agency for Cybersecurity publishes the annual ENISA Threat Landscape, which analyses cyber incidents and adversary behaviour affecting the European Union. The 2025 report analysed selected incidents from the previous year and grouped activity around cybercrime, state-aligned activity, foreign information manipulation and interference, and hacktivism. In ENISA's 2025 analysis, hacktivist activity dominated reporting, representing almost 80% of recorded incidents and consisting mainly of low-level distributed denial-of-service operations. ENISA also reported increasing convergence between hacktivism, cybercrime and state-nexus activity, including state-aligned use of hacktivist personas, hacktivist adoption of ransomware, and false-flag or impersonation activity. At the UN level, A 2026 report by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research described the cyberthreat landscape as involving state-led operations, cybercriminal syndicates, ideological hacktivists, commercial cyber mercenaries, and civilian volunteers, with actors varying in resources, technical sophistication, and links to states. Canada defines threat actors as states, groups, or individuals who aim to cause harm by exploiting a vulnerability with malicious intent. A threat actor must be trying to gain access to information systems to access or alter data, devices, systems, or networks. The Japanese government's National Centre of Incident Readiness and Strategy (NISC) was established in 2015 to create a "free, fair and secure cyberspace" in Japan. The NICS created a cybersecurity strategy in 2018 that outlines nation-states and cybercrime to be some of the most key threats. It also indicates that terrorist usage of the cyberspace needs to be monitored and understood. The Security Council of the Russian Federation published the cyber security strategy doctrine in 2016. This strategy highlights the following threat actors as a risk to cyber security measures: nation-state actors, cyber criminals, and terrorists. == Techniques == Threat actors use techniques like Social engineering (security), and Phishing, alongside technical exploits like Cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and denial-of-service attacks. == Limitations == In practice, actor categories may overlap (Edward Snowden for example), and the same activity may combine features associated with hacktivism, cybercrime and state-linked operations. The lines between hacktivism, cybercrime and state-nexus activity had continued to blur, with shared toolsets, overlapping methods, fake personas, hacktivist adoption of ransomware, and cybercriminal or state-linked actors masquerading as other groups. Threat actor analysis also has limits as a risk-management method. NIST notes that risk assessments depend on their purpose, scope, assumptions, constraints, information sources, risk model and analytic approach, and that assessments are tied to particular time frames and organisational contexts. NIST also warns that simple threat-vulnerability pairing may be undesirable or problematic where there are many threats and vulnerabilities, and recom
Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint, often referred to as DPaint, is a bitmap graphics editor created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts and published for the then-new Amiga 1000 in November 1985. A series of updated versions followed, some of which were ported to other platforms. An MS-DOS release with support for the 256 color VGA standard became popular for creating pixel graphics in video games in the 1990s. Author Dan Silva previously worked on the Cut & Paste word processor (1984), also from Electronic Arts. == History == Deluxe Paint began as an in-house art development tool called Prism. As author Dan Silva added features to Prism, it was developed as a showcase product to coincide with the Amiga's debut in 1985. Upon release, it was quickly embraced by the Amiga community and became the de facto graphics (and later animation) editor for the platform. Amiga manufacturer Commodore International later commissioned EA to create version 4.5 AGA to bundle with the new Advanced Graphics Architecture chipset (A1200, A4000) capable Amigas. Version 5 was the last release after Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994. Early versions of Deluxe Paint were available in protected and non copy-protected versions, the latter retailing for a slightly higher price. The copy protection scheme was later dropped. Deluxe Paint was first in a series of products from the Electronic Arts Tools group—then later moved to the ICE (for Interactivity, Creativity, and Education) group—which included such Amiga programs as Deluxe Music Construction Set (preceded by Music Construction Set for the Apple II), Deluxe Video, and the Studio series of paint programs for the Mac. With the development of Deluxe Paint, EA introduced the ILBM and ANIM file format standards for graphics. While widely used on the Amiga, these formats never gained widespread end user acceptance on other platforms, but were heavily used by game development companies. Deluxe Paint was used by LucasArts to make graphics for their adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island, and the name of a particular filename used to store the main protagonist Guybrush Threepwood was probably at the origin of his peculiar name. One of the main artist developer of the game, Mark Ferrari, in an interview for The Making of Monkey Island 30th Anniversary Documentary remembers that "there was a pulldown menu in DPaint called brushes, so character sprites were referred to as brushes", and the male protagonist was simply "the guy.brush" until the artist Steve Purcell suggested to take the very name "Guybrush". The author Ron Gilbert remembers that the PC DOS version of the file was named "guybrush.bbm". == Versions == === Amiga === Deluxe Paint I was released in 1985. A major feature was animation by using color cycling. The Amiga natively supports indexed color, where a pixel's color value does not carry any RGB hue information but instead is an index to a color palette (a collection of unique color values). By adjusting the color value in the palette, all pixels with that palette value change simultaneously in the image or animation, creating cyclic movement in the image. In the Christmas demo files on the Deluxe Paint I disk, this kind of animation (which is toggled by pressing the tab key) is used to depict falling snowflakes, a blinking Christmas tree, and a roaring fire in the fireplace. In 1986, Deluxe Paint II was introduced, which added many convenient features such as pattern and gradient fill, which could be selected by right-clicking on a fill tool. An effects menu with e.g. perspective transformation was also added. The screen format could now be changed from a dedicated selection page. Deluxe Paint III appeared in 1989 and added support for Extra Halfbrite. New editing modes allowed one to stencil certain colors to protect them, so it is possible to e.g. paint a landscape from front to back, with the foreground protected by a stencil. A major new feature of Deluxe Paint III was the ability to create cel-like animation, and animbrushes (1MB of RAM is needed for animation). These let the user pick up a section of an animation as an "animbrush", which can then be placed onto the canvas while it animates. Deluxe Paint III was one of the first paint programs to support animbrushes. This is similar to copy and paste, except one can pick up more than one image. Deluxe Paint IV (introduced in 1991), which did not include Silva as the lead programmer, offered significant new features like non-bitplane-indexed Hold-and-Modify support for creating images with up to 4,096 colors. Animation support was improved by adding a light table, i.e. onion skinning, and AnimBrush morphing. The color mixer was now a HAM region at the bottom of the screen (instead of a floating window as before) and allowed mixing adjacent colors similar to a real palette. Deluxe Paint 4.5 AGA appeared the following year, addressing the stability issues and providing support for the new A1200 and A4000 AGA machines and a revamped screen mode interface. It appeared in both standalone and Commodore-bundled versions. The final release, Deluxe Paint V, in 1995, supported true 24-bit RGB images. However, using only the AGA native chipset, the 24-bit RGB color was only held in computer memory, the on-screen image was displayed in HAM8 (18-bit color). === Apple IIGS === DeluxePaint II for the Apple IIGS was developed by Brent Iverson and released in 1987. === MS-DOS === Deluxe Paint II for MS-DOS was released in 1988, It required MS-DOS 2.0 and 640 kB of RAM. It supports CGA, EGA, MCGA, VGA, Hercules and Tandy IBM PC-compatible graphic cards. Deluxe Paint II Enhanced was released in 1989, requiring MS-DOS 2.11 and 640 kB of RAM. It supports resolutions up to 800x600 pixels with 256 colors. Deluxe Paint II Enhanced 2.0, released in 1994, was the most successful MS-DOS version, and was compatible with PC Paintbrush PCX image files. The MS-DOS conversion was done by Brent Iverson with the enhanced features by Steve Shaw. It supports CGA, EGA, MCGA, VGA, Hercules, Tandy, and Amstrad video cards, as well as early Super VGA video cards enabling it to support up to 800 × 600 with 256 (from 262,144) colors and 1024 × 768 with 16 colors. The sister product Deluxe Paint Animation (only for 320×200 pixels and 256 colors) was widely used, especially in video game development. === Atari ST === Deluxe Paint ST was developed by ArtisTech Development, published by Electronic Arts, and was released in 1990. It supports the Atari STE 4096 color palette and animated graphics. Features advertised for the Atari ST version include 3D perspective, design your own fonts, mirror symmetry, multi-color airbrushing & animations, printing up to poster size, split-screen magnification with variable zoom, and working on animations (including multiple animations). == Workflow == "[" and "]" hotkeys step through the indexed palette, turning indexed-pixel-painting into a fast two-handed mouse+keys process, and the right mouse button paints with the background color. For example, transparency is obtained as simply as selecting a background color index (a single right click on the palette GUI to change). colors could be locked from editing by use of a stencil (a list of color indices whose pixels should not be altered in the image data) and simple color-cycling animations could be created using contiguous entries in the palette. This was easy to change the hue and tone of a section of the image by altering the corresponding colors in the palette. (The specific section needed to use a dedicated part of the palette for this technique to work.) Brushes can be cut from the background by using the box, freehand, or polygon selection tools. They can then be used in the same manner as any other brush or pen. This functionality is simpler to use than the "stamp" tool of Photoshop or Alpha Channels as provided in later programs. Brushes can be rotated and scaled, even in 3D. After a brush is selected, it appears attached to the mouse cursor, providing an exact preview of what will be drawn. This allows precise pixel positioning of brushes. Animations stored in IFF ANIM format are delta compressed making animations both smaller and faster to playback. == Reception == Compute! criticized the documentation of the first release of DeluxePaint as inadequate, but stated that "DeluxePaint is a visual arts program of immense scope and flexibility". In later versions the documentation was much improved; for instance DeluxePaint IV came with a 300-page manual. Deluxe Paint was a hit for EA. The main line of the series, particularly installments one to three, has won a total of at least nine awards from independent publications and organizations, including three Amiga-specific awards. Deluxe Paint III also won Commodore International's Enterprise and Vision award in 1990, becoming the first software to win the award, for what the company's judges believed to be best utilizing the Amiga's graphical capabilities. Deluxe Pai
Information security
Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data or the unlawful use, disclosure, disruption, deletion, corruption, modification, inspection, recording, or devaluation of information. It also involves actions intended to reduce the adverse impacts of such incidents. Protected information may take any form, e.g., electronic or physical, tangible (e.g., paperwork), or intangible (e.g., knowledge). Information security's primary focus is the balanced protection of data confidentiality, integrity, and availability (known as the CIA triad, unrelated to the US government organization) while maintaining a focus on efficient policy implementation, all without hampering organization productivity. This is largely achieved through a structured risk management process. To standardize this discipline, academics and professionals collaborate to offer guidance, policies, and industry standards on passwords, antivirus software, firewalls, encryption software, legal liability, security awareness and training, and so forth. This standardization may be further driven by a wide variety of laws and regulations that affect how data is accessed, processed, stored, transferred, and destroyed. While paper-based business operations are still prevalent, requiring their own set of information security practices, enterprise digital initiatives are increasingly being emphasized, with information assurance now typically being dealt with by information technology (IT) security specialists. These specialists apply information security to technology (most often some form of computer system). IT security specialists are almost always found in any major enterprise/establishment due to the nature and value of the data within larger businesses. They are responsible for keeping all of the technology within the company secure from malicious attacks that often attempt to acquire critical private information or gain control of the internal systems. There are many specialist roles in Information Security including securing networks and allied infrastructure, securing applications and databases, security testing, information systems auditing, business continuity planning, electronic record discovery, and digital forensics. == Standards == Information security standards are guidelines generally outlined in published materials that aim to protect a user's or an organization's cyber environment from threats. This environment includes the users themselves, hardware such as devices and networks, software such as applications or services, and any information in storage or transit. These standards comprise security concepts, technologies, and guidelines to deal with an adverse event. They may also include assessment criteria and certification for organizations implementing a minimum level of security. These standards are developed by various international and national bodies to prevent or mitigate cyber-attacks, ensure consistency among developers, and establish a minimum standard in industries susceptible to an attack. The ISO/IEC 27000 family, published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), provides information about the guidelines and requirements for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). The Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408) provides guidelines on evaluating and certifying the security of a system. The IEC 62443 establishes security standards for automation and control systems. Similarly, the ISO/SAE 21434, ETSI EN 303 645, and EN 18031 provide standards for road vehicles, the Internet of Things, and radio-based systems respectively. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) is a set of guidelines developed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology to help organizations with risk management. NIST also publishes various Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and Special Publications. The United Kingdom has introduced Cyber Essentials, which is a certification scheme to protect organizations against common security threats. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes the Essential Eight mitigation strategies. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) regulates handling of cardholder data in order to reduce credit card fraud. UL has published standards related to specific industries such as UL 2900-2-3 for security and life safety signaling systems and UL-2900-2-1 for healthcare and wellness systems. == Threats == Information security threats come in many different forms. Some of the most common threats today are software attacks, theft of intellectual property, theft of identity, theft of equipment or information, sabotage, and information extortion. Viruses, worms, phishing attacks, and Trojan horses are a few common examples of software attacks. The theft of intellectual property has also been an extensive issue for many businesses. Identity theft is the attempt to act as someone else usually to obtain that person's personal information or to take advantage of their access to vital information through social engineering. Sabotage usually consists of the destruction of an organization's website in an attempt to cause loss of confidence on the part of its customers. Information extortion consists of theft of a company's property or information as an attempt to receive a payment in exchange for returning the information or property back to its owner, as with ransomware. One of the most functional precautions against these attacks is to conduct periodical user awareness. Governments, military, corporations, financial institutions, hospitals, non-profit organizations, and private businesses amass a great deal of confidential information about their employees, customers, products, research, and financial status. Should confidential information about a business's customers or finances or new product line fall into the hands of a competitor or hacker, a business and its customers could suffer widespread, irreparable financial loss, as well as damage to the company's reputation. From a business perspective, information security must be balanced against cost; the Gordon-Loeb Model provides a mathematical economic approach for addressing this concern. For the individual, information security has a significant effect on privacy, which is viewed very differently in various cultures. == History == Since the early days of communication, diplomats and military commanders understood that it was necessary to provide some mechanism to protect the confidentiality of correspondence and to have some means of detecting tampering. Julius Caesar is credited with the invention of the Caesar cipher c. 50 B.C., which was created in order to prevent his secret messages from being read should a message fall into the wrong hands. However, for the most part protection was achieved through the application of procedural handling controls. Sensitive information was marked up to indicate that it should be protected and transported by trusted persons, guarded and stored in a secure environment or strong box. As postal services expanded, governments created official organizations to intercept, decipher, read, and reseal letters (e.g., the U.K.'s Secret Office, founded in 1653). In the mid-nineteenth century more complex classification systems were developed to allow governments to manage their information according to the degree of sensitivity. For example, the British Government codified this, to some extent, with the publication of the Official Secrets Act in 1889. Section 1 of the law concerned espionage and unlawful disclosures of information, while Section 2 dealt with breaches of official trust. A public interest defense was soon added to defend disclosures in the interest of the state. A similar law was passed in India in 1889, The Indian Official Secrets Act, which was associated with the British colonial era and used to crack down on newspapers that opposed the Raj's policies. A newer version was passed in 1923 that extended to all matters of confidential or secret information for governance. By the time of the First World War, multi-tier classification systems were used to communicate information to and from various fronts, which encouraged greater use of code making and breaking sections in diplomatic and military headquarters. Encoding became more sophisticated between the wars as machines were employed to scramble and unscramble information. The establishment of computer security inaugurated the history of information security. The need for such appeared during World War II. The volume of information shared by the Allied countries during the Second World War necessitated formal alignment of classification systems and procedural controls. An arcane range of markings evol
Dashboard (computing)
In computer information systems, a dashboard is a type of graphical user interface which often provides at-a-glance views of data relevant to a particular objective or process through a combination of visualizations and summary information. In other usage, "dashboard" is another name for "progress report" or "report" and is considered a form of data visualization. The dashboard is often accessible by a web browser and is typically linked to regularly updating data sources. Dashboards are often interactive and facilitate users to explore the data themselves, usually by clicking into elements to view more detailed information. The term dashboard originates from the automobile dashboard where drivers monitor the major functions at a glance via the instrument panel. == History == The idea of digital dashboards followed the study of decision support systems in the 1970s. Early predecessors of the modern business dashboard were first developed in the 1980s in the form of Executive Information Systems (EISs). Due to problems primarily with data refreshing and handling, it was soon realized that the approach wasn't practical as information was often incomplete, unreliable, and spread across too many disparate sources. Thus, EISs hibernated until the 1990s when the information age quickened pace and data warehousing, and online analytical processing (OLAP) allowed dashboards to function adequately. Despite the availability of enabling technologies, the dashboard use didn't become popular until later in that decade, with the rise of key performance indicators (KPIs), and the introduction of Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton's balanced scorecard. In the late 1990s, Microsoft promoted a concept known as the Digital Nervous System and "digital dashboards" were described as being one leg of that concept. Today, the use of dashboards forms an important part of Business Performance Management (BPM). Initially dashboards were used for monitoring purposes, now with the advancement of technology, dashboards are being used for more analytical purposes. The use of dashboards has now been incorporating; scenario analysis, drill down capabilities, and presentation format flexibility. == Benefits == Digital dashboards allow managers to monitor the contribution of the various departments in their organization. In addition, they enable “rolling up” of information to present a consolidated view across an organization. To gauge exactly how well an organization is performing overall, digital dashboards allow you to capture and report specific data points from each department within the organization, thus providing a "snapshot" of performance. Benefits of using digital dashboards include: Visual presentation of performance measures Ability to identify and correct negative trends Measure efficiencies/inefficiencies Ability to generate detailed reports showing new trends Ability to make more informed decisions based on collected business intelligence Dashboards offers a holistic view of the entire business as it gives the manager a bird's eye view into the performance of sales, data inventory, web traffic, social media analytics and other associated data that is visually presented on a single dashboard. Dashboards lead to better management of marketing/financial strategies as a dashboard for the display of marketing data makes the process of marketing easier and more reliable as compared to doing it manually. Web analytics play a crucial role in shaping the marketing strategy of many businesses. Dashboards also facilitate for better tracking of sales and financial reporting as the data is more precise and in one area. Lastly, dashboards offer for better customer service through monitoring because they keep both the managers and the clients updated on the project progress through automated emails and notifications. == Align strategies and organizational goals == Gain total visibility of all systems instantly Quick identification of data outliers and correlations Consolidated reporting into one location Available on mobile devices to quickly access metrics == Classification == Dashboards can be broken down according to role and are either strategic, analytical, operational, or informational. Dashboards are the 3rd step on the information ladder, demonstrating the conversion of data to increasingly valuable insights. Strategic dashboards support managers at any level in an organization and provide the quick overview that decision-makers need to monitor the health and opportunities of the business. Dashboards of this type focus on high-level measures of performance and forecasts. Strategic dashboards benefit from static snapshots of data (daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly) that are not constantly changing from one moment to the next. Dashboards for analytical purposes often include more context, comparisons, and history, along with subtler performance evaluators. In addition, analytical dashboards typically support interactions with the data, such as drilling down into the underlying details. Dashboards for monitoring operations are often designed differently from those that support strategic decision making or data analysis and often require monitoring of activities and events that are constantly changing and might require attention and response at a moment's notice. == Types of dashboards == Digital dashboards may be laid out to track the flows inherent in the business processes that they monitor. Graphically, users may see the high-level processes and then drill down into low-level data. This level of detail is often buried deep within the corporate enterprise and otherwise unavailable to the senior executives. Three main types of digital dashboards dominate the market today: desktop software applications, web-browser-based applications, and desktop applications are also known as desktop widgets. The last are driven by a widget engine. Both Desktop and Browser-based providers enable the distribution of dashboards via a web browser. An example of the latter is web-based-browser Asana, which helps teams orchestrate their work, from daily tasks to strategic cross-functional initiatives. With it, teams can manage everything from company objectives to digital transformation to product launches and marketing campaigns. Specialized dashboards may track all corporate functions. Examples include human resources, recruiting, sales, operations, security, information technology, project management, customer relationship management, digital marketing and many more departmental dashboards. For a smaller organization like a startup a compact startup scorecard dashboard tracks important activities across lot of domains ranging from social media to sales. Digital dashboard projects involve business units as the driver and the information technology department as the enabler. Therefore, the success of dashboard projects depends on the relevancy/importance of information provided within the dashboard. This includes the metrics chosen to monitor and the timeliness of the data forming those metrics; data must be up to date and accurate. Key performance indicators, balanced scorecards, and sales performance figures are some of the content appropriate on business dashboards. === Performance Dashboards === Dashboards involve the combination of visual and functional features. This combination of features helps improve cognition and interpretation. A performance dashboard sits at the intersection of two powerful disciplines: business intelligence and performance management. Therefore, there are different users who could use these dashboards for different reasons. For example, a level of workers could look at monitoring inventory while those in more managerial roles can look at lagging measure. Then executives could utilize the dashboard to evaluate strategic performance against objectives. == Dashboards and scorecards == Balanced scorecards and dashboards have been linked together as if they were interchangeable. However, although both visually display critical information, the difference is in the format: Scorecards can open the quality of an operation while dashboards provide calculated direction. A balanced scorecard has what they called a "prescriptive" format. It should always contain these components: Perspectives – group Objectives – verb-noun phrases pulled from a strategy plan Measures – also called metric or key performance indicators (KPIs) Spotlight indicators – red, yellow, or green symbols that provide an at-a-glance view of a measure's performance. Each of these sections ensures that a Balanced Scorecard is essentially connected to the businesses critical strategic needs. The design of a dashboard is more loosely defined. Dashboards are usually a series of graphics, charts, gauges and other visual indicators that can be monitored and interpreted. Even when there is a strategic link, on a dashboard, it may not be noticed as such since objectives are not normally pre
BREACH
BREACH (a backronym: Browser Reconnaissance and Exfiltration via Adaptive Compression of Hypertext) is a security vulnerability against HTTPS when using HTTP compression. BREACH is built based on the CRIME security exploit. BREACH was announced at the August 2013 Black Hat USA conference by security researchers Angelo Prado, Neal Harris and Yoel Gluck. == Details == While the CRIME attack was presented as a general attack that could work effectively against a large number of protocols, only exploits against SPDY request compression and TLS compression were demonstrated and largely mitigated in browsers and servers. The CRIME exploits against HTTP compression has not been mitigated at all, even though the authors of CRIME have warned that this vulnerability might be even more widespread than SPDY and TLS compression combined. BREACH is an instance of the CRIME attack against HTTP compression—the use of gzip or DEFLATE data compression algorithms via the content-encoding option within HTTP by many web browsers and servers. Given this compression oracle, the rest of the BREACH attack follows the same general lines as the CRIME exploit, by performing an initial blind brute-force search to guess a few bytes, followed by divide-and-conquer search to expand a correct guess to an arbitrarily large amount of content. == Mitigation == BREACH exploits the compression in the underlying HTTP protocol. Therefore, turning off TLS compression makes no difference to BREACH, which can still perform a chosen-plaintext attack against the HTTP payload. As a result, clients and servers are either forced to disable HTTP compression completely (thus reducing performance), or to adopt workarounds to try to foil BREACH in individual attack scenarios, such as using cross-site request forgery (CSRF) protection. Another suggested approach is to disable HTTP compression whenever the referrer header indicates a cross-site request, or when the header is not present. This approach allows effective mitigation of the attack without losing functionality, only incurring a performance penalty on affected requests. Another approach is to add padding at the TLS, HTTP header, or payload level. Around 2013–2014, there was an IETF draft proposal for a TLS extension for length-hiding padding that, in theory, could be used as a mitigation against this attack. It allows the actual length of the TLS payload to be disguised by the insertion of padding to round it up to a fixed set of lengths, or to randomize the external length, thereby decreasing the likelihood of detecting small changes in compression ratio that is the basis for the BREACH attack. However, this draft has since expired without further action. A very effective mitigation is HTB (Heal-the-BREACH) that adds random-sized padding to compressed data, providing some variance in the size of the output contents. This randomness delays BREACH from guessing the correct characters in the secret token by a factor of 500 (10-byte max) to 500,000 (100-byte max). HTB protects all websites and pages in the server with minimal CPU usage and minimal bandwidth increase.
Keyword extraction
Keyword extraction is tasked with the automatic identification of terms that best describe the subject of a document. Key phrases, key terms, key segments or just keywords are the terminology which is used for defining the terms that represent the most relevant information contained in the document. Although the terminology is different, function is the same: characterization of the topic discussed in a document. The task of keyword extraction is an important problem in text mining, information extraction, information retrieval and natural language processing (NLP). == Keyword assignment vs. extraction == Keyword assignment methods can be roughly divided into: keyword assignment (keywords are chosen from controlled vocabulary or taxonomy) and keyword extraction (keywords are chosen from words that are explicitly mentioned in original text). Methods for automatic keyword extraction can be supervised, semi-supervised, or unsupervised. Unsupervised methods can be further divided into simple statistics, linguistics or graph-based, or ensemble methods that combine some or most of these methods.
G.hn
Gigabit Home Networking (G.hn) is a specification for wired home networking that supports speeds up to 2 Gbit/s and operates over four types of legacy wires: telephone wiring, coaxial cables, power lines and plastic optical fiber. Some benefits of a multi-wire standard are lower equipment development costs and lower deployment costs for service providers (by allowing customer self-install). == History == G.hn was developed under the International Telecommunication Union's Telecommunication Standardization sector (the ITU-T) and promoted by the HomeGrid Forum and several other organizations. ITU-T Recommendation (the ITU's term for standard) G.9960, which received approval on October 9, 2009, specified the physical layers and the architecture of G.hn. The Data Link Layer (Recommendation G.9961) was approved on June 11, 2010. Prominent organizations, including CEPca, HomePNA, and UPA, who were creators of some of these interfaces, rallied behind the latest version of the standard, emphasizing its potential and significance in the home networking domain. Moreover, the ITU-T extended the technology with multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) technology to increase data rates and signaling distance. This new feature was approved in March 2012 under G.9963 Recommendation. The development and promotion of G.hn have been significantly supported by the HomeGrid Forum and several other organizations. The technology was not only designed to address home-networking challenges but also found applications beyond this initial scope, showcasing its versatility and potential in the networking domain. == Technical specifications == === Technical overview === G.hn specifies a single physical layer based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and low-density parity-check code (LDPC) forward error correction (FEC) code. G.hn includes the capability to notch specific frequency bands to avoid interference with amateur radio bands and other licensed radio services. G.hn includes mechanisms to avoid interference with legacy home networking technologies and also with other wireline systems such as VDSL2 or other types of DSL used to access the home. OFDM systems split the transmitted signal into multiple orthogonal sub-carriers. In G.hn each one of the sub-carriers is modulated using QAM. The maximum QAM constellation supported by G.hn is 4096-QAM (12-bit QAM). The G.hn media access control is based on a time division multiple access (TDMA) architecture, in which a "domain master" schedules Transmission Opportunities (TXOPs) that can be used by one or more devices in the "domain". There are two types of TXOPs: Contention-Free Transmission Opportunities (CFTXOP), which have a fixed duration and are allocated to a specific pair of transmitter and receiver. CFTXOP are used for implementing TDMA Channel Access for specific applications that require quality of service (QoS) guarantees. Shared Transmission Opportunities (STXOP), which are shared among multiple devices in the network. STXOP are divided into Time Slots (TS). There are two types of TS: Contention-Free Time Slots (CFTS), which are used for implementing "implicit" token passing Channel Access. In G.hn, a series of consecutive CFTS is allocated to a number of devices. The allocation is performed by the "domain master" and broadcast to all nodes in the network. There are pre-defined rules that specify which device can transmit after another device has finished using the channel. As all devices know "who is next", there is no need to explicitly send a "token" between devices. The process of "passing the token" is implicit and ensures that there are no collisions during Channel access. Contention-Based Time Slots (CBTS), which are used for implementing CSMA/CARP Channel Access. In general, CSMA systems cannot completely avoid collisions, so CBTS are only useful for applications that do not have strict Quality of Service requirements. ==== Optimization for each medium ==== Although most elements of G.hn are common for all three media supported by the standard (power lines, phone lines and coaxial cable), G.hn includes media-specific optimizations for each media. Some of these media-specific parameters include: OFDM Carrier Spacing: 195.31 kHz in coaxial, 48.82 kHz in phone lines, 24.41 kHz in power lines. FEC Rates: G.hn's FEC can operate with code rates 1/2, 2/3, 5/6, 16/18 and 20/21. Although these rates are not media specific, it is expected that the higher code rates will be used in cleaner media (such as coaxial) while the lower code rates will be used in noisy environments such as power lines. Automatic repeat request (ARQ) mechanisms: G.hn supports operation both with and without ARQ (re-transmission). Although this is not media specific, it is expected that ARQ-less operation is sometimes appropriate for cleaner media (such as coaxial) while ARQ operation is appropriate for noisy environments such as power lines. Power levels and frequency bands: G.hn defines different power masks for each medium. MIMO support: Recommendation G.9963 includes provisions for transmitting G.hn signals over multiple AC wires (phase, neutral, ground), if they are physically available. In July 2016, G.9963 was updated to include MIMO support over twisted pairs. ==== Security ==== G.hn uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption algorithm (with a 128-bit key length) using the CCMP protocol to ensure confidentiality and message integrity. Authentication and key exchange is done following ITU-T Recommendation X.1035. G.hn specifies point-to-point security inside a domain, which means that each pair of transmitter and receiver uses a unique encryption key which is not shared by other devices in the same domain. For example, if node Alice sends data to node Bob, node Eve (in the same domain as Alice and Bob) will not be able to easily eavesdrop their communication. G.hn supports the concept of relays, in which one device can receive a message from one node and deliver it to another node farther away in the same domain. Relaying becomes critical for applications with complex network topologies that need to cover large distances, such as those found in industrial or utility applications. While a relay can read the source and target addresses, it cannot read the message's content due to its body being end-to-end-encrypted. ==== Profiles ==== The G.hn architecture includes the concept of profiles. Profiles are intended to address G.hn nodes with significantly different levels of complexity. In G.hn the higher complexity profiles are proper supersets of lower complexity profiles, so that devices based on different profiles can interoperate with each other. Examples of G.hn devices based on high complexity profiles are Residential Gateways or Set-Top Boxes. Examples of G.hn devices based on low complexity profiles are home automation, home security and smart grid devices. ==== Technical parameters ==== The chart depicts a summary of the crucial technical specifications of the G.hn standard. Many of these technical elements are consistent across different physical media, with variations seen in areas such as Tone Spacing and frequency ranges. This uniformity is essential as it allows silicon manufacturers to produce a singular chip capable of implementing all three media types, leading to cost savings. Presently, G.hn chipsets are compatible with all three media types. This compatibility allows system manufacturers to create devices that can adjust to any wiring type simply by modifying a software configuration in the equipment. === Spectrum === The G.hn spectrum depends on the medium as shown in the diagram below: === Protocol stack === G.hn specifies the physical layer and the data link layer, according to the OSI model. The G.hn Data Link Layer (Recommendation G.9961) is divided into three sub-layers: The Application Protocol Convergence (APC) Layer, which accepts frames (usually in Ethernet format) from the upper layer (Application Entity) and encapsulates them into G.hn APC protocol data units (APDUs). The maximum payload of each APDU is 214 bytes. The logical link control (LLC), which is responsible for encryption, aggregation, segmentation and automatic repeat-request. This sub-layer is also responsible for "relaying" of APDUs between nodes that may not be able to communicate through a direct connection. The medium access control (MAC), which schedules channel access. The G.hn physical layer (Recommendation G.9960) is divided into three sub-layers: The Physical Coding Sub-layer (PCS), responsible for generating PHY headers. The Physical Medium Attachment (PMA), responsible for scrambling and forward error correction coding/decoding. The Physical Medium Dependent (PMD), responsible for bit-loading and OFDM modulation. The interface between the Application Entity and the Data Link Layer is called A-interface. The interface between the Data Link Layer and the ph