IEEE Future Directions
Technology Policy & Ethics – May 2019
Fake News Remastered: The Impact of Technology
Renato Opice Blum and Camila Rioja
Fake news is the buzzword of the moment. Specifically, in Brazil, the theme was one of the most relevant topics in the elections held this past October. With flashy titles and loaded with content aimed at triggering emotions, fake news are powerful weapons in today’s digital reality. Brazil has more than one functioning smartphone per inhabitant (approximately 220 million currently and counting), as estimated by a study conducted by a prestigious Brazilian university early 20181. Worldwide, a projection made by the Statista portal2 shows that smartphone users will reach over 2.87 billion by 2020. Thus, is somewhat intuitive how fast fake news can spread through social media and/or communication apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
Current State of API Security and Machine Learning
Fatima Hussain, Brett Noye, and Salah Sharieh , Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto
The adaptation of application program interface (API)s in every enterprise is the emerging business trend, and at the same time it diversifies the threat domain for businesses. APIs are becoming the new and most important infrastructure layer on the Internet and are the most vulnerable point of attacks in modern systems. Each API adds new dimensions to security threats and attack vectors to corporate data and applications, therefore critically forfeiting the business systems. Traditional security features for API protection are provided through API gateways, and it had been nothing more than API keys and username/password combinations (HTTP authentication). On the other hand, intruders and hackers are getting smarter. Combining the proliferation of social engineering platforms with recent technological advancements, the ability to gain access to confidential data has become both easier and common. APIs funnel data among applications, a multitude of various API users, and cloud infrastructure, therefore sensitive or confidential information might get exposed to unauthorized users, if API security is not carefully crafted. Using a holistic approach to securing APIs not only addresses the vulnerability issues but offers protection for all of the infrastructure, networks and information.
Information Assurance and Security Issues in Telemedicine – Future Directions
By Ankur Chattopadhyay and Robert Ruska Jr., University of Wisconsin, Green Bay
One of the challenges in healthcare is to provide equitable access to services, given that the provider and the patient are traditionally expected to be physically present in the same place [6, 8, 9]. Technological advancements have been made to overcome obstacles to equitable healthcare services and enable convenient access to quality healthcare for consumers throughout the world. The field of digital healthcare, which is known as telemedicine [4, 7, 8, 9], is rapidly making its way globally across the healthcare services domain. It allows the transfer of images and video through telecommunication technology, giving physicians the ability to evaluate, diagnose, and in certain cases, treat patients remotely [10]. Patients can visit providers over live video without travelling for immediate care and for follow up treatment. Not only does it give patients the ability to schedule appointments with local physicians via live video communication without having to leave home, but it also allows them to consult with distant healthcare professionals and avail their services remotely.