Month: February 2020

Enlarge / Artist's impression of an insider threat stealing your stuff. (credit: D-Keine / Getty Images)

In the second of our series of podcasts on artificial intelligence produced in association with Darktrace, we dive into something a little spookier: the world of "insider threat" detection.

There've been a number of recent high profile cases where people within organizations use their access to data for selfenrichment or ill-intent, and it slipped past the usual policies and tools that are collectively referred to as "data loss prevention." Most of the time, employees are long gone before the data theft is noticed (if it ever is), and preventing data loss almost requires a Minority Report level of pre-cognition.

To get some insight into how AI could play a role in detecting insider threats, Ars editors Sean Gallagher and Lee Hutchinson spoke with Kathleen Carley, Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University about her research into identifying the tells of someone about to take the data and run.  Lee and Sean also talked to Rob Juncker, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at data loss prevention software company Code42 about whether or not AI can really help detect when people are about to walk off or upload their employer's data. And Justin Fier, Director for Cyber Intelligence and Analysis at Darktrace, spoke with Lee about how AI related technologies are already being brought to play and to stop insider threats.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Portable SSDs are a good way to increase the amount of storage you have to preserve digital data and take that data with you wherever you go. These powerful accessories let you pack a huge amount of storage in your daily bag, giving you a place to offload files from your computer or smartphone, a place to access files you only need in certain circumstances, and backup important information on the go.

But the world of portable SSDs is a large one, and deciding on the best device for your needs can be a challenge. It's not just about how small the device is, how durable it is, or how many gigabytes of storage it has—the speed of a portable SSD can heavily influence your satisfaction with it. SSDs in general promise better read and write speeds than HDDs, so you'll see a general increase if you're going from one to the other. However, not all portable SSDs perform the same—even if they advertise similar maximum speeds.

To help you decide which portable SSD may work for you, Ars put some of the newest and most popular portable SSDs on the market to the test and judged them on speed, design, durability, compatibility, and price. Here are our findings:

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  Fig. 1: Measured purely based on nominal prices, $500 sure seems like it's at the high end. [credit: Ars Technica ]

Last week, a Bloomberg report about PS5 component costs suggested the upcoming system would cost no less than $450 for Sony to manufacture. Add in costs for packaging, shipping, and retail markup, and Sony would likely need to charge about $500 per PS5 just to break even on the hardware at launch (though taking a loss on hardware has also been an option, historically).

The prospect of a $500 PS5 got industry watchers chattering about whether such a price point could be broadly acceptable to the US console-buying market. A look back at console-pricing history suggests that, while a $500 launch would be at the high end of nominal prices, it actually sits right near the middle of the pack when inflation and median buying power are taken into account.

Inflated expectations?

In the history of the game industry, only two game console have launched at an MSRP above $500: the $650 Neo Geo in 1991 and the $700 3DO in 1993 (Fig. 1). Both of those consoles sold for way more than the contemporary competition and became instant niche products, as well as cautionary tales for anyone who might decide to price a console too highly in the future.