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Robot fires lasers at a computer network, obliterating it while another robot watches

Predictions for Earth 2050: How will cybersecurity change?

  • min read
    • If you're like me, having a long-term vision is a wonderful aspiration… frequently quashed by today's more screamingly imminent 'to do' list. Five-year plan?  I'm still working on the next five days. But the next five minutes? That's a no-brainer: let's get immersed in the futuristic predictions for the world in 2050, and the evolving role of cybersecurity in it. Cyber-immunity will intuitively protect our systems Predicted by: Eugene Kaspersky, CEO, Kaspersky In 2050, digital systems have moved up to a whole new level. They're no longer assistants making life easier for us mere mortals, they've become the basis of civilization – the very framework keeping the world functioning properly. This quantum leap forward has generated new requirements for the reliability and stability of artificial intelligence (AI). Since the romantic era around the turn of the 21st century, cyberattacks are not yet extinct, but they're now only a threat to outliers who reject modern standards of digital immunity. One of the pillars of cyber-immunity is digital intuition, the ability of AI systems to make the right decisions in conditions where the source data is insufficient to make a rational choice. There's no mysticism here: digital intuition is the logical continuation of machine learning. When the number and complexity of related self-learning systems exceeds a certain threshold, the quality of decision-making rises to a level that eludes rational understanding. An intuitive solution results from the superimposition of the experience of a huge number of machine-learning models, much like the result of the calculations of a quantum computer. Digital intuition – with its ability to instantly, and correctly, respond to unknown challenges –has helped build the digital security standards of this new technological era. The robot servants are uprising Predicted by: Vitaly Kamluk, Director, Global Research & Analysis Team, Kaspersky Busy workers rejoice! Help for your home is arriving. A robot servant will cook your meals, do your laundry and clean your apartment. These autonomous systems will be able to carry out many complex tasks using the processing power of a central intelligent system, and in tricky situations, they'll switch to remote technical support managed by real people. There will be mass attempts to hack these helpful robots by labor rights activists and criminals trying to blackmail their owners. Since the servants will all be equipped with cameras, microphones and sensors, they offer a unique viewing platform for home-based espionage. Expect compromises of the manufacturers' infrastructure and the implantation of malicious code in devices with the aim of enacting, en masse, attacks that could be serious. The man(less) mining machine Predicted by: Andrey Nikishin, formerly Future Technologies Project Director, Kaspersky Mining is a fully automated process; people are not needed and former miners regain their health. One robot extracts rock from the soil, the second cleans it, the third guards the perimeter, while the fourth delivers the purified ore to industrial consumers. A hacker who gains access to the system can re-program individual robots so they take a small amount of the platinum ore to an unauthorized place. The guard robots are also hacked, so they're unaware of this theft. The big reveal of dynamic clothes Predicted by Vladislav Biryukov, Head of Consumer Social Media, Kaspersky Dynamic clothing is à la mode. The fabric's characteristics – color, pattern, lighting, transparency, and in advanced models, even the cut and length – can be automatically changed. Some people now wear shirts or dresses with variable transparency levels, which allows them to reveal more at any moment they choose. Few people 'program' their clothes by themselves; most enjoy free fashion patterns or, for the fashionistas, expensive programs from well-known designers. Initially lacking security, the process of getting a smart clothing upgrade has led to the emergence of a new kind of extortion. "Heading to a business meeting, sir? Transfer 10 bitcoins to this account number now, or we'll expose you!". The naked truth in the boardroom. Awkward. Not quite the transparency in business we were hoping to achieve in 2050. A quantum (computing) leap threatens cryptography Predicted by Alexey Malanov Cryptography is widely used in many spheres of online activity. It's no exaggeration to say that the world will experience a huge shock if suddenly everything that's encrypted today is unlocked. How cryptography works: some operations can be easily carried out in one direction, but they're very difficult to reverse. For example, an image can be quickly transformed into a picture puzzle, but to arrange all of the pieces back into the picture takes much longer. Modern public-key cryptography is based on this principle: I know two numbers, I have multiplied them and told everyone the answer. Now everyone can encrypt a message for me using the result of the multiplication, but only I can decipher this using the original multipliers. There are already quantum computers that allow you to quickly solve problems that seem to be circuit-breaking for conventional computers, like how to de-compose a composite number. The only obstacle to the end of the digital world – let's call it 'cryptocalypse' – is that quantum computers can only work with small numbers. But by 2050, quantum computing will allow security services or master criminals to access universal decryption, and they may choose to do bad things with it. For example, if a villain steals your credit card, he or she will immediately know your PIN. The ability to decipher brings with it the opportunity to forge: an ATM informs the bank one thousand dollars are withdrawn, but the villain falsifies the message to say only 10 dollars were taken out. We will need to develop new safety standards – fast. On the bright side, encryption helps with verification so you can be sure you're actually on your real bank's website, not a cleverly cloned fake, when you wire the ransom to keep your business suit from turning into your birthday suit. Phew! One challenge solved.
earth2050 robot, Illustration of intelligent robot protesting for robots' rights

What will the future of work be like by 2050?

  • min read
    • The world of work in 2050. If you're unlucky enough not to have retired by then, the working world will be a very different place to how it is today. The vision of the future for workers tends to scale from a nilistic view of the robots taking our jobs (leaving us permanently trapped indoors, living entirely from Amazon Prime supplies), through to the utopia of the eradication of repetitive tasks using artifical intelligence. This will leave humans free to think, create and act (while never needing to leave their home…thanks to improved remote work options and those highly convenient Amazon delivery drones). But what do the experts think it will really be like? Robots have rights too Predicted by: Ian Pearson. Ian has been a full-time futurologist for over 25 years, tracking and predicting developments across a wide range of technology, business, society, politics and the environment. We see a picket line of robots in the city center. Their placards are plastered with slogans written in binary code. The widespread development of robots and artificial intelligence have necessitated the creation of a legal framework to protect them to regulate the rights of intelligent robots. Subsequently, this code is constantly updated and improved so robots have improving rights in our society. Personal assistants for life Predicted by: Alexey Malanov Personal assistants (PAs) have rapidly developed throughout the 21st century. To begin with, they could only answer primitive questions: in 2019, voice assistants were as dumb as a box of rocks. But by 2025, they'd mastered the art of recognizing and transcribing speech (with punctuation marks too); they could understand the meaning of a text and recite it so realistically that it was almost indistinguishable from a human. This led to half of all office activities being automated: PAs began to take minutes, write post-meeting reports, summarize lengthy documents, and consciously digest and recapitulate the contents of messages. They also plan your day, schedule meetings and even order lunch. Thanks to machine learning, PAs are fully adapted to their owners' personalities, increasingly penetrating every aspect of their lives. It all began with assisting with office work, and by the mid-2040s, PAs had become an integral part of everyday life by monitoring their owners' diets, planning trips abroad, buying gifts for friends and family, and more. But it's not as rosy as it seems: the human-PA relationship has spawned a plethora of psychological issues and communication difficulties between real people. However, a specially trained AI psychologist is on hand to help us cope. Paradoxically, it's just another voice assistant. The power is in your hands Predicted by: Mersey Shelley is a pseudonym of Alexey Andreyev, writer and futurologist, who works for Kaspersky. This prediction is from his cyberpunk novel '2048' published in 2004. In decades past, palms and fingers were scanned for identification. Now, hands with implanted sensors become the scanners themselves. These implants come in different models with two main variations: first, a simple scanner for daily use. It helps to read different tags and product codes, and to exchange digital business cards via the handshake ritual (you can use face recognition to identify a stranger but this is considered indecent; besides, many people use protection to prevent recognition. Hats with special veils are popular). Second, sophisticated scanners for technicians and other professionals. For example, a doctor's hand includes various medical sensors for diagnostics – even a portable endoscope with a direct video stream to the doctor's visual cortex. A flexible workforce Predicted by Jacob Morgan is a best-selling author, speaker, futurist and founder of Future of Work University. In the year 2050, technology will dominate the workplace with artificial intelligence and smart assistants being commonplace, while the use of augmented and virtual reality continues to increase. Everything will be 'smart' – connected and data-driven. The vast majority of us will continue working the same way we are today, but the jobs on offer will be ones that haven't yet been invented. Emotional intelligence and 'human' skills such as perpetual learning will be crucial for leaders to possess, as well as fluency with the latest technologies. Work will increasingly become more fluid as some employees will be virtual, some will be full-time, some will be bots, and we will all be working non-fixed hours. As with any kind of change, there will be pros and cons. Those who work in routine jobs are likely to struggle to make sure they can stay relevant in the new world of work. The advantage is that this will give us more time to focus on the human aspects of work such as building relationships, being creative, deep thinking, and practicing skills like empathy and self-awareness. Technology will help us make organizations more personable. This also means that we need to get more comfortable with using technology such as bots and AI in our work, a cause of tension and fear for some. And what about working hours? It depends if you're a knowledge worker or working in industries like retail. Flexible work arrangements are already being implemented at organizations around the world. The advantages are far-ranging, from improving employee satisfaction, productivity and tenure, to being able to attract and retain top talent. The potential disadvantages here are making sure that employees can stay accountable for delivering high-quality work while feeling like they're a part of the team, dealing with isolation, and ensuring effective communication and collaboration. I think the pros outstrip the cons: when managed effectively, flexible work arrangements can be a huge benefit to the organization and its people. Focus on the user experience Predicted by: Edney Souza, digital culture and business and technology teacher, speaker and entrepreneur, Brazil. For sure, work will become more fun and those repetitive activities in our day-to-day life will be done by robots and artificial intelligence. Knowing programming logic will be as important as English and mathematics. User experience design (UX) will be more important than other technical components of a project to ensure its success with customers. Skills in solving problems and serving customers will continue to be competitive advantages for the work of the future. Read more predictions about our technological future from scientists, futurologists and cybersecurity experts at Earth 2050 by Kaspersky.
climate edge farm

The future of farming: The start-up digitizing agriculture in developing nations

  • min read
    • As part of Kaspersky's Bring on the Future series, we're meeting businesses around the world who are changing their industry, and society, for the better. Farming isn't easy – fact. It's even trickier for smallholder tea or coffee farms in developing nations. Why? Lack of affordable infrastructure and the intensifying effects of climate change to name a couple of factors. But things are changing. Since 2015, the good people of Climate Edge have been helping farmers in developing nations fight common problems – from lack of affordable farm insurance to jumping through hoops to join cooperatives – by digitizing their day to day. I spoke with James Alden, co-founder and CEO, to find out more. Ryan: Why did you start Climate Edge, and how did you come to found it? James: We started it from a social perspective – my business partner Paul and I were studying environmental technology at Imperial College. When it came to our dissertations, Peter Baker, now our business partner, was running a project on how to prepare smallholder coffee farmers for climate change. We liked the sound of it, so went to Honduras to get involved. Almost instantly, we realised that farmers were really up against it. Climate change was impacting their ability to grow crops massively and not much was being done to support them. As part of our dissertation, we were required to collect yield data manually every day. Which, as you can imagine, was tedious. We thought, "If this is hard for us, how hard is it for the farmers, and what knock-on effects will it have if they don't do it?" After doing some digging, we realised that by not having data from the farm readily available, it was impacting everything from the way farmers insure themselves to understanding climate change and selling their products. That was how we could help, by giving farmers the means to digitize their everyday work. Helping farmers digitize their everyday processes, got it. So who's behind Climate Edge? Myself, Paul Baranowski and Peter Baker. Both Paul and I are from an environmental tech background – with exposure to policy, business and management – whereas Peter is the academic. Since beginning in 2015 we've brought on a product designer, a developer and someone to specifically focus on partner relations. You're building quite the team, what's the big vision? To be honest, our vision has changed quite a bit since we first started. Originally, we set out to help farmers adapt to climate change conditions by giving them a simple, easy-to-use digital system to record key farming data, how that affects their farm, and how best to prepare against changing environmental conditions. Now, we want to open up the market so that farmers can get access to the services and the value they need, to address the problems they have, which go beyond preparing for climate change. For example, insurance. Without recorded data – which most smallholder farms don't have – insurers don't know the risk of each individual farmer. They end up estimating, which results in small farms being lumped onto policies that either don't fit them, or are too expensive altogether, so if a fire comes and wipes out their crop, they're finished. We also want to move away from helping farmers at a localized level, to helping their cooperatives. In developing nations, a handful of farms form 'cooperatives', which are groups of farms that club their exports together to sell on – the benefits of which are tenfold, from fair prices to guaranteed sales. However, cooperatives need to be certified by organisations like Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade, otherwise traders won't buy from them. All well and good, but to be accredited, these small farms need to show a series of markers, from biodiversity measures, to pesticide use or even crop history, something that's increasingly difficult to do by hand, and can often be a barrier for these farms to join cooperatives. Climate Edge helps farmers store this data digitally, instead of on thousands of sheets of paper – or not at all! Must be a huge weight off their minds. So how does the technology work? In the first instance, we use Nexo – a weather station – to collect data from farms. The Nexo monitors everything from soil temperature to humidity and everything in between. Then our analytical software takes this data and logs it. By measuring air temperature, soil temperature, air humidity, precipitation and more, we can monitor the key conditions determining yield and quality. Our back-end system then takes this raw data, analyses it and provides farmers and their cooperatives, if they have one, with actionable, tailored information so they can implement the right solutions. Climate Edge gives smallholder farmers globally the information needed to adapt to a devastating changing climate. Our agricultural weather stations and blended satellite imaging identify how yield and quality of crops are being impacted by key climatic variables, at an affordable price for the market we are working in. Remarkable! So how does Climate Edge differ from similar technologies on the market? Right now, future forecasting in agriculture is huge. Future forecasting is the ability to know if the prices for different things are going to go up or down depending on yields. Our technology and operation differs because we use Climate Edge-affiliated farmers to collect very high quality data, then use that data to make conclusions from the surrounding farmland and other farmers. Climate Edge also has the power to affect the agricultural supply chain. For example, our climate data enables micro-insurers to make accurate pay-outs, our farm management data gives micro-financers the ability to identify reliable investments and the two combined provide the information needed to manage supply chains securely. Through this accessible approach we can provide the 500 million global farmers growing the world's most valuable crops the necessary information to grow stable and profitable businesses. That has the potential for a huge impact. How does it work when a farm signs up? What's the process? We currently work with farmer cooperatives who have a big data burden, but little in the way of automating any of their processes. The biggest burden for cooperatives is maintaining their certification standards (meaning that they can sell their crops under value-adding marks, such as Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade). Without this certification it can be very difficult, if not impossible, for the cooperatives to sell the crops, which is why this is such an important issue. Climate Edge supports cooperatives through this process by providing an app which integrates into the current data collection and reporting process, making this far less time consuming and complicated.  We provide this service for free to the farmers. Climate Edge benefits as the data collected through this process is often the same as the data needed for processes done by other businesses in the supply chain. For example, one service we have been delivering recently is conducting impact assessments for NGOs (non-governmental organizations). If an NGO does a project with a cooperative, how much impact did they achieve with the money they were given?  There has been a great push from funding donors to know more about the impact that has been achieved using their money, but for many NGOs this requires a huge amount more money to be spent paying for staff on the ground to visit farms and survey farmers. We can cut out that process as we are already on the ground collecting the data they need. It can't have been smooth sailing the whole way. What big challenges have you faced so far? Our biggest challenges are probably the same as most other start-ups; making sure that what we commit to building is correct, that we grow efficiently but also as quickly as possible, and making sure we don't run out of money. This is a delicate balance to achieve and it is often difficult to make sure you are spending enough time on validating product market fit versus fundraising.  Both are incredibly important, but when you only have a certain amount of hours in the day and a small team, you have to make decisions on what is most important at that moment in time. Smallholder farming is built on narrow profit margins and often low incomes. This means it is difficult to develop technologies which add sufficient value whilst still being affordable. As a result, there is little innovation in the market. We believe creating products which benefit a number of stakeholders, including farmers, is key to spreading the cost between users, and achieving a suitable price point for each.  I'm sure you've had your fair share of positive stories. What's been your biggest success? Our greatest success is that we have been able to start generating revenue very early on in our journey.  This is not common among many start-ups, who want to make sure everything is perfect before offering it to customers. But that's dangerous because building a client base and building trust takes time, and as we all know, time is money. We've been able to offer our service in broken-down chunks to initial clients and partners, which is extremely beneficial in two ways. Firstly, it brings in money which means we don't need to fundraise as much, saving us time and equity, and secondly, it means that we can move quicker by understanding exactly what it is our clients want and how we can give it to them. It's been quite the journey so far. What do you think the future opportunities are for smart farming, or specifically, big data use in farming? The opportunity in our market is enormous. Agriculture in developing nations hasn't seen any significant innovation since the green revolution, but the demand for the crops produced has risen dramatically. We won't be able to learn how we can make sure supply keeps up with demand without innovating significantly. Of course some of this will come from breeding new crops which can yield more, or can withstand more extreme conditions, but it will also involve making agriculture more investible, or understanding where the greatest supply chain risks are and how to mitigate them. Smallholder farming is currently a number of steps behind other global agricultural systems, particularly in the tropics. Many of the farmers we have worked with are incredibly isolated from high-tech products which improve efficiency, up-to-date agronomic models and finance management software – all of which are mainstays of European and US agriculture. The technology to provide data-driven farming is not the problem, which is a great position to be in. The challenge is in creating business models that allow these technologies to be fostered in the market. Once this has been achieved in a scalable way, I see data-driven farming practices completely changing the global agriculture market, as much more information (and therefore power) will be put in farmers' hands. Previously, you've said that Climate Edge can 'provide significant value to other sectors'. Which sectors could this have a positive effect on? Our goal is to become a big data broker for the developing agriculture sector. This data can have a lot of value for a lot of different people. This includes NGOs, insurance providers who need data on the risk profile of farmers or of an area, or banks who need data to understand the likelihood of a client defaulting on their loan.  It also helps input providers who need to understand market drivers and demand so that they can pre-emptively make products which meet that need, and investors who speculate on commodity markets want to make sure their investments are most likely to pay off. The value of data is being seen in many different industries and agriculture is no different.  We are making this happen in a place it hasn't been done before. Impressive! What does the future hold for Climate Edge? Scaling up. We are currently consolidating our efforts and increasing our scale in two key areas.  The first is East Africa, starting with Kenya.  The second is Latin America, starting with Colombia.  We are moving from a scattergun approach where we were trying to better understand the landscape of different sectors, to now expanding within the most promising. We have a number of very exciting partnerships and clients, like Unilever and Producers Direct, which are starting to scale to lead this expansion.
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Secure Futures magazine is your go-to business guide for opinions, trends and insight into the world of technology and cybersecurity. We help your business to bring on the future. Brought to you by Kaspersky, the global cybersecurity experts.

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