Okay, my new technology post was made on Friday, Feb. 4th. This post concerns a couple of topics I wanted to talk about. The first is about Watson, the IBM computer system that processes information given in natural language that I blogged on last week. There is a great article in this weekend's Wall Street Journal by Stephen Baker. FYI, Watson cost IBM more that 30 million dollars and has 2,208 computer processors working "in concert". It will be facing Jeopardy's champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in two games that will be aired on Feb. 14, 15, and 16. I know I will be watching to see how it goes.
The next topic concerned an article on the front page of The News and Observer's Thursday, February 3rd paper. The article was called "Researcher's demotion hurts UNC image" with a subtitle of "Blamed for hacker's breach". It was written by Eric Ferreri. The article blasts UNC for demoting cancer researcher Bonnie Yankaskas after the research database that she was overseeing was hacked into in 2007. According to the university's investigation, 180,000 patient files were exposed as well as 114,000 social security numbers. The article goes on to say that 127 university professors have signed a petition to request reinstatement of Yankaskas saying that the punishment was unjustly harsh. Yankaskas was reduced from full professor to associate professor and her salary dropped from $178,000 to $93,000. Yankaskas, 65, says that she"can't be expected to be a data security expert". She had turned over the security aspects of the database to a subordinate.
In my opinion, she should be held accountable if she can be proven to be negligent. As with the law, ignorance is no excuse. If she was the person overseeing the database, then she should have taken every precaution for database security. She should be well familiar with the steps taken to secure the database even if she turned the duties over to a another person. People in charge of sensitive data should be able to prove that they have not been negligent with its security. I know that even the best security can be hacked, but you have to provide (in good faith) the best security that you can. What do you think? BTW, I was one of the people whose data was compromised. Read the story at:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/03/964783/researchers-demotion-hurts-unc.html#storylink=misearch
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