Keep yourself up-to-date with the digital marketing news roundup segment each and every week on the EDGE. The latest episode features Site Strategics CEO Erin Sparks and Creative Studio Producer Jacob Mann along with special guest Arlie Hartman, Chief Information Security Officer at BraunAbility. Here’s the news roundup from Episode 322 of the award-winning EDGE of the Web podcast:
Google will start surfacing individual podcast episodes in search results
From Ashley Carman on The Verge we learn that Google will start surfacing individual podcast episodes in search results. “Google is taking the next step in making podcasts easier to find. The company will now surface individual podcast episodes in search results, so if someone searches for a show about a niche topic or an interview with a specific person, Google will show them potential podcast episodes that fit their query.”
- Erin Sparks: Talk about something that’s instantaneous information Google is providing. What an incredible boon for anybody running a podcast on niche topics. So what do you think about the new search results with podcasts?
- Arlie Hartman: I think it’s exciting. I consume 10 to 12 different podcast episodes a week. It’s one of the top ways I keep in touch with what’s going on in our community along with Twitter and the like. It’s fascinating because typically you’re relying so much on either user recommendations or the title or a person appearing on there to try to get an idea of what the content is. It’ll be nice to be able to dial a particular thing I’m looking into and have relevant podcast episodes surface right in the results. I think it’s incredible.
Alexa devices maintain 70% market share in U.S. according to survey
According to Greg Sterling on Marketing Land, Alexa devices maintain 70% market share in U.S. according to survey. In the smart-speaker market, Amazon echo was at 69% 18 months ago and is now at 70% market share with 76 Million units. Google home has 25%, and Apple HomePod has 5%.
- Erin Sparks: There has been a huge focus on security and privacy information with these smart speakers. Can you scare the crap out of us right now on that concept?
- Arlie Hartman: Yes. One, the article rightly pointed out how the price point has obviously been a huge driver of this. Amazon has led with an ecosystem of entertainment and Prime membership and the ability to be able to deliver products to you quicker, cheaper, faster. Apple is more of an experienced company with a higher price tag and Google is more about how can we monetize what you’re looking at and serving you ads. Who wants a Google smart device in the home if it’s going to start playing advertisements? But everything people were saying to these smart speakers was being transcribed and then checked by humans to make sure the auto-transcription function was working correctly. Congress sent letters to all three companies wanting to know more about this. Now Amazon and Google say you can opt-out and have all that deleted, moving forward. But who knows about everything that previously recorded.
- Erin Sparks: Right. And you have to remember to do that on a daily basis. Unless you ask the device to set a reminder to do it, but then if everything is erased every day, the smart speaker won’t remember to…it’s an unending loop!
- Arlie Hartman: Every choice you make involves a level of risk, whether it’s getting in your car to drive to work on getting on a plane to fly somewhere. It’s the same thing with having devices connected to the Internet. You have to decide how much of your life you want to be connected to the Internet, like smart speakers in every room of your house. Do you really want that smart speaker in your bedroom? Well, maybe you do…and these devices are now in workplaces, too. Make sure they are clearly marked so people know when they walk into a room that this thing is listening in unless the red light is on.
Capital One Data Theft Impacts 106M People
At Krebs on Security, Brian Krebs reports how Capital One Data Theft Impacts 106M People Content. “On July 29, FBI agents arrested Paige A. Thompson on suspicion of downloading nearly 30 GB of Capital One credit application data from a rented cloud data server. Capital One said the incident affected approximately 100 million people in the United States and six million in Canada. That data included approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and approximately 80,000 bank account numbers on U.S. consumers, and roughly 1 million Social Insurance Numbers (SINs) for Canadian credit card customers. ‘Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised,’ Capital One said in a statement posted to its site.”
- Erin Sparks: Give us your take on what Capital One did as a response. And more importantly, how in the world can these credit card companies even protect themselves in the cloud space?
- Arlie Hartman: I think what you’re starting to see there is a real fear, founded or not, among those that have made that journey into the cloud. The people who learned all the hard lessons about cybersecurity when they were setting up on-premise data centers aren’t the same people running data storage in the cloud. So I think those folks are starting to understand all of the traditional security problems haven’t gone away just because you went to the cloud. What happened here was what can be called the “confused deputy” scenario, like the bumbling Barney Fife character on The Andy Griffith show. Barney has a very limited set of tasks he’s allowed to do but is also easily duped or tricked into doing things he shouldn’t be doing. This woman had intimate knowledge of how Amazon Web Services (AWS) works. She did what is called a “server-side request forgery” where you trick a proxy into doing something it normally shouldn’t do. She tricked the system into letting her query various parts of the infrastructure and take gigabytes of data. Nowadays it’s all about crisis response. The company experiencing the breach isn’t judged for having a breach incident but is instead judged on how it responds to the crisis. It’s all about transparency, speedy action, being very clear about what happened and how to address it, offering something affected people to show you care, and so on. Capital One handled it as well as can be expected, unlike previous incidents at other places such as Equifax. There is already a lawsuit against Capital One working its way through the courts, so there will be an attempt to find out what happened and why and whether or not Capital One needs to be held accountable in some way.
Connect with Arlie Harman and BraunAbility
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arliehartman/
Twitter: @BraunAbility (https://twitter.com/BraunAbility)
Facebook: @braunability (https://www.facebook.com/braunability)
Instagram: @braunability (https://www.instagram.com/braunability)
Website: https://www.braunability.com
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