How Politicians Are Using Big Data to Sway Voters

Welcome to the Monday edition of the IP news roundup. Here are the latest headlines in big data, network security, cloud and unified communications:

• Big data is shaping the future of political campaigns. With the US presidential election taking place this week, an article on SingularityHUB offered insight into how politicians are using big data to sway voters. According to the article, politicians used to have access to just a few statistics – age, ethnic group, party affiliation, etc. – to predict how someone would vote. However, with all of the political and consumer data now available (such as what magazines you read and what organizations you support), politicians can run statistical algorithms to better determine how you will vote. They can then use this information to “decide whom to ignore, whom to persuade, and whom to mobilize.” So, the next time a campaign volunteer shows up on your doorstep, realize that they’ve probably done their research.
• Asia is ramping up big data spend. Research from IDC has revealed that the Asia/Pacific region (excluding Japan) will grow its big data market from US$258.5 million in 2011 to US$1.76 billion in 2016. According to an ICD press release, this rapid growth “will be driven by business cases, which are largely defined by the applied analytics and business process integration. The pull-through opportunities for infrastructure and adjacent software will be just as significant.” The largest areas of growth will be storage (56.1%), networking (55.8%) and services (48.3%).
• SC Magazine announces the threat of the month. The November threat of the month is IE exploits, a “0-day vulnerability that affects all supported versions of Internet Explorer and can be exploited to compromise a user’s system.” An SC Magazine blog post warns readers to proceed with caution when visiting untrusted web sites if your systems are not fully patched. For information on how to prevent IE exploits from compromising your network, see the full SC Magazine warning.
• Avoid common private cloud mistakes. As more companies are moving their data to private clouds, Datamation has offered tips on how to avoid the biggest private cloud pitfalls. These pitfalls include believing that consolidating servers through virtualization will eliminate over-provisioning, and forgetting to update chargeback tools along with your infrastructure. For other private cloud mistakes, as well as tips on how to avoid them, please see the Datamation article.
• And finally … make it easy for your staff to adopt unified communications. The Vodafone Global Enterprise blog offered tips on how to get your staff on board for unified communications, because even though everyone in your company may have five devices, they may still miss an important phone call. The blog post suggests taking a phased approach: “Although most of the current growth and innovation is taking place in the mobile arena, fixed-line services remain almost ubiquitous and still account for a substantial proportion of enterprise spending in telecoms. User familiarity and a robust, reliable infrastructure mean fixed-line will play a key role in delivering the services enterprises require in the foreseeable future.” For more tips, please see the Vodafone article.

What is your take on today’s news? Feel free to share your opinions below.