By Bryan Koenig ( December 19, 2024, 5:03 PM EST) — Las Vegas casino hotels urged the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday not to revive the first algorithmic price-fixing case to reach an appeals court, in a brief that took direct aim at the Justice Department’s amicus intervention in the room rate lawsuit…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More While the 2024 U.S. election focused on traditional issues like the economy and immigration, its quiet impact on AI policy could prove even more transformative. Without a single debate question or major campaign promise about AI, voters inadvertently tipped the scales in favor of accelerationists — those who advocate for rapid AI development with minimal regulatory hurdles. The implications of this acceleration are profound, heralding a new era of AI policy that prioritizes innovation over caution and signals a decisive shift in the debate between AI’s potential risks and rewards. The pro-business stance of President-elect Donald Trump leads many to assume that his administration will favor those developing and marketing AI and other advanced technologies. His party platform has little to say about AI. However, it does emphasize a policy approach focused on repealing AI regulations, particularly targeting what they described as “radical left-wing ideas” within existing executive orders of the outgoing administration. In contrast, the platform supported AI development aimed at fostering free speech and “human flourishing,” calling for policies that enable innovation in AI while opposing measures perceived to hinder technological progress. Early indications based on appointments to leading government positions underscore this direction. However, there is a larger story unfolding: The resolution of the intense debate over AI’s future. An intense debate Ever since ChatGPT appeared in November 2022, there has been a raging debate between those in the AI field who want to accelerate AI development and those who want to decelerate. Famously, in March 2023 the latter group proposed a six-month AI pause in development of the most advanced systems, warning in an open letter that AI tools present “profound risks to society and humanity.” This letter, spearheaded by the Future of Life Institute, was prompted by OpenAI’s release of the GPT-4 large language model (LLM), several months after ChatGPT launched. The letter was initially signed by more than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak, 2020 Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, podcaster Lex Fridman, and AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell. The number of signees of the letter eventually swelled to more than 33,000. Collectively, they became known as “doomers,” a term to capture their concerns about potential existential risks from AI. Not everyone agreed. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman did not sign. Nor did Bill Gates and many others. Their reasons for not doing so varied, although many voiced concerns about potential harm from AI. This led to many conversations about the potential for AI to run amok, leading to disaster. It became fashionable for many in the AI field to talk about their assessment of the probability of doom, often referred to as an equation: p(doom). Nevertheless, work on AI development did not pause. For the record, my p(doom) in June 2023 was 5%. That might seem low, but it was not zero. I felt that the major AI labs were sincere in their efforts to stringently test new models prior to release and in providing significant guardrails for their use. Many observers concerned about AI dangers have rated existential risks higher than 5%, and some have rated much higher. AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy rated the probability of AI ending humanity at over 99%. That said, a study released early this year, well before the election and representing the views of more than 2,700 AI researchers, showed that “the median prediction for extremely bad outcomes, such as human extinction, was 5%.” Would you board a plane if there were a 5% chance it might crash? This is the dilemma AI researchers and policymakers face. Must go faster Others have been openly dismissive of worries about AI, pointing instead to what they perceived as the huge upside of the technology. These include Andrew Ng (who founded and led the Google Brain project) and Pedro Domingos (a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington and author of “The Master Algorithm”). They argued, instead, that AI is part of the solution. As put forward by Ng, there are indeed existential dangers, such as climate change and future pandemics, and AI can be part of how these are addressed and mitigated. Ng argued that AI development should not be paused, but should instead go faster. This utopian view of technology has been echoed by others who are collectively known as “effective accelerationists” or “e/acc” for short. They argue that technology — and especially AI — is not the problem, but the solution to most, if not all, of the world’s issues. Startup accelerator Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, along with other prominent Silicon Valley leaders, included the term “e/acc” in their usernames on X to show alignment to the vision. Reporter Kevin Roose at the New York Times captured the essence of these accelerationists by saying they have  an “all-gas, no-brakes approach.” A Substack newsletter from a couple years ago described the principles underlying effective accelerationism. Here is the summation they offer at the end of the article, plus a comment from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. AI acceleration ahead The 2024 election outcome may be seen as a turning point, putting the accelerationist vision in a position to shape U.S. AI policy for the next several years. For example, the President-elect recently appointed technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist David Sacks as “AI czar.” Sacks, a vocal critic of AI regulation and a proponent of market-driven innovation, brings his experience as a technology investor to this role. He is one of the leading voices in the AI industry, and much of what he has said about AI aligns with the accelerationist viewpoints expressed by the incoming party platform. In response to the AI executive order from the Biden administration in 2023, Sacks tweeted: “The U.S. political and fiscal situation is hopelessly broken, but we have one unparalleled asset as a country: Cutting-edge innovation in AI driven by a completely

Best for managing volunteers and events: Pipedrive Best nonprofit CRM tool with integrations: HubSpot Best for nonprofit project management: monday CRM Best for omnichannel marketing: Zoho CRM Best white-label CRM for nonprofits: Bitrix24 Best for tracking donor behavior with data insights: Virtuous CRM software used within the nonprofit sector is designed to help organizations manage and grow their relationships with benefactors, organize outreach, and monitor activities. A CRM tool can improve productivity and create a streamlined process for marketing to donors, tracking revenue, and progressing toward goals. Top nonprofit CRM software comparison The best CRM software offers a range of marketing, sales, and support solutions. Those core features can also be used by nonprofits. Some notable features nonprofit CRM tools might prioritize include lead management for donors, payment receipts, revenue tracking, and a mobile app for field selling or canvassing. Our list of top CRM software for nonprofits includes popular providers like Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Zoho CRM, as well as some industry-specific platforms like Virtuous. Each option can be implemented into a nonprofit’s business based on needs, scalability, and budget. It’s also typical for providers to offer reduced rates or free versions to nonprofits that apply for discount programs. Software Star rating Donor management Payment/ invoice tracking Mobile app Native and third-party integrations Starting price* Pipedrive 4.3/5 Yes Limited iOS and Android 400+ $14 per user per month HubSpot 4.1/5 Yes Yes iOS and Android 1,500+ Free monday CRM 3.5/5 Yes Through integrations iOS and Android 200+ $12 per user per month Zoho CRM 4.3/5 Yes Through integrations iOS and Android 800+ Free Bitrix24 4.1/5 Yes Through integrations iOS and Android 600+ Free Virtuous 4.1/5 Yes Yes iOS and Android 100 Contact for quote *Price when billed annually. Pipedrive: Best for managing volunteers and events Image: Pipedrive Pipedrive’s CRM platform allows nonprofits to streamline operations by tracking donor activity, events, and volunteers. Users can create multiple workflows and automations to track the efficiency of marketing campaigns, estimate fundraising potential, and nurture long-term supporters for the organization. Users can maintain a database of current and former volunteers with custom fields to track events. The platform works as a volunteer management platform by streamlining volunteer communications, capturing signups from new donors, and logging touchpoints at events. Why I chose Pipedrive Pipedrive is a CRM tool that automates sales processes with visual pipelines for businesses to easily manage leads and deals. In addition to its intuitive interface, Pipedrive offers instant insights through precise, real-time data analytics. These reports can assist in monitoring performance and forecasting and tracking revenue or donations. Pipedrive has pricing plans designed for small to midsize businesses on the rise. While Pipedrive’s premium plans are competitively priced, there isn’t a free option for smaller nonprofits looking for a basic no-cost tool. If that’s the case for you, consider looking into HubSpot for its powerful free CRM. To learn more about this provider, check out our Pipedrive review. Pricing Essential: $14 per user per month, billed annually, or $24 per user when billed monthly. Advanced: $34 per user per month, billed annually, or $44 per user when billed monthly. Professional: $49 per user per month, billed annually, or $64 per user when billed monthly. Power: $64 per user per month, billed annually, or $79 per user when billed monthly. Enterprise: $99 per user per month, billed annually, or $129 per user when billed monthly. Features Goal tracking: Maintain progress toward goals with concrete and detailed reporting. Create goals based on deals or activities and track them by adding pipelines, durations, and assignees. Activity management: View individual or team calendars, manage activities like follow-up emails, phone calls, or meetings, and plan schedules efficiently. Email inbox: Create group emails from templates and handle email scheduling, tracking, and syncing with Pipedrive’s email inbox. Goal tracking dashboard view. Image: Pipedrive Pipedrive pros and cons Pros Cons 14-day free trial. Doesn’t provide a free version of the CRM tool. User reports of simple pipeline UX/UI. Limited customization options for reporting tools. 24/7 customer support. Limited email tools, such as group emailing or scheduling, in the Essential tier. Features Live chat software: Connect this feature to your organization’s website to convert new donors in real-time. Meeting scheduler: Schedule meetings quickly by eliminating back-and-forth emails and allowing donors to book a meeting time that works for everyone. Deal pipeline: Assign tasks to team members or volunteers within a deal pipeline where users can track performance. HubSpot website live chat builder. Image: HubSpot HubSpot pros and cons Pros Cons Provides free demos and product walkthroughs. Premium and enterprise-level plans can be pricey. Users report an intuitive interface. Community support isn’t available in the free tier. Advanced AI functionality. Users report limited field customizations. monday CRM: Best for nonprofit project management Image: monday CRM monday CRM offers nonprofit organizations all the tools to track and manage ongoing and upcoming projects. The detailed dashboards provide high-level visibility that instantly reports donation progress, fundraising figures, and team performance. Users can access all team activities, like calls and meetings, in one place to track performance, understand their capacity, and plan ahead. This helps manage any team’s quota attainment, track wins, and view goals for specific members or the entire team. With no-code automation, organizations can let the platform do mundane tasks. Why I chose monday CRM monday CRM is flexible project management CRM software that can manage entire sales processes, from lead or donor generation to fundraising. It supports powerful automations with no coding background necessary, making it an intuitive option for nonprofits that might not have the technical personnel to set up a platform’s back end. While monday CRM is full of features, only its WorkOS for nonprofits plan offers an easy-to-use, discounted nonprofit platform to eligible organizations. If your organization wants a feature-rich tool at a similar price or even lower, consider HubSpot or Pipedrive. Read our independent monday CRM review for more information. Pricing Free version: monday.com offers a nonprofit discount only for monday work management. It doesn’t yet

As the cyber landscape evolves, a holistic approach to cybersecurity will be essential for organizations to effectively navigate risks and align their cyber strategies with overarching business objectives. By integrating cybersecurity into the core of corporate governance, organizations can transform security from a reactive measure into a strategic asset — enhancing resilience, fostering innovation, and maintaining competitive advantage.  In today’s business landscape, incorporating cybersecurity into enterprise risk management is a critical imperative for organizations. As cyber threats evolve, organizations must move beyond viewing cybersecurity as a technical concern and recognize its profound impacts on financial stability, reputation, compliance, and resilience.  This new model requires a fundamental shift in how the C-suite and board of directors approach cybersecurity. Change comes from understanding the criticality of moving away from a focus on technical issues towards more comprehensive, business-aligned strategies that encompass risk for the entire organization.  To effect this shift, leadership should cultivate broader digital competencies and foster a deeper understanding of cybersecurity as part of their overall risk management strategy. Chief information security officers (CISOs) will play a pivotal role in this transformation, aligning efforts more closely with overarching business objectives.  Related:Facing the Specter of Cyber Threats During the Holidays Cybersecurity as a Core Business Function  Cybersecurity conversations should extend far beyond the security team, engaging a broader set of stakeholders including board members, and risk management executives. Nearly 40% of leaders surveyed by the World Economic Forum believe that cyber-attacks represent a paramount global risk. However, most organizations remain mired in Gen 1.0 cyber thinking: that cybersecurity is an IT problem or, worse, that cyber won’t strike.  Change will only come from understanding how threats specifically impact an organization’s business, operations, sustainability, and financial condition. Whether a hospital, bank, insurer, or manufacturing giant, the implications of an incident vary dramatically.  Board Engagement and Competency  Boards are becoming involved in cybersecurity, but many may fear that they lack the necessary digital competencies or may expose themselves to risk. There’s a growing need for boards to include cyber experts who can translate technical risks into business terms and create risk committees to ensure informed decision-making and oversight.  Related:Forrester Panel: Government Cybersecurity Leaders Discuss Next Steps for Zero Trust The challenge lies in shifting perspectives from viewing cybersecurity as a costly problem best solved by technical solutions alone, to understanding the cyber domain as an enterprise risk with shared roles and responsibilities. To facilitate this transition, it’s crucial to provide plain business language assessments along with analytics that align investment decisions and help mitigate known risks.  Organizations also need to understand what an optimal insurance or risk transfer structure looks like for their specific entity. This involves stress-testing existing policies across a range of potential cyber incidents.  Finally, directors want cybersecurity exposures presented in terms that resonate with their expertise in business, operations, governance, legal matters, and finance. They also want to know what to do when things go wrong, and how to involve law enforcement.   Addressing Cybersecurity Fatigue  Digital transformation, with all its efficiencies, is juxtaposed against the seemingly unending battle against cybercrime, leaving many boards questioning how to effectively address the dynamic. To overcome fatigue and pessimism, transparent and effective communication is essential.  Premortems and table top exercises (TTXs) are both valuable, low-cost security exercises for boards and leaders. The key is to present concrete scenarios that illustrate the potential impact of cyber events on the business. For instance, demonstrating how a two-week ransomware outage could result in a $200 million write-down can help the board and CFO understand the stakes involved.  Related:Ransomware Attack on Rhode Island Highlights Risk to Government With budgets always top of mind, it is crucial to allocate cybersecurity capital wisely. Shifting away from conceiving cybersecurity as a cost center to viewing it as part of the long-term capital budget is a worthwhile conversation for organizations to consider.  Ultimately, the business must decide on its risk tolerance, ideally elevating this decision to the board level. Presenting the facts, including potential losses, mitigation strategies, and costs, allows boards to make informed decisions about acceptable risks and ROI.  CISO Evolution and Future of Cyber Risk Governance  As the role of a CISO expands beyond technical expertise, there’s a growing need for a new breed of digital risk leaders who can bridge the gap between cybersecurity and wider business objectives. Organizations are exploring innovative governance structures, such as creating a chief digital risk officer role to oversee a broader portfolio of digital exposures.  Looking ahead, integrating cybersecurity into enterprise risk management will entail a multi-faceted approach. This includes developing risk committees to address complementary domains like supply chain and technology risks, while leveraging changing frameworks like NIST CSF 2.0 the SEC’s cyber rules, and regulations like the EU’s AIAct, NIS2, and DORA.  A Framework for Board Engagement  Effective cybersecurity governance at the board level rests on three pillars: substance, frequency, and structure. The information presented must align cyber risks with tangible business exposures, moving beyond technical jargon. The frequency of discussions should be calibrated to ensure timely oversight without overwhelming the board’s agenda. Finally, determining the appropriate committee structure is crucial for fostering in-depth and relevant discussions.  As the cyber landscape evolves, a holistic approach to cybersecurity will be essential for organizations to effectively navigate risks and align their cyber strategies with overarching business objectives. By integrating cybersecurity into the core of corporate governance, organizations can transform security from a reactive measure into a strategic asset — enhancing resilience, fostering innovation, and maintaining competitive advantage.  source

A new survey of SAP customer organizations shows that, despite AI experimentation, few have implemented AI and generative AI technologies across their enterprises. That’s not to say organizations aren’t eager to leverage AI for process optimization and data analysis, in particular, but concerns about security, data quality, and governance remain hurdles. SAP conducted a “Use of Artificial Intelligence” survey among its Americas’ SAP User Group (ASUG), UK & Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG), and its German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) in August and September 2024. There were 260 ASUG respondents and 123 UKISUG respondents, along with 246 DSAG participants from the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). A small portion of SAP customers reported their organizations were using AI in many areas (6% DSAG, 7% ASUG, 5% UKISUG). The lion’s share of respondents said their organizations were leveraging AI in some areas of the business (24% DSAG, 25% ASUG, 29% UKISUG), or not using AI at all (11% DSAG, 10% ASUG, 13% UKISUG). source

NVIDIA has introduced a new at-home supercomputer just in time for the holidays. The tech giant unveiled its new Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit, a powerful new platform that delivers generative AI 70% faster than its predecessor. The compact supercomputer offers cutting-edge features and enhanced computing power for developers and hobbyists looking to train and refine generative AI tools, agents, and robots. Owners of the Jetson Orin NX and Orin Nano can also achieve higher performance with a new software upgrade. The Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit currently costs $249. The NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit comes as new hardware, or developers can download a software update to make their existing kit “super.” Image: NVIDIA What can the NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit do? According to NVIDIA, the new developer kit: Packages a Jetson Orin Nano 8GB system-on-module (SoM) and a reference carrier board. Comprises an NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPU with tensor cores and a 6-core Arm CPU. Performs at 67 INT8 TOPS (total operations per second), a 70% performance increase over the previous version. Includes 102GB/s of memory bandwidth, a 50% increase over the previous generation. Runs at just 25 watts of power. Can support up to four cameras for computer vision applications. Comes at a lower price ($249) than the previous kit ($499). In the video introducing the kit, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said the new kit “runs everything that the HGX does,” including large language models. More must-read AI coverage SEE: Last week, the Chinese government investigated NVIDIA for potential monopoly conditions around NVIDIA’s acquisition of interconnect provider Mellanox. The mini supercomputer is compatible with CUDA — NVIDIA’s software layer for harnessing GPUs together — and CUDNN, a library for building deep neural networks. Huang emphasized that NVIDIA intends developers to experiment with physical robots powered by generative AI. Jetson Orin NX and Nano get the same software boost The NVIDIA Jetson ecosystem, which offers software and developer tools for the Jetson family of embedded computing boards, is compatible with the new developer kit. Developers who already have the previous-generation Jetson Orin NX and Orin Nano series of systems on modules can access a software upgrade today that brings 1.7x generative AI performance. source

The flight-status service, released earlier this year, gives customers faster, more transparent and context-rich information about flight delays and updates, the CIO says. United has used the storytelling LLM to send out more than 100,000 digital notifications to date and has identified roughly 90 other use cases in the pipeline, Birnbaum adds. As part of its storytelling ethos, the flight-status LLM will specify, for example, which precise weather event may be affecting a delayed flight and provide quick and useful information to customers about next actions. This has proved to be far better than broadly announcing that a plane is delayed due to mechanical issues or bad weather when it is sunny outside, Birnbaum says.  “We worked hard to fine-tune this model to take operational feeds, notes from our operations teams, the crew, and all these different sources of data, and have AI take all this data and create a narrative that is more transparent, empathetic, decisive, and clear as we can be,” the CIO says. “As opposed to a canned message, we try to write a specific story about what’s going on with your flight. People hear the specifics, and they understand it and their blood pressure goes down. Our storytellers still look at the messages to make sure they’re within the realm of what we want to communicate but we’re getting much more comfortable with it.’ source

By Alissandra McCann ( December 16, 2024, 5:50 PM EST) — This article is part of a monthly column that provides takeaways from recent bid protest cases. This installment focuses on decisions from the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that considered questions of claims court jurisdiction and standing, meaningful-relationship commitment letters, and responsibility determinations and unwarranted strengths…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2024 has been a banner year for Perplexity. The AI search startup, founded by former DeepMind and OpenAI researcher Aravind Srinivas, raised hundreds of millions of dollars — its latest funding round reportedly valuing the company at $9 billion — and introduced several notable features, including Pages, Spaces, and innovative shopping experiences. These developments have solidified Perplexity’s reputation as an “AI-first” knowledge discovery engine, standing apart from traditional search giants like Google and Bing, which are bolting AI capabilities onto their existing engines. However, the journey is far from over.  Facing intensifying competition, Perplexity is broadening its scope with a new addition to its portfolio: Carbon. The company has just acquired this startup, for an undisclosed sum, to address the “data gap” enterprises encounter with AI search and streamline the knowledge discovery process in their workflows. Carbon has developed a comprehensive retrieval framework that streamlines the process of connecting external data sources to LLMs. Users can tap the Carbon universal API or SDKs to sync their data sources and retrieve the data to use with LLMs. It offers native integrations with over 20 data connectors and supports more than 20 file formats, including text, audio and video files. The expanding scope of AI search From individuals to business users, almost everyone today uses AI search as part of their workflows. The idea of the technology is pretty simple — you don’t have to go through a swathe of links and content to find relevant insights and information. Instead, the information will come to you as the direct answer to your query. Perplexity has thrived on this approach, using a range of large language models to retrieve information from the web and simplifying how users work. It even allows teams to extract information from their personal or business files such as PDFs and Word documents.  But, here’s the thing. The web is home to public information, and uploading internal files — PDFs, conversations, images — individually is not feasible for business users dealing with large volumes of proprietary data. This affects the quality of answers, keeping them generic and devoid of important organization-relevant contexts. Highlighting this “data gap,” Sanjeev Mohan, the former Gartner Research VP for data and analytics, told VentureBeat that one of the biggest AI trends for 2025 will be ETL for unstructured data. It will allow teams to extract and transform data from dispersed internal sources, ultimately powering their LLMs to generate highly relevant and accurate responses. Now, this is exactly what Perplexity plans to do with the acquisition of Carbon’s comprehensive, streamlined retrieval framework. Perplexity will integrate Carbon’s retrieval engine and connectors into its tech stack, giving users of the search platform a direct way to plug in their diverse sources of data, from Google Docs and Notion to Hubspot and Slack.  This, the company says, will expand the knowledge pool powering the AI search engine, making its responses more comprehensive, relevant and personalized to users.  What can users expect from Carbon-powered Perplexity? While Perplexity has just acquired Carbon and the integration is yet to be executed, it’s pretty easy to imagine how the additional data connectors will improve the workflows of enterprise teams using the AI search engine. For instance, if one has to move the date for a launch and needs to figure out the latest deadline and guidelines set by their team, Perplexity would be able to parse through all the data in Google Docs, Notion, and Slack — and make necessary correlations — to find the information that answers the question.  In essence, there would be no more worrying about stitching together context from the web, individual apps, and messages. The platform does everything on its own to provide the answer. “The notable benefit of this setup is that our technology can find the answer without making you pinpoint the document/database where that information is stored,” Sara Platnick, who leads communications at Perplexity, told VentureBeat.  Another example, she said, could be extracting customer meeting insights. Perplexity would be able to fetch the details and focus of the conversation from connected CRMs in no time.  Notably, by leveraging Carbon’s retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows, Perplexity is making enterprise search more accessible, saving companies the hassle of building their own RAG pipelines from scratch. “By finding and interpreting proprietary data with Perplexity and Carbon, companies can address a range of multi-faceted gen AI use cases. We find the leading adopters are most focused on customer service, document processing, image processing and recommendation engines, Kevin Petrie,” VP of research at BARC US, told VentureBeat. Execution will be key Acquiring Carbon is just the beginning. The real key will be execution, or how seamlessly and safely the startup’s tech is integrated. After all, we are talking about proprietary data from some of the most critical knowledge repositories that enterprises maintain. “Companies are rightly wary of exposing their intellectual property to the public. So Perplexity and Carbon will need to provide governance controls that ensure companies can keep their data inside their own firewalls. They have no interest in sharing secrets or training a public model to mimic their intellectual property,” Petrie added. On Perplexity’s part, Platnick noted that “all information from internal and private sources on the engine is encrypted, as is all data transmitted and stored in Carbon’s data connectors.” She also pointed out that the company has additional protections to ensure that private documents stay private and aren’t accessible to non-authorized users. As of now, there’s no specific timeline for the integration of Carbon with Perplexity. However, the startup will cease operations of its managed API on March 31, 2025. Existing customers using the API have already been notified for offboarding, with the Carbon team assisting them in the transition. source

The recent Forrester Security & Risk Summit in Baltimore featured government cybersecurity officials discussing a newly published guide on zero trust and evaluating the next steps for the security model.   In fact, Forrester is known for introducing the zero-trust security model back in 2009. The motto “never trust, always verify” suggests a least-privilege approach. Former Forrester analyst John Kindervag, now a chief evangelist at Illumio, was an initial champion of zero trust.  In a Dec. 10 panel, cybersecurity leaders discussed “Navigating the Federal Zero Trust Data Security Guide,” which the federal CISO and CDO Councils published on Oct. 31. The guide, developed by 70 people from more than 30 federal agencies and departments, offers a breakdown of how government agencies and organizations should think about data risks. The goal is to provide a practical guide on how to implement zero trust.  A Holistic View of Data and Security  During the session, Steven Hernandez, CISO in the US Department of Education and co-chair of the US federal CISO Council, discussed how the guide could teach federal and private cybersecurity professionals think from both a zero-trust and data perspective.  “It’s interesting because we talk about how to harness data, so we use a lot of behavioral analytics and logs from our systems, etc.,” Hernandez told the audience. “That’s one side of the coin, but the other side of the coin is how we protect data using zero trust principles, technologies, and operations, and in the data management section, we’re going to have to basically straddle both of those platforms to be successful. ”   Related:Ransomware Attack on Rhode Island Highlights Risk to Government Anne Klieve, management analyst in the Office of Enterprise Integration at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, agreed that a goal of the guide was to create a document that both the data and security communities could understand.   “It was about creating a guide that would be readable to both the cybersecurity and data communities, and specifically looking at how separate even the jargon was for both communities,” Klieve said during the session.  Massachusetts CIO Jason Snyder said he appreciates how the guide can move federal agencies and organizations past understanding the architecture of zero trust and doing something with it. He also said Massachusetts was at “ground zero” as far as zero trust.  “One of the things I really liked about the guide was its primary focus is data, and when you talk about zero trust, I think that is the right area of focus,” Snyder said during the panel. “So, what we’re doing within Massachusetts is really driving forward from a data perspective and better understanding our data, better understanding different types of data we have, and then working on ways to protect that data.”  Related:Cybercriminals and the SEC: What Companies Need to Know Heidi Shey, principal analyst at Forrester and co-moderator of the panel, sees the guide as applicable to organizations beyond state and federal government. For example, the panelists plan to add a section on supply chain risk.   In an interview following the session, Shey told InformationWeek that the guide can help organizations no longer operate in silos as far as data and security.  “We’re talking about really embedding data security controls throughout that entire life cycle and thinking about how we manage data and how we protect it in a much more holistic way, so that these two functions within organizations are not operating as siloed functions anymore the way they historically have been,” Shey said. “I think that’s one of the big takeaways from this guide that people can use to help bring these two groups together on zero-trust data security.”  Klieve recommended that organizations use the guide to create a zero-trust data implementation road map based on general program management principles. This would include a maturity analysis and gap assessments. After that, organizations could implement their programs as they planned, including examining finances, examining risks, and managing performance. However, she noted that C-suite leaders such as the CISO and chief data officer would need to be consulted on how the budgets would be allocated.  Related:Does Desktop AI Come With a Side of Risk? Chapter 4 of the guide has a placeholder for the topic “Manage the Data.” Klieve would like to see this chapter filled with a discussion of alignment of data management to data security as well as how to use data management to minimize data breaches. In addition, the chapter should cover the interaction between data engines and machine learning as it relates to data security, according to Klieve. That includes preparing data for machine learning models.  “This will become a key document I just keep on my desk all the time,” Klieve said. “I really want to see it kept up to date.”   Hernandez said work on the Zero Trust Data Security Guide is in a holding pattern until late January, but then his team will brief the incoming administration on “the overall status of all things cybersecurity.” He also said the CISO council could add a zero-trust section to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Special Publication 800-60, which provides guidelines on how to map data to security systems.   The Next Level for Zero Trust  Meanwhile, in another Dec. 10 panel, “Next-Level Your Zero Trust Initiative” panelists from the federal government as well as GE Aerospace addressed how government agencies and the private sector can move forward with zero trust.   Eric Poulin, senior director for cybersecurity technology strategy and management at GE Aerospace, told the audience that applying the same zero-trust initiatives to all teams would not work.  “You can design a master zero-trust plan, but at the end of the day, you just try to put one blanket zero-trust plan, you’re going to end up alienating certain individual business lines,” Poulin said.   At the Department of Interior, its zero-trust program manager, Lou Eichenbaum, has built a “zero-trust community of practice,” over three years, he told the audience. The department respects the separate missions of areas such