Paige Thompson was indicted on July 29, 2019 for allegedly stealing data from Capital One Financial Corp. Thompson is charged with gaining access to over one million credit card applications due to a misfiguration within the bank’s firewall settings that Thompson was able to infiltrate. The alleged theft took place on March 23^rd of this year when Thompson used a Tor browser to hide her identity and hack into the bank’s files. She was able to not only steal credit card applications but over 140 thousand social security numbers, 80 thousand bank account numbers, and approximately one million Canadian Social Insurance Numbers dating back from 2015.

Companies are investing in data capabilities within their organization as well as employees with data skills. Whether it is the ability to code, analyze reports, or visualizing data -having data experience has never been more important in the job market.

Going by what we keep hearing about big data, professionals and evangelists of this technology make it feel simple as if businesses can just take off as soon as they implement it. However, the truth is actually the opposite. Big data may not show results as soon as you implement it. Rather, it demands patience since it may take some time and perseverance for the data to be collected and used in what the initial intention was. It takes time to separate the useful information from data, prioritize, visualize and extract insights needed to make business decisions.

Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum…and Facebook? With Bitcoin up to nearly $11,000 a share at the time of publishing; cryptocurrencies have taken mainstream media by storm. Wanting a piece of the proverbial pie, Facebook has never been one to sit by as other businesses make millions.  The Social Media giant recently announced that they were throwing their hat in the ring by announcing Project Libra, their take on cryptocurrencies.