Datalyst Blog

We’ve all been there. You’re flying through your inbox, trying to reach inbox zero before a meeting, and you click a link in a shipping notification. The page doesn't load quite right. You stare blankly and your anxiety spikes.

That moment happens a lot and it is a fork in the road for your company’s security. In many organizations, that employee’s next thought isn’t: “I should report this,” it is: “If I tell anyone, I’m going to get fired.”

Let’s be honest for a second. You didn’t start your business because you love configuring firewalls or figuring out why the printer is offline for the third time this week. You started your business to do what you’re good at. Yet somewhere along the way, technology became a necessary evil—a constant source of friction that feels like it eats up your budget and your patience.

If you’ve ever wanted to throw your laptop out the window, you aren't alone. Here is why technology feels like such a headache, and why the problem isn’t you—it’s the approach.

We’ve seen our fair share of convenience vs. security trade-offs, but few consumer devices sit at the center of that Venn diagram quite like the Ring camera. To the average user, it’s a doorbell that significantly reduces package thieves. To those of us that work with technology, it’s a sophisticated Internet of Things (IoT) sensor with a direct, persistent uplink to one of the world’s largest cloud infrastructures.

The holiday season isn’t usually a time we like to spend dwelling on unpleasant things, but unfortunately, cybercrime is so prevalent that we cannot afford to ever let our guard down. What we can do, however, is tell a (somewhat) happier story that nevertheless reminds us what to keep an eye out for.

As such, please enjoy our version of a lesser-known Charles Dickens story.

You've heard the grumbling, seen the memes, and probably even felt it yourself: that vague, all-powerful entity known as the algorithm. It's blamed for everything from political polarization to your inexplicable obsession with people eating military rations. What exactly is it, and what digital giants are pulling its strings?