BOSTON, Nov. 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Intevity, a leading digital technology consultancy, has acquired Techabo, a rapidly growing digital consulting agency. The purchase adds momentum to Intevity's focus on strategic growth and brings talented employees on ...

INTEVITY ACQUIRES TECHABO

In its ninth year, the Transform Awards North America celebrates excellence in brand development, rebranding and reputation management. The collaboration between Unisys and Landor & Fitch resulted in a multi-dimensional creative reimagining that modernized the 150-year-old IT brand for the first time since 1986.

Unisys Brand Transformation Work Shines with Three Gold Awards at Transform Awards North America 2023

Information Services Corp (TSX:ISV:CA) Wednesday announced a new contract through its Technology Solutions segment. ISC said it has secured a $3.2 million (approx. CA$4.5 million) contract with the State of Michigan for a period of five years, with the ...

ISC’s technology solutions segment wins contract with the State of Michigan

Installation can reveal the ISE Daily editorial and reporting team for the 2024 show, which takes place at the Fira Barcelona, Gran Via from 30 January to 2 February. The ISE Daily is a long-standing partnership between Integrated Systems Europe and Installation publisher Future to provide the official show daily publication for the world’s leading

Installation reveals ISE Daily 2024 reporting team

Xiyu Lin will compete at the 2023 TOTO Japan Classic in Omitama, Japan at Taiheiyo Club, taking place from November 2-4. Looking to wager on Lin at the TOTO Japan Classic this week? She's currently listed by bookmakers at +1200 to claim the top spot on the ...

The 2023 TOTO Japan Classic Odds & Preview: Xiyu Lin

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Windows 11 version 23H2, but to get it you need to make sure a specific setting is enabled in Windows Update first.

The Windows 11 2023 Update (23H2) is now generally available, but there's a catch

Among the illustrious winners at the 2023 iF Design Awards, iSteady M6 stands tall alongside Apple's Mac Studio and Studio Display, showcasing its innovative design essence. Furthermore, the iSteady M6 recently clinched the coveted Red Dot Design Award in Germany

iSteady M6 Clinches 2023 iF Design Award at "70 YEARS iF | Shenzhen Design Annual Meeting & Design Night"

USIC, LLC (“USIC”), the leader in underground utility damage prevention, is engaging state broadband leaders and internet service providers (ISP) in c

USIC Engages With State Broadband Leaders and Internet Service Providers to Align Utility Locating Resources With BEAD Program Infrastructure Deployment

We provide may services! Free water testing, iron removal, order removal. Reverse osmosis. Clean and adjust water softeners. Filters for most drinking water systems.

Economy Treatment Systems

HID will showcase examples of end-to-end solutions that encompass readers, card personalization software, cloud-based card issuance and mobile-enabled technologies.

HID to showcase trusted identity solutions at CBORD UGC 2023

Do you like boxing fights? This evening I bring you a head-to-head battle between Redis Streams and AWS SQS. If you are interested which technology is better and which will end up on the ground, check it up! The story behind the competition Recently we had to add communication with an external API to our system. It's nothing unusual, and we already have dozens of similar integrations in our applications. This time, however, we had to meet more strict per-second rate limits, whilst still being able to maximize their usage. To keep it fast, but simple, we decided to move all the API calls to a subsystem. No database, no front-end, just two queues (input and output), and just one purpose - hit API as fast as possible within limits. This created the next challenge - which queueing system to choose? Rivals Our application is written in Ruby and hosted in the AWS cloud. The natural candidate was , as we've already used it in the other parts of the system. On the other hand, we already had set up for Sidekiq, so we decided to check if could be a better fit. We preferred not to introduce entirely new technology if one of the existing solutions met our needs. AWS SQS Redis Redis Streams AWS SQS comes in : FIFO and Standard, have their differences, so we decided to compare them separately. We ended up with three candidates: two flavors AWS SQS (standard) AWS SQS (FIFO) Redis Streams (Redis version 5.0) Detailed comparison The battle between queue systems is going to consist of five rounds. We will check: Ease of use Error handling Persistence Throughput Delivery Hopefully, you have a fighting knowledge of how AWS services work, and you know how Redis punches. I won't let you wait any longer; let the fight begin! Battleground: How queues work? A typical way of processing queue messages looks like the following; system marks messages as "pending" or "in-flight" and sends them to the consumer. When the consumer finishes processing, it notifies the queue about the success by sending an "acknowledge" message. Then messages change state from "pending" to "processed." Lack of "acknowledge" for a given time means that processing has failed, and the message is no longer considered "pending." This way, no message gets stuck in the "pending" state forever. When processing fails for a couple of times, the queue assumes there is a problem with the message itself and stops sending it to the client. Optionally it can also move it to the DLQ (it's like a graveyard for messages). Round 1: Ease of use 👨‍🔬 AWS SQS provides a handful of differing ways in which to use it. Starting from the web interface, through CLI ending on client libraries available in many languages. For example, processing messages in Ruby code looks like this: poll_config = { }
stats = sqs_poller.poll(poll_config) { process_messages(messages) } max_number_of_messages: 10 |messages| You can set up a batch size together with a bunch of other parameters describing polling loop details. The library takes care of acknowledging messages when the processing block finishes. When processing finishes, the poller returns an object containing some basic stats. (e.g., number of messages received) Using Redis Streams is more complicated. First, you need to perform all actions using CLI or client library. No web UI included. What's more, as of today, the set of commands provided by the API is somewhat limited. Simple code for processing messages looks like this: redis.xreadgroup( , , , , count: 1) redis.xack( , , ) 'mygroup' 'Alice' 'mystream' '>' # Process the message 'mystream' 'mygroup' '1526569495631-0' It looks easy, but there is a catch; if you want to handle failures, you need to code it yourself: redis.xpending( , ) redis.xclaim( , , , 3600000, ) 'mystream' 'mygroup' # Check the how long message is "pending" and "delivery counter" in the response 'mystream' 'mygroup' 'Alice' '1526569498055-0' Unless you worked with redis streams before, you probably have no idea what's happening here, which clearly shows that using SQS is way easier. If you wonder what these commands do, the best way is to check . This is what we always do when working with Redis API. the documentation AWS with web UI access and more friendly API wins this round. Aws 1:0 Redis Round 2: Error handling 🥊 Two features help with handling message processing errors: retrying non-acknowledged messages moving messages to the Dead Letter Queue (DLQ). Now, let's check how our candidates support them; In SQS (both FIFO and standard), the whole flow is integrated with the queue lifecycle. You can easily set this up using the web UI or the CLI. There is an option to define "in-flight" state timeout as well as retries limit and which DLQ queue to use. In Redis, there is no web UI, and there are no knobs for manipulating the "pending" state timeout or DLQ settings. There is a possibility to get all the needed data from the Redis API, but there is nothing built-in to utilise. You have to code the error handling by yourself. Summing up, AWS allows you to configure error handling with a few clicks, while Redis requires you to implement a custom solution. AWS wins this round. Aws 2:0 Redis Round 3: Persistence 💾 By "persistence" here, I mean how queue stores messages. I'll compare how long a queue keeps messages (retention) and what the limit is on the number of stored messages. In AWS SQS, we can configure retention to any value from 1 minute to 14 days. SQS can store an unlimited number of messages, with limits imposed only on the number of messages. It is set to 20,000 for FIFO and 120,000 for a standard queue. in-flight Redis queue works differently - it stores all the messages in memory. As a result, Redis' memory size limits the number of messages (maximum number depends on message size). You have to purge queue from old messages manually to make sure you won't receive an out of memory error. Storing messages in memory also has another drawback. In the case of server downtime or restart, you'll lose all the data. You can mitigate it by creating Redis database snapshots periodically together with recording all operations logs. Yet that requires additional manual configuration. See ( ). RDB and AOF persistence Taking into account better versatility of the AWS persistence configuration coming right out-of-the-box, AWS wins again. Aws 3:0 Redis Round 4: Throughput 🏎 Queue system cannot be the bottleneck for the application. In this round, I'll compare how fast different queue systems can deliver messages. AWS SQS introduces a limit when batching messages downloaded from the queue. In each request, you can download up to 10 messages. If your system needs to process a great number of messages, it means many queries to the API. On top of this, if you use the FIFO queue, you'll get 300/second requests cap (it's possible to increase this limit by contacting support). Combining it with messages batching (up to 10 in a single request), we receive a theoretical maximum of 3000 messages per second for FIFO SQS. My experiments showed that in practice downloading 250 messages from FIFO SQS using a single Ruby thread takes around 0.6s. Here you can see the benefits of storing messages in memory, as Redis does. There are no limits on the number of requests, and my experiment with downloading 250 messages in Ruby took around 0.001s. On top of this, Redis message size is limited only by the size of the server memory, while AWS SQS introduces a limit on the message size to 256K. You can use Extended Client Library to store message payload on S3, which extends this limit to 2GB, which is still less than Redis. Redis is several rows of magnitude faster than AWS SQS. Hence it wins this round. Aws 3:1 Redis Round 5: Delivery 📨 In the final round, I'll check if the queues guarantee First-In-First-Out (FIFO) and exactly-once delivery. Redis Streams always provide both FIFO and exactly-once processing. Period. AWS SQS provides two different types of queues. When FIFO and exactly-once processing is not a requirement, a standard SQS queue is the right choice. It can deliver messages in any order (i.e., a later message can be delivered before an earlier one). It also promises only the "at least once" delivery (one message can be delivered multiple times). For cases when FIFO is a must-have, AWS provides the FIFO SQS queues. They guarantee both FIFO and "exactly once" delivery at the cost of the limitations mentioned above. So this round is a tie (with Redis having a small advantage) Aws 4:2 Redis Verdict Winner by points 🏆 The AWS SQS has won the competition. It's a well-balanced solution that works out-of-the-box and satisfies most requirements. In case you need to tune it, there is a web UI or CLI to make it as easy as possible. It also comes with a lot of tutorials and tools that help you to start. Winner by knockout 👊 In most cases, we use AWS SQS at work in . Recently a Client gave us specific requirements, though. We were tasked in building a system that had to process at least 250 messages each second. u2i AWS SQS appeared a bit too slow. We have only one second for processing. When downloading 250 messages takes 0.6s out of 1 second we have, that doesn't leave time for possible retries. What's more, we're not interested in the lost messages when the system is down for more than 15 minutes, so we don't need an over-the-top persistence. Given the above, we decided to choose Redis Streams and bear the cost of manual implementation of the error handling scenarios.

Redis Stream vs. Amazon SQS

Today’s modern world is, undoubtedly, not a safe haven for any business. Make no mistake, even running a small-time operation or setting up a niche venture can become challenging. But surprisingly enough, the major brands like Sony or top cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance aren’t under the greatest threat - criminals and hackers mostly see their prey under a much lower grade. Network security is one of the stumbling stones for businesses of any scale nowadays. Digital age fraudsters rarely engage in assaulting the top corporations - the largest chunk of their bounty comes from the companies that would never make it to the Forbes list. A specific strategy of countering the possible threats in the digital arena must be designed, implemented, and followed through with on a constant basis. It is vital for business owners and their employees to be active when it comes to preventing cyber breaches. Why your business is not secure And this is certainly not a question. The latest study completed by (SBT) indicated that almost half of the total of all cyber attacks (43%) targeted small businesses. So what’s the catch? Criminals follow a specific strategy and often attack smaller companies, since they rarely invest in a proper digital protection software or lack of efficient tools set up. In case something unusual happens and your business will be disrupted, insurance will only save you from bankruptcy. Small Business Trends More research data suggests that of such companies go out of business for good within just six months after a cyberattack took place. The fact is, of data security breaches are performed with malicious intent. Moreover, half of the companies have experienced a cyberattack involving customer and employee information being stolen in the past 12 months. In the aftermath of such incidents, these companies spent an average of $879,582 because of the damage or theft of IT assets. In addition, disruption to normal operations accounted for an average of $955,429. 60% 48% Digital hackers and criminals can damage your brand in many ways: Snatch valuable information, such as financial data and social security numbers Acquire access over email addresses, bank account data, and personal information to target particular people Take over a user’s present accounts or even open up new ones in order to succeed in making fraudulent charges Perform phishing operations to lure our valuable data Tricky and experienced criminals use human-factor flaws to their advantage. Most people are prone to fictitious, obsolete operating browsers and social-engineering scams. Data breaches statistics & history With the increasing use and reliance on digital data by many corporations and small-time companies, data breaches have become fairly common in the past decade. The statistics speak louder than words - following the on the biggest online data breaches worldwide as of May 2019, the number of increased from 157 million in 2005 to 781 million in 2015, while the number of exposed records jumped from around 67 million to 169 million during the same time frame! Statista data data breaches in the U.S. Meanwhile, Identity theft is the most common in the world. A few years ago, identity theft accounted for more than 50% of all global data breaches, and about 40% of all compromised records that year. The services sector had the highest – nearly 260 million. This figure accounted for just . type of data breach incident number of identities exposed that year over 60% of all identities that were exposed through data breaches in 2015 The financial sector is also highly affected by cybercrimes: financial access data theft is the second most common type of data breach, accounting for 22% of all data breaches. In 2015, this sector had a total of 120 million identities exposed. The costs of cybercrimes are rather high for the financial services sector. Global cyber crimes caused, on average, an of 13.5 million USD for the financial services industry, the highest average amongst all industries. annual loss Famous data breaches In 2011, Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity music service were attacked by hacking collective Lulzsec. The PSN was offline for more than 43 days, and 77 million user data records were stolen In August 2016, a 2014 hack of online platform Yahoo was uncovered, affecting at least 500 million user accounts In December 2016, Yahoo revealed another hack dating back to 2013, which affected 1 billion users. The impact of the second reported Yahoo hack was updated in October 2017, when the company revealed that 3 billion accounts had been affected, making it the largest data breach in history. Outracing the thieves As we have seen, due to ongoing insights, small businesses are heavily unprotected. One has to put a well-designed plan in place in order to manage the data breach possibility. Ensuring a step-by-step strategy for small and medium businesses is the key to survival in the ocean full of cyber sharks. Some steps you can take are: Update all operating systems regularly Purchase and utilize professional firewall software that will hold viruses, spyware, and phishing attacks at bay Encrypt your wireless network Set up restrictions and administrative rights to ensure that nothing can be installed on company computers without proper authorization Block access to restricted websites to prevent employees and hackers from uploading data to storage clouds Remove or disable USB ports to prevent malicious data from being downloaded Implement strict password policies Encrypt everything that contains sensitive data - drives, folders, and files Use the specific software from reliable KYC providers when working with digital assets Business owners should consult and hire security professionals A digital shield for your business Organized cyber crime can render significant damage to your business. However, it is not only imperative to attempt preventing a cyber breach, but to ensure that whenever such a thing happens, your company becomes aware of it on short notice. When it comes to your organization’s security, time is absolutely of the essence. By utilizing specific KYC procedures, data-loss prevention, fraud prevention, and risk-assessment software, it is possible to reduce the data breach possibility to the lowest rate. The top companies providing KYC nowadays include Fenergo, OrboGraph, SILO Compliance, GetID, Single Source, and many others - each company having their own solutions and features. New developments, such as the blockchain, are becoming more widely used in many industries, and security is one of the main concerns for DLT-based projects. Crypto exchanges and trading operations have a severe problem with malicious cyber breaches and money laundering, but there is always a way to counter any issue. Not only is it vital to build efficient systems for KYC, but you must work to eliminate the very possibility of any fraudulent action; and there are already several successful examples of this. For instance, idCredit has  implemented a KYC aggregator within its flagship product, . GetID The main focus is fraud prevention, making such examples as onboarding fake clients and utilizing money laundering schemes with fake documents impossible. The company is also working toward creating a unique digital ID to exclude the need for KYC procedures in every single service, which requires users to download tonnes of documents and lose a lot of time. Conclusion No matter what direction you choose for your business, it is vital that you protect your venture with a strong strategy and the latest technologies. Speaking of the digital asset industry, a decent KYC procedure will save you the trouble as you can be certain that money is not being laundered through your platform and that the proper authorities will not come for you one day to close the whole thing down, resulting in you and other users losing money overnight - such as what happened to the infamous BTC-E.

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