Google (finally) released a few feature updates including the ability to quickly delete the last 15 mins of search history, a new photos folder with password protection on Android devices and reminders on location tracking in Google Maps. An improved password manager (belatedly) integrated into Chrome can be used across devices, and alert users when a password they use is found in a data breach. https://www.protocol.com/google-io-keynote-highlightsImage by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

To help patients search for information about skin, hair and nail conditions, Google's AI-based dermatology assist tool leverages volumes of images uploaded by patients. Google is one of the tech behemoths that is in a prime (somewhat unbalanced) position to develop fascinating AI tools as it sits at the edge of billions of records and images globally with all its products.Unveiled at the recent Google IO developer conference, it isn't meant to replace medical advice or specialist treatments - but be more of an education and awareness tool.https://blog.google/technology/health/ai-dermatology-preview-io-2021Image credit: Medicinet

Microsoft recently released to the open source community an automation tool for security testing AI systems. Counterfit helps organisations undertake AI security risk assessments to ensure that the algorithms used in their businesses are robust, reliable, and trustworthy.While ML is increasingly used in defence, healthcare, finance and other applications, how do we ensure that cyber security professionals can assess the security state of deployments and tools?Here's a starter...https://github.com/Azure/counterfit/Image by chenspec from Pixabay 

Ransomware attacks are on the rise and evolving into the prevalent threat of 2021. Organisations are running to stay ahead of the tools and techniques, but its often more difficult to identify where any exfiltrated data may be stored and disclosed further.Expect to see more funding and innovation flow to cyber startups that close this gap and have a robust R&D roadmap to evolve their platforms and tooling.Recent Y combinator cyber startup - cyble.io is the latest with seed funding (backed by Innov8 and Angel investors as well). https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210405005474/en/https://cyble.io/about-us.html

In Australia, we're still largely trying to make PPPs work (hint: it takes more than 1 year funding and partnership to build & execute value). However it has been proven successful elsewhere in leading to substantial economic development, significant operational capability uplift and more.Project IKE was a prototyping exercise funded by DARPA (US) back in 2013. The Contractor (Two Six Labs) has since scaled, commercialising the product in collaboration with US Defence Agencies (Navy etc). The product is now transitioning to US Cyber Command as a key cyber readiness and analysis platform.Commercialising R&D is not impossible.https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2021/04/20/a-cyber-tool-that-started-at-darpa-moves-to-cyber-command/

We are racing to learn about ourselves, our heritage and predict our likelihood/ predisposition to disease/ allergies or food choices (yes, Australian do love vegemite!). Who should we trust with our data? How will our data be used to identify and target us?There's lots of genomic testing services/ platforms, DNA registries and testing kits. Which privacy innovators are working with them?An emerging example - DNAsafe.io - run the computations required over encrypted data so its not fully visible. Next: we keep the data of ourselves and share/ run encrypted data with partners/ providers (Digi.me/ IDXchange)photo credit: dnasafe