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Organizations operate in an ever-changing environment. These environmental changes for example include an introduction of a new law, technological progress, or even large-scale crises, such as the one we are experiencing right now. Organizations often need to react to these outside factors by updating their organizational policies. Many of these policies are implemented in software. Changes in policies can therefore lead to changes in code. These are often costly, time-consuming, and can make some services temporarily unavailable. Sound bad? Meet Open Policy Agent (OPA), an open-source policy engine that unifies…

For nearly two decades, volunteer distributed computing projects have helped advance scientific research and understanding of infections and hereditary diseases. Scientists need to understand how diseases work to formulate therapies to fight them. One key way to arrive at this understanding is to create models and run multitudes of molecular dynamics simulations.  These simulations are huge and resource-intensive. Even with the help of big cloud providers and onsite clusters, scientists still need computation resources to power these simulations. Using client-server systems like BOINC, volunteers run simulations called work units using…

If you’ve ever shopped online, created a playlist with Spotify, or tried to learn a new language with Duolingo, or chatted on WhatsApp, you’ve interacted with a chatbot. In addition to being used by industries as wide ranging as news sites, retail, and real estate, chatbots have also become quite popular. According to a recent survey by Forbes, 62% of consumers in the U.S. like using chatbots.  Given the prevalence of chatbots and our love of technology, we decided to create a bot-based system, using natural language processing (NLP) to…

Overview Every web application is intended for humans. If interaction is expected, the application obviously needs to authenticate users, create accounts for them, and keep their credentials secure. This can be a complex task due to security and privacy concerns. While it is possible to create our own solution, it is much easier to use one of many ready-to-use solutions, that is if we have enough trust in it. Authentication vulnerability can bring our business down, so we should take our time to choose well. Also nowadays, people perceive IAM…

For more than a decade, the cloud, cloud computing, and cloud storage have been some of the hottest and enduring buzzwords in our industry. While most companies understand the benefits of moving their servers to the cloud and have made the leap, there are still many holdouts. The reason for this is simple; they do not trust cloud providers to protect their data. Fortunately, there is a safe and affordable solution—data encryption. Data encryption uses code to protect the confidentiality of data, making it unreadable by a computer or a…

Our client of seven years, ForgeRock, is at the forefront of the the digital identity industry. Thanks to its fast, comprehensive, and developer-friendly platform and tools, ForgeRock is changing how organizations communicate with their customers and employees, as well as the devices and means they use to do so. Headquartered in San Francisco, ForgeRock is a multinational company with offices and customers in Europe, Asia, and Australia. ForgeRock develops access management products for cloud, customer, IoT, mobile, and enterprise environments. ForgeRock was founded in 2010 in Norway by a group…

DivvyPay is an innovative online FinTech payment platform and mobile app that simplifies expense management. Publicly introduced last year, DivvyPay is growing rapidly in the triple digits. As is often the case with startups, DivvyPay’s creation stemmed from a problem Blake Murray, its founder was trying to solve. Now this company is changing the rules of the game in the payment space. Any company can use DivvyPay, regardless of the size of their business. It’s trusted by customers like Evernote, STANCE, and WordPress. The mobile app is highly rated at…

  “Cyber crime is the greatest threat to every company in the world.”       Ginni Rometty - Chairman, President, and CEO, IBM The consequences of data breaches are devastating. In 2017, there were 1,579 data breaches in the U.S. alone, an increase of nearly 45% from 2016. And it’s expensive. The average cost of a data breach in 2018 is $3.86 million. Equally devastating is the enduring damage to a company’s reputation and future business opportunities. As we saw in September, data leaks can happen to any company—even…

With 79% of websites and 7 out of 10 smartphones collecting personal information, now more than ever, data privacy is paramount. Laws such as the U.S. Privacy Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and most recently, the California Consumer Privacy Act all aim to protect personal data. There are some types of personal data we need to protect more than others—children’s. Recent statistics indicate that 71% of children ages 3-18 use the internet, and 69% of families with children under the age of 8 have smartphones. Furthermore, 38%…

Whether you are watching Coachella live on YouTube, connecting with your followers via Instagram stories, or gaming with more than 10 million other daily active users on Twitch, there's no denying that live streaming video has become an indispensable part of our lives. All you really need is a reliable internet connection and a device such as a smartphone or a computer to receive content. At profiq, we’ve been intrigued by the possibilities of live streaming and have been actively pursuing it since 2015. You can read about our ventures…