Fog, mist, cloudlets. These meteorological terms are gaining
popularity in the world of computing. They are meant to complement centralised cloud
computing in the context of the Internet-of-Things (IoT).
IoT devices generate unprecedented enormous volumes of data
and it is challenging to transmit all the data back to the cloud for
processing. With increasing need for smart, end-user IoT devices and near-user
edge devices to carry out a substantial amount of data processing with minimal
computing, fog computing offers a way to decentralise applications, management,
and data analytics into the network itself using a distributed and federated
At the moment, no consensus exists on distinction among fog
computing, mist computing, cloudlets, or edge computing. A recently
from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) strives to provide a definition that can be used by
practitioners and researchers to facilitate meaningful conversations.
The document provides the conceptual model of fog computing
and its subsidiary mist computing, and aims to place these concepts in relation
to cloud computing and edge computing.
The document also lists important aspects of fog computing
and is intended to serve as a means for broad comparisons of fog computing
capabilities, service models and deployment strategies.
Fog computing is defined by NIST as ‘a layered model for
enabling ubiquitous access to a shared continuum of scalable computing
According to NIST, fog computing facilitates the deployment
of distributed, latency-aware applications and services, and consists of physical
or virtual fog nodes residing between smart end-devices and centralised cloud
Differentiating between edge and fog computing
The document defines edge computing as the network layer
encompassing the end-devices and their users, to provide, for example, local
computing capability on a sensor, metering or some other devices that are
network-accessible. This is the IoT network itself. While edge computing runs
specific applications in a fixed logic location and provides a direct
transmission service, while fog computing runs applications in a multi-layer
architecture that decouples and meshes the hardware and software functions,
allowing for dynamic reconfigurations for different applications while
performing intelligent computing and transmission services. Moreover, in
addition to computation, and networking, fog computing also addresses storage,
control and data-processing acceleration.
Fog Nodes – the core
component of the fog computing architecture
According to the NIST document, fog nodes are either
physical components such as gateways, switches, routers, servers, etc or
virtual components like virtualized switches, virtual machines, cloudlets  etc that are tightly coupled with
the smart end-devices or access networks, and provide computing resources to
A fog node is aware of its geographical distribution and
logical location within the context of its cluster. Fog nodes are often
co-located with the smart end-devices, resulting faster analysis and response
to data generated by these devices compared to a centralised cloud service or
data center. They provide some form of data management and communication
services between the network’s edge layer where end-devices reside, and the fog
computing service or the centralised (cloud) computing resources, when needed. The
nodes can operate in centralised or decentralised manner and can be configured
as stand-alone fog nodes that communicate among them to deliver the service. Or
they can be federated to form clusters that provide horizontal scalability over
Fog computing minimises the request-response time from/to
supported applications, and provides, for the end-devices, local computing
resources and, when needed, network connectivity to centralized services.
characteristics of fog computing
- Contextual location
awareness, and low latency: Fog computing offers the lowest-possible
latency due to the fog nodes’ awareness of their logical location in the
context of the entire sytems and of the latency costs for communicating with
distribution: The services and applications targeted by the fog computing
demand widely, but geographically-identifiable, distributed deployments. An
example would be the delivery of high quality streaming services to moving
vehicles, through proxies and access points geographically positioned along
highways and tracks.
Fog computing supports collection and processing of data of different form
factors acquired through multiple types of network communication capabilities.
- Interoperability and
federation: Fog computing components must be able to interoperate, and
services must be federated across domains.
interactions: Fog computing applications involve real-time interactions
rather than batch processing.
- Scalability and
agility of federated, fog-node clusters: Fog computing is adaptive in
nature, at cluster or cluster-of-clusters level, supporting elastic compute,
resource pooling, data-load changes, and network condition variations.
Similar to cloud computing deployment models, fog node
deployment could be private (for exclusive use by a single organisation
comprising multiple consumers), community (use by a specific community of
consumers from organisations that have shared concerns), public (provisioned
for open use by the general public), hybrid (composition of private, community
or public nodes that remain unique entities, but are bound together).
NIST defines mist computing as a lightweight and rudimentary
form of fog computing that resides at the edge of the network fabric, bringing
the fog computing layer closer to the smart end-devices. Mist computing uses
microcomputers and microcontrollers to feed into fog computing nodes and
potentially onward towards the centralised (cloud) computing services. It is
not a mandatory layer of fog computing.
Read the document here.
 According to
Wikipedia, a cloudlet is a mobility-enhanced small-scale cloud datacenter that
is located at the edge of the Internet.
The Philippines’ central bank, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), has refreshed its six-year-old National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI) to make it more current and to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and greater digitalisation of financial services. The BSP will launch an enhanced version of the current NSFI in January 2022. The Financial Inclusion Steering Committee (FISC), an interagency committee in charge of the NSFI and chaired by the BSP, agreed to alter and update the NSFI on November 9.
“The plan must evolve in tandem with the landscape,” BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno remarked. “This pushes the bank to reassess the initial strategic plan and ensure that the NSFI continues to be a flexible framework for promoting financial inclusion across the country.”
The National Survey on Financial Institutions (NSFI) was originally introduced in July 2015 and the most recent national survey on FI as an official report was in 2019. The BSP publishes quarterly FI data on its website, the most recent of which was in the fourth quarter of 2020. The objective of the NSFI is to promote and develop public-private collaboration and financial inclusion policies and programmes. The Financial Institutions Surveillance Commission (FISC) developed an inclusive financial system in 2015.
According to Diokno, there is still more work to be done to make formal financial services available to everybody, and the pandemic and rapid development of digital technology are bringing new opportunities as well as obstacles in the pursuit of financial inclusion.
The BSP said the new NSFI will encompass six years from 2022 to 2028, with strategies transformed into priority activities, key performance indicators, and targets. The bank emphasised that this is a shift from the present NSFI, which lays out the principles for achieving financial inclusion but does not include a timescale or goals.
To update the NSFI, the BSP and the Asian Development Bank are holding ongoing consultation workshops and actively requesting views from the banking and other sectors. According to Diokno, who spoke at the BSP’s recent “Financial Education Expo,” Filipinos’ financial behaviour has changed because of the pandemic.
“Some for the better (and) they are prioritising saving, availing health and life insurance, and preparing for retirement to provide better financial opportunities for themselves and their families during and beyond the pandemic,” he said. This was one of the updated information that the national FI survey aims to capture.
OpenGov Asia reported the issuance of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) on broadening the provision of internet service through satellite services is seen by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) as further promoting financial inclusion and digital finance in the country. The IRR, issued in September by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) under Department Circular No. 002, Series of 2021, aims to promote the development of an inclusive and vibrant satellite industry by liberalising access to satellite systems.
Increased access to satellite services is expected to hasten the rollout of internet connectivity for the country’s unserved, underserved, geographically isolated, and disadvantaged areas. With the issuance of the IRR, banks, fintech companies, and other financial sector entities will be guided even further in their exploration of ways to use satellite technology for their operations, particularly in expanding presence in underserved communities.
As financial transactions and services shift to online platforms, internet connectivity is recognised as a critical enabler of financial and economic inclusion. Banks and other financial service providers (FSPs) will be able to better serve rural areas with more access points, such as automated teller machines and cash agent services that rely on internet connectivity, as internet service is expanded.
The Illinois office uses a cloud-based Cyber Range platform to create such live-fire scenarios to give security teams hands-on training to prepare them for real events. The training is critical because the number of attacks on the office has increased by 800% since 2019. The training came about as a way for the office to ensure the protection of the $52 billion in assets.
One of the challenges that I found is making sure that your teams who have to respond to this are trained and ready to go. We were looking for a platform that allowed our security folks to actually simulate being under attack. It’s super important because if you don’t train that way, you’re not going to be able to defend in the real world.
– Joe Daniels, CIO, Treasurer’s Office
Cyber Range serves as a cyber playground. At the centre is a virtual enterprise-grade network. That means when someone comes to train on the platform, they enter a live network, which consists of databases and servers and desktops and. The second component is a sophisticated attack machine. The research team detects real malware and reverse engineers it to use on the network. When they enter the playground, they are using their own tools in order to try to defend the network, meaning to detect the attack before they know what kind of attack it is, and then mitigate that. They are doing that in a real virtual environment.
Treasurer’s Office staff have trained on the platform weekly for the past 18 months, and the office also helps train local units of government involved in a round-the-clock full-service electronic program through twice-monthly sessions using another module of the platform. Using the labs, trainees experience the fundamentals of hands-on cybersecurity, while the CyYber Range provides a realistic live-fire exercise in which they must solve a complete attack vector.
The tools that they use in the lab, they’re real-world tools that most agencies have in place already. The lab-based training has a waitlist of six months. That shows you the need or the desire for people to understand and learn about this environment. I think the pandemic showed everyone how reliant on technology we really are,” Daniels said.
The onset of the COVID-19 crisis is when cyberthreats took off, especially because agencies’ technology footprint grew as employees worked from home. It is very different trying to protect assets with a remote workforce.
The approach to security focuses on people rather than technology because a shortage of cyber professionals is one of the biggest challenges the industry faces. As of November 17, there were almost 600,000 cybersecurity job openings in the United States – about 40,000 of them in the public sector. The team uses the platform to spot skills gaps and trains the existing workers to fill them.
The goal is to create a centre of excellence for cybersecurity around financial transactions, although there are plans to expand beyond that area starting in January 2022. Cybersecurity is going to continue to be critical.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, A joint advisory issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) has warned that an infamous ransomware group has targeted multiple organisations deemed critical infrastructure, including two organisations in the U.S. food and agriculture sector. The advisory includes technical details, analysis, and assessment of this cyber threat, as well as several mitigation actions that can be taken to reduce the risk to this ransomware.
CISA, FBI and NSA are unified in emphasising the value and importance for organisations to apply best practices to protect their networks, systems and data, such as (1) implement and enforce backup procedures; (2) Use strong, unique passwords; (3) Use multi-factor authentication; and (4) implement network segmentation and traversal monitoring. All organisations striving to protect their networks from a ransomware attack and ensure their systems are resilient should read the joint advisory for the full spectrum of recommended mitigations.
Around 85% of Vietnamese banking consumers are more likely to use online and digital banking services compared to 18 months ago, according to a recent report. Globally, nearly two-thirds (61%) of consumers have made greater use of digital banking services over the last 18 months. Two in five (41%) have started using digital banking services for the very first time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Vietnam, these numbers are higher, at 70% and 54%, respectively. Approximately 90% of respondents use online and digital banking services mostly to pay bills, transfer money, and check account balances. These statistics will help banks understand customers habits and behaviours to create more effective online services.
The report surveyed 4,500 consumers globally, including Vietnamese consumers (accounting for 11%). It identifies five emerging financial “tribes” that banks need to know about in a post-pandemic world. These consumer groups include techcelerators, ethical bankers, convenience cravers, covidpreneurs and neo asset hoarders. Techcelerators are recent converts to the world of digital banking who have adopted digital services amid physical branch closures.
Vietnam was most likely to identify with techcelerators, with 33% of respondents showing the traits of this group. Ethical bankers are young, purpose-driven savers that want to make a positive impact in the world. Some 76% of Vietnamese consumers agreed that they are willing to pay a premium for financial services if a cut goes towards helping the environment or local communities.
Convenience cravers are one-stop shoppers who want all-in-one services at their fingertips, and no extra cost. Covidpreneurs are entrepreneurs who have set up their own business during the pandemic, in need of easy-to-use and reliable business banking services. 14% of Vietnamese respondents belong to this group. Neo asset hoarders are new asset owners who want to use financial services to buy, trade, and hold assets. This group is the smallest, but a rapidly growing tribe globally.
An industry expert explained that each tribe shows something significant about the way consumer behaviour is adapting and what banks must do to stay ahead of the curve. Traditional audience segmentation in financial services is broken. The one-size-fits-all model, in which customers are divided based on how much they earn, or simple demographics, is redundant in a world of open finance. If banks want to survive, they must think about how to affiliate themselves with the new groups within society and appeal to them with products and experiences that meet their shared values and user needs.
Digital transformation in banking has accelerated in Vietnam and the report shows that 87% of local banking customers agreed with the importance of online and digital banking services in a bank or financial institution. Over 80% of respondents prefer to save or invest rather than spend money – the highest rates of all surveyed markets, and more than 74% are willing to pay a premium for financial services that save their time and offer greater flexibility.
The Financial Services Authority (OJK) wants to encourage banks to improve information technology governance and risk management. This is in line with the banking industry’s migration from the old banking system to digital banking. Banking Supervision Deputy Commissioner, OJK as previously stated, banks must anticipate issues such as customer data protection and exchange, the risk of customer data leakage connected to fraud, probable incompatibility of technology investments with business strategy, and others.
“The risk of cyber-attacks is one of the main risks that banks need to watch out for and mitigate in the digital era, considering the development of banking digitalisation increases the emergence of cyber security risks for banks,” said the Commissioner.
OJK has released a roadmap for Indonesian banking development through 2025, which will serve as a guide for future regulations and agreements. This is to foresee national banking cyber security threats. “OJK will encourage banks to continue to strengthen related to IT (information technology) governance and risk management, adopt the latest technology, then cooperate with IT and implement advance digital banking,” he said.
Meanwhile, Retno Ponco Windarti, the Director of Bank Indonesia’s Payment System Policy Department, said that the department has its way of securing digital data for every customer with a national payment system, one of which is close collaboration with payment service providers (PJP) and payment system infrastructure providers (PIP). “We give a maximum of one hour from the time the incident must be reported. Then, we conduct discussions, audits to find out what the real cause is.”
In addition, they would impose consequences on PJP and PIP for failing to meet their responsibilities, so that digital security becomes one of the factors that the financial services business must emphasise.
In the banking industry, Bank DKI, as the Regional Bank, has taken precautions to protect itself from cyber-attacks, one of which is the IT Security Cyber Architecture method. Amirul Wicaksono, Director of Technology and Operations at Bank DKI, stated that the organisation is still safe from cyber threats due to bank laws. “Banks have regulations, such as regulations on risk management in the use of technology (MRTI). OJK also always audits the risk mitigation function and the function to ward off cyberattacks.”
OpenGov Asia reported, Indonesia, the country with the fourth-fastest growth in internet users in the world, faces both great opportunities and significant threats as digital technology and the internet advance. However, according to the Indonesian government’s cyber and crypto agency, Badan Siber dan Sandi Negara (BSSN), Indonesia is becoming a victim of an increasing number of cyber-attacks, with over 423 million recorded by the end of 2020. Without solid cybersecurity systems, the 150 million internet users in Indonesia are at risk of being caught up in a tragic cybersecurity issue.
Strengthening the legal and policy fundamentals of cybersecurity and cryptology is essential if Indonesia is to grow its digital economy, embrace the fourth industrial revolution, and protect critical infrastructure and information security assets.
To combat these attacks, Indonesia’s government had recently partnered with a leading cybersecurity solutions vendor to strengthen the country’s cybersecurity capabilities and fend off mounting threats. Badan Siber dan Sandi Negara recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to improve cybersecurity capacity development and institution building within the country’s government sector. Broadly, the MoU covers collaborating through knowledge-sharing, capacity-building, cybersecurity training, and joint programs to build cyber awareness in Indonesia.
Many deep learning models struggle to see the world in which there are objects and the relationships between them. Most models do not understand the entangled relationships between individual objects. Without knowledge of these relationships, a robot designed to assist someone in a kitchen would have difficulty following commands such as “grab the spatula on the left side of the stove and place it on the cutting board.”
In an effort to solve this problem, MIT researchers have developed a model that understands the underlying relationships between objects in a scene. Their model depicts individual relationships one by one and combines these representations to describe the overall scene. This allows the model to generate more accurate images from text descriptions, even when the scene contains multiple objects arranged in different relationships to each other.
This work can be applied in situations where industrial robots need to perform complex, multi-step manipulation tasks, such as stacking items in a warehouse or assembling devices. It also brings the field one step closer to enabling machines that can learn from and interact with their environment more like humans do.
When I look at a table, I cannot tell there is an object in the XYZ location. Our minds do not work that way. In our minds, when we understand a scene, we really understand it based on the relationships between the objects. We think that by building a system that can understand the relationships between objects, we can use that system to more effectively manipulate and change our environments.
– Yilun Du, PhD Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory & Co-Lead Author
The framework the researchers developed can generate an image of a scene based on a text description of objects and their relationships, such as ‘A wooden table to the left of a blue stool. A red bench to the right of a blue stool.”
Their system would break these sentences into two smaller pieces describing each individual relationship, then model each part individually. Those pieces are then combined through an optimisation process that generates an image of the scene.
The researchers used a machine learning technique called energy-based models to represent the individual object relationships in a scene description. This technique allows them to use one energy-based model to encode each relational description, then assemble them in a way that infers all objects and relationships.
The system also works in reverse: with an image, it can find text descriptions that correspond to the relationships between objects in the scene. In addition, their model can be used to edit an image by rearranging the objects in the scene to match a new description.
The researchers compared their model with other deep learning methods that were given text descriptions and tasked with generating images showing the associated objects and their relationships. In any case, their model outperformed the baselines.
They also asked people to evaluate whether the images generated matched the original scene description. In the most complex examples, where descriptions included three relationships, 91% of participants concluded that the new model performed better.
While these initial results are encouraging, the researchers would like to see how their model performs on more complex real-world images, with noisy backgrounds and objects blocking each other. They are also interested in eventually incorporating their model into robotic systems, allowing a robot to derive object relationships from videos and then apply this knowledge to manipulate objects in the world.
The National University of Singapore’s Institute of Systems Science (NUS-ISS) recently introduced new buildings and initiatives to strengthen the digital skills pipeline in Singapore and beyond. The agency’s signature investment for the next generation of digital talent, according to NUS-ISS CEO Mr Khoong Chan Meng, is this expansion and change. “We intended our new facility to be a beacon on campus, attracting and enticing industry experts to come to NUS-ISS and experience the thrill of learning. We look forward to welcoming more learners and organisations to our new facility and embarking on a journey with them to help them achieve their digital excellence goals.”
Completed over two years, the revitalised NUS-ISS building provides an inspiring, adaptable and innovative setting that is ideal for learning, practice cooperation and social networking. The buildings are outfitted with cutting-edge technology to assist learners and educators in implementing hybrid and blended learning strategies.
NUS-ISS has trained over 157,000 professionals, managers, and executives from over 8,000 organisations in the public and commercial sectors since its foundation in 1981. This year, the Institute celebrates its 40th anniversary by reaffirming its commitment to assisting industry partners in their digital transformation efforts. NUS-ISS will do so through a variety of new projects that will draw on its experience in establishing essential digital competencies.
Moving forward, NUS-ISS will focus on forging comprehensive collaborations with businesses, trade groups, and professional bodies to strengthen and sustain digital capacities in many industries. NUS-ISS is aiding these partners in a variety of ways, including internships, project collaboration, talent acquisition and retention, career development activities, consulting, and research, in addition to training and upskilling.
NUS-ISS will also co-invest and cooperate with its industry partners to assist them to establish and run their digital academies, based on the NUS-ISS operating model, to help them develop organic digital skills.
Industry personnel must build dynamic digital skills more synergistically as the working environment undergoes a paradigm shift, through holistic, just-in-time learning. NUS-ISS uses a unique approach of numerous learning pathways and blended learning to ensure that upskilling is a lifelong process that may take place at any time and in any location. The Institute is collaborating with new channel partners and facilitating new modes of delivery to reach more learners in Singapore and throughout the world, to make its programmes more widely accessible and scalable. NUS-ISS provides an open platform for collaboration to assist our learning organisations to climb the next curve of digital excellence, from stackable to certifiable routes, online to face-to-face interactions, and formal to social learning.
“Since its inception in 1981, NUS-ISS has demonstrated an unrelenting commitment to enhancing the digital competencies of our workforce, thereby aiding Singapore’s economic growth and transformation,” Minister Chan said. “I hope NUS-ISS continued success as it continues to pave the way for our people and businesses to be future-ready.”
Professor Tan Eng Chye, President of NUS, stated that the NUS-ISS has progressed tremendously over the years, adapting to changing workforce and industry needs and generating digital talent for Singapore.
OpenGov Asia reported the official opening of a Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DS&AI) Lab was recently announced with the support of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). Singapore’s IT manufacturer and Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) collaborated to enhance local DS&AI education, empowering students with the tech tools and skills needed to inspire a brighter future.
The Lab will put together the IT firm’s cutting-edge deep-learning technology with NTU’s global strengths in artificial intelligence and data science, allowing local data scientists and AI experts to pioneer the development of meaningful AI solutions in important industries.
“Singapore aspires to be amongst leaders in developing and deploying scalable impactful AI solutions in high-value sectors. Entering the next phase of growth, it is imperative to build a strong bench of multidisciplinary talent to meet the needs of the industry,” affirmed Senior Vice President and Head Operations, Semiconductors of the IT company. “This partnership between aims to nurture next-generation tech leaders will contribute to this effort, creating good economic opportunities for Singaporeans,” he then added.
Vietnam is expected to be the fastest-growing e-commerce market in Southeast Asia by 2026, with e-commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) reaching US$56 billion by 2026, 4.5 times the estimated value of 2021, according to a recent survey. Vietnam is at the forefront of driving change and seizing opportunities to thrive based on digital transformation in a post-pandemic future.
A study surveyed about 16,700 digital consumers and more than 20 C-level employees in six Southeast Asian countries, including 3,579 survey participants from Vietnam. The report described Southeast Asia as a leader of digital transformation in the Asia-Pacific region and Vietnam as one of the best performers. In Vietnam, seven out of ten consumers have digital access, and the country will have 53 million digital consumers by the end of 2021.
The number of goods categories purchased by Vietnamese online shoppers this year went up 50% compared to 2020, while that of online stores in Vietnam also rose by 40% year-on-year, resulting in a 1.5-fold increase in total online retail sales nationwide. Some 49% of Vietnamese consumers switched to a new online marketplace within the last 3 months, based on considerations of price incentives (45%), product quality (34%), and availability of goods (33%).
For the first time, the payment using cash is at risk of being dethroned with a significant decrease from 60% in 2020 to only 42% in 2021. Safety, privacy, and service fees are the three main concerns of Vietnamese consumers when considering these types of payments.
This year, Vietnamese people spent most of their time using social networks, texting, watching videos, shopping online, and emailing, the report showed. The rapid growth of the market is forecast to continue increasing. It will not only bring about major opportunities but also challenges for the development of online platforms to meet the increasing demand of customers and the market.
OpenGov Asia reported recently that online transactions in Vietnam for the first four months of this year jumped 66% compared with the same period last year, which has been accelerated enormously by the pandemic. There has also been an increase in the use of e-wallets, payments via smartphones and QR codes, and high demand for ‘instant credit’ solutions such as buy-now-pay-later, particularly among those segments of the population that remain unbanked or underbanked. Fintech and e-wallet penetration reached 56% in 2021 for Vietnam, a hike of 40 percentage points from 2017. This penetration level is higher than the average of Asia-Pacific (APAC) emerging markets (at 54%) and developed markets (43%).
The large majority (73%) of Vietnamese consumers are multi-channel banking users. This means they use a combination of digital banks and physical branches. In light of this, banks need to strengthen branches’ omnichannel delivery – measuring both financial goals and customer satisfaction. They should play the role of a digital attacker (digital-only banks using a cloud-native, low-cost platform) or an omnichannel incumbent to stay competitive. In doing so, they must differentiate their digital value proposition from existing offerings, focus on gaining access to a large customer ecosystem to scale fast, and capture transactions and balances as primary banks. Banks in emerging markets are already leading digital innovation but the market is getting crowded and competitive. To stay relevant, banks should think about building (or acquiring) AI/ML capabilities in sales and service, operations, and information technology (IT).