Recent News – Page 209

Posted on November 27, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Finally, a way for designers and artists to sketch 360-degree VR scenes

As new technologies, tools, and platforms spring to life in augmented and virtual reality, a new era of XR design and artistry is unfolding. Today, we announce the release of a project that empowers creators to spend less time explaining, editing, and re-doing XR creations, and more time being creative. Sketch 360, a Microsoft Garage project, is a UWP app enables designers and artists to sketch and prototype 360 degree VR scenes–now available for free download in the Microsoft Store.

Innovation from Passion

The Microsoft Garage empowers employees to channel their passions into innovations that can, in turn, inspire and enable customers. Creative Experience Engineer Michael Scherotter has been nurturing a passion for using artistry to capture his adventures in traditional journals for over 30 years. “I love to travel and I’ve always found sketching such a great way to capture the essence of a place. Last year, it occurred to me that I might be able to pair my software skills with my love of sketching to build a richer, digital tool to capture the interesting places I’ve visited.”

Michael found it hard to sketch scenes in a classic or even digital notebook and crafted a new tool that would allow him to create digital, panoramic sketches viewable in all directions. “It’s very difficult to freehand draw in 360. You need to draw straight lines curved and you can’t see how your creation turns out until you’ve finished the whole thing.”

While Michael was originally inspired to build Sketch 360 to make the experience of sketching 360 environments more natural, he also quickly realized it may have other creative applications as well. “Sketch 360 is a game changer for designers working in XR,” according to Mike Pell, the Lead Designer for the Microsoft Garage and a big proponent of the possibilities for designers in XR. “This tool unlocks a whole new way to do rapid prototyping to fuel those experiences.”

Create and Prototype VR Scenes in 360 Degrees

As designers create and collaborate on 360 degree scenes, sketching provides a quick way to convey the vision of an end-product to a developer or other team member, paving the way to quickly create multiple directions on a design or make tweaks before moving on to the labor-intensive work of 3D modeling. With Sketch 360, a design team can align on the vision for a VR environment and save hours in changes and re-dos. In addition to VR design, Sketch 360 can be used in a variety of sketching scenarios. “I actually got my start in design at architecture school,” adds Michael. “I can see this being a great tool for architects looking for a digital canvas that brings their ideas to life.” With guided gridlines and a dual, ink/finished product interface, Sketch 360 can be useful both to designers, architects, and game creators prototyping early versions of a finished product as well as the casual user leveraging the canvas to sketch interior decorating vision or even artists using sketch as their medium.

“Sketch 360 is another really exciting tool for designers, just like Microsoft Maquette will be for in-device rapid creation,” shared Tom Mignone, a Program Manager on the Mixed Reality User Experience team and a contributor to another 3D project and Garage Wall of Famer, 3D Models in Office. “We want to empower creators to be more productive with Windows Mixed Reality and this Garage project joins a group of experiences all aimed at that.” Microsoft Maquette is a mixed reality tool for creating immersive prototypes using a PC VR headset. While Maquette strives to make spatial prototyping fast and easy with a focus on 3D objects, Sketch 360 focuses on the setting around those objects. Designers can use these two, complementary experiences to prototype both the environment of a VR experience and the elements within it. Maquette and Sketch 360 are compatible with mutiple PC VR setups including Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.

Key Features

Trace along embedded, equirectangular gridlines designed for 360 degree scenes
See your design come to life with a side-by-side, dual interface
Create designs in a variety of thicknesses and in any of 30 colors, powered by Windows Ink
Use pen or touch to make your masterpiece, best on Surface with the Surface Pen
Adjust the settings for your preferred drawing experience including sketching on the right or left pane, changing gridline opacity and canvas color
Export your creations as JPEGs with 360 metadata that immersive experience sites like Facebook and Kuula enable or embed in full websites (HTML, CSS, JS, JPEG)
Tilt and rotate in senor-enabled devices
Import Sketch 360 files to edit and collaborate on a design
Work offline or on-the-go, works great on Surface Book 2 or Surface Go
Created with ease using Windows Ink APIs

Best with Surface

Sketch 360 is powered by Windows Ink and best with Surface Pen. And inspired by sketching while traveling, Sketch 360 is designed around the active, on-the-go designer who uses a Surface Go or Surface Book 2 as their digital canvas.

Try Sketch 360 and Share Your Creations with Us

Sketch 360 is available for free download at the Microsoft Store worldwide. Designers and creators can provide feedback on the experience and share their VR and 360 sketch creations with the Garage by tagging @MSFTGarage and #Sketch360 on Twitter and Instagram.

Posted on November 27, 2018 by — Leave a comment

AI transforms photo management for Japanese pro baseball

Sports stars are among the most photographed people on the planet today. Their on-field performance, style, gestures, and facial expressions are almost continuously captured digitally for fans, the media, commercial use, and, ultimately, posterity.

It’s not unusual for thousands of pictures to be shot from all angles at any professional encounter nowadays. So, a typical season is likely to produce virtual mountains of images for major clubs and competitions in most sports.

Now, professional baseball in Japan is turning to artificial intelligence and the cloud to handle the magnitude of what has been a laborious and time-consuming task – photo management.

Sports photos can have immediate, lasting, and lucrative value – but only if they are kept in well organized and cataloged collections that can be accessed efficiently. IMAGE WORKS – a service of iconic Japanese photo giant, Fujifilm – manages the Nippon Professional Baseball’s (NPB) cloud-based Content Images Center (CIC).

Here curators sort images, identify players in each image and tag those images with that information. It sounds simple, but the volume of imagery now being produced is huge. The usual way of managing this is simply not keeping up.

To understand why let’s look at the special place baseball holds in modern Japan where it has been a wildly popular game since the 1930s. While its rules differ slightly from those of America’s favorite pastime, the NPB is to Japan is what Major League Baseball (MLB) is to the United States. The NPB consists of two top professional leagues: the Central League and the Pacific League. Each has six teams, and each holds 146 games a season, playing on most days of the week from March to October. Each league then holds its own playoffs, which are followed by the seven-game Nippon Series Championship between the two league champions – in a spectacle similar to that of World Series in the United States.

The automatic player name-tagging function can often identify players even in images that do not show their faces.

There is a steady deluge of images from across the country for much of the year with about 3,000 images shot at each game. After the crowds have left the stadiums, curators from each team typically select about 300 photographs. They then spend around four hours manually identifying and tagging player information to each picture.

That sort of timing can be a problem in our fast-paced world. Demand for images is usually at its highest in realtime or near realtime – that is, during or immediately after, each game. Fans and media can quickly lose interest in content from a past game once a new one begins. So, not only is the job of player image identification massive, it needs to be done fast.

Now AI has stepped up to the plate. Developers from Fujifilm and Microsoft Japan have devised a solution: an automatic player name-tagging function that identifies and tags images much faster than people can, and in greater volumes.

Since June 2018, it has been in a trial that has focused on just five baseball teams – including Hiroshima Toyo Carp, which has won the Central League championship eight times, and the Nippon Series three times. The trial was such a success, the function will be used for all NPB teams in the 2019 season.

Its photo analysis capabilities are based on pre-trained AI from Microsoft Cognitive Services and a deep learning framework from the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit. Specifically, facial recognition using the Microsoft Cognitive Services Face API is combined with a unique determination model built on the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit.

This enables the classification of images into four types—batting, pitching, fielding, and base running. Often, it can also determine a player’s name when his face is not visible in an angled or side shot. Azure Durable Functions and Automatic Player Name Tagging, and a final manual check by people has reduced overall processing time from the traditional four hours to just 30 minutes.

A sample of IMAGE WORKS baseball photo collection

Through its developmental stages, Microsoft Japan provided a ResNet neural network model from Microsoft Research, its research and development arm. It also held several hackathons with Fujifilm Software, which is the developer of IMAGE WORKS. Repeated verification exercises saw player recognition accuracy rates jump to over 90%.

“With the power of Azure and deep learning, we have been able to create an AI solution that makes of our photo service so much more efficient and faster. And, that is good for our customers,” said Riki Sato, Team Leader of the Advanced Solution Group at IMAGE WORKS. His colleague Daichi Hayata hailed the collaboration between IMAGE WORKS team and Microsoft Japan. “This was the first time we have dealt with deep learning, and we could do it with basic knowledge,” he said.

Fujifilm Imaging Systems now has plans to widen its use to amateur baseball leagues and then other sports. It might also be applied to the content needs outside the sports world. And, it is looking at the use of video analysis through Azure Video Indexer.

Microsoft Japan is committed to helping companies and organization embrace digital transformation with AI and is considering how to use this combination of pre-trained AI and a customizable deep learning framework in other fields, such as medicine.

Posted on November 27, 2018 by — Leave a comment

World faith leaders join governments, nongovernmental organizations and industry to protect children online

Faith leaders from across the globe met in Abu Dhabi Nov. 19 and 20 to hear from and discuss with governments, civil society organizations and the technology industry, best practices for protecting children online, as well as new ways to work together to combat the sexual exploitation and abuse of young people in the digital age.

The United Arab Emirates sponsored the first Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities Forum, which seeks to unite global religious leaders through a series of biannual forums and global workshops to foster dialogue and take action to address important social challenges, the first being the online sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

I spoke on the forum’s opening panel, which focused on online risks to children. Other participants included representatives from ECPAT International, UNICEF and Google, as well as Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children. Our panel was moderated by Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali, Secretary General of the Global Network of Religions for Children. I also co-moderated with Howard Taylor, executive director of the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, a discussion workshop about partnering and collaborating across sectors and stakeholder groups to better protect children online.

Like the inaugural World Congress on Child Dignity in the Digital World held in Rome in October 2017, this follow-up forum focused on child sexual exploitation and abuse, and the online prevalence of child sexual abuse imagery. In the opening panel, however, we broadened the conversation to discuss the array of harms and abuse that youth may encounter online.

Understanding online risks to teens and young people

At Microsoft, we see online risks to all people as stemming from four primary sources, what I call the Four C’s: content, contact, conduct and commerce. In and of themselves, the Four C’s are fairly innocuous, but when we consider illegal content, inappropriate contact or conduct, or illegitimate commerce, we’re addressing online safety risks and harm. To better understand that landscape, three years ago we began conducting research into online pitfalls as the centerpiece of our work in promoting digital civility: leading and acting with empathy, respect, compassion and kindness in all online interactions.

I shared with the Abu Dhabi audience that we poll teens and adults in more than 20 countries and ask about their lifetime exposure to some 20 different online risks across four categories: behavioral, sexual, reputational and personal/intrusive. As with the two prior years’ research studies, full results of our latest survey will be made available on international Safer Internet Day 2019, Feb. 5. Our latest results show that teens in 22 countries are most susceptible to behavioral, sexual and personal/intrusive risks. Teens have more limited exposure to reputational harms. And, along with online risks come real-life consequences and pain.

New results from 2018 digital civility research

Our 2018 study finds that nearly three-quarters (71 percent) of the more than 11,000 teens and adults polled said they had experienced at least one consequence due to online-risk exposure. These included losing trust in other people either online or offline; becoming stressed or depressed; and losing sleep, money, a job or a friend. In a small number of instances, respondents said they even contemplated suicide. And, along with those consequences comes a certain degree of pain. Nearly eight in 10 (79 percent) of teens who had experienced an online risk said they’d suffered some degree of pain. Just under 30 percent characterized the pain as mild or moderate, while 22 percent said it was severe. Of that 22 percent, 8 percent said the pain was debilitating, such that they didn’t want to get up in the morning, get out of bed or go to school.

Concluding the panel, we discussed suggested actions for faith leaders, such as leveraging available awareness-raising tools and educational resources to better understand online issues; learning to recognize telltale signs of risks and harm stemming from, for example, online bullying or harassment, and potentially intervening as wise and trusted adults in a child’s life. Identifying child sexual exploitation and abuse would be more difficult, but all agreed that clergy and religious leaders need to be open and welcoming to assisting children and teens with any digital or real-world concern. Robbert van den Berg, executive director at the nongovernmental organization ECPAT International, also appearing on the panel, summed up for faith leaders any number of young people’s online struggles elegantly and succinctly, “Try to understand it; don’t deny it.”

Two decades of child online protection

Microsoft’s commitment to protecting children, and indeed all individuals, online dates back more than 20 years. We readily and willingly collaborate with individuals and groups that share our goal of safer online communities for children and disrupting the online spread of illegal material. Earlier this month, we hosted a cross-industry hackathon focused on developing a tool to identify and root out potential instances of child online grooming for sexual purposes. We are encouraged by the outcomes of the hackathon, which included not only a technical and an engineering track, but also teams examining the requisite legal and operational aspects of implementing such a technique. The hackathon was mentioned in several circles at the Abu Dhabi event.

As we and others continually note: No one entity or organization can tackle these weighty issues alone. They continue to require new, innovative approaches and, the integration of the faith sector as an informed and involved actor can only speed our collective progress for the world’s children.

For more information about the Interfaith Alliance, see their website. To learn more about Microsoft’s technological contributions to the fight against online child sexual exploitation and abuse, see this webpage, and for more about staying safer online generally, visit our website and resources page, as well as our digital civility webpage: www.microsoft.com/digitalcivility. You can also connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on November 26, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Eyes on Europe: Giving voters new insights through technology

By Ben Rudolph, Managing Director of Modern Journalism, Microsoft Corporate HQ

Today, in collaboration with Microsoft, industry leader POLITICO Europe launched the next wave of its 2019 European Parliamentary election coverage featuring 27 new interactive data visualizations created with Microsoft Power BI. The latest Elections hub content follows last month’s launch of an interactive homepage visualization and includes new country-level pages sharing important information and the latest news about each of the European member states participating in the election.

“Each member state has its own electoral system, its own voter turnout and its own unique political landscape. At POLITICO Europe, we’ve built a European Election hub that reflects this national dimension” said Johannes Boege, Chief Product Officer at POLITICO Europe. “With these country pages, we are again combining our leading journalism with state of the art data technology. Enabled by Microsoft Power BI, our product provides comparisons of 2014 results with the latest projections, linking national parties, their European parliamentary groups, voter turnout and key information on the voting process. At a glance, our readers can get a very detailed and up-to-date overview of the EU elections in their country and compare it with the situation in other member states.”

At Microsoft, we’re thrilled to collaborate with POLITICO Europe to deliver on our commitment to empower the news industry to discover and tell impactful stories in engaging ways. Recognized as the most influential publication on European affairs for two of the three years since it launched, POLITICO Europe is on a mission to bring nonpartisan education and insight to the European electorate as they navigate the complicated election process, which spans thousands of candidates and hundreds of parties.

To help achieve this goal, the new country pages enable POLITICO Europe readers to interact with reports to see the country-level seats by party as well as voter data from 2014, comparing it to the current predictions for 2019. The reports showcase the breakdown of party seats and affiliated groups, information on the voting system and process and past voter turnout stacked against population. Behind the scenes calculations make it easy for readers to interact with the report to understand the impact their vote could have in the upcoming election. Because the visualizations are built it Power BI, updates can be made in real-time as new data becomes available or news stories emerge.

This new content builds on the success of the homepage visualization that shows the projected composition of the next EU Parliament.

Microsoft is thrilled to continue collaborating with POLITICO Europe to launch new content formats that bring discussion about the future of the EU to new and existing readers.

Find out more about how Power BI is being used to build the solutions on the Power BI blog.

Posted on November 26, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Devs: See how new SharePoint features can enhance your Microsoft 365 applications

Thanks to the work of thousands of developers around the world who use SharePoint Framework to deliver deep customizations and new application types, millions of SharePoint users now experience modern team and communication sites tailored with SharePoint Framework. Use of extensions created with SharePoint Framework continues to grow rapidly and is on pace to keep doubling every six months. These customized SharePoint sites provide the stage for your organization, department, and team to showcase your best work. And with new capabilities—now in preview—you can bring these experiences to Microsoft Teams. As developers and business leaders look to solve business problems with new applications and new customizations, we’re confident SharePoint Framework and the foundation of SharePoint will provide an attractive, friendly option to deliver tailored Microsoft 365 experiences.

Rapid growth of SharePoint Framework capabilities

Since its launch 20 months ago, SharePoint Framework has continually evolved to support an expanding set of use cases—such as business data dashboards and document integrations—and has delivered company-wide links and tools. Now in its eighth update after launch, SharePoint Framework has added new capabilities, including easier deployment options across your Office 365 sites, the ability to use Office 365 to host application elements, and built-in capabilities to work with a variety of web services. SharePoint Framework also works with on-premises SharePoint Server 2019, as well as SharePoint Server 2016 via Feature Pack 2.

Next stop: foundation for applications across Microsoft 365

The latest release of SharePoint Framework may be the most significant. New capabilities, in preview, empower developers to create full application experiences built on Microsoft 365 components. Developers can create applications that are hosted in the familiar frame of SharePoint, which leverages infrastructure such as Microsoft Graph services, SharePoint lists, and document libraries—all in one centrally hosted application page.

SharePoint Framework is expanding to be a foundation for applications in Teams. Through recently announced interoperability, tabs from Teams now show up as web parts and applications in SharePoint, and web parts from SharePoint can show up in Teams. In addition, customizations to document libraries will also show in document libraries in Teams. Wherever teams collaborate, customizations built on the foundation of SharePoint pages and documents are close at hand.

A custom lead management system SharePoint Framework web part, hosted in Microsoft Teams.

Resources to get started with SharePoint Framework

Thanks to a strong community, there are a wide array of resources to get started with SharePoint Framework. The recently released SharePoint Starter Kit provides a fantastic foundation of web parts and extensions you can use in your SharePoint sites. In addition, the SharePoint Patterns and Practices community has delivered an amazing series of training and video content for learning the various capabilities of SharePoint. If you are a developer (or work with developers), you can build your first SharePoint Framework web part in under an hour. Investing now in new solutions for SharePoint will provide a great foundation for creating tailored experiences across Microsoft 365.

Posted on November 26, 2018 by — Leave a comment

EMCOR Group transitions to the cloud, constructs intelligent workplace with Microsoft 365

Today’s post was written by Peter Baker, senior director of information technology at EMCOR Group.

A good way to describe the culture at EMCOR is to reference the many awards we’ve received for excellent customer service and safety. We provide mechanical and electrical construction, industrial and energy infrastructure, and facilities services to commercial, industrial, utility, and institutional customers around the world. For 10 consecutive years, EMCOR has been named among the top five “World’s Most Admired Companies” in the Engineering and Construction Industry by Fortune, and in 2018, EMCOR was ranked #1. Our IT team concentrates on helping employees build on that culture of customer-focused service and safety, so we can continue to differentiate ourselves from the competition and serve customers with excellence.

We stand out by taking advantage of the latest opportunities for IT advancements—when it makes sense for our business. That’s why we turned to cloud computing now. Cloud-based solutions are typically more cost-competitive than on-premises solutions. In addition, we want to reduce the administrative burden of on-premises solutions so that IT staff can focus on business-critical areas. For example, we will be able to collaborate more effectively across multiple divisions and business units using Microsoft 365 cloud-based workplace services. It’s easier for our employees to share information with each other, customers, and suppliers. Also, a modern, intelligent workplace helps EMCOR compete for talent among today’s younger workforce.

We chose Microsoft because we felt it has the most comprehensive set of cloud-based components for a large enterprise. EMCOR needs enterprise-class messaging, applications, infrastructure, mobile security, collaboration tools, document management solutions, and governance capabilities. Microsoft offered the widest array of integrated solutions for each of those areas.

In making the transition from an on-premises IT organization to a cloud-friendly IT organization, one of our biggest anticipated benefits is that we’ll have a more standardized IT infrastructure that’s easier to support and secure. Microsoft fully supports our commitment to security and data privacy as defined by internal and customer-driven requirements. With solutions such as Microsoft Azure Key Vault, EMCOR can encrypt its data and control the encryption keys. This was a major differentiator for us. Also, we plan to use Azure Information Protection P2, a component of Enterprise Mobility + Security, along with Customer Lockbox for Office 365—a deal maker for moving to the cloud—shortly after our pilot project. Enabling Customer Lockbox is a must for EMCOR because it helps us meet our customers requirement that we control access to their data. We’re in the early stages of configuring our tenant, and so far things are going well.

As a result of moving to a Microsoft cloud platform, EMCOR has a much closer business relationship with Microsoft. We’re counting on Microsoft to remain the leader in enterprise-class, cloud-based messaging and workplace tools. Meanwhile, the total set of capabilities we gain with Microsoft 365 E3 provides value. EMCOR obtains multiple software and service elements wrapped in a single unified price, and all services and software will remain current and fully patched with little effort on our part. This frees our IT staff to focus on issues more critical to supporting revenue generation and business operations.

Posted on November 21, 2018 by — Leave a comment

New Microsoft Whiteboard for Education makes it easy to create and collaborate

Today we’re debuting a new tool that can spark collaboration in the classroom. We’re excited to be able to share a preview of a new, free app: Microsoft Whiteboard for Education.

Taking the magical simplicity of an analog whiteboard and adding interactive, collaborative technology, Microsoft Whiteboard for Education gives the whole class a new space to engage, ideate, and create. Teachers and students can brainstorm and grow ideas on this limitless canvas, coming together on lessons, projects, and more.

With Whiteboard for EDU, you can:

Collaborate in real time, wherever you are.

Give ideas room to grow using Whiteboard’s infinite canvas. Drive an interactive lesson from the front of the classroom on a large display. Flip the classroom by letting students contribute with notes, images, diagrams, and more on their individual devices. Brainstorm with others and be inspired by their thoughts in real time. Provide a limitless space for lessons, student ideas, and group projects.

Unlock creativity and interact naturally.

Work with whatever feels most natural to you. Teachers and students can use their fingers to make quick additions or draw the finer details with a digital pen. The pen-first, touch-first technology gives students immediate creative power, right at their fingertips. Don’t have pen or touch? Whiteboard for EDU works great with a keyboard and mouse too.

Supercharge your learning experience.

From the ground up, Whiteboard for EDU has been designed with teachers and students in mind: to work the way you already do.

Export your board directly to OneNote Class Notebooks for safekeeping. Change Whiteboard’s background to a variety of new colors (including blackboard mode!) and reduce eye strain. Play with different line styles to support writing and graphing. Use education-themed stickers with your students to collect poll responses and give feedback in real time.

Increase the readability of quickly-jotted notes with Ink Beautification, which analyzes handwriting and automatically replaces it with more legible strokes. Choose different ink and colors to give handwriting extra oomph. And for teachers and students who occasionally use analog whiteboards, you can convert pictures of your notes into real digital ink with Ink Grab, making the move from analog to digital seamless.

Get Started Today

Whiteboard for EDU launches today for Windows 10 and next week for iPad! After downloading, login to Whiteboard with your Office 365 Education account and enable “Education Preview” from the Settings menu. To learn more, provide feedback or be inspired from others using the preview, join our Whiteboard for Education Facebook group.

This post was originally published on this site.

Posted on November 21, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Save money and time with Microsoft Shopping Assistant

Microsoft Shopping Assistant, first released in 2016 through The Garage, is a browser add-on that helps you get the best deals at more than 50,000 online stores, from top retailers like Amazon and Walmart to your favorite boutique shop on Etsy.

Track prices for products on thousands of stores

Never miss a deal again with the Microsoft Shopping Assistant. When you’re on a product web page, click the heart shaped button in the assistant widget and add it to your Favorites. The assistant will automatically notify you when the price changes, and you can see all price changes from the notifications screen in the assistant.

Compare prices across retailers

Shop smarter with instant price comparisons from other retailers. When you’re shopping online, the assistant will notify you when products you’re looking at are cheaper elsewhere. See how much you can save or if you’re already getting the best deal. You can also find recommendations for similar products.

Stay on top of your shopping everywhere you shop

Forget about keeping multiple tabs open or emailing yourself links of your favorite products. The assistant automatically remembers products you’ve browsed so you don’t have to. You can also organize your shopping with custom boards.

You are always in control

Microsoft Shopping Assistant is built with your security and privacy in mind. You are always in control of your shopping data – you can remove products from the assistant’s history at any time.

Take the assistant shopping with you this holiday season. Add it to your browser and simplify your shopping!

Editor’s note: The name of the add-on was updated following initial publication.

Updated November 21, 2018 9:58 am

Posted on November 21, 2018 by — Leave a comment

More ways to improve patient care with AI and blockchain

Whether you’re interested in using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to drive better health outcomes, reduce your operational costs, or improve fraud detection, one way you can better unlock these capabilities is through leveraging blockchain.

In my last blog, “Improving Patient Care through AI and Blockchain – Part 1,” I discussed several opportunities for blockchain to help advance AI in healthcare, from sourcing more training data from across a consortium, to tracking provenance of data, improving the quality of AI with auditing, and protecting the integrity of AI using blockchain. In this second blog, take a look at four more reasons to consider blockchain for advancing AI in healthcare.

Shared models
In cases where constraints exist that preclude the sharing of raw training data from across a consortium of healthcare organizations, for legal or other reasons, it may be possible to incrementally train shared models, enabled by the blockchain. In this approach the AI / ML models themselves can be shared across the network of healthcare organizations in the consortium, rather than the raw training data, and these shared models can be incrementally trained by each organization using its training data, and within its firewall. Blockchain can then be used to share the models as well as metadata about training data, results, validations, audit trails, and so forth.
Incentivizing collaboration using cryptocurrencies and tokens
Cryptocurrencies and tokens on blockchain can be used to incent and catalyze collaboration to advance AI / ML in healthcare. From sharing of training data, to collaboration on shared models, results, validations, and so forth, healthcare organizations can be rewarded with cryptocurrencies or tokens proportional to their participation and contribution. Depending on how the blockchain is setup these cryptocurrencies or tokens could be redeemed by participating healthcare organizations for meaningful rewards, or monetized. This can be useful in any AI / ML blockchain initiative both as an accelerant, and could also be critical to overcome potential impediments and reservations to collaboration that can arise where the size / value of contributions from organizations across the consortium are asymmetrical.
Validating inference results and building trust fasterBefore AI / ML models can be used for patient care they must be validated to ensure safety and efficacy. A single organization validating a model alone will take more time to achieve an acceptable level of trust than would be the case for a consortium of healthcare organizations concurrently collaborating to validate a shared model. Blockchain can be used to coordinate and collaborate around such validation to increase synergy, minimize redundant efforts, accelerate validation, and establish trust in a new model faster.
Automation through smart contracts and DAOsExecutable code for processing transactions associated with AI / ML, whether procurement of training data or otherwise, can be implemented on blockchains in the form of smart contracts. DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) such as non-profits can also be built using smart contracts to automate whole enterprises that can facilitate advancing AI / ML in healthcare at scale.

Keep the conversation going

If you’re interested in using AI, ML, or blockchain for healthcare, you know that new opportunities are constantly surfacing and with it come a whole host of new questions. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter to get updates on these topics as well as cloud computing, security, privacy, and compliance. If you would like to explore a partnership as you work to implement AI and/or blockchain for your healthcare organization, we’d love to hear from you.

For more resources and tips on blockchain for healthcare, take a look at part 1 of this series here.

Posted on November 20, 2018 by — Leave a comment

Microsoft becomes first Fortune 500 company to adopt password-less authentication

Howdy folks,

I’m so excited to share today’s news! We just turned on the ability to securely sign in with your Microsoft account using a standards-based FIDO2 compatible device—no username or password required! FIDO2 enables users to leverage standards-based devices to easily authenticate to online services—in both mobile and desktop environments.

This combination of ease of use, security, and broad industry support is going to be transformational both at home and in the modern workplace. Every month, more than 800 million people use a Microsoft account to create, connect, and share from anywhere to Outlook, Office, OneDrive, Bing, Skype, and Xbox Live for work and play. And now they can all benefit from this simple user experience and greatly improved security.

Starting today, you can use a FIDO2 device or Windows Hello to sign in to your Microsoft account using the Microsoft Edge browser.

Watch this quick video showing how it works:

Microsoft has been on a mission to eliminate passwords and help people protect their data and accounts from threats. As a member of the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), we’ve been working with others to develop open standards for the next generation of authentication. I’m happy to share that Microsoft is the first Fortune 500 company to support password-less authentication using the the WebAuthn and FIDO2 specifications, and Microsoft Edge supports the widest array of authenticators compared to other major browsers.

If you want to know more details on how it works and how to get started, keep reading on.

Get started

To sign in with your Microsoft Account using a FIDO2 security key:

If you haven’t already, make sure you update to Windows 10 October 2018.
Go to the Microsoft account page on Microsoft Edge and sign in as you normally would.
Select Security > More security options and under Windows Hello and security keys, you’ll see instructions for setting up a security key. (You can purchase a security key from one of our partners, including Yubico and Feitian Technologies that support the FIDO2 standard.*)
Next time you sign in, you can either click More Options > Use a security key or type in your username. At that point, you’ll be asked to use a security key to sign in.

And as a reminder, here’s how to sign in with your Microsoft account using Windows Hello:

Make sure you’ve updated to Windows 10 October 2018.
If you haven’t already, you’ll need to set up Windows Hello. If you have Windows Hello set up, you’re good to go!
Next time you sign in on Microsoft Edge, you can either click More Options > Use Windows Hello or a security key or type in your username. At that point, you’ll be asked to use Windows Hello or a security to sign in.

If you need more help, check out our detailed help article about how to get set up.

*There are a couple of optional features in the FIDO2 spec that we believe are fundamental to security, so only keys that have implemented those features will work. Read What is a Microsoft-compatible security key? to learn more.

How does it work?

Under the covers, we implemented the WebAuthn and FIDO2 CTAP2 specifications into our services to make this a reality.

Unlike passwords, FIDO2 protects user credentials using public/private key encryption. When you create and register a FIDO2 credential, the device (your PC or the FIDO2 device) generates a private and public key on the device. The private key is stored securely on the device and can only be used after it has been unlocked using a local gesture like biometric or PIN. Note that your biometric or PIN never leaves the device. At the same time that the private key is stored, the public key is sent to the Microsoft account system in the cloud and registered with your user account.

When you later sign in, the Microsoft account system provides a nonce to your PC or FIDO2 device. Your PC or device then uses the private key to sign the nonce. The signed nonce and metadata is sent back to the Microsoft account system, where it is verified using the public key. The signed metadata as specified by the WebAuthn and FIDO2 specs provides information, such as whether the user was present, and verifies the authentication through the local gesture. It’s these properties that make authentication with Windows Hello and FIDO2 devices not “phishable” or easily stolen by malware.

How do Windows Hello and FIDO2 devices implement this? Based on the capabilities of your Windows 10 device, you will either have a built-in secure enclave, known as a hardware trusted platform module (TPM) or a software TPM. The TPM stores the private key, which requires either your face, fingerprint, or PIN to unlock it. Similarly, a FIDO2 device, like a security key, is a small external device with its own built-in secure enclave that stores the private key and requires the biometric or PIN to unlock it. Both options offer two-factor authentication in one step, requiring both a registered device and a biometric or PIN to successfully sign in.

Check out this article on our Identity Standards blog, which goes into all the technical details around the implementation.

What’s next

We have tons of great things coming out as part of our efforts to reduce and even eliminate the use of passwords. We are currently building the same sign-in experience from a browser with security keys for work and school accounts in Azure Active Directory. Enterprise customers will be able to preview this early next year, where they will be able to allow their employees to set up their own security keys for their account to sign in to Windows 10 and the cloud.

Furthermore, as more browsers and platforms start supporting the WebAuthn and FIDO2 standards, the password-less experience—available on Microsoft Edge and Windows today—will be hopefully available everywhere!

Stay tuned for more details early next year!

Best Regards,
Alex Simons (@Twitter: @Alex_A_Simons)
CVP of Program Management
Microsoft Identity Division