Latest news with #database
RNZ News
19 hours ago
- RNZ News
Waikato police officer makes 1700 off-duty database queries
By Al Williams, Open Justice reporter of Photo: 123RF A police officer made around 1700 checks of a person on the police database while off-duty for non-work-related reasons, claiming they believed doing so would make them a "good cop". The Waikato officer's actions led to an investigation that involved an audit of their use of the database. It identified around 1700 queries conducted by the officer between March 2023 to October 2024 while off-duty, according to a report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA). The investigation found that, except for "a check that was probably work-related", the officer did not have a work-related reason for any of the queries. As a result, it was found their actions breached police policy and the code of conduct. The officer acknowledged that their use of the database was wrong. They said the checks were for their own information, as they mistakenly believed it would make them a "good cop". An employment process was undertaken to address the breaches. The IPCA's investigation report said the authority oversaw the police investigation and agreed with the outcome, which was not mentioned in the report. But the authority considered there was sufficient information available to suspect the officer had committed an offence under the Crimes Act by accessing the database for non-work-related reasons. "Accordingly, the Authority recommended that Police conduct a criminal investigation as well as an employment investigation at the start of their process," the report said. Relieving Waikato District Commander Superintendent Scott Gemmell said police considered the case did not meet the threshold for prosecution and the officer was subject to an employment process. "NZ police rightly hold all staff to high standards. The misuse of the National Intelligence Application [NIA] is not tolerated and if an employee is found to have inappropriately accessed or misused information, a disciplinary process with appropriate sanctions will be applied." However, Gemmell did not provide the outcome of the process. "Police have the same privacy obligations as any employer, and as such, does not comment on individual employment matters." He said police were focused on performance improvement and expectation setting and this year all staff had been "firmly" reminded that NIA searches must be conducted for legitimate work-related purposes only. The IPCA's report came within days of it being revealed that 50 police employees snooped into the file relating to the death of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming without good reason. An Official Information Act request released to NZME confirmed there have been 76 instances of misuse of the database this year. - This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald .
National Post
4 days ago
- Business
- National Post
The underrated risk in your tech stack is a weak SQL strategy
his article was created by StackCommerce. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through our links on this page. Article content In an age when cyberattacks hit every 39 seconds — that's 2,244 attacks per day on average — organizations across Canada are urgently seeking tools to protect and manage their data infrastructure. For finance teams and business leaders, ensuring the security and integrity of databases is becoming a critical piece of the equation. That's where Microsoft SQL Server skills and the new 2025 Total Microsoft SQL Server Bundle can help. Article content It's been reported that an increase in cyber threats targeting financial institutions underscores the need for robust database administration. SQL Server remains a cornerstone technology in enterprise systems: relational databases like SQL Server are so entrenched that 49 percent of developers use them in tandem with NoSQL technologies. This means expertise not only offers career mobility but is also key to safeguarding sensitive financial data. Article content The 2025 Total Microsoft SQL Server Bundle includes five comprehensive courses: Article content SQL Server from Scratch: Learn fundamental queries, SSMS navigation and data manipulation techniques. Backup & Recovery: Build airtight restoration workflows—full, differential and transaction-log backups. Failover Clustering: Ensure high availability with Active Directory, shared disk setup and cluster services. Advanced Cluster Labs: Deep dive into resilient setup, transaction logging and SQL Server 2019 enhancements. Git & GitHub: Manage version control and collaboration across your SQL projects. Article content Article content For database administrators, IT directors or fintech entrepreneurs in Canada's thriving business ecosystem, this bundle packs both breadth and depth. Remote redundancy, disaster recovery and version control — covered in hands-on labs — offer practical skills that directly map to real-world needs such as regulatory compliance, uptime guarantees and data resilience. Article content Article content
CNA
20-06-2025
- Business
- CNA
Haveli Investments to buy AI database firm Couchbase for about $1.5 billion
Haveli Investments will acquire Couchbase for about $1.5 billion, the companies said on Friday, as the private equity firm looks to capitalize on the artificial intelligence-focused database company's platform. Couchbase's shares, which have gained 21 per cent this year, were up 29 per cent in early trading following the news. The company's cloud-based database powers AI-related applications that need a flexible data model and easy scalability. Couchbase is part of a group of modern database companies — including MongoDB , Cockroach Labs, Snowflake and Databricks — challenging legacy players such as Oracle . New database technologies make it easier and faster to store, manage and use a large amount of unstructured data that modern AI systems require. Haveli Investments, founded by former Vista Equity Partners president Brian Sheth, will pay Couchbase shareholders $24.50 per share, which represents a premium of about 29 per cent to the stock's last close price. The private equity firm has a 9.6 per cent stake in Couchbase, according to data compiled by LSEG. It may engage with Couchbase's management or board to explore strategic options, including a potential merger, according to a March filing with the U.S. SEC. The agreement includes a go-shop period that ends on Monday, during which Couchbase can consider alternate offers.
Forbes
20-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Speed Means Nothing If You're Down: Benchmarking For The Real World
Spencer Kimball is the CEO and co-founder of Cockroach Labs. For decades, database performance benchmarks like TPC-C (Transaction Processing Performance Council Benchmark C) chased peak throughput under ideal conditions. Systems were scaled vertically and micro-optimized at every layer to game benchmarks and maximize transactions per second (TPS). But times—and technology—have changed. Today's applications live everywhere: across regions, clouds and availability zones. They're always on, global and expected to perform flawlessly despite disruptions. Users now demand instant banking balances, lag-free global broadcasts, immediate access to patient records and real-time inventory updates across international supply chains. These aren't aspirations; they're baseline expectations, assumed and demanded unequivocally. Modern workloads are unpredictable, highly distributed and intensely data-driven. Fraud detection, logistics tracking and AI-powered automation now run continuously at a global scale. Autonomous systems assume constant availability and consistency. They don't pause for outages or wait for recovery. They expect the system to be fast, consistent and always available. Yet legacy benchmarks still focus on raw throughput, rarely accounting for the realities of modern architecture: latency spikes, node crashes or regional outages. The true measure of performance isn't speed under ideal conditions—it's resilience under failure. If anyone doubts the importance of resilience, recent history is rife with cautionary tales. • Costco's Black Friday outage in 2019 allegedly cost millions in sales. • Ticketmaster's 2022 crash during Taylor Swift's ticket sales revealed its infrastructure was unprepared for massive spikes. • A faulty update in 2024 froze hospital electronic health records, forcing clinicians to revert to paper and risking patient safety. • CrowdStrike's 2024 outage halted global freight logistics due to insufficient resilience planning. • Barclays and Capital One outages in 2025 left millions unable to access banking services, demonstrating that even leading institutions aren't immune. There is a perennial thread running through this representative sampling of recent failures: The rising complexity of modern applications requires a shift in mindset to resilience as a first-order goal. Modern infrastructure complexity—multiregion, multicloud and governed by stringent regulations like GDPR, PDPA and DORA—demands new benchmarks that prioritize resilience as a fundamental metric, not an afterthought. Benchmarks that ignore this operational and compliance complexity are no longer sufficient. True resilience testing involves deliberately introducing controlled chaos: killing nodes, dropping disks, simulating outages. The objective is clear: Observe the system's behavior under stress. Does it reroute traffic seamlessly? Are transactions duplicated, delayed or lost? How rapidly does performance return to baseline? These aren't trivial operational details—they're critical indicators of system integrity. Chaos testing, a methodology where systems are intentionally stressed to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, is gaining traction. However, resilience testing often remains disconnected from standard performance metrics like throughput and latency. Integrating these tests ensures resilience isn't merely theoretical but quantifiable and central to system design. Just as vehicle performance isn't judged solely by top speed, database benchmarks shouldn't focus exclusively on maximum throughput. Benchmarks must evolve to measure continuity, recovery speed and stability under real-world pressures. Systems engineered with built-in replication, self-healing automation and geographic consensus aren't merely technically superior; they're strategically essential. These aren't just engineering choices; they're risk strategies. And they should be part of how we measure value. Speed without resilience is meaningless. Challenge your teams and vendors to prove resilience under chaos. If they can't, they're not ready for today's demands. The ultimate benchmark isn't the fastest lap—it's staying on track when legacy systems are stuck rebuilding in the pit. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Zawya
20-06-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Egypt: El-Sisi ratifies law to establish unified national real estate database
Arab Finance: President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has ratified law No. 88 of 2025 establishing a unified national real estate database, according to the Official Gazette. The law mandates assigning a unique national real estate number to each property in Egypt. This number will be linked to the country's unified baseline map and integrated within a secure electronic system, aiming to enhance the organization and management of real estate data. A competent authority, to be designated by a decision from the Prime Minister, will be tasked with managing the database and providing access to the data in a non-interactive technical format. The law excludes properties of strategic and military significance owned by sovereign entities, in accordance with regulations to be issued by the Cabinet. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), in coordination with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and other relevant authorities, will define the components of the unified national real estate number. © 2020-2023 Arab Finance For Information Technology. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
