Security measures can be applied in different ML workflow stages to defend them against malicious activities, such as data theft, model tampering, or adversarial attacks. Some of the security measures are:

• Launch ML Instances In a virtual private cloud (VPC): A VPC is a logically isolated section of a cloud provider’s network that allows users to launch and control their own resources. By launching ML instances in a VPC, users can enhance the security and privacy of their data and models, as well as restrict the access and traffic to and from the instances.
• Use data encryption: Data encryption is the process of transforming data into an unreadable format using a secret key or algorithm. Data encryption can protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data at rest (stored in databases or files) or in transit (transferred over networks). Data encryption can prevent unauthorized access, modification, or leakage of sensitive data.
• Use Secrets Manager to protect credentials: Secrets Manager is a service that helps users securely store, manage, and retrieve secrets, such as passwords, API keys, tokens, or certificates. Secrets Manager can help users protect their credentials from unauthorized access or exposure, as well as rotate them automatically to comply with security policies.

Encoding is a technique that transforms categorical data into numerical features that can be used by machine learning models. Categorical data are data that have a finite number of possible values or categories, such as gender, color, or country. Encoding can help convert categorical data into a format that is suitable and understandable for machine learning models. Some of the encoding methods that can be used to transform categorical data into numerical features are:

• Mean Encoder: Mean encoder is a method that replaces each category with the mean value of the target variable for that category. Mean encoder can capture the relationship between the category and the target variable, but it may cause overfitting or multicollinearity problems.
• One-Hot Encoder: One-hot encoder is a method that creates a binary vector for each category, where only one element has a value of 1 (the hot bit) and the rest have a value of 0. One-hot encoder can create distinct and orthogonal vectors for each category, but it may increase the dimensionality and sparsity of the data.

A handover is the process of transferring the ownership and responsibility of an ML system from one party to another, such as from the developers to the end users. A handover should include all the necessary information and resources that enable the end users to use and run a trained model on their own system. Some of the items that should be included in a handover are:

• Link to a GitHub repository of the codebase: A GitHub repository is an online platform that hosts the source code and version control of an ML system. A link to a GitHub repository can provide the end users with access to the latest and most updated version of the codebase, as well as the history and documentation of the changes made to the code.
• README document: A README document is a text file that provides an overview and instructions for an ML system. A README document can include information such as the purpose, features, requirements, installation, usage, testing, troubleshooting, and license of the system.
• Sample input and output data files: Sample input and output data files are data files that contain examples of valid inputs and expected outputs for an ML system. Sample input and output data files can help the end users understand how to use and run the system, as well as verify its functionality and performance.

Skip-gram and TF-IDF are both text vectorization methods that convert text into numerical feature vectors. Skip-gram is a prediction-based word embedding method that learns vector representations of words from their contexts in a large corpus of text. TF-IDF is a frequency-based word weighting method that assigns scores to words based on their importance in a document and in a corpus of documents. References: Text Vectorization and Word Embedding | Guide to Master NLP (Part 5), What Is Text Vectorization? Everything You Need to Know - deepset

Technical debt is a metaphor that describes the implied cost of additional work or rework caused by choosing an easy or quick solution over a better but more complex solution. Technical debt can accumulate in ML systems due to various factors, such as changing requirements, outdated code, poor documentation, or lack of testing. Some of the ways to decrease technical debt in ML systems are:

• Documentation readability: Documentation readability refers to how easy it is to understand and use the documentation of an ML system. Documentation readability can help reduce technical debt by providing clear and consistent information about the system’s design, functionality, performance, and maintenance. Documentation readability can also facilitate communication and collaboration among different stakeholders, such as developers, testers, users, and managers.
• Refactoring: Refactoring is the process of improving the structure and quality of code without changing its functionality. Refactoring can help reduce technical debt by eliminating code smells, such as duplication, complexity, or inconsistency. Refactoring can also enhance the readability, maintainability, and extensibility of code.