Google offers new ‘Always Free’ cloud tier to attract users

Google is letting its customers get a taste of its cloud for free, without a time-limited trial. The company quietly launched a new “Always Free” tier on Thursday that lets people use small amounts of its public cloud services without charge, beyond the company’s limited-time trial.The tier includes — among other things — 1 f1-micro compute instance, 5 GB per month of Regional Storage and 60 minutes per month of access to the Cloud Speech API. Using the free tier requires users to provide a credit card that Google can automatically bill for any use over the limits.In addition, the cloud provider expanded its free trial so that users get $300 in credits that they can use for up to 12 months. Google will halt users’ workloads if they eat up all of the credits before the end of 12 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Well-funded doesn’t mean well-secured

Three of my four children are of school-going age. When they arrive home in the afternoon, the youngest usually makes a dash for the games console, the middle one is tired to the point of being miserable, and the eldest announces herself loudly, wanting to share every detail from her day with anyone who will lend an ear. The only thing they all seem to have in common is that they are hungry and want dinner.RELATED: What IT admins love/hate about 8 top network monitoring tools While I'm the type of parent who makes the children fish-finger sandwiches and declares them fed, my wife prefers to serve a lavish five-course meal. In the past, she would often customize meals to meet each child's individual taste and preference. After a while, I had to put a stop to it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s position on Security Analytics and Operations (SOAPA)

Just what is a security operations and analytics platform architecture (SOAPA) anyway? In the past, most enterprises anchored their security analytics and operations with one common tool: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. Now, SIEM still plays a major role here, but many organizations are supplementing their security operations centers (SOCs) with additional data, analytics tools and operations management systems. We now see SOCs as a nexus for things like endpoint detection and response tools (EDR), network analytics, threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) and incident response platforms (IRPs). In aggregate, security operations is changing, driven by a wave of new types of sensors, diverse data sources, analytics tools and operational requirements. And these changes are driving an evolution from monolithic security technologies to a more comprehensive event-driven software architecture along the lines of SOA 2.0, where disparate security technologies connected with middleware for things like data exchange, message queueing and business-level trigger conditions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Well-funded doesn’t mean well-secured

Three of my four children are of school-going age. When they arrive home in the afternoon, the youngest usually makes a dash for the games console, the middle one is tired to the point of being miserable, and the eldest announces herself loudly, wanting to share every detail from her day with anyone who will lend an ear. The only thing they all seem to have in common is that they are hungry and want dinner.RELATED: What IT admins love/hate about 8 top network monitoring tools While I'm the type of parent who makes the children fish-finger sandwiches and declares them fed, my wife prefers to serve a lavish five-course meal. In the past, she would often customize meals to meet each child's individual taste and preference. After a while, I had to put a stop to it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s position on Security Analytics and Operations (SOAPA)

Just what is a security operations and analytics platform architecture (SOAPA) anyway? In the past, most enterprises anchored their security analytics and operations with one common tool: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. Now, SIEM still plays a major role here, but many organizations are supplementing their security operations centers (SOCs) with additional data, analytics tools and operations management systems. We now see SOCs as a nexus for things like endpoint detection and response tools (EDR), network analytics, threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) and incident response platforms (IRPs). In aggregate, security operations is changing, driven by a wave of new types of sensors, diverse data sources, analytics tools and operational requirements. And these changes are driving an evolution from monolithic security technologies to a more comprehensive event-driven software architecture along the lines of SOA 2.0, where disparate security technologies connected with middleware for things like data exchange, message queueing and business-level trigger conditions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft killing vowel-challenged So.cl social networking service on March 15

Microsoft's FUSE Labs has announced it is killing So.cl (or just plain Socl), a multimedia-infused social network and search tool positioned as a complement to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and other more established social services. The So.cl (pronounced Social) service quietly launched at a few universities in late 2011, became generally available in 2012 and is being discontinued as of March 15.VISIT the 2016 Microsoft Product GraveyardThe free service could be accessed via a Microsoft or Facebook account. (Confession: I created my first So.cl post this morning.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Proving how bad enterprise software really is, Knoa delivers visibility

I have written at length about just how bad many legacy enterprise software products are. I was reminded about this recently when raising an invoice for one particular client. This client is an enterprise technology vendor, with some of the best software tools on the planet and extensive conceptual videos detailing just how its platforms enable enterprise application users to be as efficient as they are with their consumer technology tools.Alas, the reality of the internal tools that this particular vendor uses was very different from the hype. The task of raising a single invoice—a seemingly simple job—took on absolutely epic proportions with deep operating system and browser requirements, poor user experience, and, fundamentally, a system that didn't work. I came away, once again feeling nothing but sympathy for my friends who have to use these systems on a day-to-day basis.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IMF moving IT jobs to offshore firm

The International Monetary Fund in Washington is shifting some of its IT work overseas, and somewhere between 100 and 200 IT workers are impacted by this change.The work is being taken over by India-based IT managed services provider L&T Infotech, and the change was announced to the staff last year. The transition, which involves training L&T employees, is continuing through the end of this year. IMF IT workers are being to encourage to stay by means of an incentive package.The affected IT workers are all third-party contractors. Some of the contractors have been working at the IMF for five and 10 years or longer, and are viewed as staff for most purposes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5G plans just hit the accelerator

The international body crafting the 5G standard has approved an accelerated roadmap that could see large-scale trials and deployments in 2019 instead of 2020.At a meeting this week in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the 3GPP signed off on a 5G work plan that several top mobile operators and network vendors came out in favor of last week. It would create an interim 5G specification before the full-scale standard is completed.It’s important to get the next generation of mobile out into the world soon because users keep increasing their data consumption, said Lorenzo Casaccia, vice president of technical standards at Qualcomm, in a blog post on Thursday. That’s why his company is backing the in-between spec, which is now expected to be done by the end of this year and available in software about three months later.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5G plans just hit the accelerator

The international body crafting the 5G standard has approved an accelerated roadmap that could see large-scale trials and deployments in 2019 instead of 2020.At a meeting this week in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the 3GPP signed off on a 5G work plan that several top mobile operators and network vendors came out in favor of last week. It would create an interim 5G specification before the full-scale standard is completed.It’s important to get the next generation of mobile out into the world soon because users keep increasing their data consumption, said Lorenzo Casaccia, vice president of technical standards at Qualcomm, in a blog post on Thursday. That’s why his company is backing the in-between spec, which is now expected to be done by the end of this year and available in software about three months later.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to use Ryzen Master, AMD’s powerful new CPU overclocking tool

The long-awaited Ryzen CPUs are finally here and AMD’s shiny new hardware arrived with helpful new software in tow.Following in the footsteps of the WattMan overclocking tool for Radeon graphics cards, the Ryzen Master overclocking tool is aimed at giving you complete control over your new Ryzen chip, allowing you to push your processor to the bleeding edge of its potential performance. Want to crank voltage higher, fiddle with clock speeds, monitor temperatures, or even completely disable some of your chip’s cores? AMD’s overclocking software enables all that and more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google tries to beat AWS at cloud security

Google knows that if enterprises are going to move their critical services to its cloud, then it has to offer something that AWS doesn’t. At Google Cloud Next, the company’s leadership made the case that Google Cloud was the most secure cloud.At the conference this week, Google unveiled tools that would let IT teams provide granular access to applications, better manage encryption keys, and enforce stronger authentication mechanisms for applications running on Google Cloud. While Google is just playing catch-up to Amazon with the Key Management System for GCP, it is stepping into uncharted territory with Data Leak Prevention API by giving administrators tools that go beyond the infrastructure to protect individual applications. Google is tackling the identity access management challenge differently from Amazon, and it will be up to enterprises to decide which approach they prefer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google tries to beat AWS at cloud security

Google knows that if enterprises are going to move their critical services to its cloud, then it has to offer something that AWS doesn’t. At Google Cloud Next, the company’s leadership made the case that Google Cloud was the most secure cloud.At the conference this week, Google unveiled tools that would let IT teams provide granular access to applications, better manage encryption keys, and enforce stronger authentication mechanisms for applications running on Google Cloud. While Google is just playing catch-up to Amazon with the Key Management System for GCP, it is stepping into uncharted territory with Data Leak Prevention API by giving administrators tools that go beyond the infrastructure to protect individual applications. Google is tackling the identity access management challenge differently from Amazon, and it will be up to enterprises to decide which approach they prefer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Newer car tech opens doors to CIA attacks

The revelation through Wikileaks that the CIA has explored hacking vehicle computer control systems should concern consumers, particularly as more and more cars and trucks roll off assembly lines with autonomous features."I think it's a legitimate concern considering all of the computers being added to cars," said Kit Walsh, a staff attorney with the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "There's no reason the CIA or other intelligence agencies or bad actors couldn't use those vulnerabilities to hurt people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Newer car tech opens doors to CIA attacks

The revelation through Wikileaks that the CIA has explored hacking vehicle computer control systems should concern consumers, particularly as more and more cars and trucks roll off assembly lines with autonomous features."I think it's a legitimate concern considering all of the computers being added to cars," said Kit Walsh, a staff attorney with the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "There's no reason the CIA or other intelligence agencies or bad actors couldn't use those vulnerabilities to hurt people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Danes targeted by malware spread through Dropbox

Earlier this week, Danish-speaking users were hit by malware spread through Dropbox, but the company responded quickly to shut down the attack. According to a research report by AppRiver, the attack hit Denmark, Germany, and several surrounding Scandinavian countries on Wednesday morning. The attack was unusual in that it narrowly targeted a specific audience, said Troy Gill, security analyst at AppRiver. "Somehow, they found this language-based list of email addresses," he said. "I'm not sure where they gathered it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Danes targeted by malware spread through Dropbox

Earlier this week, Danish-speaking users were hit by malware spread through Dropbox, but the company responded quickly to shut down the attack. According to a research report by AppRiver, the attack hit Denmark, Germany, and several surrounding Scandinavian countries on Wednesday morning. The attack was unusual in that it narrowly targeted a specific audience, said Troy Gill, security analyst at AppRiver. "Somehow, they found this language-based list of email addresses," he said. "I'm not sure where they gathered it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hybrid IT Requires Communication, Breadth of Skills

Protecting the enterprise against mobile threats

Mobile devices have transformed the digital enterprise allowing employees to access the information they need to be most productive from virtually anywhere. Has that convenience come at a cost to enterprise security, though?  According to Forrester's The State of Enterprise Mobile Security: 2016 to 2017, by Chris Sherman, "Employees are going to continue to purchase and use whatever devices and apps they need to serve customers and be highly productive, whether or not these devices are company-sanctioned."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Protecting the enterprise against mobile threats

Mobile devices have transformed the digital enterprise allowing employees to access the information they need to be most productive from virtually anywhere. Has that convenience come at a cost to enterprise security, though?  According to Forrester's The State of Enterprise Mobile Security: 2016 to 2017, by Chris Sherman, "Employees are going to continue to purchase and use whatever devices and apps they need to serve customers and be highly productive, whether or not these devices are company-sanctioned."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here