IDG Contributor Network: Underwriters Laboratories creates Living Lab for real-world IoT testing

What could go wrong with IoT devices? A lot when it comes to dozens of such devices working close to one another if not tested for interoperability first. Is the connected thermostat interfering with the smart TV? Or has the IoT-enabled door lock been hacked through the security camera?How do you to test if the smart appliances from different vendors work with your smart home ecosystem? Is one compromising the security of another? How do consumers really use their IoT devices?Underwriters Laboratories (UL) uses a real home fitted with IoT appliances and devices as a testing lab to find out.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile, security tools among education tech favorites

In the school district of La Crosse, Vicki Lyons depends on mobile device management software from Jamf to manage the Wisconsin district’s fleet of iPads and MacBook Air devices. The Apple device management platform plays a key role in the district’s efforts to provide equitable access to technology to all of its students.“We use Jamf Pro as our device management solution for our 1:1 iPad program district-wide. As a result, we are driving student success with iPads and meeting their individual needs via personalized learning — something we weren’t able to previously do,” says Lyons, technology service director for the School District of La Crosse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile, security tools among education tech favorites

In the school district of La Crosse, Vicki Lyons depends on mobile device management software from Jamf to manage the Wisconsin district’s fleet of iPads and MacBook Air devices. The Apple device management platform plays a key role in the district’s efforts to provide equitable access to technology to all of its students.“We use Jamf Pro as our device management solution for our 1:1 iPad program district-wide. As a result, we are driving student success with iPads and meeting their individual needs via personalized learning — something we weren’t able to previously do,” says Lyons, technology service director for the School District of La Crosse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT execs tout benefits of SD-WAN

Enterprises are adopting software-defined WAN to simplify branch office connectivity, improve application performance, and better manage WAN expenses, according to Gartner, which predicts that spending on SD-WAN products will rise from $129 million in 2016 to $1.24 billion in 2020.“While WAN architectures and technologies tend to evolve at a very slow pace — perhaps a new generation every 10 to 15 years — the disruptions caused by the transformation to digital business models are driving adoption of SD-WAN at a pace that is unheard of in wide-area networking,” Gartner writes.Two early adopters of SD-WAN shared some of the gains they’re realizing from the technology. The Bay Club Company and Autodesk are deploying SD-WAN technology from VeloCloud and CloudGenix, respectively, to transform the way they provision and support remote sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT execs tout benefits of SD-WAN

Enterprises are adopting software-defined WAN to simplify branch office connectivity, improve application performance, and better manage WAN expenses, according to Gartner, which predicts that spending on SD-WAN products will rise from $129 million in 2016 to $1.24 billion in 2020.“While WAN architectures and technologies tend to evolve at a very slow pace — perhaps a new generation every 10 to 15 years — the disruptions caused by the transformation to digital business models are driving adoption of SD-WAN at a pace that is unheard of in wide-area networking,” Gartner writes.Two early adopters of SD-WAN shared some of the gains they’re realizing from the technology. The Bay Club Company and Autodesk are deploying SD-WAN technology from VeloCloud and CloudGenix, respectively, to transform the way they provision and support remote sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What’s behind VMware’s Wavefront acquisition?

VMware’s acquisition of monitoring software maker Wavefront for an undisclosed sum is a move core to VMware's strategy to round out its portfolio for facilitating and managing hybrid cloud environments. It highlights in the need to ensure that applications running between private and public clouds perform up to par.[ 30 CIOs share their strategic focus ] Companies undertaking digital transformations are leaning heavily on hybrid clouds to deploy software, a scenario playing out across nearly every industry. To enable this at a high velocity, companies are instituting DevOps, in which code is constantly written, shipped, run and regularly refined. In DevOps environments, corporate developers code application functionality, called microservices, which they ship via virtual containers to run between private cloud environments and public cloud systems such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Samsung Dex nearly nails smartphone-as-desktop

We all love our smartphones and tablets, but boy do we miss our big screens, mice, and keyboards when doing complex work on those mobile devices. That’s why the notion of a smartphone that acts like a PC when connected to those peripherals has kept recurring ever since the iPhone redefined mobility for the modern era.But so far, reality has not delivered on that promise of the mobile-on-desktop notion. Now, Samsung is trying its hand at this puzzle, with the Dex dock available for its new Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones.[ Review: Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is an unpleasant smartphone. | iPad Pro vs. Surface Pro vs. Pixel C vs. Galaxy TabPro S: The “tabtop” tablet/laptop hybrids compared. ] The journey from the Lapdock to the Dex Station The Motorola Lapdock back in 2011 was the first dock to put smartphone screens on a computer monitor, as well as provide a full-screen browser and connections for physical keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals. But the constrained smartphone apps weren’t much easier to use as big-screen windows, and the Linux-based browser was too limited.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Galaxy S8+ review: The future of Android is now

Samsung has finally beat Apple at its own game.While the Galaxy S has been regarded for years as the best Android phone money can buy (at least until the Pixel came around), it’s always existed in the iPhone’s lengthy shadow. Even with a higher market share, a dominant OS, and a years-long lead on features like screen size and water resistance, the Galaxy S has stayed just out of reach of the iPhone zeitgeist. No matter how much it tried to create its own end-to-end experience, Apple fans saw it as a copycat and Android enthusiasts lamented its aggressive TouchWiz interface overhaul.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity remains an elusive business priority

I’ve been remiss by not blogging earlier this year about ESG’s annual IT spending intentions research. The year 2017 continues to follow a pattern: Cybersecurity is a high business and IT priority for most organizations. Based upon a global survey of 641 IT and cybersecurity professionals, the ESG research reveals: While just over half (53%) of organizations plan on increasing IT spending overall this year, 69% said they are increasing spending on cybersecurity. As far as cybersecurity spending goes, 48% will make their most significant cybersecurity technology investments in cloud security, 39% will in network security, 30% in endpoint security, and 29% in security analytics.    Respondents were asked which business outcomes were their highest priorities for this year. The top three results were as follows: 43% said “reducing costs,” 40% said “increasing productivity," and 39% said “improving information security.”  When asked which business initiatives will drive the most IT spending, 39% said “increasing cybersecurity,” the top selection of all. When asked to identify the most important IT initiatives for this year, the number one answer was “strengthening cybersecurity controls and processes.”  For the sixth year in a row, survey respondents said cybersecurity is the area where Continue reading

Cybersecurity remains an elusive business priority

I’ve been remiss by not blogging earlier this year about ESG’s annual IT spending intentions research. The year 2017 continues to follow a pattern: Cybersecurity is a high business and IT priority for most organizations. Based upon a global survey of 641 IT and cybersecurity professionals, the ESG research reveals: While just over half (53%) of organizations plan on increasing IT spending overall this year, 69% said they are increasing spending on cybersecurity. As far as cybersecurity spending goes, 48% will make their most significant cybersecurity technology investments in cloud security, 39% will in network security, 30% in endpoint security, and 29% in security analytics.    Respondents were asked which business outcomes were their highest priorities for this year. The top three results were as follows: 43% said “reducing costs,” 40% said “increasing productivity," and 39% said “improving information security.”  When asked which business initiatives will drive the most IT spending, 39% said “increasing cybersecurity,” the top selection of all. When asked to identify the most important IT initiatives for this year, the number one answer was “strengthening cybersecurity controls and processes.”  For the sixth year in a row, survey respondents said cybersecurity is the area where Continue reading

Cybersecurity Remains an Elusive Business Priority

I’ve been remiss by not blogging earlier this year about ESG’s annual IT spending intentions research (note: I am an ESG employee).  The year 2017 continues to follow a pattern – cybersecurity is a high business and IT priority for most organizations. Based upon a global survey of 641 IT and cybersecurity professionals, the ESG research reveals: While just over half (53%) of organizations plan on increasing IT spending overall this year, 69% say they are increasing spending on cybersecurity.  As far as cybersecurity spending goes, 48% will make their most significant cybersecurity technology investments in cloud security 39% will in network security, 30% in endpoint security, and 29% in security analytics.    Respondents were asked which business outcomes were their highest priorities for this year.  The top three results were as follows: 43% said “reducing costs,” 40% said “increasing productivity, and 39% “improving information security.”  When asked which business initiatives will drive the most IT spending, 39% said, “increasing cybersecurity,” the top selection of all. When asked to identify the most important IT initiatives for this year, the number one answer was, “strengthening cybersecurity controls and processes.”  For the 6th year Continue reading

Worth Reading: IPv6 data exfiltration

The transition to internet protocol version 6 has opened up a whole new range of threat vectors that allow attackers to set up undetectable communications channels across networks, researchers have found. A paper has been published by researchers at the NATO defence alliance’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and Estonia’s Tallinn University of Technology. It outlines how attackers can create covert data exfiltration channels and system remote control, using IPv6 transition mechanisms. IPv6 aims to remove the technical drawbacks of the older IPv4 addressing scheme but brings its own fresh set of dangers, the researchers warned. Since IPv6 implementations and security solutions are relatively new and untested, and systems engineers aren’t fully aware of them, the new protocol can become a network backdoor attackers can exploit undetected. —itnews

The post Worth Reading: IPv6 data exfiltration appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Meanwhile in China: Surveillance required on public Wi-Fi

Every once in a while, something in China that sounds like it came out of a dystopian movie catches my attention.China’s great surveillance machine seems to know no bounds. China has already cracked down on unauthorized VPN use. Last month, we learned that if you want toilet paper at one UNESCO World Heritage Site in China, then you must submit to facial recognition in order to be issued a strip of toilet paper. This time, we are looking at China requiring surveillance technology on public Wi-Fi and Chinese loan startups determining credit-worthiness by the model of smartphones used and if the battery runs low.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Meanwhile in China: Surveillance required on public Wi-Fi

Every once in a while, something in China that sounds like it came out of a dystopian movie catches my attention.China’s great surveillance machine seems to know no bounds. China has already cracked down on unauthorized VPN use. Last month, we learned that if you want toilet paper at one UNESCO World Heritage Site in China, then you must submit to facial recognition in order to be issued a strip of toilet paper. This time, we are looking at China requiring surveillance technology on public Wi-Fi and Chinese loan startups determining credit-worthiness by the model of smartphones used and if the battery runs low.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can Container Security Surpass That of Virtual Machines?

Containers certainly face security threats that virtual machines do not.

Uber offers new dispatch service for businesses

Uber wants businesses to do away with shuttle buses for customers, and has launched a new service aimed at making it easier for companies to hail cars on other people’s behalf. Called Uber Central, the software lets users request cars even for people who don’t have accounts with the ride-hailing company.Here’s how it works: company employees who have access to the Uber Central console input a customer’s name and phone number, along with their pickup and drop-off address. After that, they can request a ride from Uber’s menu of services, or save the data as a draft for easier use later.The Uber Central dashboard, which is available worldwide, also lets employees track the status of rides. It’s built on top of Uber for Business, a version of the ride-hailing platform that has been built for use by companies rather than individuals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Announcing Ansible Container 0.9

The Ansible Container team is proud to announce the 0.9 release of the Ansible Container project. Key new features of the 0.9 release include:

Tighter integration with Ansible roles

Ansible roles are a great way to describe microservices; roles that are "common" between multiple services map well to container image layers and service-specific roles are easy for teams to maintain. We decided to make that concept clearer in the way Ansible Container works. We ditched the main.yml playbook and replaced it with a per-service list of roles in container.yml.

Tighter integration with Kubernetes in OpenShift Origin and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

We've built brand new Kubernetes and OpenShift modules for Ansible, and are already using them in Ansible Container. We've also restructured the container.yml syntax to more naturally support Kubernetes and OpenShift concepts out of the box, then fall back to the comparatively simpler Docker ecosystem. Instead of trying to bolt Kubernetes features into the Docker Compose style schema, we have dedicated OpenShift/Kubernetes configuration for resources like Persistent Volume Claims. This will allow end users to transfer existing Ansible roles into Kubernetes/OpenShift and have Ansible Container manage the deployment lifecycle.

Putting more tools into the Continue reading

Announcing LinuxKit: A Toolkit for building Secure, Lean and Portable Linux Subsystems

Last year, one of the most common requests we heard from our users was to bring a Docker-native experience to their platforms. These platforms were many and varied: from cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, to server platforms such as Windows Server, desktop platforms that their developers used such as OSX and Windows 10, to mainframes and IoT platforms –  the list went on.

We started working on support for these platforms, and we initially shipped Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows, followed by Docker for AWS and Docker for Azure. Most recently, we announced the beta of Docker for GCP. The customizations we applied to make Docker native for each platform have furthered the adoption of the Docker editions.

One of the issues we encountered was that for many of these platforms, the users wanted Linuxcontainer support but the platform itself did not ship with Linux included. Mac OS and Windows are two obvious examples, but cloud platforms do not ship with a standard Linux either. So it made sense for us to bundle Linux into the Docker platform to run in these places.

What we needed to bundle was a secure, lean and portable Linux Continue reading

Introducing Moby Project: a new open-source project to advance the software containerization movement

Since Docker democratized software containers four years ago, a whole ecosystem grew around containerization and in this compressed time period it has gone through two distinct phases of growth. In each of these two phases, the model for producing container systems evolved to adapt to the size and needs of the user community as well as the project and the growing contributor ecosystem.

The Moby Project is a new open-source project to advance the software containerization movement and help the ecosystem take containers mainstream. It provides a library of components, a framework for assembling them into custom container-based systems and a place for all container enthusiasts to experiment and exchange ideas.

Let’s review how we got where we are today. In 2013-2014 pioneers started to use containers and collaborate in a monolithic open source codebase, Docker and few other projects, to help tools mature.

Then in 2015-2016, containers were massively adopted in production for cloud-native applications. In this phase, the user community grew to support tens of thousands of deployments that were backed by hundreds of ecosystem projects and thousands of contributors. It is during this phase, that Docker evolved its production model to an open component based approach. In Continue reading

IoT meets augmented reality

PTC has assembled a robust portfolio of Internet of Things technologies that, when combined with the company’s history in digital 3D design and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools, makes for some interesting new ways to bridge the physical and digital worlds.  To see how it all adds up, Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with Michael Campbell, Executive Vice President of PTC’s ThingWorx IoT platform. Campbell, who has been with PTC since 1995, has a background in 3D CAD and visualization, and ran the company’s CAD business for years when they started to think about the convergence of IoT and 3D and how it might all come together in augmented and virtual reality. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here