Jon Gold
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Jon Gold
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A startup makes IoT sensors, no batteries necessary
A startup founded by two MIT grads says that it can deploy self-powering sensors to handle low-intensity IoT tasks, eliminating the need for batteries or wired electrical supplies, adding a new level of flexibility to IoT deployments.Ben Calhoun and Dave Wentzloff are the founders of Everactive, an IoT-device manufacturing startup whose sensor modules can create their own power from a variety of sources, including indoor solar, thermal gradient differential, and vibrations. The sensors can monitor for temperature, humidity, light levels, vibration, movement, sound, pressure and gas, among other things.To read this article in full, please click here
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Open-source: Get SLAs to protect network apps with open-source components
The continuous influx of open-source software (OSS) into enterprise IT departments is, in many ways, an enormous boon to both vendors and users. For the former, the ability to use open source components means getting rid of a great deal of duplicative effort—rather than having to design every part of, say, an IoT sensor and monitoring product from scratch, a vendor can adopt a well-understood, well-supported open source library for its networking stack, and focus more of its attention on the sensing and data analysis features that will set the product apart from its competitors.For end-users, one of the chief advantages is—at least in theory—the improved security that’s part of the usual sales pitch for open source software. The idea here is that the open nature of a piece of software—and the fact that anyone can look at it to discover and correct security flaws—means that it’s generally going to be more secure than a proprietary equivalent.To read this article in full, please click here
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Open-source: Get SLAs to protect network apps with open-source components
The continuous influx of open-source software (OSS) into enterprise IT departments is, in many ways, an enormous boon to both vendors and users. For the former, the ability to use open source components means getting rid of a great deal of duplicative effort—rather than having to design every part of, say, an IoT sensor and monitoring product from scratch, a vendor can adopt a well-understood, well-supported open source library for its networking stack, and focus more of its attention on the sensing and data analysis features that will set the product apart from its competitors.For end-users, one of the chief advantages is—at least in theory—the improved security that’s part of the usual sales pitch for open source software. The idea here is that the open nature of a piece of software—and the fact that anyone can look at it to discover and correct security flaws—means that it’s generally going to be more secure than a proprietary equivalent.To read this article in full, please click here
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Aruba Wi-Fi 6E access point to launch this fall
Business users looking for an upgrade to the very latest Wi-Fi standard, also known as Wi-Fi 6E, now have the option of Aruba’s new AP 635, the company announced this morning. Wi-Fi resources Test and review of 4 Wi-Fi 6 routers: Who’s the fastest? How to determine if Wi-Fi 6 is right for you Five questions to answer before deploying Wi-Fi 6 Wi-Fi 6E: When it’s coming and what it’s good for Wi-Fi 6E works much the same as Wi-Fi 6, sharing that standard’s improved ability to handle dense client environments, high throughput, and advanced multi-user and multi-antenna functionality. The new feature is the ability to use the 6GHz spectrum that the FCC opened in April 2020 to unlicensed users, representing a two-fold increase in the spectrum available for WI-Fi. That added spectrum means that Wi-Fi users can take advantage of much wider channels, leading to commensurately higher throughput.To read this article in full, please click here
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‘FragAttack’ flaws threaten Wi-Fi, but not too seriously
Almost all Wi-Fi is potentially vulnerable to flaws that date back to 1997 when it became commercially available, but even the person who discovered the weaknesses says some of them are difficult to exploit. Wi-Fi resources Test and review of 4 Wi-Fi 6 routers: Who’s the fastest? How to determine if Wi-Fi 6 is right for you Five questions to answer before deploying Wi-Fi 6 Wi-Fi 6E: When it’s coming and what it’s good for Mathy Vanhoef, a post-doctoral student at NYU Abu Dhabi, has created attacks—FragAttacks—that take advantage of the vulnerabilities, but in an academic paper about them, says the most widespread vulnerabilities can be exploited only under specific, rare conditions, and require either user interaction or highly unusual configurations to succeed.To read this article in full, please click here
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‘FragAttack’ flaws threaten Wi-Fi, but not too seriously
Almost all Wi-Fi is potentially vulnerable to flaws that date back to 1997 when it became commercially available, but even the person who discovered the weaknesses says some of them are difficult to exploit. Wi-Fi resources Test and review of 4 Wi-Fi 6 routers: Who’s the fastest? How to determine if Wi-Fi 6 is right for you Five questions to answer before deploying Wi-Fi 6 Wi-Fi 6E: When it’s coming and what it’s good for Mathy Vanhoef, a post-doctoral student at NYU Abu Dhabi, has created attacks—FragAttacks—that take advantage of the vulnerabilities, but in an academic paper about them, says the most widespread vulnerabilities can be exploited only under specific, rare conditions, and require either user interaction or highly unusual configurations to succeed.To read this article in full, please click here
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VMware picks an in-house exec for its new CEO
VMware says its COO for products and cloud services, Raghu Raghuram, will be its next permanent CEO, a signal that the company’s board intends to keep VMware on its present course.When Raghuram takes the reins in June, it will end a four-month interregnum, during which the company has been helmed by CFO Zane Rowe. Former CEO Pat Gelsinger became the CEO at Intel in February, returning to the company where he had worked for 30 years.VMware is the unquestioned 800-pound gorilla of the enterprise hypervisor market and has pursued both internal technology development and a succession of strategic acquisitions to diversify its business. The company’s hypervisor business, buttressed by deals with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other hyperscalers to provide its core products as cloud services, is still the main revenue stream. But VMware also plays in security, containerization, and cloud-native applications.To read this article in full, please click here
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VMware picks an in-house exec for its new CEO
VMware says its COO for products and cloud services, Raghu Raghuram, will be its next permanent CEO, a signal that the company’s board intends to keep VMware on its present course.When Raghuram takes the reins in June, it will end a four-month interregnum, during which the company has been helmed by CFO Zane Rowe. Former CEO Pat Gelsinger became the CEO at Intel in February, returning to the company where he had worked for 30 years.VMware is the unquestioned 800-pound gorilla of the enterprise hypervisor market and has pursued both internal technology development and a succession of strategic acquisitions to diversify its business. The company’s hypervisor business, buttressed by deals with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other hyperscalers to provide its core products as cloud services, is still the main revenue stream. But VMware also plays in security, containerization, and cloud-native applications.To read this article in full, please click here
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Tech employers focus on training for IT pros
IT teams are dealing with rapid technology changes with increased retraining and skill development, according to a report by trade association CompTIA.Seven in 10 HR professionals surveyed who work with IT personnel said they plan a substantially increased effort to help workers re-skill in the coming year, with larger firms reporting a particularly strong emphasis in that area. Nearly 80% of IT HR professionals employed at such companies rated re-skilling or up-skilling as “more important” for the coming year, in contrast to 68% at medium-sized firms and 52% at smaller businesses.Network training 2021: Businesses grow their own expertise These numbers mark a changed relationship between employers and tech, according to CompTIA director of education and ed tech Stephanie Morgan, adding that the pandemic helped force companies to rethink the way they deal with their workers. “Businesses have realized they have to talk about people like they’re people, not like they’re assets,” she said.To read this article in full, please click here
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Red Hat buttresses edge features in RHEL 8.4
New features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are tuned to provide better remote support for edge networking where processor- and memory-constrained devices can present management problems.RHEL 8.4 announced this week at Red Hat Summit has new capability to send lighter-weight universal base images and is designed for potentially less capable edge devices, letting Red Hat customers deploy edge applications more flexibly.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] In addition to the new RHEL version, Red Hat announced updates to Podman, the company’s open-source container engine, that will allow users to manage widely deployed containers from a single console, and an OpenShift update that adds support for smaller clusters and remote worker nodes makes it easier to use Kubernetes in resource-constrained locations.To read this article in full, please click here
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Red Hat buttresses edge features in RHEL 8.4
New features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are tuned to provide better remote support for edge networking where processor- and memory-constrained devices can present management problems.RHEL 8.4 announced this week at Red Hat Summit has new capability to send lighter-weight universal base images and is designed for potentially less capable edge devices, letting Red Hat customers deploy edge applications more flexibly.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] In addition to the new RHEL version, Red Hat announced updates to Podman, the company’s open-source container engine, that will allow users to manage widely deployed containers from a single console, and an OpenShift update that adds support for smaller clusters and remote worker nodes makes it easier to use Kubernetes in resource-constrained locations.To read this article in full, please click here
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Organizations need to patch Pulse Secure VPNs
Organizations using Pulse Secure’s mobile VPN should patch vulnerabilities reportedly being exploited in the wild, possibly by a “Chinese espionage actor”.The patch–available here–is considered important enough that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) gave federal agencies a deadline of April 23 to apply them.Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster CISA’s guidance states that federal users of Pulse Connect Secure VPNs must use the company’s free utility to ascertain whether their devices are vulnerable.To read this article in full, please click here
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Organizations need to patch Pulse Secure VPNs
Organizations using Pulse Secure’s mobile VPN should patch vulnerabilities reportedly being exploited in the wild, possibly by a “Chinese espionage actor”.The patch–available here–is considered important enough that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) gave federal agencies a deadline of April 23 to apply them.Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster CISA’s guidance states that federal users of Pulse Connect Secure VPNs must use the company’s free utility to ascertain whether their devices are vulnerable.To read this article in full, please click here
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5 top open-source infrastructure projects
Open source software has been a key underpinning of enterprise IT for years, so it’s no surprise that it’s helping to drive the infrastructure part of the equation forward just as much as application development.Some projects are much more influential than others, and here are five that are doing the most to help enterprise infrastructure keep pace with the demands of an ever-more sophisticated operating environment.OpenStack OpenStack is notable in part for being an open-source competitor to the most important proprietary virtualization software on the market—VMware’s VSphere. For the basic task of virtualizing servers into a flexible pool of computing resources, the difference appears to be ease of use—it’s simpler to use VMware when there isn’t a lot of in-house virtualization or private-cloud expertise.To read this article in full, please click here
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5 top open-source infrastructure projects
Open source software has been a key underpinning of enterprise IT for years, so it’s no surprise that it’s helping to drive the infrastructure part of the equation forward just as much as application development.Some projects are much more influential than others, and here are five that are doing the most to help enterprise infrastructure keep pace with the demands of an ever-more sophisticated operating environment.OpenStack OpenStack is notable in part for being an open-source competitor to the most important proprietary virtualization software on the market—VMware’s VSphere. For the basic task of virtualizing servers into a flexible pool of computing resources, the difference appears to be ease of use—it’s simpler to use VMware when there isn’t a lot of in-house virtualization or private-cloud expertise.To read this article in full, please click here
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Water-authority network upgrade spots problems faster
The Albuquerque water authority says recent network upgrades give it greater visibility and control over its remote sites and makes for faster responses to leaks and other problems.The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority manages more than 3,000 miles of water-supply pipeline covering more than 650,000 users. The authority manages 135 remote locations, which include well sites, tanks, and pump stations, all of which have programmable logic controllers (PLC) connected to a dedicated, fixed-wireless network running at 900MHz back to the core network.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] “The [main treatment] plant was built [about] 15 years ago,” said Kristen Sanders, the authority’s chief information security officer. “So if a piece of equipment went out, replacing it would be about shopping on eBay.” Also the authority’s fiber backbone that connects the sites with the main plant was past it’s service life and had to be replaced.To read this article in full, please click here
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Water-authority network upgrade spots problems faster
The Albuquerque water authority says recent network upgrades give it greater visibility and control over its remote sites and makes for faster responses to leaks and other problems.The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority manages more than 3,000 miles of water-supply pipeline covering more than 650,000 users. The authority manages 135 remote locations, which include well sites, tanks, and pump stations, all of which have programmable logic controllers (PLC) connected to a dedicated, fixed-wireless network running at 900MHz back to the core network.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] “The [main treatment] plant was built [about] 15 years ago,” said Kristen Sanders, the authority’s chief information security officer. “So if a piece of equipment went out, replacing it would be about shopping on eBay.” Also the authority’s fiber backbone that connects the sites with the main plant was past it’s service life and had to be replaced.To read this article in full, please click here
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TCP/IP stack vulnerabilities threaten IoT devices
A set of vulnerabilities in TCP/IP stacks used by FreeBSD and three popular real-time operating systems designed for the IoT was revealed this week by security vendor Forescout and JSOF Research. The nine vulnerabilities could potentially affect 100 million devices in the wild.Nucleus NET, IPNet and NetX are the other operating systems affected by the vulnerabilities, which a joint report issued by Forescout and JSOF dubbed Name:Wreck.In a report on the vulnerabilities, Forescout writes that TCP/IP stacks are particularly vulnerable for several reasons, including widespread use, the fact that many such stacks were created a long time ago, and the fact that they make an attractive attack surface, thanks to unauthenticated functionality and protocols that cross network perimeters.To read this article in full, please click here
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TCP/IP stack vulnerabilities threaten IoT devices
A set of vulnerabilities in TCP/IP stacks used by FreeBSD and three popular real-time operating systems designed for the IoT was revealed this week by security vendor Forescout and JSOF Research. The nine vulnerabilities could potentially affect 100 million devices in the wild.Nucleus NET, IPNet and NetX are the other operating systems affected by the vulnerabilities, which a joint report issued by Forescout and JSOF dubbed Name:Wreck.In a report on the vulnerabilities, Forescout writes that TCP/IP stacks are particularly vulnerable for several reasons, including widespread use, the fact that many such stacks were created a long time ago, and the fact that they make an attractive attack surface, thanks to unauthenticated functionality and protocols that cross network perimeters.To read this article in full, please click here
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5G: mm-wave signals could power self-charging IoT devices
A 3D-printed antenna could turn high-frequency 5G signals into a wireless power source, potentially eliminating the need for batteries in low-power IoT devices, according to researchers at Georgia Tech. 5G resources What is 5G? Fast wireless technology for enterprises and phones How 5G frequency affects range and speed Private 5G can solve some problems that Wi-Fi can’t Private 5G keeps Whirlpool driverless vehicles rolling 5G can make for cost-effective private backhaul CBRS can bring private 5G to enterprises The antenna, which the researchers call a mm-wave harvester, is about the size of a playing card and has visible circuitry printed on it. It uses a technology called a Rotman lens as a waveguide to focus multiple beams of millimeter-wave electromagnetic radiation used in 5G into a coherent whole.To read this article in full, please click here