Katherine Noyes, Author at NetworkingNexus.net

Katherine Noyes

Author Archives: Katherine Noyes

When it comes to spam, IBM’s SoftLayer is the host with the most

IBM may be the fastest-growing vendor in the worldwide security software market, but it's also the owner of the world's largest source of spam.That's according to a Wednesday report by security expert Brian Krebs, who called out the company's SoftLayer subsidiary for being "the Internet’s most spam-friendly" service provider.SoftLayer currently holds the top position on antispam nonprofit Spamhaus.org's list of the world’s worst spam support ISPs, which it defines as the ISPs with the worst abuse departments and "consequently the worst reputations for knowingly hosting spam operations."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BT Group may give OpenStack the boot

OpenStack has gained considerable popularity over the years for its open-source cloud platform, but this week it looks like one major user is seriously considering dropping the technology in favor of a proprietary alternative.U.K.-based telecom giant BT Group said it will switch to a different option for delivering virtual enterprise services, according to a Wednesday report in Light Reading, unless OpenStack can address its concerns regarding six key areas: virtual network functions, service chain modification, scalability, security, backward compatibility and what's known as "start-up storms" when numerous nodes all come online at the same time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

As a private company, Dell-EMC will enjoy a freedom HP can only dream of

Dell's US$67 billion acquisition of EMC will give it access to a sales force notorious for its ability to "sell ice to eskimos," while EMC will gain a new foothold among mid-market customers. As a private entity, the combined result will face a freedom from market pressures that competitors such as HP can only dream of.Those are just some of the benefits that could follow from the deal announced early on Monday."This industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation," said Crawford del Prete, an executive vice president with IDC. "You can't navigate it with short-term business decisions."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former Autonomy CEO Lynch sues HP for $150 million

Making good on the promise he made earlier this year, former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch on Thursday filed a $150 million lawsuit against HP over what he called a public smear campaign against him and other Autonomy executives.“Over the past three years, HP has made many statements that were highly damaging to me and misleading to the stock market," Lynch said. "HP knew, or should have known, these statements were false."HP's ill-fated 2011 acquisition of the British software maker for $11.7 billion -- which later resulted in an $8.8 billion impairment charge -- was "doomed from the very beginning," Lynch said. "HP’s own documents, which the court will see, make clear that HP was simply incompetent in its operation of Autonomy."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Michigan sues HP over $49 million project that’s still not done after 10 years

Hewlett-Packard has faced no end of financial and legal woes in recent months, and on Friday it was hit with one more: A new lawsuit filed by the state of Michigan over a $49 million project the state says is still not completed after 10 years.The contract dates back to 2005 and called for HP to replace a legacy mainframe-based system built in the 1960s that is used by more than 130 Secretary of State offices.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers HP was given a 2010 deadline to deliver a replacement, but it failed to do so, the state says, leaving the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget and SOS staff dependent on the old technology for functions such as vehicle registration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tired of memorizing passwords? A Turing Award winner came up with this algorithmic trick

Passwords are a bane of life on the Internet, but one Turing Award winner has an algorithmic approach that he thinks can make them not only easier to manage but also more secure.The average user has some 20 passwords today, and in general the easier they are to remember, the less secure they are. When passwords are used across multiple websites, they become even weaker.Manuel Blum, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who won the Turing Award in 1995, has been working on what he calls "human computable" passwords that are not only relatively secure but also don't require us to memorize a different one for each site. Instead, we learn ahead of time an algorithm and a personal, private key, and we use them with the website's name to create and re-create our own unique passwords on the fly for any website at any time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why the world’s top computing experts are worrying about your data

It would be difficult to come up with a better illustration of the profound effect data can have on people's lives than the Ashley Madison hack, which has not only sparked numerous lawsuits but also been associated with several suicides.On Tuesday, many of the world's experts in computer science and mathematics spent an afternoon at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany trying to figure out how the widespread collection of data about consumers can be prevented from causing more harm in the future.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Big data's biggest challenges "In the U.S., there are now states where jail sentencing guidelines are being set by data," said Jeremy Gillula, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Data has a huge impact on people's lives, and that's only going to increase."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Vint Cerf: ‘Sometimes I’m terrified’ by the IoT

Vint Cerf is known as a "father of the Internet," and like any good parent, he worries about his offspring -- most recently, the IoT."Sometimes I'm terrified by it," he said in a news briefing Monday at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany. "It's a combination of appliances and software, and I'm always nervous about software -- software has bugs."The Internet of Things will offer the ability to manage many of the appliances we depend on, acknowledged Cerf, who won the Turing Award in 2004. With its ability to continuously monitor such devices, it also promises new insight into our use of resources, he said.INSIDER: 5 ways to prepare for Internet of Things security threats Devices such as Google's Nest thermostat, for instance, can "help me decide how well or poorly I've chosen my lifestyle to minimize cost and my use of resources -- it can be an important tool," he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Vint Cerf: ‘Sometimes I’m terrified’ by the IoT

Vint Cerf is known as a "father of the Internet," and like any good parent, he worries about his offspring -- most recently, the IoT. "Sometimes I'm terrified by it," he said in a news briefing Monday at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany. "It's a combination of appliances and software, and I'm always nervous about software -- software has bugs." The Internet of Things will offer the ability to manage many of the appliances we depend on, acknowledged Cerf, who won the Turing Award in 2004. With its ability to continuously monitor such devices, it also promises new insight into our use of resources, he said. Devices such as Google's Nest thermostat, for instance, can "help me decide how well or poorly I've chosen my lifestyle to minimize cost and my use of resources -- it can be an important tool," he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IRS: Tax breach much worse than originally thought

The cyberattack on U.S. taxpayer data reported by the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year now appears to be much worse than originally thought, the agency announced Monday, with as many as 300,000 citizens now believed to be potential victims.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 6 simple tricks for protecting your passwords Whereas in May the IRS reported that sensitive information of about roughly 100,000 taxpayers had been stolen by thieves through its "Get Transcript" online application, its latest estimates more than double that number. It's now believed that the thieves potentially gained access to more than 300,000 taxpayer accounts after attempting to breach more than 600,000.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Use SAP’s mobile platform? Patch now to avoid these ‘high risk’ vulnerabilities

Three high risk vulnerabilities in SAP Mobile could give attackers access to encrypted information stored in mobile devices, security firm Onapsis reported Wednesday.All three vulnerabilities were recently fixed by SAP, but systems are only safe if the patches are applied.“SAP runs so many of the world’s largest enterprises that any vulnerability must be taken very seriously,” said Nicholas Taylor, CEO of Netlogx, another security provider.One of the flaws enables keystream recovery and could allow an attacker with access to a vulnerable device to decrypt credentials and other sensitive information stored within, Onapsis said. The attacker could then potentially connect to other business systems to access additional data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dropbox adds U2F support for better security

Two-factor authentication is often held up as a best practice for security in the online world, but Dropbox on Wednesday announced a new feature that’s designed to make it even tougher.Whereas two-step verification most commonly involves the user’s phone for the second authentication method, Dropbox’s new U2F support adds a new means of authenticating the user via Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) security keys instead.What that means is that users can now use a USB key as an additional means to prove who they are.“This is a very good advancement and adds extra security over mobile notifications for two-factor authentication,” said Rich Mogull, CEO with Securosis.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Infor seeks to strengthen cloud footing with $675M GT Nexus buy

Infor made a $675 million bid to bolster its cloud and supply-chain management capabilities Tuesday with the announcement that it will acquire global order-management platform provider GT Nexus.The deal, said to be the second largest in Infor’s history, is expected to close within 45 days.Because GT Nexus is a fully cloud-based supply-chain platform, it will help Infor to accelerate its shift from on-premises software to true multitenant cloud, said Paul Hamerman, a Forrester Research analyst. “It also aligns well with Infor’s focus on manufacturing industries.”GT Nexus’ global trade and logistics software is designed to let companies in industries like retail, fashion and manufacturing to collaborate with global suppliers and optimize shipments to customers, distribution centers and retailers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s restructuring will let new ventures shine

Google may be best known for its ubiquitous search engine, but it has long been associated with seemingly whimsical ventures into areas as diverse as self-driving cars, drones and human aging. On Monday, it took a step toward making those “side” ventures more legitimate—and more transparent.Thus Alphabet was born, catapulting Google’s top executives into new roles with new titles. Cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are now president and CEO of the Alphabet holding company, respectively, while Sundar Pichai, formerly a vice president in charge of Android, Chrome and Google apps, will become Google’s CEO.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s restructuring will let new ventures shine

Attack on Sabre reportedly conducted by Anthem, OPA hackers

Travel industry software maker Sabre is the latest company said to have been hit by the same hackers who recently attacked U.S. health insurer Anthem and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), while American Airlines has been investigating its own systems for evidence of a similar breach.Texas-based Sabre, whose technology processes reservations for hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotel properties, on Friday confirmed that its systems were compromised.“We recently learned of a cybersecurity incident, and we are conducting an investigation into it now,” Sabre said. “At this time, we are not aware that this incident has compromised sensitive protected information, such as credit card data or personally identifiable information, but our investigation is ongoing.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft, Salesforce.com join $5.3 billion Informatica buyout

Data-integration giant Informatica has made itself a private company in a $5.3 billion deal that includes investments from Microsoft and Salesforce.com.The deal, said to be the biggest leveraged buyout this year, means Informatica’s stock ceased trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday. In exchange, Informatica stockholders are getting $48.75 per share in cash.It’s part of a trend in which companies have been taking themselves private to make themselves more competitive. Dell, Tibco Software, Riverbed and Compuware have all made similar moves.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s new $1B acquisition will help Watson ‘see’

IBM plans to buy Merge Healthcare in a $1 billion deal that promises to bring new image-focused capabilities to its Watson Health platform.Under the terms of the acquisition, which was announced Thursday and is expected to close later this year, Merge shareholders will receive $7.13 per share in cash. The deal is IBM’s third and largest major health-related acquisition since it launched its Watson Health unit in April.Merge’s technology provides medical image handling and processing and is currently used at more than 7,500 U.S. health care sites. IBM plans to use its Watson Health Cloud to analyze and cross-reference Merge’s medical images against lab results, electronic health records, genomic tests, clinical studies and other health-related data sources amounting to 315 billion data points and 90 million unique records.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM launches new services to help enterprises embrace Macs

IBM's year-long partnership with Apple took a new turn on Wednesday with the PC giant's announcement of new cloud services designed to help large companies incorporate Macs into their IT infrastructures.With the new offering, which is part of IBM's MobileFirst services portfolio, clients can order Macs and have them delivered directly to their employees without the need for any additional setup, imaging or configuration. Employees can then quickly and securely gain network access, connect to email and download business applications, IBM said.The services can also accommodate employees' own, personal Macs in corporate "bring-your-own-device" settings. They are delivered via the cloud as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product but are also available on-premises in clients' data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM launches new services to help enterprises embrace Macs

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