Think housing your servers in a data center rather than squeezing them under your desk is a bulletproof solution?Well, they might be safer in a data center, but believe it or not, some of the same pitfalls that can create trouble in the office can affect those secure data centers too. Namely UPS failure, human error, and cybercrime.'Unplanned'
UPS system failure is still the principal cause of "unplanned data center outages," according to a new report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers have combined transistors and photonics in a fabricated chip for the first time. The photonics act as inputs and outputs (I/O) and let the microprocessor talk to other chips. That light-based technology could be faster and more bandwidth-friendly than wires.The new chip is revolutionary because the photonics I/O have been made into part of the chip for the first time in a manufacturing scenario, scientists from the University of California Berkeley and the University of Colorado wrote in a letter published in Nature.Photonics is the technology behind the detection of photons, or particles of light. It's the principal building block for fiber-optic transmission of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers have combined transistors and photonics in a fabricated chip for the first time. The photonics act as inputs and outputs (I/O) and let the microprocessor talk to other chips. That light-based technology could be faster and more bandwidth-friendly than wires.The new chip is revolutionary because the photonics I/O have been made into part of the chip for the first time in a manufacturing scenario, scientists from the University of California Berkeley and the University of Colorado wrote in a letter published in Nature.Photonics is the technology behind the detection of photons, or particles of light. It's the principal building block for fiber-optic transmission of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Attacks on major state universities will continue in 2016, according to a non-profit cybersecurity readiness organization that specializes in the public sector.
And the problem is exacerbated because some state or small governments don’t have ‘mature’ cybersecurity plans in place, so they can’t mitigate it.
The vulnerability has been tagged by a cybersecurity readiness organization The Center for Internet Security (CIS). The prediction was quoted in Fedscoop, a government-oriented IT website.Intellectual property
“The universities are home to an awful lot of valuable intellectual property, so a lot of the major research universities are prime targets for attackers,” said Thomas Duffy, chair of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) that's operated by CIS. He was quoted by Fedscoop, writing about threats for states and localities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Attacks on major state universities will continue in 2016, according to a non-profit cybersecurity readiness organization that specializes in the public sector.
And the problem is exacerbated because some state or small governments don’t have ‘mature’ cybersecurity plans in place, so they can’t mitigate it.
The vulnerability has been tagged by a cybersecurity readiness organization The Center for Internet Security (CIS). The prediction was quoted in Fedscoop, a government-oriented IT website.Intellectual property
“The universities are home to an awful lot of valuable intellectual property, so a lot of the major research universities are prime targets for attackers,” said Thomas Duffy, chair of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) that's operated by CIS. He was quoted by Fedscoop, writing about threats for states and localities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A majority of PCs in the workplace were struck by “at least one attempted malware infection” last year, cybersecurity company Kaspersky said in an overview of corporate threats observed throughout 2015 released last month.Well over half, or 58%, of PCs were infected. That’s a gain of 3% over 2014.Meanwhile, CryptoLocker attacks doubled, Kaspersky says in its press release about the report.CryptoLocker attacks are when a trojan-infected PC user receives a ransom demand to decrypt files, stop a denial of service attack, or other onerous result if the ransom isn’t paid.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The vast majority of tested Android apps share users' personal information like email addresses with third parties "behind-the-scenes," a report has uncovered. Many apps aren't required by the OS to notify users of the data being shared, the study finds.
Out of 110 tested Android and iOS apps, 93% of the Android apps connected surreptitiously to a strange domain called safemovedm.com, for example.
It's probably part of a background process, surmises the authors of a report published at the end of October on Harvard's open forum Journal of Technology Science (JOTS) website.The pillaging
The study found that 73% of Android apps shared Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and that "47% of iOS apps shared geo-coordinates and other location data with third parties."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Unintentional interference from radios and space can cause problems for the GPS system, as can intentional jamming and spoofing of signals. But communications companies aren't prepared to protect the GPS system from these threats, according to a 2012 Homeland Security report that was recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, as reported by EE Publishing.The communications sector is "vulnerable to potential long-term GPS disruptions" of a few days or more "that could cause sector-wide service degradations," the report says.Jamming
That Global Positioning Systems are vulnerable to interference and disruptions isn't news. However, the apparent lack of preparedness in civilian systems noted by DHS should be an eye-opener.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Unintentional interference from radios and space can cause problems for the GPS system, as can intentional jamming and spoofing of signals. But communications companies aren't prepared to protect the GPS system from these threats, according to a 2012 Homeland Security report that was recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, as reported by EE Publishing.The communications sector is "vulnerable to potential long-term GPS disruptions" of a few days or more "that could cause sector-wide service degradations," the report says.Jamming
That Global Positioning Systems are vulnerable to interference and disruptions isn't news. However, the apparent lack of preparedness in civilian systems noted by DHS should be an eye-opener.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Flickering lights, tripping breakers, and discolored outlets are among the ways one can guess that wiring is overloaded. Add visual access, and you can tell if the sheathing may appear discolored.But some of us who've been around electricity for a while have also developed an acute sense of smell for wiring trouble. There's a distinctive acrid odor that can be caused by melting components on a PCB, the plastic around a part, or the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) covering on the wire emitting vapor.That odor on its own, even without visible smoke, is a heads-up to troubleshoot the wiring.Nasal range?
There are, however, flaws in the sniffing method of overloading detection. What happens if the overloading occurs in an overhead crawl space, for example? Or at a remote, non-staffed installation?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Flickering lights, tripping breakers, and discolored outlets are among the ways one can guess that wiring is overloaded. Add visual access, and you can tell if the sheathing may appear discolored.But some of us who've been around electricity for a while have also developed an acute sense of smell for wiring trouble. There's a distinctive acrid odor that can be caused by melting components on a PCB, the plastic around a part, or the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) covering on the wire emitting vapor.That odor on its own, even without visible smoke, is a heads-up to troubleshoot the wiring.Nasal range?
There are, however, flaws in the sniffing method of overloading detection. What happens if the overloading occurs in an overhead crawl space, for example? Or at a remote, non-staffed installation?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fact that circuits are not designed to flex hinders product design, causes maintenance issues in the field, and is slowing the move towards bendable, rollable gadgets.However, some scientists think they've got a solution. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin say they've invented a healing gel that doesn't need an application of light or heat to fix a broken connection.Until now, you'd need "external stimuli" to mend cracks or breaks in circuits, Guihua Yu, the UT Assistant Professor who developed the gel, said in an article at UT News.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fact that circuits are not designed to flex hinders product design, causes maintenance issues in the field, and is slowing the move towards bendable, rollable gadgets.However, some scientists think they've got a solution. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin say they've invented a healing gel that doesn't need an application of light or heat to fix a broken connection.Until now, you'd need "external stimuli" to mend cracks or breaks in circuits, Guihua Yu, the UT Assistant Professor who developed the gel, said in an article at UT News.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lawyers advise enterprises to establish preemptive legal protection before suffering a cyberattack. While one might expect lawyers to say that, there are some reasons to take this advice.Namely, a federal district court in Minnesota found in October that "certain documents created during Target's internal investigation of its 2013 payment card breach were protected by the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine," according to the Cybersecurity Law Report.Investigation
The court told Target that it didn't have to produce certain documents that the plaintiffs wanted to see. The reason: they were part of the investigation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Processing power may be more important than horsepower in future cars, consultant firm KPMG said in a recent report on the rapidly changing auto industry.KPMG's report on automotive innovation, released last week, says that many "aggressive players are now entering the connectivity space."That list includes "not only makers of chips, pipes, receivers, and software, but also data aggregators and content providers."Changing landscape
Two big ones are Apple and Google. Their investment capacity and economies of scale are significantly larger than the incumbent automakers, KPMG thinks. That means auto-makers risk being trampled.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Light-based data communications, or Li-Fi, which uses LEDs to create networked communications, can be integrated into a solar panel to create a self-powered Li-Fi receiver.The solar panel receives light from the LED to create power, and also receives light from the network to act as the broadband receiver, thereby powering itself, the technology's inventor says.Solar cells
The currently prototyped solution allows "a solar cell to be tightly integrated into communication nodes, to then receive relatively high bandwidth data while also providing electrical power for the nodes' operation," the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Research and Innovation subsidiary says on its website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are partnering with Big Data marketers and are actively selling, or at least getting ready to sell, data that connects consumer demographics with locations, according to an article in Advertising Age.The data lists phone subscriber location along with websites visited on mobile browsers, neighborhoods where subscribers go, and so on.Telco data-as-service
This kind of telco data-as-service (TDaaS) business is currently worth $24 billion a year and will be a $79 billion business by 2020, according to 451 Research, whose numbers are quoted in the Ad Age article.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lithium-oxygen batteries will be 10 times as energy-dense as the lithium-ion technology we're using today. It will be significantly lighter than anything we've seen to date.Why the obsession with weight reduction in batteries?Weight is an issue in vehicle battery chemistry because the heavier a vehicle is, the more power you need to propel it. Which means you need more batteries. That results in more weight, and it becomes an ever-decreasing circle.Diminishing returns
As things stand now, you can't just keep adding more powerful batteries, because they add weight and size, and actually result in that diminishing return.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With a recent New York Times article expressing concern from military officials that some undersea internet-carrying cables are susceptible to submarine-attack by Russians, a few questions come to mind:Should we be worried? Just how much data do these cables carry? And where are they anyway?Mariners
"Not many people realize that undersea cables transport nearly 100% of transoceanic data traffic," writes Nicole Starosielski in The Conversation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the problems with traditional magnetic storage has always been that, because it's written with magnetic fields, it can be wiped by those fields too.That makes for a pretty unstable medium—though convenient and more efficient than many.Magnetic storage is used in ID and credit cards too, but the environments that the cards encounter are brutal on the media.So is space travel, and indeed the residential living rooms with magnet-containing home theatre speakers, for example. Remember the mysteriously deteriorating cassette tape?Yet magnetic media has its favorable qualities—it's more secure than Radio Frequency (RF) chips, for example.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Nelson