The cloud has been the default setting in federal government IT for long enough now that most agencies have migrated over some basic operations like email, but that still leaves the hard work undone.After some quick wins -- moving relatively lightweight applications over to a cloud environment -- many federal CIOs are now trying to figure out what comes next. That requires a more challenging calculus and a nuanced evaluation of the agency's IT portfolio to determine what applications and systems really belong in the cloud."Agencies are struggling with that idea of how do they really in an affirmative sort of way adopt cloud technologies," Bill Zielinski, director of the Office of Strategic Programs at the General Services Administration, said during a recent panel discussion hosted by Federal News Radio. "It's one thing to find those kind of freestanding, low-hanging brand-new sorts of things to put in -- quote unquote -- the cloud, but when you really start talking about constituting your IT enterprise with a significant portion of it being cloud, they're struggling."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Measuring ROIImage by ThinkstockWith the advent of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), WLAN network access to customers and visitors and virtualized systems, the demand for IP addresses has exploded. Small companies might have to manage more than 1,000 IP addresses and it is not unusual for larger companies to have 10,000 or more spread across many locations. Setting up and protecting the network infrastructure is a major challenge and needs to be even more sophisticated and dynamic than ever before.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Storage vendors pitch new systems in innumerable ways. Whether they tout performance claims about IOPS and low latency, protection, reliability, and security features or sell on convenience, capacity, cost, or even brand reputation, there are many options vendors can offer an IT team looking to fix a problem.Although these various abilities have been around for many years, they have long been confined to a storage-centric ecosystem. With the advent of advanced data management software, it finally becomes possible to shift to a data-centric architecture that enables IT admins to automatically align data with storage that meets enterprises’ business objectives.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The new release of the OWASP Top 10 list is out for public comment from the Open Web Application Security Project, and while most of it remains the same there are a couple of new additions, focusing on protections for web applications and APIs.To make room for the new items, a couple of older ones were either removed or merged into new items.The fact that the list hasn't changed much since its first release in 2003 is both good and bad, said Jeff Williams, CTO and co-founder at Contrast Security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The BlackBerry KeyOne, an Android-based smartphone with a hardware keyboard, will be available in the U.S. and Canada from May 31, the phone's maker said Thursday.TCL Communications, the Chinese company that acquired rights to produce BlackBerry-brand handsets, originally had said the phone would go on sale in April, so the delay may disappoint potential users. This could be a bad time to test the patience of potential buyers, as Samsung and LG are both heavily promoting their new flagship handsets, the S8 and G6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s a great time to be in information technology.While that statement is true, not everyone clearly understands why (or perhaps has the fortitude to make it so). In the face of a massive movement to public cloud—by 2020, 92 percent of world’s workloads will be in cloud, with 68 percent in public and 32 percent in private—many in IT feel their value in the workplace eroding along with their identity.That feeling doesn’t need to be reality. Businesses are changing the way they operate and are transforming to leverage IT more strategically. IT has a real opportunity to lead this transformation, not let the transformation happen to them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's USAFacts project, an ambitious and sometimes overwhelming repository of data about local to state to federal U.S. government spending and outcomes that was launched on Tax Day, is surprisingly light on technology-related data.Not that Ballmer is obligated to spend his post-Microsoft life focused on technology —indeed, he's mainly been known for his purchase of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers in recent years — but given his background I expected that I might find more tech-related nuggets in this graphically-pleasing data trove that's been three years in the making. Interested in the possibilities for data journalism stories spun from USAFacts, I made an inquiry to the outfit's media relations contact and will update this post if I hear back from them with any clarification on possible additions of such techie numbers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tencent Holdings has opened a data center in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, with four more planned outside China as part of its bid to grow its cloud business outside the country.The proposed data centers in Frankfurt, Mumbai, Seoul and Moscow are targeted at Chinese companies looking to expand overseas and international companies expanding their businesses in China or other parts of the world, the Chinese internet giant said Tuesday. The centers are expected to go into operation this year.Rival Alibaba has also set up data centers outside China to expand its cloud business outside the country.The new investment aims to meet growing demand worldwide for the company's cloud services from online games and finance, video and other internet-related industries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Data analytics company Palantir will pay US$1.7 million in back pay and stock options to settle charges that it routinely discriminated against Asian job applicants. In addition, it must also hire eight people from among those it allegedly discriminated against.The charges go back to September last year, when the Department of Labor accused Palantir of rejecting Asian software engineers for jobs even though they were as qualified as white applicants. Palantir also maintained a discriminatory employee referral system, the Labor Dept. alleged.Tuesday's deal ends a threat to Palantir's government contracting business. Under federal law, companies that work for the government are obliged to ensure their hiring practices and policies are free of all forms of discrimination.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you're running a Windows Server 2003 machine, you have a problem. Your already-vulnerable computer is now at severe risk of being hacked.That's due to the internet release earlier this month of a batch of updates that paint a bulls-eye on computers running Windows Server 2003, according to security researchers.“I can teach my mom how to use some of these exploits,” said Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, a security provider. “They are not very complicated at all.”Experts are urging affected businesses to upgrade to the latest Windows OSes, which offer security patches that can address the threat.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM's Watson artificial intelligence technology has found plenty of white-collar work in places like hospitals and banks, but soon it will be off to get its hands dirty on the factory floor.Working with ABB, a maker of industrial plant, IBM has developed a new AI assistant to help factory workers spot manufacturing defects on the production line.Connected to an existing industrial monitoring system, ABB Ability, it will help manufacturers improve speed, yield, and uptime, according to ABB.The Cognitive Visual Inspection system, as IBM calls it, pipes images from a UHD (ultra-high-definition) camera to an instance of IBM's Watson software that has been trained to detect and classify production faults in real time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco this week took the wraps off three products aimed at increasing the speed of communications while controlling and analyzing the substantial data stream of the factory floor.The products build on Cisco’s Connected Factory portfolio which offers a variety of technologies from networking and security to analytics the company says will help customers quickly and more securely integrate industrial automation and control with business systems while improving industrial and manufacturing operational costs and efficiency.+More on Network World: Ethernet: Are there worlds left to conquer?+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Just when we thought we had a grasp on Apple's 2017 iPhone plans, a sketchy rumor has entered the fray and turned everything upside down. According to a recent report from Micgadget, Apple this year will release only two brand new iPhone models. Recall, most other rumors we've seen thus far pointed to Apple releasing three new iPhones this year: an iPhone 7s, an iPhone 7s Plus, and an edgeless iPhone 8 with an OLED display.Micgadget's alleged sources within Foxconn, however, seem to claim otherwise.
Some our friends from Foxconn confirmed that Foxconn received an order for two new models. It’s mean that Apple will [release] two, not three models.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Public IaaS cloud providers have been on a dizzying streak of announcing and opening new data centers to power their operations, and according to the CEO of Amazon Web Services Andy Jassy, that’s not expected to slow down any time soon.“We are not close to being done expanding geographically,” Jassy said at AWS’s San Francisco Summit last week. “I think virtually every tier one country will have an AWS region over time and I think many of the emergent countries will as well.”+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: A peek inside Amazon’s cloud, from global scale to custom hardware | Deep dive comparison of cloud storage options from Amazon, Microsoft and Google +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This deal on Amazon will net you 2 Dash Buttons for the price of 0, making this a no-brainer if you've been thinking about trying Dash out. Right now if you buy two Dash Buttons, Amazon will give you one of them for free, and then a $4.99 credit the first time you actually use it (list price on a Dash Button is $4.99). Amazon Dash is a simple Wi-Fi connected gadget that lets you order your favorite things with just the push of a button. Keep it by your washing machine, your pet food, or in the bathroom closet. When you notice you're running low, just press the button and Amazon ships it right out. Each button gets tied to a specific product from Amazon's library of over 300 brands, in categories such as (click each category to see samples) household supplies, beverage & grocery, health & personal care, beauty products, pets, kids & baby, and more. Access this deal on Amazon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the death of yet another open source/free software/Linux-based mobile platform, Ubuntu Touch, clearly it is time for us to sit down and have a frank discussion about what we in the free software world can reasonably accomplish in a mobile platform. One of the biggest issues—if not THE biggest issue—with Ubuntu Touch was that it simply had goals that were far too aggressive to reasonably achieve. It suffered from the all-too-common malady known in software development as feature creep. Ubuntu Touch was not simply a project to bring the existing Ubuntu system to mobile hardware and add functionality specific to that hardware (such as phone dialing, cell data, etc.). The project also contained: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The global cybersecurity skills shortage continues to be a critical issue. For example, ESG research found 45% of organizations report a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills today, more than any other area within IT.Want more? Here are a few tidbits from last year’s research project done in conjunction with the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA). In a survey of 437 cybersecurity professionals and ISSA members:
29% of cybersecurity professionals said the global cybersecurity skills shortage has had a significant impact on their organization. Another 40% said the global cybersecurity skills shortage has impacted their organization “somewhat.”
When asked to identify the impact of the cybersecurity skills shortage:
54% said it increased the cybersecurity staff’s workload
35% said their organization had to hire and train junior staff rather than hire people with the appropriate level of experience necessary
35% said the cybersecurity skills shortage has created a situation whereby the infosec team hasn’t had time to learn or use its security technologies to their full potential
While the cybersecurity skills shortage endures, the industry itself remains white hot. According to a recent Bloomberg business article, the cybersecurity industry is expected to grow about 7% a year through 2019 to Continue reading
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.Your help desk email and phones start lighting up. Your CIO is in your office looking stressed and staring at you. Quickly, you learn your company is the latest target of a ransomware attack.Logically, you shouldn’t be in this position. The latest detection software and data protection tactics are commonplace at your organization, intending to keep you out of this mess. Also, you have followed all best practices to ensure maximum data availability, so it’s likely your backups and disaster recovery sites were impacted as well. At this point, all that matters is that your data has been kidnapped, and you need to restore operations as soon as possible.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you're running out of ideas for Father's Day gifts, then consider this: The Grillbot. Grillbot is the first automated grill cleaning robot. Focus on your prep-work while it scrubs away in 10, 20 or 30-minute cleaning cycles. Grillbot has a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery, removable dishwasher-safe brushes, and works with virtually all grill types. Grillbot averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 145 people on Amazon, and its list price of $129.95 is reduced right now 42% to $75.28 in red (other colors are available and discounted as well) -- see the deal now on Amazon. If you need to dive a bit deeper before making the decision, read TechHive's review of the Grillbot here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Critics of the recently scrapped federal privacy regulation for internet service providers (ISPs) argued that the rules were overreaching, and that broadband providers should be held to the same privacy framework as application and content providers.The only catch is, they can't.Terrell McSweeny, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), laments that her agency lacks the same oversight authority over ISPs that it exerts in the general consumer internet space, where it has brought privacy cases against the likes of Google and Facebook.Then, when Congress moved last month to nullify a privacy rule for ISPs advanced by the FCC, it effectively stripped the market of federal oversight, McSweeny argued at a recent event on privacy policy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here