On Wednesday night into the early morning hours of Thursday Microsoft reported that its Azure cloud customers had difficulty provisioning storage resources, including in its Eastern US region.The service disruption had a domino effect that impacted many other services too, including its cloud-based SQL database platform. The issue was first reported at 21:50 UTC and was resolved by about 6:00 on Thursday.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What the AWS outage can teach us about WAN deployments +“Due to a incident in East US affecting Storage, customers and service dependent on Storage may have experienced difficulties provisioning new resources or accessing their existing resources in the region,” Microsoft reported on its Azure health status page. Other services impacted include: Azure Media Services, Application Insights, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Data Factory, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Cache, Azure Search, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Hubs, Azure SQL Database, API Management and Azure Stream Analytics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s a bad week for all things network security as Cisco spewed out 20 Security Advisories and Alerts – two critical and three high-impact – that customers should be aware of and implement patches where they can.Cisco, like other big enterprise vendors, regularly issues security warnings but 20 in one day is an unusual amount for the networking giant. Others like Microsoft and Oracle issue tons of security bulletins monthly mostly without much fanfare – for example Microsoft for March, released 18 security bulletins split into nine critical and nine important security updates.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Since we’ve just had a Raspberry Pi anniversary, you might think that it’s excessive to trumpet another Pi-related holiday just one week later, but, well, Tuesday was Pi Day, this is the internet, and I’m afraid that’s just the way these things go.OK, so Pi Day isn’t, strictly speaking, a Raspberry Pi thing – around these parts, it’s more of a pie-in-the-face thing – but that didn’t stop the Raspberry Pi community from getting in on the act. The estimable Alex Bate over at the official Raspberry Pi Foundation blog put together a graphic to make sure everyone understands certain key points of terminology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The outage that hit Amazon Web Services' Simple Storage Service earlier this month might have been unusual in its impact, but not in its cause—a configuration error. Service providers suffer outages for all sorts of reasons. Backhoes take out local access loops. Seismic events and fishing trawlers cut underwater cables. And, yes, humans make mistakes.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day
About three years ago, I was called in by a customer to help address a problem in their MPLS network. At the time, I ran MPLS Experts, a predecessor of SD-WAN Experts, and had developed a reputation for knowing a thing or two about global MPLS/VPLS services. The customer was noticing packets with unknown IPs on its carrier-managed private network. After we reviewed the logs, the cause became apparent: One of the carrier techs had misconfigured the VRF/VFI identifiers, accidentally connecting a different customer to their private network. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apparently, big bucks can be made selling stolen printer ink cartridges online.A dozen suspects are accused of pulling in more than US$12 million by selling the stolen cartridges and retail electronics on Amazon and eBay, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Wednesday.Sixty-four-year-old Richard Rimbaugh allegedly led the operation for more than 20 years by recruiting people to steal the goods from retail stores across 28 states.Rimbaugh and his "theft crews" allegedly went out each week to steal new merchandise, which also included computer software, Schneiderman said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has pledged his agency will respond more quickly to new technology proposals, a move that might influence the direction of 5G development around the world.Pai was appointed by President Donald Trump in January. In his first major policy address on Wednesday, Pai directed Federal Communications Commission staff to follow a little-known section of U.S. communications law that says the agency should decide within a year whether a new technology or service is in the public interest."Going forward, if a petition or application is filed with the FCC proposing a new technology or service, we'll supply an answer within a year," Pai said in his speech at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As AMD reveals its Ryzen 5 prices and release date, the company marks an important transition: After launching its eagerly awaited Ryzen 7 chip for high-end PCs, AMD hopes to parlay that goodwill into mainstream success.AMD said it will ship its Ryzen 5 desktop processors on April 11, the same day it will begin accepting its first orders for the chip. All of the four new Ryzen 5 chips will be priced at less than $250, the same price range that Intel currently offers for its own Core i5 chips at. However, the number of cores and threads that the Ryzen 5 offers pushes into Intel’s Core i7 territory, potentially offering much more value for the price.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you choose a productivity platform like Microsoft’s Office 365 or Google’s G Suite, the main focus is on the platform’s functionality: Does it do the job you need?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
It’s legendary: A CIO promotes his best developer into a management role, losing an excellent programmer and gaining a bad manager.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
10 offbeat trackers and wacky wearables Image by CIOAre you feeling worn out by wearables? Can’t stand the thought of strapping yet another heart-rate-sensing, step-counting, sleep-tracking watch around your wrist? I feel your pain. As someone who frequently reviews activity trackers, I don’t often see bold new features in mainstream devices. But if you look closely at small startups around the globe, you’ll start to notice some cool, slightly crazy, definitely out-there devices that go far beyond counting steps. Some of the claims these device developers make will likely make your eyes roll. Nonetheless, here are 10 wacky wearables and oddball devices that may also pique your curiosity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you're a company entrenched in an arms race for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, you could do worse than tapping into a pool of thousands of data scientists to augment your digital products and services.That's the pole position Google holds after acquiring crowdsourcing platform Kaggle last week for an undisclosed sum. Some 600,000 professional data crunchers use Kaggle to build prediction models for such heady challenges as cancer detection and heart disease diagnoses. And experts say Kaggle could help Google facilitate broader adoption of AI technologies."Data science and machine learning is now global and this is a validation of the idea that Google recognizes that most of the smartest people in the world work for somebody else," Neil Jacobstein, who chairs the artificial intelligence and robotics track at Singularity University, told CIO.com. "This is potentially a very positive move, I think, that could make everybody more competitive."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For the ambitious IT professional, there are a number of ways to take advantage of today’s hot job market. You could patiently climb the ladder at your organization or jump to an attractive opportunity at another company … or you can go into business for yourself as a consultant.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
One of the main reasons to buy insurance is to prevent the cost of an accident or other disaster from breaking the bank. But what if simply buying insurance threatens to break the bank?That scenario is starting to worry some organizations, for several reasons.First is the simple but powerful market force of supply and demand. More and more organizations, spooked by regular stories of catastrophic breaches – such as the compromise of more than 1.5 billion Yahoo! accounts, which took down its acquisition value by a reported $350 million – are seeking insurance. And when demand rises, the price tends to do so as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last month, reports came out that Apple accidentally installed a fake firmware patch on internal development servers. That's a lesson to all companies to be careful about where they get their patches.What may have happened is that an Apple employee installed a patch shared by the hardware vendor's employee, instead of using the official release of the patch, said Chris Nietzold, senior platform engineer at security appliance manufacturer MBX Systems."They procured the firmware from an unofficial source and didn't follow the official release schedule," he said.The firmware included a potential security vulnerability and Apple reportedly ended its relationship with the supplier, Super Micro Computer, as a result.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pwnie Express is adding a tool that ranks the risks its security service finds on customer networks and makes it easier to remediate them.The new feature of the company’s Pulse service assesses potential vulnerabilities that its sensors detect in customers’ networks and issues a grade in each of four categories. This Device Risk Scorecard points out problems, prioritizes them by urgency and tells how to fix them.The scorecard looks at wireless infrastructure configuration, client connection behaviors, network host configuration, and shadow IT and rogue devices and computes a grade for each. Customers can drill down to find what discoveries account for low scores and follow the remediation suggestions to fix the problems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a rare move, the U.S. has indicted two Russian government agents for their suspected involvement in a massive Yahoo data breach. But what now?
Security experts say Wednesday’s indictment might amount to nothing more than naming and shaming Russia. That’s because no one expects the Kremlin to play along with the U.S. indictment.
“I can’t imagine the Russian government is going to hand over the two FSB officers,” said Jeremiah Grossman, chief of security strategy at SentinelOne.
"Even in the most successful investigations, state hackers are still immune from prosecution or retaliation," said Kenneth Geers, a research scientist at security firm Comodo.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One mistaken click. That's all it took for hackers aligned with the Russian state security service to gain access to Yahoo's network and potentially the email messages and private information of as many as 500 million people.The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating the intrusion for two years, but it was only in late 2016 that the full scale of the hack became apparent. On Wednesday, the FBI indicted four people for the attack, two of whom are Russian spies.Here's how the FBI says they did it:The hack began with a spear-phishing email sent in early 2014 to a Yahoo company employee. It's unclear how many employees were targeted and how many emails were sent, but it only takes one person to click on a link, and it happened.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One mistaken click. That's all it took for hackers aligned with the Russian state security service to gain access to Yahoo's network and potentially the email messages and private information of as many as 500 million people.The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating the intrusion for two years, but it was only in late 2016 that the full scale of the hack became apparent. On Wednesday, the FBI indicted four people for the attack, two of whom are Russian spies.Here's how the FBI says they did it:The hack began with a spear-phishing email sent in early 2014 to a Yahoo company employee. It's unclear how many employees were targeted and how many emails were sent, but it only takes one person to click on a link, and it happened.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When the CBRS Alliance introduced itself early last year as an outfit bent on promoting LTE services across shared spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band, five out of the six founding members’ names — Google, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ruckus — were familiar to those in general network technology circles. But the other member, Federated Wireless, might have drawn some blank stares from those not in the thick of the emerging Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) market.Interestingly enough, though, it was Federated that drew up the charter for this alliance of companies promoting CBRS in light of new FCC rules opening up 150 MHz of spectrum for new commercial use. What’s more, Federated Wireless CEO Iyad Tarazi, previously a VP with Sprint and Nextel, had also co-chaired the Wireless Innovation Forum, which the FCC is working with to establish standards for the CBRS band to ensure that devices used in the newly opened 3.5 GHz shared spectrum play nicely together. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We're about six months away from Apple unveiling the iPhone 8 and the excitement has only continued to mount with each passing month. Of course, the big rumor surrounding Apple's next-gen iPhone is that it will feature an edge to edge display. In turn, it's widely believed that Apple has figured out a way to embed the Touch ID sensor into the display itself, though as we'll get into later, the iPhone 8 release date may not actually happen until November.That said, the main reason why everyone is so excited about the iPhone 8 is because Apple hasn't updated the current iPhone form factor since 2014's iPhone 6. Consequently, many current iPhone owners can't wait to get their hands on the first new iPhone design in nearly three years. While the ultimate design remains to be seen, that hasn't stopped some enterprising designers from churning out absolutely stunning iPhone 8 concepts that we can only hope will be similar to the real thing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here