For Jim Fowler, CIO of General Electric, there’s a simple reason he is marching the company toward the cloud: “I’m not going to sell another aircraft engine because I run a global compute factory very well; I’m not going to sell another locomotive because I figured out how to engineer the user experience really well for my developers; I’m not going to sell an oil and gas pump because I’ve figured out how to do self-service,” he said at last year's Amazon Web Service’s re:Invent conference. “That’s AWS’s differentiator. That's what they do well.”
GE, the 123-year-old staple of the global industrial sector, is going all in on the cloud. The company plans to migrate 9,000 applications to public IaaS over the next three years. It is reducing its data centers from more than 30 to the single digits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While some organizations continue to make use of WAN services such as Frame Relay and ATM, the use of those services is quickly diminishing. As a result, we are rapidly approaching a time when IT organizations will have only two WAN services to choose from: MPLS and the Internet. Given that trend, a key question facing network organizations is how to best design a branch office WAN using just those two services.Location of functionality
Abogado states that security in the branch will evolve from a model that relies on the perimeter approach to a multi-layered model that requires embedding security into all branch technologies. The philosophy behind this change is that administrators will have to make the “trust" zone an “untrust” zone, since attacks can come from any vector, including inside the branch. He believes that a single layer of encryption is probably insufficient, and that IT organizations should consider encryption at both the application and network layers. Increased branch deployment of network and data segmentation are also key technologies that will support the multi-layer security model.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Altify MaxKey features: Altify Max is the first "augmented intelligence" platform that combines human and machine intelligence. Altify Max includes more than 30 years of sales knowledge built-in and combines the deep muscle memory of a million sales engagements, knowledge of the world’s best sales methodologies and insights from each individual business to create instant, real-time recommendations about how to progress each opportunity. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The last episode of Silicon Valley’s previous season began with the protagonist giving an uplifting talk about why the gang got into this mess in the first place – “to build cool s**t” – as an injured man endured a 127-hours-esque ordeal on a live video stream using software that they had designed.“The quality is great!” enthuses one.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Catastrophic cyber attack on U.S. grid possible, but not likely + Secretive Intel quietly woos makers in ChinaTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A while ago in another post I asked Is it time to give up on WordPress sites? and I got some interesting comments; here’s two that nail the issue and the growing sentiment:
Marco Naseef: “extremely modular = extremely vulnerable”David Franks: “… I run a hundred or so Wordpress sites and I'm on the verge of throwing in the towel. / All the big hosts like Bluehost and Hostgator have their shared host platforms controlled by hackers and riddled with malware like dark leach. It's very dispiriting. / I think the days of Wordpress are numbered”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The CEOs of Oracle and Google met for six hours on Friday but failed to reach a deal to end their massive copyright lawsuit over Google's use of Java in Android."After an earlier run at settling this case failed, the court observed that some cases just need to be tried. This case apparently needs to be tried twice," Magistrate Judge Paul Singh Grewal, who mediated the talks, noted on the court's docket.Oracle accuses Google of illegally copying a key part of the Java platform into its Android operating system, making billions in profit for Google and, according to Oracle, crushing Java’s chance of success in smartphones, tablets and other products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is about to make it harder for Chrome extensions to collect your browsing data without letting you know about it, according to a new policy announced Friday.Starting in mid-July, developers releasing Chrome extensions will have to comply with a new User Data Policy that governs how they collect, transmit and store private information. Extensions will have to encrypt personal and sensitive information, and developers will have to disclose their privacy policies to users.Developers will also have to post a "prominent disclosure" when collecting sensitive data that isn't related to a prominent feature. That's important, because extensions have tremendous power to track users' browsing habits and then use that for nefarious purposes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than 2,000 machines at schools and other organizations have been infected with a backdoor in unpatched versions of JBoss that could be used at any moment to install ransomware such as Samsam.
That's according to Cisco's Talos threat-intelligence organization, which on Friday announced that roughly 3.2 million machines worldwide are at risk.
Many of those already infected run Follett's Destiny library-management software, which is used by K-12 schools worldwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The owner of a Web hosting company who claimed to have erased his entire business from the Internet with a single script command appears to have made the whole thing up.Marco Marsala of Italy posted a cry for help on the popular Server Fault forum earlier this week, claiming he’d accidentally erased all the data on his servers including backups.“I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1,535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers,” Marsala wrote. “Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s fitting that President Obama launched a new initiative to open up TV set-top boxes to competition 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 because consumers are in for as radical a makeover of television today as they experienced with the transformation of telephone communications back then. This isn’t Kansas anymore!In the next few years, consumers’ expectations for TV will be radically different, and in a decade, today’s TV will look as antiquated as cordless phones and answering machines look today.Opening up the set-top box means much more than market competition to lower the price and break the stranglehold that cable companies have over equipment leases that tie consumers to their TV. It means set-top boxes can include other features, such as Google Cast (renamed from Chromecast) AppleTV, Amazon Prime or Roku.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A group of cybercriminals have combined two powerful malware programs to create a new online banking Trojan that has already stolen millions of dollars from customers of 24 U.S. and Canadian banks.The new threat has been dubbed GozNym by researchers from IBM X-Force because it combines the stealthy Nymaim malware and the Gozi banking Trojan.The new computer Trojan targets 22 websites that belong to banks, credit unions and e-commerce platforms based in the U.S., and two that belong to financial institutions from Canada. Business banking services appear to be a top target for GozNym's creators, according to the IBM researchers.Nymaim is what researchers call a dropper. Its purpose is to download and run other malware programs on infected computers. It is usually distributed through Web-based exploits launched from compromised websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Department of Homeland Security is publicizing eight new cyber security technologies developed under federal grants that are looking for private businesses to turn them into commercial products.In its fourth “Cyber Security Division Transition to Practice Technology Guide”, DHS outlines the eight technologies that range from malware analysis tools to behavior analysis platforms to randomization software that protects Windows applications.+More on Network World: IRS: Tax deadline looms, scammers get more frantic+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security has, and continues to be, an impediment to container adoption. Whether containers are less or more secure than their virtual machine counterparts is a topic of continued debate.Like any debate, there are merits to arguments on both sides with a bit of FUD interlaced. Many efforts have been undertaken within the container ecosystem to educate adopters and improve their comprehension of available tooling and security postures within platforms and offerings—be that in the form of static analysis (image scanning), runtime vulnerability detection, provenance (image signing), fine-grained authorization, cryptographic verification, etc.The breadth of need for improved security capabilities has provided an opportunity for emerging start-ups to focus specifically on the container security space and others to dedicate their company's mission to securing the Internet. Having spent time with most of the vendors in this space, I'll say that as you might expect, it's a quickly changing landscape. One thing is evident: open source communities and vendors at every layer—from hardware through operating system, container runtime, container image, host-to-cluster orchestrator, PaaS to CaaS—have significantly marshalled forward security-centered improvements in the past year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After a year-long investigation, the European Commission appears ready to accuse Google of abusing its dominant position in the smartphone OS market.It could announce formal antitrust charges as early as next Wednesday, the Financial Times reported Friday.The Commission began its Android investigation on April 15, 2015, the same day that it announced formal antitrust charges against Google in another investigation, accusing the company of favoring its own comparison shopping service over that of rivals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
5G wireless is coming, but it has a lot of challenges to overcome, and we’re not going to be enjoying its blazing speeds until 2020 at least. But, at cable industry group CableLabs’ InformED Wireless event on Wednesday in New York, several experts helped provide new hints about the shape of the technology to come.One of the biggest hurdles, it seems, is physics – 5G is going to be a millimeter-wave technology, operating at a much higher frequency than existing Wi-Fi. That’s great if the goal is to move a lot of information quickly – 5G speeds could top 6Gbps in the field – but it raises the issue of range.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft and the Samba project fixed a vulnerability in their implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol after the flaw was initially announced three weeks ago under the name Badlock.The vulnerability, covered by Microsoft in its MS16-047 security bulletin published Tuesday, was also fixed in Samba 4.4.2, 4.3.8 and 4.2.11. It could allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to impersonate an authenticated user and execute arbitrary network calls to the server, possibly with administrative privileges.Badlock's existence was announced on March 22 by a company called SerNet, which offers Samba consulting, support and development services. It employs the person who found the flaw: a Samba development team member named Stefan Metzmacher.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There are some things you just don't need -- until the price plummets to $25 and then you can't grab your wallet fast enough. The Etekcity Lasergrip 630 Digital Infrared Thermometer Temperature Gun uses dual lasers to instantly measure the temperature of almost anything you can shoot it at. List price is $70, but with the current 63% off deal you can snag it for just $25.99. The gun gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 200 reviewers (read reviews). Check electrical components, oven & fridge temps, check for drafts, find a frozen pipe, see if your beer is cold enough (because you can, that's why) -- at $25 it might pay for itself in just a few hours of wandering around the house. The Lasergrip 630 has a measurable range of -58F to 1,076F (can display in celsius as well) and is powered by a 9-volt battery. If you've always wanted to check temps with lasers, see this heavily discounted item now at Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Privacy Shield trans-Atlantic data transfer arrangement is better than its predecessor, Safe Harbor, but still not good enough, European Union data protection authorities said Wednesday.They want the European Commission improve the deal it has negotiated with U.S. authorities to ensure that EU citizens' personal information receives privacy protection equivalent to that of EU law when it is exported to the U.S.The authorities have been examining Privacy Shield since it was unveiled in February, and announced the results of their study Wednesday.The deal is too complex, they say, as it is composed of a collection of legal instruments, letters and annexes rather than a single, easily understandable document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Windows 10 is an ultra-modern piece of software, an operating system written for the cloud generation, right? Well, not so fast. A new form of error reporting uses a mobile technology that’s been declared dead.Windows has never been particularly helpful in saying why your computer crashed. Even the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) in Windows 10 doesn’t tell you much. And the large sad face emoticon doesn’t exactly help, does it?It’s almost comical that they tell you the error code, like “KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR” or “HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED” and then tell you to look it up after you reboot. And good luck finding any useful information.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10
So, what is Microsoft’s solution? A QR code. Yes, a QR code, that dead technology from mobile phones. It was supposed to be a way to rapidly look up info on items in retail outlets or get info from other sources, but it never got any traction. For some time now, QR codes have long been considered dead in the water.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon and the city of Boston today announced a $300 million fiber optic cable replacement of copper cable throughout the city over the next six years.The project will increase Internet speeds and help Boston, which has 650,000 residents, expand broadband as part of its priority to ensure every resident has Internet access, Mayor Marty Walsh said in a statement on Tuesday. Business, schools, hospitals and libraries will also be connected.Smart city elements will be added as well, including a trial project to reduce traffic congestion along Massachusetts Avenue. The city and Verizon will partner to experiment with sensors and advanced traffic signal technology to increase safety, measure bike traffic and improve public transit vehicle flow.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here