I’d like to think that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is taking my advice about how to improve his company’s Echo smart speaker and Alexa voice assistant—but he probably isn’t. More likely, the new Echo Show device the company announced yesterday is just another logical step in the evolution of voice recognition and smart assistants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft is doubling down on its cloud AI services for business customers with a fleet of new offerings aimed at helping companies deal with video and unique problems not solved by its off-the-shelf cognitive services.New services announced Wednesday include a new Video Indexer service that will provide customers with automated captioning, sentiment analysis, custom face recognition, object detection, optical character recognition and keyword extraction of videos they provide. The tool is built on existing Microsoft services, but gives customers an easier way to process large amounts of video for indexing and analysis rather than require manual work by humans.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco this week said it patched a critical vulnerability in its widely deployed IOS software that was disclosed in the WikiLeaks dump of CIA exploits earlier this year.Cisco had in March issued a “critical” security advisory for the IOS software that runs on some 300 models of its Catalyst switches and other networking equipment.+More on Network World: FBI/IC3: Vile $5B business e-mail scam continues to breed+Cisco this week wrote: “A vulnerability in the Cisco Cluster Management Protocol (CMP) processing code in Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a reload of an affected device or remotely execute code with elevated privileges.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Anyone who has been in the workforce for any significant length of time probably feels like their workload has grown tenfold, but they likely brush it off to getting old or maybe being burned out. The fact is, however, the extra workload is very real. This week, as part of its Knowledge17 event, ServiceNow released a study called “Today’s State of Work: At the Breaking Point” (pdf) that shows how bad the problem currently is. Before I get into the details of the survey, it’s important to understand the demographics. The report summarizes a survey of about 1,850 business leaders, including C-level executives, vice presidents, directors and managers in seven countries, to understand the workload of business leaders, the impact of automation and the opinions on the future of work. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As shocking as it is, President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey yesterday, despite the agency investigating possible collusion with Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.Trump’s letter to Comey stated: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.”Trump said new leadership was needed to restore “public trust and confidence” in the FBI.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today marks the start of this year’s Microsoft Build developers conference in Seattle, not far from Microsoft HQ. It seems like yesterday that the show was launched at the Anaheim Convention Center, which I attended for a briefing on Windows Server 2012, among other things. The show has grown tremendously and played a part in the launches of Windows 8 and 10, among many other products.So, news will roll out out throughout the day by people there to cover the show, but in advance of that, let’s take a look at what will likely be the big news in different categories, and what we hope to see. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In late March when I got an unsettling message on my Gmail account: "Warning: Google may have detected government-backed attackers trying to steal your password."Google sends them out when it detects a "government-backed attacker" has attempted to hack an account through phishing or malware.Last time I saw one, I added two-factor authentication to many of my accounts. This time it prompted me to ask: Can I do even better? Martyn Williams/IDGNS
A security warning message displayed by Google.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over 100,000 internet-connected cameras may be falling prey to a new IoT malware that’s spreading through recently disclosed vulnerabilities in the products. The malware, called Persirai, has been found infecting Chinese-made wireless cameras since last month, security firm Trend Micro said on Tuesday. The malware does so by exploiting flaws in the cameras that a security researcher reported back in March. The researcher, Pierre Kim, found that the vulnerabilities can allow an attacker to remotely execute code on the cameras, effectively hijacking them.At least 1,250 camera models produced by a Chinese manufacturer possess the bugs, the researcher went on to claim.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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.A recent Network World article argued that automated threat detection (TD) is more important than automated incident response (IR). But the piece was predicated on flawed and misguided information.The article shared an example of a financial institution in which analysts investigated 750 alerts per month only to find two verified threats. The piece claimed that, in this scenario, automated IR could only be applied to the two verified threat instances, therefore making automated threat detection upstream a more important capability by “orders of magnitude.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft released security patches Tuesday for 55 vulnerabilities across the company's products, including for three flaws that are already exploited in targeted attacks by cyberespionage groups.Fifteen of the vulnerabilities fixed in Microsoft's patch bundle for May are rated as critical and they affect Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and the malware protection engine used in most of the company's anti-malware products.System administrators should prioritize the Microsoft Office patches because they address two vulnerabilities that attackers have exploited in targeted attacks over the past two months. Both of these flaws, CVE-2017-0261 and CVE-2017-0262, stem from how Microsoft Office handles Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) image files and can lead to remote code execution on the underlying system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Heavy duty, compact and tough as nails. Perhaps the last flashlight you'll ever need. That's how J5 Tactical describes their V1-Pro. A super bright 300 lumens LED produces an intense beam of light up to 600 feet with high, low and strobe modes. It can take a beating, is weather resistant, and works for hours on a single AA battery. With over 11,600 reviews on Amazon, it averages 4.6 out of 5 stars (read reviews). Its typical list price of $29.95 has been reduced by 57% to $12.95. See the discounted J5 Tactical V1-Pro flashlight now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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.With enterprises rapidly adopting hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure and migrating traditional workloads to the cloud, distributed architectures have become de-facto standard, but traditional backup and recovery strategies have not kept pace. A new cloud-first approach to data protection is required.According to IDC, 70% of CIOs have a cloud-first strategy, and it is safe to assume most enterprises have a multi-cloud infrastructure, deploying applications on the best suited cloud whether private, public or managed. This evolution to multi-cloud has created two transformative shifts that are disrupting the application tier of the infrastructure world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Infamous government hacker Edward Snowden believes open source is a fundamentally better way to use technology compared to proprietary technology that he believes disempowers users.Snowden was interviewed at the open source cloud computing project OpenStack Summit in Boston via video from a non-descript location and spoke about his personal use of open source technology. In 2013 Snowden, then a government contractor, leaked classified information about government surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency, which brought him worldwide fame.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Deep dive comparison of Amazon, Microsoft and Google cloud storage +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon this week said it would begin offering x86-based servers with OpenStack software aimed at customers looking to support all manner of advanced cloud, software defined networking and network functions virtualization-based enterprises.+More on Network World: Extreme offers glimpse of integrated Avaya, Brocade technology future+According to Verizon, letting customers use a combination of off the shelf hardware over a distributed deployment of OpenStack will let them decouple hardware from software and frees them from proprietary hardware. OpenStack is developed by some 150 companies from AT&T to IBM and Red Hat to Cisco, Dell EMC and others. The open software controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center, managed typically through a single dashboard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The newly-announced Echo Show is available for pre-order in black or white and will start shipping on Wednesday, June 28. Right now if you buy two of them and enter the code SHOW2PACK at checkout, you'll activate a special $100 discount. So you'll get two new Echo Shows for the price of two standard Echos. Go in on this deal with a friend, or buy a few for yourself (they work very well in multiple rooms). Echo Show brings you everything you love about Alexa, and now she can show you things. Watch video flash briefings and YouTube, talk with family and friends (if they have Echos as well), see music lyrics, security cameras, photos, weather forecasts, to-do and shopping lists, and more. All hands-free—just ask. Select two-day shipping when you check out, and Amazon says you'll have it the very day it's released. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security architects are the people responsible for maintaining the security of their organizations’ computer systems, and as such they must be able to think as hackers do in order to anticipate the tactics attackers can use to gain unauthorized access to those systems, according to the InfoSec Institute.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Android surpassed Microsoft's Windows in March to become the most popular operating system on the internet, according to figures compiled by GlobalStats, the research arm of web analytics company StatCounter.GlobalStats found that, worldwide, Android had a 37.93 percent internet usage market share, just ahead of Windows at 37.91 percent. "This is a milestone in technology history and the end of an era," said Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter's CEO. "It marks the end of Microsoft’s leadership worldwide of the OS market which it has held since the 1980s. It also represents a breakthrough for Android, which held just 2.4 percent of global internet usage share only five years ago."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Blockchain technology has been generating excitement in the public and private sectors for the past several years for many reasons — a prominent one being support for self-executing contracts commonly referred to as smart contracts. But while smart contracts have the potential to streamline many business processes, full automation isn't likely anytime in the foreseeable future."Smart contracts are a combination of some certain binary actions that can be translated into code and some reference to plain language like we have today that is open to litigation if you mess up," says Antonis Papatsaras, CTO of enterprise content management company SpringCM, which specializes in contract workflow automation. "I think it's going to take forever."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A recently released draft of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST's) digital identity guidelines has met with approval by vendors. The draft guidelines revise password security recommendations and altering many of the standards and best practices security professionals use when forming policies for their companies.The new framework recommends, among other things:
Remove periodic password change requirements
There have been multiple studies that have shown requiring frequent password changes to actually be counterproductive to good password security, said Mike Wilson, founder of PasswordPing. NIST said this guideline was suggested because passwords should be changed when a user wants to change it or if there is indication of breach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One criticism that I have never heard leveled at enterprise software vendor SAP is that it over simplifies things. Quite the opposite. In fact, SAP is well known for being a seriously complicated set of applications that offers huge amounts of flexibility, but huge amounts of complexity to go with it. Perhaps that is why a Google search on “SAP implementations gone wrong” brings up a steady stream of disaster stories.So, at first blush the partnership between Tricentis and Panaya makes sense. Panaya is a division of outsourcing company Infosys. It helps organizations using SAP and Oracle solutions to be more agile (and, yes, for the naysayers, “agile” is a relative term). It also helps with testing and collaboration across the entire software release process.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here