With a drone, you can take videos that were never possible before -- at least not if you didn't have the budget for a crane or a helicopter. But having an unmanned aerial vehicle doesn't necessarily mean you'll end up with compelling video. You don't want all your shots to be free and erratic. Viewers are used to seeing certain types of shots, and these help tell a story.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
As if holding your data hostage and seeking cash payment weren’t harsh enough, security experts foresee the next stage of ransomware to be even worse.Scott Millis, CTO at mobile security company Cyber adAPT, expects ransomware to spin out of control in the year ahead. That is an astounding statement when you consider that there were more than 4,000 ransomware attacks daily in 2016, according to Symantec’s Security Response group (Report).Corey Nachreiner, CTO at WatchGuard Technologies, predicts that 2017 will see the first ever ransomworm, causing ransomware to spread even faster.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Whether you got a smartphone under the tree or just plan to gift yourself a handset soon, we hope the joy of the holidays extends to your relationship with your new phone. But don’t forget about the old one! Sure, you might not need it in your pocket, but if you’re not planning to repurpose the device or keep it as a backup, then you shouldn’t just toss it in a drawer or shove it in a closet somewhere. That dated device might still have cash value, or you could donate it to a good cause (possibly for a tax writeoff). At the very least, if you don’t plan on using the phone again, then you should recycle it and ensure that the harmful materials within don’t end up in the dump. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bold predictions are in order at this time of year. Zeus Kerravala looked into his crystal bowl for the networking space, and Taylor Armeriding did the same for security. We went rummaging through our fortune cookies and came up with this Yoda-like one for 2017:Security shall networking become.What did that really mean? Our Yoda translator was of no help. Could networking replace security (or vice versa) in 2017? Should CIOs and CISOs prepare themselves for the inevitable assimilation (head nod to you aging Trekies)? How should, then, security and networking personnel prepare themselves for the inevitable onslaught?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We all live in a browser if we use the internet. You're in one right now if you're reading this. And it's not a new piece of software. Sir Tim Berners-Lee first introduced us to the Mosaic browser in 1990. And despite 26 years of development, the browser remains the worst piece of software we use on a daily basis.Broke. Buggy. Bloated. Hogging memory. Crash-prone. Susceptible to malware. Lousy HTML rendering. I could go on and on with a litany of poorly constructed sentences describing the current state of browsers, but you get the idea. + Also on Network World: Windows 10 browser beatdown: Who’s got the edge? +
Browsers aren't just for watching YouTube videos or visiting news sites, either. With the on-demand world of SaaS, browsers are the portal into important line-of-business software, even if the high priest of SaaS, Marc Benioff, hates that word. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wave 2 Wi-Fi access pointsImage by ThinkstockThere’s a lot to like about Wave 2 802.11ac products, including theoretically faster speeds than Wave 1 products and cool new features, such as multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO.) In this review, we look at five Wave 2 wireless access points, comparing prices and features, looking at usability and doing some performance testing. The products in this review are: Amped Wireless AC1300, ASUS EA-AC87, Cisco Aironet 1852i, Extreme Networks AP3935 and the Linksys LAPAC2600. Read the full review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There’s a lot to like about Wave 2 802.11ac products, including theoretically faster speeds than Wave 1 products and cool new features, such as multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO.) In this review, we look at five Wave 2 wireless access points, comparing prices and features, looking at usability and doing some performance testing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
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.Cybersecurity experts are excited about big data because it is the “crime scene investigator” of data science. If your organization is hacked and customer information compromised, your use of big data to collect massive amounts of information on your systems, users and customers makes it possible for data analysts to provide insight into what went wrong.But while big data can help solve the crime after it occurred, it doesn’t help prevent it in the first place. You’re still left cleaning up the mess left behind by the breach: angry customers, possible compliance issues with data privacy standards like HIPAA and PCI DSS, maybe even government fines and class-action lawsuits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Veepeak Rechargeable Motion Sensor Light offers a simple solution to lighting any area inside your home. The portable and detachable design makes it versatile enough to be used as a night light in hallways and bedrooms or as a cabinet or closet light for dim areas. Installation is a breeze, the magnetic strip with 3M adhesive allows you to quickly mount wherever you need extra light. This light is motion activated and will automatically turn on once it detects motion; when no movement is detected for about 20 seconds, the light will automatically turn off. This LED light is powered by built-in Lithium battery which can be charged with included USB cable by a phone charger or PC USB port. No electric wire, no need to replace batteries and one full charge provides up to 500 times of sensing at full brightness. This light currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars (read reviews) and is discounted 30% down to just $13.99. For more information and buying options, see the discounted LED Motion light 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.You don’t have to look far to see the amazing things that organizations are doing with big data technology: pulling information from past transactions, social media and other sources to develop 360-degree views of their customers. Analyzing thousands of processes to identify causes of breakdowns and inefficiencies. Bringing together disparate data sources to uncover connections that were never recognized before. All of these innovations, and many more, are possible when you can collect information from across your organization and apply data science to it. But if you’re ready to make the jump to big data, you face a stark choice: should you use a pre-integrated “out-of-the-box” platform? Or should you download open-source Hadoop software and build your own?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The black market value of stolen medical records dropped dramatically this year, and criminals shifted their efforts from stealing data to spreading ransom ware, according to a report released this morning.Hackers are now offering stolen records at between $1.50 and $10 each, said Anthony James, CMO at San Mateo, Calif.-based security firm TrapX, the company that produced the report.That down a bit since this summer, when a hacker offered 10 million patient records for about $820,000 -- or about $12 per record -- and even a bigger drop from 2012, when the World Privacy Forum put the street value of medical records at around $50 each.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia has filed new patent infringement lawsuits against Apple on Thursday, a day after it weighed in on a licensing dispute with the company by filing claims in Germany and the U.S.On Wednesday, the Finland-based mobile network vendor filed lawsuits in three German courts and two lawsuits in a Texas court, leveling infringement claims against Apple on the widely used H.264 video codec and other technologies. Those suits cover 32 of Nokia's patents.Nokia's first round of lawsuits came after Apple filed a lawsuit Tuesday accusing Nokia of working with patent assertion firms Acacia Research and Conversant Intellectual Property Management to “extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly and anticompetitively” from Apple and other smartphone makers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
By now, everyone in our industry has provided 2017 cybersecurity predictions and I’m no exception. I participated in a 2017 infosec forecast webcast with industry guru Bruce Schneier, and ESG also published a video where I exchanged cybersecurity prophecies with my colleague Doug Cahill (note: I am an ESG employee).Yup, prognosticating about the future of cybersecurity has become a mainstream activity, but rather than simply guess at what will happen next year, I think it is useful to review what actually happened over the past few years and extrapolate from there.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At Amazon Web Services' (AWS) re:Invent conference two years ago, the company introduced AWS Lambda, a mind-blowing service that allows developers to specify and set up specific functions that would run in the event of particular events.This was a remarkable development, for it heralded the ability to move beyond servers for specific processes and move to a model where the operation was the unit of measure. Functions would run only in the event of the particular triggers and would set in a idle state for eternity in the absence of those triggers. Developers would pay only when the particular functions were running.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has alerted app developers that it will not be accepting new app or app update submissions from Dec. 23-27, so the clock is ticking...
Apple annual announces a holiday schedule, presumably to give some of the real people behind the app management process some time off. However, this year the break is only 5 days vs. 7 the past couple of years.
While developers won't be able to submit new apps or updates during the break, they will have access to other iTunes connect features.
Apple recently announced its Best of 2016 list, highlighting top apps and developers. Statista shows that about 2 million mobile apps are available for download on the Apple App Store, including the top new free app (well, it costs $10 to activate the good stuff), Super Mario Run. Nintendo says Super Mario Run was downloaded 40 million times in its first 4 days of availability, and Apple confirmed that is a record-breaker.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As the festive season approaches, there is nothing better than a good surprise. If you follow my blog regularly, you’ll have read my position on Polar codes—great technology, but perhaps not quite ready for prime time.Well, I guess I was wrong, or maybe not? Recently, 3GPP selected Polar codes as the official coding method for the control channel functions in the 5G enhanced mobile broadband use case (one of the three main use cases being developed), and the LDPC method was crowned as the channel code for the data channels in the same use case. Turbo codes are not in the game yet, at least in this round. So, what happened?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Developers of the popular Signal secure messaging app have started to use Google's domain as a front to hide traffic to their service and to sidestep blocking attempts.Bypassing online censorship in countries where internet access is controlled by the government can be very hard for users. It typically requires the use of virtual private networking (VPN) services or complex solutions like Tor, which can be banned too.Open Whisper Systems, the company that develops Signal -- a free, open-source app -- faced this problem recently when access to its service started being censored in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Some users reported that VPNs, Apple's FaceTime and other voice-over-IP apps were also being blocked.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here’s a prediction you don’t hear very often: The cloud computing market, as we know it, will be obsolete in a matter of years.The provocateur is Peter Levine, a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He believes that the increased computing power of intelligent Internet of Things devices, combined with ever-increasingly accurate machine learning technologies, will largely replace the infrastructure as a service public cloud market.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 10 IaaS trends to watch in 2017 | 5 Enterprise Tech Trends that will shake things up in 2017 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Why do we monitor things (user experience, transactions, applications, virtual servers, physical servers, datastores, etc.)? Because we want them to work well all of the time.Does everything in your environment work well as you expect it to all of the time?Well, of course not. What if we reinvent monitoring so that we can help make that happen?Consider the following analogy: An airplane can fly itself from its origination to its destination and land itself without human intervention. If we flew commercial airliners the way we run enterprise IT, planes would be dropping out of the sky left and right—and only be 30 percent full (maybe this would be a good thing).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Alibaba’s Taobao.com marketplace is in the eye of a storm after the U.S. Trade Representative included the vastly popular online Chinese marketplace in the list of ‘Notorious Markets’ for 2016, after a long break.The list identifies markets that are allegedly "engaging in and facilitating substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting.” The listing carries no penalties but will likely be an embarrassment for Alibaba, which has been trying to burnish its image in international markets.The move by the USTR comes even as the company claims to have used “big data” technologies to zero in, for example, on 13 factories and shops that were selling knockoff RAM modules under Kingston and Samsung brands, according to Alibaba's news hub Alizila.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here