Companies were least prepared to assess the security risks of cloud and mobile technologies, according to a survey of cybersecurity professionals released this morning.Around 60 percent of companies were able to assess security risks in cloud environments, down 7 points compared to last year. Mobile devices scored at 57 percent, down by 8 percentage points compared to last year.Overall, the confidence levels of security professionals that their cyber defenses were meeting expectations dropped from 76 percent last year to 70 percent in this year's survey, according to the report, which was produced by Annapolis, M.D.-based CyberEdge Group, and sponsored by Tenable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the awards winning short story, Cat Pictures Please, by Naomi Kitzer, an artificial intelligence with a predilection for cats photos inhabiting some unspecified system has taken to manipulating people to see if it can change their lives for the better. It’s a clever story that raises several interesting issues about what the nature of an A.I. might be and one of the biggest concerns the A.I.’s fondness for pictures of cats. This fondness is understandable as cats can be very entertaining. Consider this video …
Wasn’t that cute? Anyway, in Kitzer’s story, cat pictures are the A.I.’s source of pleasure in a manner that isn’t fully articulated, something that’s fine for the purposes of fiction. On the other hand, in the real world, such an interest by an A.I. could have very different consequences due to something called instrumental convergence, which is defined on Wikipedia as:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Russian government claims to have foiled a "large-scale" cyber attack from foreign intelligence services meant to destabilize the country’s financial system.The government’s Federal Security Service made the statement on Friday without blaming a specific country, but said the attack was meant to be carried out on Dec. 5 against a number of major Russian banks.The hack would have also included the use of social media and SMS text messages to circulate posts claiming a crisis in Russia’s financial system. Several dozen cities in the country had been targeted, the Federal Security Service claimed, stating it had already neutralized the threat.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's a lot of excitement about Intel's superfast Optane SSDs, but products won't be on shelves this year as the chipmaker had earlier promised.Intel is currently making Optane in a factory in China, and production will "ramp" up next year, said Stacy Smith, executive vice president of manufacturing, operations, and sales at Intel.Smith declined to comment on when Optane products will hit the market, maintaining a consistent pattern of silence among Intel executives on the topic. He spoke at the Credit Suisse 20th Annual Technology, Media, and Telecom conference in Scottsdale, Arizona this week.Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said sample Optane products will ship to more testers next year, and that "it’s really a 2018 ramp for that product," according to a transcript of an October earnings call, posted on Seeking Alpha.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twitter has swallowed social app developer Yes and is also getting a new product head as part of the deal.Keith Coleman, formerly CEO of the Palo Alto startup, is joining Twitter as vice president of product development. “Yes! Keith and team are joining Twitter to help lead and strengthen our service!,” wrote Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a message on the social network.The post of head of product development has been vacant for some time at Twitter, which has been struggling to boost its user base and turn a profit. In the third quarter, the company posted a loss of US$103 million on revenue of $616 million. Average monthly active users grew in the quarter by 3 percent year-on-year to 317 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lashed to the much bigger ship that is Oracle, cloud software provider NetSuite is setting sail for a new market near you.Until now, the 18-year-old company based in San Mateo, California, has focused on English-speaking countries and Japan. As part of Oracle, it plans to localize its products for many more countries while expanding its data-center capacity, sales operations, partner channel and other assets to reach customers in those new areas.Oracle announced plans in July to buy NetSuite for $9.3 billion, and it closed the deal on Nov. 7. On Thursday, executives laid out some of their plans following the takeover.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Deciding on a new or updated virtual private network (VPN) solution can be intimidating, but it shouldn’t be.Network demands are increasing day-by-day, and technology is evolving rapidly with the advent of software-defined networking (SDN). Businesses need fast decisions on network infrastructure, but making a bet in the midst of rapid technology advances can have a paralyzing impact.Fear of making the wrong decisionAn IDG Research Services survey conducted early in 2016 shows that enterprises are eager to modernize their networks but are constrained by financial considerations and the fear of making a wrong decision.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Looking to bolster its cloud analytics and machine learning technologies, Juniper today announced its intention to buy startup AppFormix for an undisclosed amount.AppFormix brings streaming analytics and machine learning technologies to Juniper that are tailored for managing operations of large OpenStack and Kubernetes-based Hybrid clouds and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)/Telco clouds, wrote Ankur Singla, Juniper’s Vice President, Office of the CTO in a blog about the acquisition.+More on Network World: Juniper CEO: On the cusp of transforming economics of optical networking+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook wants to grow the community of companies that understand and use artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress in the field. Tech leaders Facebook, Google, Microsoft and IBM believe AI is the next platform that will follow mobile. During the announcement of Google Home last October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the AI platform shift, paraphrasing Facebook mobile-first tagline as an AI-first world.
Facebook publishes its AI and machine learning research, speaks at conferences and licenses its software under open source licenses to accelerate development and demystify AI. Today, in a blog post, Facebook released six short videos, narrated by Yann LeCun, head of Facebook's AI research group and machine learning pioneer, to introduce developers, data scientists and people interested in the most important AI topics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple said it took "courage" to remove the audio jack port from the iPhone 7 and replace it with wireless audio. Microsoft hasn't yet mustered the courage to cut the aging port.Microsoft has retained the headphone jack as a minimum hardware requirement for Windows 10 Mobile smartphones. The company declined to comment if it would make the headphone jack an optional port.The headphone jack port isn't a requirement for other Windows devices, including laptops, desktops, tablets, or IoT devices.Apple gave several reasons for removing the port, saying it was old technology, and it blocked the integration of newer technologies in the already compact iPhone 7.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Now that the iPhone 7 has been out for nearly three months now, the always-busy Apple rumor mill is refocusing its attention on what may very well be Apple's most anticipated product launch in years -- the iPhone 8.Speaking to the gravitas that surrounds Apple's next-gen iPhone, it's widely believed that Apple next year will forgo the iPhone 7s name and will instead call its 2017 smartphone the iPhone 8. Not only does the upcoming iPhone mark the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, it will also usher in some long-overdue changes to the iPhone's industrial design.According to a number of reports, Apple's upper-tier iPhone model will feature a curved OLED panel along with an edge to edge display. In effect, the entire device will effectively consist of one giant piece of glass. As a result, many of the device's sensors are said to be embedded underneath or into the display itself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some say email is or will soon be dead, but try telling that to retailers promoting Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2016 sales in recent weeks.Amazon, Walmart and the rest absolutely inundated shoppers who wittingly or not had shared their email addresses with retailers. MORE: 50-plus eye-popping Black Friday 2016 tech dealsEmail marketing analysis firm eDataSource reports that more than 35,000 Black Friday-themed email campaigns were mailed during the period from 10 days before Black Friday (Nov. 25) to Cyber Monday (Nov. 28), representing a 50% increase from a year ago. The Cyber Monday messaging deluge followed suit, with about 24,000 campaigns mailed over the same period and a 36% increase from 2015.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Like a man eager to show off his new watch, Google is encouraging anyone running IT operations to ask it for the time.The company will let anyone use its NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers, a move to help IT shops cope with the next “leap second,” which will be tacked onto 2016 just after midnight on Dec. 31.Leap seconds help to keep clocks aligned with Earth’s rotation, which can vary due to geologic and even weather conditions. But an extra second can wreak havoc with applications and services that depend on systems being tightly synchronized.Most Internet-connected devices get their time through NTP, an open-source technology that's used all over the world. NTP has its own problems, mainly around funding, but it's long been the standard. Google runs its own NTP servers and uses them to ease its systems through leap seconds, according to Michael Shields, technical lead on the company’s Time Team, in a blog post on Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon is bringing a bit of its AWS magic to devices and board computers with its Greengrass IoT service, which will help boost offline data collection and analysis.The goal of Greengrass, an AWS software tool, is to make IoT devices and maker boards smarter. Even underpowered devices collecting data won't be "dumb" anymore, Amazon says.Amazon has kept in mind that smart devices can't always be connected to the cloud for data analysis, and Greengrass brings some AWS software tools to devices to aid in better collection and analysis of data.Developer boards are strongly tied to cloud services, which add more functionality to smart devices. Data collected from sensors are typically dispatched and collected in the cloud, where it can be analyzed and can define the next steps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cyber-attacks using the VoIP protocol Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) have been growing this year accounting for over 51% of the security event activity analyzed in the last 12 months, according to a report from IBM’s Security Intelligence group this week.“SIP is one of the most commonly used application layer protocols in VoIP technology… we found that there has been an upward trend in attacks targeting the SIP protocol, with the most notable uptick occurring in the second half of 2016,” IBM wrote. “In actual attacks on VoIP communications, we note various types of disruption. Spikes in July and September were mostly the result of specially crafted SIP messages that were terminated incorrectly. Persistent, invalid messages are known to cause vulnerable servers and equipment to fail. The spike in October 2016 was largely influenced by SIP messages with invalid characters in the SIP “To” field. These could be reflective of suspicious activity, necessitating further investigation.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The perfect entry-level GoPro + Wi-Fi and touch display is currently discounted 18% on Amazon. HERO+ LCD delivers 1080p60 video and 8MP photos, and features the convenience of a touch display. Built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connect to the GoPro App to allow for shot preview, total camera control and easy content sharing to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more from your phone or tablet. Rugged and waterproof to 131 feet (40 meter), with the ability to power up and record at the press of a button. The GoPro HERO+ is a #1 best seller with 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews), where its list price of $300 has been reduced 18% to $245. See the discounted GoPro HERO+ on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AWS CEO Andy Jassy predicts that as more workloads move to the public IaaS cloud, companies will reduce the number of servers they will manage and the new definition of on-premises infrastructure will increasingly be Internet of Things (IoT) devices.“More and more companies are deploying connect IoT devices,” he notes, from factories, ships, cars, oil rigs and agricultural machines. “Every place they have assets, they want to be able to collect and analyze data.”+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Cool tech from AWS re:Invent | A peek inside Amazon’s cloud – from global scale to custom silicon +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Even though we tried more than 50 different tech devices and gadgets for our annual Cool Yule Tools holiday gift guide, there are still a ton of other products that we didn’t get to try. Most of these were because they either came out after our deadline, or they were late in shipping to us.We’ve had a few weeks to try out some additional items, these would make excellent gifts for anyone on your list:Dart laptop charger$100More info: https://finsix.com/shop/dart/
There are a bunch of mobile power batteries aimed at recharging your smartphone or tablet while you’re on the go (or traveling), but when it comes to recharging your laptop, you’re left with a big, bulky power brick with a cable. The Dart laptop charger aims to lighten the load here a bit – it claims to be the “world’s smallest laptop charger”.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It can be hard moving large amounts of data to the cloud. Even with consistent 10 Gbps of data transfer, it would take years to get hundreds of petabytes from an on-premises data center to a public cloud provider.Amazon is aiming to speed that process up with a high-capacity data transfer product: a literal truck. The Snowmobile is a big, white semi-trailer that can hold 100PB of data. It will then get driven to an Amazon endpoint, and the data will be loaded into its public cloud storage.For smaller migrations that can also benefit from processing at the edge, Amazon also announced a new Snowball Edge appliance that provides 100TB of storage, local compute power, and migration for handling data transfer and processing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
"One thing you realize early on," says Luke Tillman, technical evangelist for Apache Cassandra at DataStax, "is that things are constantly changing."That's a fact of life for developers and their managers. It's true whether you're working with JavaScript front-end frameworks or databases."You almost feel bad for front-end developers," Tillman says. "A front-end framework gets hot for a year or two and then you've got to change."So first, Tillman says, you've got to accept that change is constant. That's the easy part.Finding their motivation (Hint: it may be $$$)
"Once you accept that change is constant, the question is not only how do you stay relevant, but also what is your motivation for staying relevant," Tillman says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here