In the world of the Internet of Things one thing you’ve got lots of, apart from things, is messages. When IoT devices generate messages, they send stuff like status reports and environmental measurements; when they receive, they’re being told what to do (“open that valve” or “send your status”) or they’re storing data from other devices or, or ,or … there are endless use cases. Moreover, the number of IoT devices is growing incredibly fast and only their combined message traffic is growing faster. And as well as the explosion of the IoT, there are applications running on smartphones, tablets, and computers that all need the same type of messaging service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Members of Congress received a dire warning this week about security vulnerabilities in the so-called internet of things (IoT), as cyber experts cautioned that with billions of new devices coming online, coordinated hacking attacks could become -- literally -- a matter of life and death.House lawmakers convened the hearing on IoT security in response to last month's distributed denial-of-service attack on the internet addressing provider Dyn, which resulted in temporary outages at popular sites like Twitter and Spotify.[ Related: How the Dyn DDoS attack unfolded ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In his nomination of Representative Mike Pompeo to head the CIA, President-elect Donald Trump has picked someone who has supported NSA surveillance programs and has criticized Silicon Valley's stance on encryption.Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas, is a former cavalry officer in the U.S. Army and a graduate of West Point military academy. He currently serves on the House Intelligence Committee and is perhaps best known for his role on the Benghazi committee that investigated Hillary Clinton.But his committee assignment has also put him in the middle of several recent issues that have pitched the U.S. intelligence community against major tech companies.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.Ready or not, unified communications is starting to move to the cloud. A recent survey by BroadSoft predicts that cloud UC market penetration will jump almost six times in the next four years, from 7% percent today to 41% of the overall UC space by 2020.According to Gartner, “the UC-as-a-Service market as a whole is transitioning from the ‘early adopter phase’ to the ‘early mainstream phase’ for enterprise delivery.” Even those enterprises once reluctant to move to the cloud are gazing upward and putting small groups of users into the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Digital certificates provide the backbone of information security and trust on the Internet. Demand for certificates is exploding as companies use them to secure and build trust in web transactions, email messages, application code, and devices such as those on the Internet of Things. The use case for digital certificates continues to expand as more people and devices become connected.
It’s not unusual for an enterprise organization to have 10,000 or more certificates in use. For example, a company might use certificates to digitally sign and encrypt email messages and attachments. Allowing for one certificate per email account, this can amount to tens of thousands of certificates for this use case alone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The person who submitted the above photo to Reddit’s section devoted to IT rants presumably does not believe it depicts wireless security at its finest. In fact, the sarcasm oozes.However, not everyone in the forum held such a dim view.“There is nothing wrong with this,” writes another user. “It is public wi-fi. It has a slight security advantage over an open network in that it makes it more difficult to eavesdrop. The (would-be) attacker also has to capture the handshake when a client associates.”There were supportive variations on that theme.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The dream of creating intelligent computers has inspired the development of exotic chips based on the structure of the brain, which operates in mysterious ways. Some researchers are making such chips from components found in today's computers.Using components pulled off store shelves, researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have made a chip for intelligent computers that can learn. The chips are structured to discover patterns through probabilities and association, helping with decision making.The researchers are using off-the-shelf, reprogrammable circuits called FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) to simulate the way neurons and synapses in a brain operate. The chip was made as part of the university's DANNA neuromorphic software project.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the era of digital disruption, the ability to successfully implement new technologies such as mobility, big data and analytics systems, cloud computing options, or robotics for competitive advantage is critical. In some cases, going to an existing IT service provider may not be the best way to do so. However, in many cases, there are advantages to working with incumbent supplier. Doing so may enable IT outsourcing customers to leverage existing contractual commitments and terms to accelerate the contracting process.Business and IT leaders may want a trusted partner to manage their entire technology environment. By expanding the scope of an existing deal, the customer can retain integrated performance standards and service levels for the entire environment and maintain streamlined governance processes. It also may be a way to minimize any transition or termination costs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SAN FRANCISCO — The pressing issue of modern technology's negative impact on jobs was largely ignored during the 2016 presidential election, according to California's Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who spoke this week at the Code Enterprise conference. Today's society has deficiencies in education and regulation, and it lacks the collective mindset necessary to transform tech challenges into opportunities, Newsom said. The roles large technology companies play in eliminating jobs, and the responsibilities they should bear to fight this problem, are rarely discussed. However, senior executives at Google and LinkedIn addressed the issue on stage at Code Enterprise, telling the audience of business leaders that it is paramount for tech titans to minimize job losses by creating new opportunities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud migrations can fail for a variety of reasons, such as a cloud strategy that isn’t aligned with business goals, cultural resistance or lack of a viable cloud security plan. Managing these migration risks is the focus of a free online course presented by training company Logical Operations Inc., in partnership with IDG Enterprise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
It’s a lot easier to find Black Friday 2016 deals for Android smartphones and tablets than it is for competing Apple products, so if you’re a fan of Google’s Linux kernel-based mobile OS or willing to give it a shot, then Best Buy, Target and others are more than happy to accommodate on Nov. 25.
Here’s where to look if you want to compare Android products to those from Apple or running Windows. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
About 20 years ago, I started driving co-workers within listening distance crazy with constant chirps of "Uh oh!" emanating from my laptop. It was all coming from a nifty little program I'd discovered called ICQ, which let me talk to friends in real time. Created by a group of Israeli college students who eventually formed the company Mirabilis to support development of the app, ICQ stood for "I seek you" and was intended as a way for Windows users to communicate much in the same way Unix users could send real-time messages. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New research paints a somewhat bleak picture of network performance. Outages are frequent. Hours typically pass before an issue is reported and resolved. Protective measures are manual and error prone.The source of the data is a survey of 315 network pros at midsize and large enterprises. The survey was sponsored by Veriflow, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup that aims to minimize the risk of network vulnerabilities and outages. Veriflow’s software is designed to catch network problems before they happen by predicting possible network-wide behavior and continually verifying that a network model adheres to an enterprise’s security and resilience policies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Put away the Halloween candy, and dust off your stuffed turkeys, folks. October is long gone, as are a fresh set of announcements from Microsoft about changes to its Azure cloud platform. Here's the important news you might have missed.Price drops for a bunch of Azure compute instances
If there's one constant in the public cloud, it's the back-and-forth between competing providers over who gets to claim that they have the cheapest services. Microsoft fired another shot in that war in October, dropping prices for its A1, A2, Dv2 and F series compute instances. Here's how that breaks down, straight from a blog post by Microsoft Corporate Vice President Takeshi Numoto:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I am not sure how many problems the TSA has had with this but I was surprised to learn that Thanksgiving gravy is not allowed on carry-on bags.From the TSA: “Gravy is sadly prohibited from carry-on bags unless you pack it in accordance with our liquid polices mentioned above. You can also pack it in your checked baggage.”+More on Network World: 26 of the craziest and scariest things the TSA has found on travelers+Gravy as well as cranberry sauce for that matter fall under the sometimes mysterious “Liquid Rules” which basically states that you’re “allowed to take as many 3.4 ounce or smaller sized containers that will fit in one sealed, clear, quart-sized zip-top bag – and one bag per person. Make sure you take the zip-top bag out of your carry-on prior to sending it through the X-ray.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel is taking a new direction in chip development as it looks to the future of artificial intelligence, with the company betting the technology will pervade applications and web services.The company on Thursday said it is developing new chips that will handle AI workloads, which will increasingly be a part of its chip future. For now, the AI chips will be released as specialized primary chips or co-processors in computers and separate from the major product lines.But over time, Intel could adapt and integrate the AI features into its mainstream server, IoT, and perhaps even PC chips. The AI features could be useful in servers, drones, robots, and autonomous cars. Intel is aggressively chasing these sectors as it tries to diversify outside the weakening PC market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Well before Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for President, the current President-elect didn't mince words when it came to American companies relying upon factories in China for manufacturing purposes.Speaking to a crowd at Liberty University last January, Trump said that if were to become President, he would take steps to ensure that Apple "builds their damn computers in this country." More broadly, Trump added that he'd like to see Apple manufacture all of their devices in the United States instead of outsourcing said duties to Asian-based partners like Foxconn.While Trump's promise will likely go unfulfilled, Apple reportedly isn't taking any chances. In an apparent effort to remain prepared for any type of new policy Trump might dream up, Apple has reportedly asked both Foxconn and Pegatron about the feasibility of "moving iPhone production" to the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Well before Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for President, the current President-elect didn't mince words when it came to American companies relying upon factories in China for manufacturing purposes.
Speaking to a crowd at Liberty University last January, Trump said if he were to become President, he would take steps to ensure Apple "builds their damn computers in this country." More broadly, Trump added that he'd like to see Apple manufacture all of their devices in the United States instead of outsourcing said duties to Asian-based partners such as Foxconn.
While Trump's promise will likely go unfulfilled, Apple reportedly isn't taking any chances. In an apparent effort to remain prepared for any type of new policy Trump might dream up, Apple has reportedly asked both Foxconn and Pegatron about the feasibility of "moving iPhone production" to the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Azure Stack is Microsoft’s enterprise cloud technology that allows organizations to run Microsoft Azure on their own premise. During the early adopter testing phase, I needed an Azure Stack host that I could take between my office (by day) and home (on weekends), or to take to client sites to demonstrate. So I created a portable version of Azure Stack by building a 14-core / 10-terabyte cloud in a briefcase!For those who need a background on Azure Stack, please see a couple articles I wrote on Azure Stack describing the technology in more detail, as well as the business use cases of who is lining up to buy Azure Stack. My initial article back in February 2016 covers some early experiences, and then a October 2016 article that updated some more recent work on Azure Stack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google Cloud Platform solidified its partnership with Intel and announced plans to create customized silicon chips for tasks like machine learning, security, container orchestration and the Internet of Things, while bringing on a new executive to help the company flush out its strategy.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 10 Tips from the front line of enterprise cloud use +The Cloud Foundry Foundation announced that its former executive director, Sam Ramji has joined Google in a leadership position, but his new title is not yet know. Cloud Foundry Foundation is the home of the open source application development platform of the same name. Companies like Pivotal and IBM base their PaaS off CF. Google cloud is also the preferred public cloud for Pivotal’s hosted CF version.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here