Shadow IT is often viewed as something that opens up businesses to data and security threats, leaving IT without control over business apps and services. But that attitude is changing as more businesses adopt a friendly attitude towards unconventional IT practices."Some CIOs certainly see 'shadow' IT as a negative, hence the less flattering terms 'feral' or 'rogue' IT, but more progressive CIOs know that, given today's technology and the increasing savvy of the business, it's in their best interest to embrace shadow IT," says Tracy Cashman, senior vice president and partner of WinterWyman Executive Search.Cashman says it's time for IT to embrace the fact that they can't control everything and instead, help drive innovation around IT practices so that they align with the modern reality of technology. It's about empowering users because otherwise, they'll go around IT and download the software they want to use anyway.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Imagine if US Airways Flight 1549 out of New York – operating without a pilot -- had hit the same flock of birds, landed itself on the Hudson River, and saved the lives of 153 passengers and flight attendants.Well, there would be no movie called “Sully” playing in theaters right now.Pilotless airliners? Far-fetched, you say. Not so, according to Tim Robinson, editor-in-chief of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s magazine Aerospace, who tells the BBC:
“So with pilots relying on autopilots for 95% of today's flights, the argument goes, why not make the final 5% – take-off and landing – automated?” says Robinson. “Computers fly ultra-precise, repeatable trajectories, do not fly drunk, do not get tired, do not get distracted and so the thinking goes could be safer than human pilots in the future.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Variety is the spice of life, and it's also what makes a DevOps career endlessly fascinating and intriguing. But while DevOps requires an intimate knowledge of a myriad of technologies -- software, infrastructure, middleware, as well as business processes and operational best practices -- the most important skills to have for a successful DevOps career aren't technical at all: They're interpersonal, says Eric Sigler, head of DevOps at incident resolution software platform company PagerDuty."Critical thinking, problem-solving, communication and collaboration are the foundation for what makes DevOps work. Empathy in particular is a must-have for those building a career around DevOps. True DevOps engineers have a high degree of compassion and will use it to enable those around them. By being open to alternative points of view, you can pick and choose the best practices and skill sets available to solve the problem at hand," Sigler says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Coordinating multiple access points simultaneously, all on the same frequency and without generating interference, is the premise behind a new form of Wi-Fi called MegaMimo 2.0. When released commercially, as its inventors say it soon will be, it will allow data to be shot through at three times the speed that it travels now and twice as far, the researchers claim.The Wi-Fi technology, supposedly immune to bottleneck-causing interference, works by letting a number of distinct transmitters send same- and similar-frequency data “to multiple independent receivers without interfering with each other,” the computer scientists, led by Professor Dian Katabi from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), say in their news release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Cisco and Apple partnership has yielded a ton of new business features that include improved Wi-Fi connectivity, business app prioritization capabilities and the tighter integration of voice for collaboration – all via the today’s release of iOS 10 for Apple’s iPhone and iPad.Today’s announcement is a reflection of how important and integral mobile smartphones have become to businesses. For example Cisco earlier this year stated that smartphone traffic would exceed PC traffic by 2020. In 2015, PCs accounted for 53% of total IP traffic, but by 2020 PCs will account for only 29% of traffic. Smartphones will account for 30% of total IP traffic in 2020, up from 8% in 2015, Cisco wrote in its 11th annual Visual Networking Index in June.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Recently I chatted with Dawie Olivier, the CIO of Westpac Bank. Olivier has a long history within the financial services industry, and we talked about helping these kinds of organizations become agile and innovative.This is no small challenge (I’ll share more about my interview with Olivier in a future post). Financial services organizations work within a highly regulated industry and are doubly confounded by often being built on top of big, heavy, monolithic, legacy IT systems. Hardly a recipe for agility.+ Also on Network World: Promise and peril in the journey to DevOps +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Trying to capture an end-to-end picture of application performance across a single enterprise is challenging enough. Providing that level of visibility for hybrid- and public-cloud-enabled applications presents a whole new level of difficulty. Enter Dyn, which is an early leader in the emerging internet performance management (IPM) market. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Canada has recalled over 21,900 Galaxy Note7 smartphones after receiving a report of the overheating of the battery of one phone.The Samsung Note7 smartphone battery has the potential to overheat and burn, posing a potential fire hazard, Health Canada, a Canadian federal government department said Monday.The problem with the lithium-ion batteries may, however, turn out to be more serious in the U.S. where already reports of over 70 cases have been received by Samsung, according to the Canadian agency. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is charged with protecting the public from the risk of injury or death linked with certain consumer products, said Friday it was working on an official recall with Samsung but there has been no formal announcement yet of the move.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The hardest news out of Apple during its iPhone 7/7Plus and Apple Watch 2 extravaganza last week is that the company will release a version of its Apple Watch made from ceramic, which as Apple says, is "one of the hardest materials in the world." Speculation this week is that Apple might use some of that zirconia ceramic to build its iPhone 8, too. Why deal with messy Bendgate issues involving its aluminum-body iPhones when it can build its smartphones from stronger material?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Autonomous cars need a new kind of horsepower to identify objects, avoid obstacles and change lanes. There's a good chance that will come from graphics processors in data centers or even the trunks of cars.With this scenario in mind, Nvidia has built two new GPUs -- the Tesla P4 and P40 -- based on the Pascal architecture and designed for servers or computers that will help drive autonomous cars. In recent years, Tesla GPUs have been targeted at supercomputing, but they are now being tweaked for deep-learning systems that aid in correlation and classification of data."Deep learning" typically refers to a class of algorithmic techniques based on highly connected neural networks -- systems of nodes with weighted interconnections among them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The BRK 3120B smoke detector from First Alert contains technology that many experts are now recommending -- dual sensors. A photoelectric sensor detects slow and smoldering fires, while an ionization sensor can detect often fast moving open flames. Your current detectors may have only one or the other, so if you're due (or overdue) for new ones, it might be something to consider. This model is hardwired with a battery backup (see below for non-hardwired model), so all units interconnect. When an alarm is triggered, indicator lights let you know which detector was the initiator, so there's no guessing. If being used in a public area, the BRK 3120B also has locking features that prevent theft of the battery or the unit itself. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 220 people (read reviews) and you can buy it now on Amazon for $29.97.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I spend a significant portion of my life installing and testing distributions of Linux-based systems. It’s really rather ridiculous.Even obscure ones—ones that never stand a chance of being listed on the likes of DistroWatch—find their way onto my drives. I can’t help it. It’s an addiction.But you know which one I haven’t installed in a long, long while? Debian. Not some Debian-derived system, like the ones that get a lion’s share of the media attention, but pure Debian. I haven’t loaded it in eons. I know, weird, right?So, I installed it. Debian Stable. Code-name “Jessie.” Originally released as version 8.0 in April 2015—then given the ole’ “point-5” update to 8.5 in June 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Canadian enterprise information management vendor OpenText has agreed to buy Dell Technologies' EMC enterprise content division for US$1.62 billion in a deal that, the companies say, will allow them to focus on their core missions.The acquisition of the "highly profitable" Dell EMC Enterprise Content Division will allow OpenText to expand its related services to Asia and Africa and across a larger customer base, including the healthcare and oil production industries, said OpenText CEO and CTO Mark Barrenechea. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To say the National Security Agency (NSA) prefers to lay low and shuns the limelight is an understatement. One joke said about the secretive group, widely regarded as the most skilled state-sponsored hackers in the world, is NSA actually stands for “No Such Agency.”But now a recent leak has put the group right where it loathes to be—squarely in the headlines. Last month, a group called “The Shadow Brokers” published what it claimed were a set of NSA “cyber weapons,” a combination of exploits, both zero day and long past, designed to target routers and firewalls from American manufacturers, including Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Aruba, a division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, announced software today that's designed to help companies speed up secure integration of mobile devices and Internet of Things objects into their networks.Called Aruba Mobile First Platform, the software is based on application programming interfaces (APIs) for use by third-party developers and developer teams inside companies to help them boost automation with IoT devices and allow mobile workers to be more efficient.Mobile First is built on Aruba OS 8.0, the company's new operating system, which is deployed as a virtual machine on a server appliance.Also, Aruba announced enhancements to its existing Aruba ClearPass software for Mobile First to make it easier for IT security teams to integrate cloud-hosted services into ClearPass. This means customers can more easily build software workflows for Enterprise Mobility Management packages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Thousands of publicly accessible FTP servers, including many from Seagate network-attached storage devices, are being used by criminals to host cryptocurrency mining malware.Researchers from security vendor Sophos made the discovery when they investigated a malicious program dubbed Mal/Miner-C, which infects Windows computers and hijacks their CPUs and GPUs to generate Monero, a bitcoin-inspired cryptocurrency.With most cryptocurrencies, users can generate new units by devoting their computing resources to solving complex math problems needed to validate transactions in the network. This process, known as "mining," provides an incentive for attackers to hijack other people's computers and use them for their own gain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In somewhat of a kick in the teeth for law enforcement and spy agencies, a science institute says smartphones will soon be able to take advantage of some of the most spectacular encryption ever known.The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) says random number generators (RNGs) will soon be able to function without ever repeating the random number and that the quantum-based chips will soon be small enough to fit in a smartphone’s form factor. It would create the fastest and smallest encryption functionality ever.+ Also on Network World: Why smartphone encryption has law enforcement feathers ruffled +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As you no doubt have already heard, two recent high-profile smartphone introductions have been plagued by controversy. Apple’s iPhone 7 has famously inspired rage and disbelief among observers by omitting a headphone jack. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7, meanwhile, infamously has a problem with its battery spontaneously exploding—or at least catching on fire.Two awesome new smartphones, two very different issues garnering piles of press for the wrong reasons. So, which issue is worse? Let’s take a systematic look and see if we can come to a decision. (Have your own “favorite?” Feel free to share it in the comments.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Despite lasting two hours, Apple's hardware event this week felt a bit light. The company announced just a handful of new products: the updated Apple Watch lines, the pretty-much-as-expected iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and new wireless AirPods.There was no mention of the iPad line. There were no updates for the Mac. New MacBook Pro laptops remain to be unveiled. The Apple TV didn't rate a mention, though Apple did appear to quietly retire the 3rd generation model. iOS 10 did some brief attention, but largely to highlight the Sept. 13 release date. (macOS Sierra didn't make the cut at all, though Apple did announce its release date -- Sept. 20 -- as well.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tech skills are in high demand. But maybe leaving your full-time IT gig in pursuit of a hot new career as a mobile developer or data scientist isn’t the best bet. Or perhaps your employer doesn’t offer enough growth opportunity and you want to expand your skills and experience without giving up all your benefits and starting from scratch.There’s another, more flexible way to cash in on today’s high demand for tech: Start a part-time business in your spare time. According to "Freelancing in America: A National Survey of the New Workforce," 14 million Americans engage in a part-time business (also known as moonlighting, freelancing, or running a side hustle). And in tech there is no shortage of part-time projects and contracts on offer, some of which will be in your wheelhouse, while others will provide an opportunity to learn new skills.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here