Malware infections in the United States dropped by 47 percent in the first half of 2016 when compared to the same period last year, according to a new report by cybersecurity software provider Enigma Software.
Enigma analyzed 30 million infected computers and found that while malware and ransomware infections still remained at an all-time high relative to prior years, the overall rate of infections had dropped 47.3 percent compared to the first half of 2015.
+ Also on Network World: 8 ways to fend off spyware, malware and ransomware +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook’s Aquila Unmanned Aircraft research project, which uses solar-powered drones to fill the internet access void in unconnected regions of the world, could be overtaken by the company’s latest development. Facebook announced today that it will apply its open source influence and expertise to a new open-source, mobile, voice and data cellular base station called OpenCellular—a cellular base station in a box. The first implementations are expected to be available this summer.Facebook’s move represents breathtaking potential. Another company, Range Networks, has proven the feasibility of the model. Now, with Facebook’s extensive resources, this feasibility could become a reality, connecting the 4 billion not-yet-internet-connected people and the 10 percent of the world’s population who lack simple cellular voice and SMS connections.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Digital Ocean, an intriguing cloud infrastructure vendor that many may not have heard of, is taking a big step forward today with the introduction of block storage to its platform.Block storage allows users to add extra disk space to virtual machines that can be scaled up and down independently from the state of the VM. DO’s SSD-based Block Storage is priced at $.10 per GB per month, the same price as Amazon EBS, the Elastic Block Storage Service from Amazon Web Services. Digital Ocean
Digital Ocean unveiled a new logo, new CTO and new Block Storage service today To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AlphaGo's uncanny success at the game of Go was taken by many as a death knell for the dominance of the human intellect, but Google researcher David Silver doesn't see it that way. Instead, he sees a world of potential benefits.As one of the lead architects behind Google DeepMind's AlphaGo system, which defeated South Korean Go champion Lee Se-dol 4 games to 1 in March, Silver believes the technology's next role should be to help advance human health.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft today announced that this fall its partners will start selling subscriptions to Windows 10 Enterprise, the edition that targets businesses, for $7 per month per user.Dubbed Windows 10 Enterprise E3 -- the last part of the label a nod to Office 365's nomenclature -- the subscription program will be offered from a select group of resellers already on the Redmond, Wash. company's Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) list.The approved CSP resellers -- Microsoft did not identify which partners would participate -- will sell Windows 10 Enterprise E3 for $7 per user per month, or $84 per user per year.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10
Yusuf Mehdi, an executive in the Windows and Devices Group, briefly mentioned Windows 10 Enterprise E3 in his time on stage Tuesday at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto, and provided a bit more information in a post to a company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple is co-producing a TV show about app design and development, and you might be able to play a starring role.On Tuesday, the production company working with Apple on the show, Propagate, announced an open casting call for people who want to be on "Planet of the Apps."The show is Apple's first foray into TV series production and is described as "a new unscripted series about the world of apps and the developers who create them."Applications are being accepted through the show's website until Aug. 26. The producers will then travel to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and New York to meet with app developers and tech entrepreneurs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pokémon Go, the new augmented reality smartphone game, has players showing up in some strange places looking for virtual cartoon creatures.
Several players have shown up at a sex products store in the U.K., according to some news reports. In New Zealand, players have gone to the headquarters of the Hells Angels biker gang, reports the Guardian.
The game is aimed at players aged 10 and up, according to information on Pokémon Go's Google Play download page. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
System authentication could one day be widely achieved through brainwaves, scientists say. Simply thinking of certain things, such as a person's face, or a rotating displayed cube would be enough to unlock a device.Electro-encephalography (EEC) sensors are behind the technique. That’s where electrical activity in certain parts of the brain is recorded. We know it as the wavy, graphical lines on charts created from wired electrodes placed on the scalp, as seen in hospitals and TV shows. They're used in that environment to diagnose epilepsy, among other things.+ Also on Network World: 5 things you should know about two-factor authentication +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For July, Microsoft released 11 security bulletins, six of which were rated critical due to remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities.CriticalMS16-084 is the cumulative patch for Internet Explorer, fixing a plethora of RCE problems that an attacker could exploit if a victim viewed a maliciously crafted webpage using IE. The security update also addresses spoofing vulnerabilities, security feature bypass and information disclosure flaws.MS16-085 is the monthly cumulative security update for Microsoft’s Edge browser. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow RCE. The patch also resolves security feature bypass issues, information disclosure problems and many memory corruption flaws.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you deal with enterprise systems security, you likely have an idea what your annual expenditure for security and forensic security is. It’s huge. It’s a time and resource suck like few others. The licensing costs will vary, but they’re a considerable fraction of most organizations’ annual IT spend. Ready-made modular costs are platform-dependent. In Windows, it might be a framework from Symantec, Intel Security, or a host of others. Integration into Active Directory isn’t so much difficult as it is tedious. If you start or add Linux, the cost shifts towards any number of frameworks that require at least a moderate amount of labor costs in customization, maintenance and ongoing platform mods.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FIDO (formerly Fast Identity Online) Alliance is out to kill the password.It wouldn’t seem to be a tough sales job. There is little debate among security experts that passwords are a lousy, obsolete form of authentication.The evidence is overwhelming. Most people in spite of exhortations to use long, complicated passwords, to change them at least monthly and to avoid using the same one for multiple sites, don’t.The latest Verizon Data Breach Incident Report (DBIR) found that 63 percent of all data breaches involved the use of stolen, weak or default passwords.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
China already has the world's fastest computer with its homegrown chip, but the country hasn't stopped loading up on technology to make more of its own chips.ARM announced Tuesday it has licensed the ARMv8-A architecture to Huaxintong Semiconductor Technology, a joint venture between China's Guizhou province and a subsidiary of Qualcomm.The Chinese company will make ARM-based chipsets for servers in data centers. The small Guizhou province is considered a big data hub, and the province hosts 2.5 million servers, including some used by China's top telecom companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Driven by the need to partition databases into independent data sets to facilitate concurrent data access, NoSQL databases have been at the forefront of the “share-nothing” resource movement. But if NoSQL’s share-nothing philosophy is correct, then how do you explain the explosive growth and acceptance of Linux containers that share resources on the same host and the clusters and data center operating systems that run over them?On the surface, these two movements appear to be at odds, but a deeper look shows merits for both.+ Also on Network World: Containers: Most developers still don’t understand how to use them +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous over the past decade and a half that we talk about it – and complain about it – like it’s part of the weather. Be honest, average user – the first thing you think when your connection starts acting up is “damn it, what’s wrong with the Wi-Fi now?”
But the degree to which Wi-Fi is likely to be the limiting factor for any given connection is shrinking. Wi-Fi has evolved quickly over the past few years, so much so that it can seem like wireless is outstripping wired networks in terms of raw capability.
+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD:Why one Cisco shop is willing to give Wi-Fi startup Mist a shot +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Azure Stack, Microsoft's system for building private clouds that run the same software it uses in its public cloud, has been delayed until the middle of 2017, the company announced Tuesday.Microsoft has changed its strategy and will provide Azure Stack through integrated systems built by hardware partners, rather than allowing companies to deploy the software on any compatible hardware they choose. Microsoft has been pushing Azure Stack as a differentiator of its cloud platform compared to many of its competitors in the public cloud arena -- especially Amazon. The change came about because the company wants to give businesses prevalidated hardware to simplify deployments of Azure Stack, according to Mike Schutz, the general manager of product marketing for Microsoft's Server and Tools division. At launch, Microsoft will be working with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Dell, and Lenovo. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Forget hoverboards. The Segway miniPRO is a smarter, stronger and safer personal transporter, UL 2272 Certified for the highest standards of electrical and fire safety requirements established by Underwriter Laboratories. The miniPRO has large air-filled tires suitable for almost any terrain. Its innovative knee bar makes steering easy and precise, and its powerful lithium-ion battery will take you up to 14 miles on a single charge at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour. Automatic head and tail-lights produce maximum visibility night or day, personalized from a spectrum of 16 million color variations. It comes with a full-featured app, available for iOS and Android, that lets you personalize your miniPRO, activate anti-theft features, control your miniPRO remotely, and much more. It's available to ship now, and its initial list price of $1,299 has been reduced to $699. See or buy it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It looks like it's safe to go back into the Pokemon Gyms and PokeStops, as Pokemon Go maker Niantic has addressed concerns that it has unfettered access to Google accounts of those who signed up for the popular mobile game via their iOS devices.(Those who have signed up for Pokemon Go via the Pokemon Trainer Club weren't threatened with the security/privacy issue, but it has proven difficult for some to get through the crowded Trainer Club servers.)Niantic, looking to assuage fears that it can read/send from your Gmail account and dip into your Google Docs, has issued the following statement:
Permissions update
We recently discovered that the Pokémon GO account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon GO only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected. Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or Continue reading
iPhones and cable TV have a lot in common: Consumers tend to buy more than they need. iPhones and the Android flagship phones have more features than an individual consumer will use—like cable TV has a lot of channels that an individual consumer won’t watch. Given the choice, consumers might shave their consumption of both and save a few hundred dollars to a thousand dollars a year.Compare the prices of Apple’s entry-level iPhone SE to the Moto G4 Plus. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but an insightful one, nevertheless.
The comparison is in a way apples to oranges. The iPhone SE has Apple’s powerful brand, an NFC chip for payments, and a glass and metal design. The G4 Plus, on the other hand, lacks the NFC chip and is has a mostly plastic exterior design. But the G4 Plus has a larger higher-resolution screen and its storage can be expanded with a microSD cards with as much as 128GB. Depending on the configuration of the Chinese-manufactured devices, the G4 Plus costs $150 to $200 less than the iPhone SE.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Startups are typically at the mercy of venture capitalist funding, but as of the first quarter of 2016, VCs are pulling back on how quickly they hand over that much-needed funding. According to a report from Dow Jones VentureSource, funding for U.S. startups fell 25 percent from the previous quarter -- marking the largest quarterly decline since the dot-com bust in 2000.It's bad news for startups. As these small companies feel the pressure, they're forced to budget cuts, layoffs and buy-outs as a way to stay afloat amid limited funding. Startups will need to get strategic, says Al Stevenson, a principal with WinterWyman Executive Search's Technology practice.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The most recent top 25 list of IT service providers from outsourcing analyst firm HfS Research leads with a couple of the usual suspects, with IBM and Accenture in the No. 1 and 2 spots, with 7.8 percent and 5.1 percent market shares, respectively.[ Related: 10 outsourcing trends to watch in 2016 ]But not far behind are India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), at No. 5, offshore-centric Cognizant in 8th, and as-a-service Amazon Web Services (AWS) already in the No. 12 spot. HfS is calling it a “full-scale assault” on the traditional providers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here