Online backup company Backblaze made waves last year when it announced a beta test last year of B2, a new public cloud storage service that would be cheaper than competing offerings from Amazon and Microsoft.
B2 has now exited beta with some new features that may make it more appealing to business users. It now has a service level agreement guaranteeing 99.9 percent uptime for all data stored within it, matching the baseline offerings from Amazon Web Services’ S3 and Microsoft Azure’s Blob Storage service.
In addition, users can now purchase expanded support from Backblaze, which will give them guaranteed rapid responses to support questions and – at the highest level – access to a phone number for around-the-clock support.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Londoners are counting the years until cashless technologies take over. A significant three-quarters of the urban dwellers there think bank notes and coins are on the way out.The people there reckon those traditional instruments will be completely gone in 20 years, according to a survey conducted by London & Partners, a mayor-funded publicity company.The study of 2,000 U.K. consumers ties in with a London mayoral push for the city to become a financial technology (fintech) hub.“Financial technology companies will change the nature of money, shake the foundations of central banking and deliver nothing less than a democratic revolution for all who use financial services,” Mark Carney, The Governor of the Bank of England said, in the London & Partners press release for the survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Reinventing malwareImage by MartialArtsNomad.comJust like evolution from viruses, to botnets and malware families that we’ve seen over the past decade, bad actors continue to find new ways of reinventing old threats. Today, the top trend in modern malware is the proliferation of ransomware. Ransomware has come a long way from the non-encrypting lockscreen FBI scare warnings like Reveton. In 2016, there has been a constant flow of new ransomware families popping up, like Locky, Cerber, Madeba and Maktub, and this is only expected to pick up steam over the summer. Ransomware is very damaging. Nick Bilogorskiy , senior director threat operations at Cyphort, shares seven tips to help fend off ransomware attacks. More tips are provided near the end of the slideshow by Alert Logic. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
8 biggest email pet peevesImage by ThinkstockEmail is both an incredible workplace communication tool and the bane of most knowledge workers' existence. While it can definitely enhance productivity and communication, the written word often has the potential to misconstrue messages, introduce unnecessary stakeholders into the conversation and generally make your work life more stressful. Based on a survey of 2,000 U.S. knowledge workers who use email, corporate intranet provider Igloo Software has compiled a list of the eight biggest email pet peeves.
1. SpamImage by ThinkstockTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Historically the Internet of Things (IoT) has been much more hype than substance. Sure, there have been a few verticals such as oil and gas and mining that have embraced the trend, but those vertical have been active in IoT since it was known as machine to machine (M2M).Now, however, we sit on the precipice of IoT exploding. I’ve seen projections that by 2025, anywhere from 50 billion to 200 billion new devices will be added to the network. Which is right? Doesn’t really matter. The main point is that we’re going to see a lot devices connected over the next 10 years, and businesses need to be ready. + Also on Network World: Experts to IoT makers: Bake in security +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A move in the Senate to provide enhanced surveillance powers to the FBI through the use of National Security Letters met a hurdle Monday after Senator Ron Wyden placed a hold on the 2017 Intelligence Authorization bill over the controversial provisions.Wyden’s hold is a a measure by which a senator or group of senators can prevent a motion from reaching a vote.Tech companies and industry and civil rights groups are opposed to what is seen as a wider push by the Senate to increase the scope of the NSLs, which would allow the government to collect Internet records such as browsing history, email metadata, and location information through administrative orders and without court approval.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fight over LTE networks sharing channels with Wi-Fi appears to be heating up.The Wi-Fi Alliance says that by September there will be a way to test whether an LTE device can get along with Wi-Fi. But Qualcomm, one of the biggest backers of LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed), is demanding those tests immediately.The latest disagreement arose after a workshop held last Wednesday, the latest in a series aimed at crafting a test plan for coexistence between the two technologies. That test plan, which is designed for new products that use LTE in unlicensed bands, will be finished and verified by late September, WFA said.That's at least a month later than some earlier forecasts. Test development has taken a long time because it's an unprecedented project and the tests still need to be validated, WFA marketing vice president Kevin Robinson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A hacker claims to have stolen close to 10 million patient records and is selling them for about US$820,000.Over the weekend, the hacker, called thedarkoverlord, began posting the sale of the records on TheRealDeal, a black market found on the deep Web. (It can be visited through a Tor browser.)The data includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers – all of which could be used to commit identity theft or access the patient’s bank accounts.These records are being sold in four separate batches. The biggest batch includes 9.3 million patient records stolen from a U.S. health insurance provider, and it went up for sale on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft's open source programming language push reached a new milestone Monday, with the company announcing the general availability of .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 1.0.Those two projects are an attempt by Microsoft to make the core elements of its programming language available for use on Linux and OS X, operating systems that previously didn't support it. To reach this milestone, more than 18,000 developers, representing 1,300 companies, contributed to .NET Core.It's all part of Microsoft's push to make .NET into a development platform that developers can use across platforms, whether on the desktop, on servers, or on mobile. To that end, the tech giant earlier this year acquired Xamarin, which makes a set of tools allowing developers to build mobile apps across iOS and Android using .NET, too.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are common in battery-powered sensor devices, but Qualcomm wants to also make LTE a common feature in such devices.Qualcomm makes some of the most advanced modems for mobile devices, but the company is now tuning them for Internet of Things devices by lowering power consumption and improving performance.The latest MDM9207-1 modem chipset, announced last year, is now available from the chip-maker. It is part of the MDM9x07 chipset family, for which Qualcomm has secured 100 design wins, although some of those products may not ultimately ship. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise can't seem to settle down. Nine months after it separated from HP's PC and printer group and a month after it said it would spin off its enterprise services division, CEO Meg Whitman has announced yet more changes that will see CTO Martin Fink leave at the end of the year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There are two main reasons why you might want to reset Windows 10 and remove everything. One is if a program or setting really screwed up your PC—like that never happens—and you just need to start over. Another is if you plan to sell or recycle your PC, and you want to make sure the next person doesn’t get any of your stuff. Luckily, Windows 10 lets you start over with a few clicks.I’m going to show you how Windows 10 lets you reset your PC and remove everything—and I mean everything: all of your files, software, and settings.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10
Just make sure you really want to burn the place down before you do it, because this is it. If you have any doubts, back up your PC or important files before you do this, or choose the milder reset option, which resets just Windows and keeps everything else.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Red Hat on Monday rolled out a major new release to its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform that's designed to offer better support for containers and cloud-native applications.It's been 10 years since Red Hat acquired JBoss, but much has changed in the technology world since then. Now, JBoss EAP 7 is optimized for cloud environments, Red Hat says. The platform combines Java EE 7 APIs (application programming interfaces) with key DevOps tools including Red Hat’s JBoss Developer Studio integrated development environment (IDE). Also included are Jenkins, Arquillian, Maven, and support for several Web and JavaScript frameworks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The tech press has documented for months the continued pushy and obnoxious behavior on the part of Microsoft to get people to upgrade their PC to Windows 10, including forced upgrades. Well, now the other shoe has dropped, and Microsoft may regret its decision. The Seattle Times reports that Teri Goldstein of Sausalito, California, sued Microsoft after an unwanted Windows 10 upgrade left her system unusable for days and prone to crashing. Other times, her computer, which she needed to run her travel agency, slowed to a crawl.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to be able to predict what form malware will morph to so it can plan how to block it when it becomes reality.DHS has granted Charles River Analytics in Cambridge, Mass., $500,000 to develop the technology, known as Predictive Malware Defense (PMD).Charles River will use machine learning and statistical models to predict attacks based on new malware as well as create defenses ahead of time. The models will look at features of families of malware and predict how they might evolve.Once it’s developed, PMD will be turned over to admins in private and public organizations – particularly financial organizations - so they can anticipate attacks before they happen, DHS says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has become the latest tech executive to have a social media account hacked, and the group responsible says more targets will follow.On Sunday, a group of hackers calling themselves OurMine briefly took over Pichai’s account on Quora, a question-and-answer site."We are just testing your security,” the hackers wrote, with the same message auto-posted via Quora to Pichai’s Twitter account. On Monday, the posts had been deleted.OurMine is the same group that hacked the social media accounts of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this month, and they've claimed other victims too, including the CEO of Spotify and a prominent Amazon executive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The UK referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) caught many within and outside the UK off guard.CIOs and IT leaders, in particular, may wonder how the pending changes in the financial and political landscapes will impact their organisations, vendors, and technology purchases over the coming months.Gartner research vice president, John-David Lovelock, noted that business discretionary IT investments, which struggled during the run up to the vote, will suffer in the short term and the effects will spread further than Western Europe.“In the wake of the UK’s exit from the EU, some new larger, long-term strategic projects will now be put on pause and likely not restarted until 2017 when the outlook with the UK outside the EU becomes clearer,” he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Healthcare is now the most frequently attacked industry, beating out financial services, retail and other industries, according to a new report by TrapX. As a result, healthcare organizations are having trouble keeping pace with the number and sophistication of attacks they have to deal with.The report, entitled MEDJACK 2, details the sheer scale of attacks that hospitals and other medical establishments suffer on a regular basis. It is a follow-up to a similar report TrapX released last year.+ Also on Network World: Healthcare needs more IT security pros – stat +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Food safety was thrust into the public consciousness in 2015 after salmonella and E.coli outbreaks sickened people at Chipotle. Determined to avoid such public relations disasters, quick-service restaurants are taking extra precautions to keep customers healthy and ensure that their products comply with health inspection standards. Chick-fil-A, whose commercials feature chicken-shilling cattle, is using wireless sensors to monitor the temperature of walk-in coolers and freezers. Yes -- the Internet of Chicken has arrived. Chick-fil-A franchisee Matthew Michaels, who equipped his two Texas stores with the sensors 18 months ago, notes that several prominent incidents have underscored the importance of adhering to food safety standards, both in stores and in the supply chain. "There are stories about food safety gone wrong all over the place,” Michaels tells CIO.com. "You've got to be really careful with that stuff.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft today will release the 1.0 versions of its open source .Net Core and ASP. Net Core technologies, which open up its .Net software development platform and extend it to Linux and popular mobile platforms. The company also is working on a protocol that enables multiple language support in any tool..Net Core provides a modular subset of the company's .Net Framework programming model and is intended to to promote code reuse and code-sharing. ASP.Net Core is for building cloud-based, internet-connected applications including web apps. These technologies have transformed .Net into a platform for building applications for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, said Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Data Group.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here