It's no secret that working IT is stressful, but a new survey from TEKsystems shows that the pressure may be easing for some IT professionals. The 2016 IT Stress and Pride survey from IT talent management and solutions company TEKsystems polled 241 IT workers at all experience levels in April of 2016, and found that just 14 percent of entry-to mid-level IT professionals and 18 percent of senior IT professionals consider the work they are currently doing to be the most stressful of their career.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Though it's showing itself to be a good operating system (in line with Windows XP and Windows 7), sometimes a Windows 10 system will start misbehaving to the point where repair is needed. This often takes the form of worsening performance or stability and can originate from damage to or loss or corruption of Windows system files typically found in the C:\Windows folder hierarchy. When that happens, users would be well advised to break out the following routine to help them set things back to rights.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Here's a Facebook hack straight from the pages of the novel 1984: A way to rewrite the record of the past."Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," went the ruling party's slogan in George Orwell's dystopian novel.Security researchers have found a way to control the past, by altering Facebook's logs of online chats conducted through its website and Messenger App.Such modified logs could be used to control the future, the researchers suggest, by using them to commit fraud, to falsify evidence in legal investigations, or to introduce malware onto a PC or phone.Roman Zaikin of Check Point Software Technologies discovered a flaw in Facebook's chat system that made it possible for an attacker to modify or remove any sent message, photo, file or link in a conversation they were part of.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Demand for security information and event management (SIEM) technology is high, but that doesn’t mean businesses are running these products and services smoothly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
A national LTE network for U.S. public-safety agencies would also give consumers better mobile service if a startup gets to build a futuristic network-sharing system.The company, Rivada Mercury, is one of the players that wants to build the so-called FirstNet LTE network, the government's plan to unify mobile communications for first responders. The federal government is allocating a block of spectrum and about $6.5 billion in funding for the network, which is supposed to start going live next year.Rivada Mercury is a partnership that includes major mobile network vendors, Intel Security and other companies. At the center of this group is Rivada Networks, a startup with a technology called DSA (Dynamic Spectrum Arbitrage).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Why is your USB drive so slow? If your drive is formatted in FAT32 or exFAT (the latter of which can handle larger capacity drives), you have your answer.USB drive vendors tend to format their drives at the factory with FAT32/exFAT because every device that can read USB mass storage can read and write to these well-known formats. That includes, but is not limited to: Windows PCs, cell phones, car radios, Linux, and OS X/iOS devices.
If you want maximum read/write compatibility, format with exFAT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tablets were the big thing a few years ago, purportedly soon to displace PCs. It didn't happen, and tablet sales have been dropping for several years. Except for one kind of tablet: the kind with a detachable keyboard, epitomized by Microsoft's Surface Pro. They're the rising star, both for IT organizations and for computer makers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Get ready to start fielding voice calls in Slack. The company announced Tuesday that all users of its popular chat app will be able to ring their teammates with a couple of clicks. People who access Slack on a Mac or Windows PC using either Google Chrome or the communication service's own app will see a phone icon in the header. Users can click that button and start a voice-only call without making other participants open up a second app. Slack
This phone glyph in the header of a Slack window lets users place a call to one of their teammates.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If there's an overriding trend in the world of enterprise software lately, it's democratization, as tools previously reserved for experts are put in the hands of average users. On Tuesday, Salesforce.com climbed on board with new software, training and support services that aim to help more users -- not just professional developers -- build applications for the Salesforce platform.There aren't enough trained developers to create apps for the business world, the company says, so it wants to help users in all parts of the organization make their own. More than 2.8 million developers have already built some 5.5 million apps based on the company's customer relationship management software, it says, and at its TrailheaDX developer event in San Francisco, it made several announcements to expand that further.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s been a tumultuous past year for Hewlett Packard Enterprise but this week the company is unveiling a series of new offerings intended to solidify its standing in the private and hybrid cloud computing market.Key themes for HPE’s new cloud products are bundling software to make it more easily consumable, packaging that software with optional hardware to create an all-in-one cloud and being able to manage not only new, cloud-native workloads and technologies – such as application containers – but legacy and traditional workloads too.
Bill Hilf, SVP and GM of Helion Cloud at HPETo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you'd like to step up your brushing game, this 20% off deal might be for you. The Oral-B Pro 7000 is a Bluetooth connected electric rechargeable toothbrush. Its best-in-class 3D cleaning technology oscillates, rotates and pulsates to remove up to 100% more plaque than a regular toothbrush, and has 6 different modes (ranging from "daily clean" to "tongue cleaning"). But it doesn't stop there. Bluetooth communication allows the brush to connect with your smartphone to give you real-time feedback on your brushing habits. It communicates as it cleans, so you know you're doing it right every time. An on-board sensor notifies you if you are brushing too hard to prevent harmful over-brushing, and a timer helps you hit the doctor-recommended goal of 2 minutes. The Pro 7000 averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,500 customers on Amazon (70% rate it a full 5 -- read reviews). The regular list price is $149.99, but is currently discounted to just $119.97.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The world, or at least the world of technology, is fixated on buzzwords. Call it laziness, or call it simply a great way for companies to build context for their customers and prospects. Either way, buzzwords aren't going anywhere soon. And right now, "artificial intelligence" is the buzzword en vogue. I get dozens of PR pitches a day that promise to apply AI to dog walking, laundry services and enterprise resource planning.Today's example comes courtesy of Wix, a website development platform. Wix's cloud-based web development platform allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites using online drag and drop tools. So, what place does AI have in Wix's industry? According to Wix, AI is going to help its users eliminate the most significant challenges they face when building websites: time, design and content creation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There are millions upon millions of systems on the internet which offer services that should not be exposed to the public network and Rapid7 has determined which countries are the most exposed and therefore the most hackable.Using Project Sonar, Rapid7 set out to understand the overall internet threat exposure in general and at a country level. In the new research paper, exposure is defined “as offering services that either expose potentially sensitive data over cleartext channels or are widely recognized to be unwise to make available on the internet.”The report noted that “while there are 65,535 possible listening ports for every IP-addressable endpoint on the internet, we are concerned primarily with a sampling of the ‘most popular’ TCP ports on the internet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There are millions upon millions of systems on the internet that offer services that should not be exposed to the public network, and Rapid7 has determined which countries are the most exposed and therefore the most hackable.Using Project Sonar, Rapid7 set out to understand the overall internet threat exposure in general and at a country level. In the new research paper, exposure is defined “as offering services that either expose potentially sensitive data over cleartext channels or are widely recognized to be unwise to make available on the internet.”The report noted: “While there are 65,535 possible listening ports for every IP-addressable endpoint on the internet, we are concerned primarily with a sampling of the ‘most popular’ TCP ports on the internet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The second wave of wireless networking gear based on the 802.11ac standard – collectively, “wave 2” – is the current cutting edge of Wi-Fi technology.
Boasting multi-user MIMO (meaning that it can service multiple client devices using its multiple antennae), wider channels, and a number of other bells and whistles, wave 2 hardware offers more throughput and better handling of multiple connections.
But is it really necessary? Generally, connection speeds are limited by other parts of the infrastructure, not the wireless connection. Cutting-edge gear, obviously, comes at a premium price. If the improvements over 802.11ac wave 1 aren’t crucially important to you, some argue, you might be better off skipping wave 2 and waiting for the next wireless standard – 802.11ax – to make it onto shelves.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One thing I have been very passionate about is making secure network access deployments easier, which includes what we like to call serviceability. Serviceability is all about making a product easier to troubleshoot, easier to deploy and easier to use. Ultimately the goal is always customer success.There is a distinct correlation between visibility and success of any NAC project. If you are blind to what's happening, and if you can't easily get to the information that helps figure out what's wrong, it can be very frustrating and also gives the appearance of a poor deployment.My goal of this post is to highlight a lot of the serviceability items Cisco has put into ISE that you may not be aware of. I'll do my best to not only call out the feature or function that was added, but explain why it matters and what version it was added in. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise on Tuesday stepped up its efforts to develop a brand-new computer architecture by inviting open-source developers to collaborate on the futuristic device it calls "The Machine."Originally announced in 2014, The Machine promises a number of radical innovations, including a core design focus on memory rather than processors. It will also use light instead of electricity to connect memory and processing power efficiently, HPE says.A finished product won't be ready for years still, but HPE wants to get open-source developers involved early in making software for it. Toward that end, it has released four developer tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While there’s talk that investment dollars for security startups are getting harder to find, entrepreneurs still manage to deliver a range of hardware, software and services that protect data, networks and corporate reputations.This roundup of 13 such companies that we’re keeping an eye on runs the gamut from cloud security services to fraud prevention to protecting supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and Internet of Things devices.+ SEE LAST YEAR'S LIST of Security startups to watch +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IP traffic will grow in a massive way as 10 billion new devices come online over the next five years.
Those are just a couple of the amazing facts found in Cisco’s 11th annual Visual Networking Index look at all things in the communications world.
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