Cloud Access Security Brokers are increasingly popular because they give enterprise IT shops a centralized way to control access to multiple cloud resources. But are they worth it? We want to find out.Network World is teaming with IDC to field a survey of companies that have implemented or have experience with CASBs and invite you to participate. Your answers are confidential and will be reported in combination with responses from your peers. As way of thanks, we'll send you a PDF of the survey highlights and you will be eligible to enter a sweepstakes for $250.To participate, click on the following URL or paste into your browser: https://response.questback.com/idg/casb2016/To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple depends on the iPhone flywheel effect to draw consumers into its proprietary ecosystem and throw off iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, App Store and iTunes revenues. When that effect doesn’t work, things go south, as we’ve seen in Apple’s first decline in 13 years.The decrease, in fact, marks the beginning of the end of the iPhone 6 product cycle. iPhone 6 growth spiked because of pent-up demand for iPhones with larger screens that Android competitors proved consumers wanted. Former iPhone users that became large-screen Android users returned to Apple, increasing iPhone sales. For iPhone sales to rebound from this current decline, though, the iPhone 7 must have a vital growth-reigniting feature–something really important to consumers that hasn’t been invented by a competitor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare unanimous vote, has approved a bill to strengthen privacy protections for email and other data stored in the cloud.The Email Privacy Act would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other data stored with third parties for longer than six months. The House on Wednesday voted 419-0 to pass the legislation and send it to the Senate.The bill, with 314 cosponsors in the House, would update a 30-year-old law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Some privacy advocates and tech companies have been pushing Congress to update ECPA since 2011.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Who doesn't love a good adapter? The USB3S2SAT3CB USB 3.0 to SATA adapter cable lets you connect a 2.5" SATA hard drive or solid state drive to your computer through an available USB port. This is one of those geeky adapters you're going to want to keep on hand. Swap between hard drives without installing in the enclosure. Clone or back up HDD drives as if they were external. It's likely you'll find many more applications once you have this in your tool box. It currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 2,200 people (read reviews), most of which indicate that this adapter is well made, and simply does what it claims to do. With a regular price of $29.65, the 59% discount gets you down to just $12.26. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The concerns around the cybersecurity of your car are likely magnify in the near term while experts try to figure out what can be done simply to eliminate risks.But while some short-term fixes may develop, forthcoming government auto cybersecurity standards won’t happen until at least 2018. Furthermore, technologies, such as message encryption and authentication, which can be used to secure and verify the legitimacy of communications occurring along in-vehicle networks—cannot be incorporated into existing vehicles. Rather, such technologies must be incorporated during the vehicle design and production process, which according to experts, will take approximately 5 years to complete, according to a report out this week by the Government Accountability Office.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The CBS legal and political drama The Good Wife ends its 7-season run on May 8, and if you’re not a regular viewer of the show it might surprise you to learn how clever the writers are at coming up with plots ripped from the day’s top technology news headlines. Back in 2007 I documented “What ‘The Sopranos’ taught me about technology,” and here’s my rundown of what The Good Wife has taught its audience about tech and its influence on everything from politics to the law to sex (yes, I confess this show is one of my guilty pleasures). For the uninitiated, The Good Wife in the show title is Alicia Florrick, who had put aside her legal career during her husband Peter’s rise in politics, only to get back into it after he ruins their marriage by cheating on her. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel is making it easier to create smarter and more functional gadgets, robots, drones, and wearables using its Edison developer board.The company has made a series of improvements to its latest IoT Developer Kit 3.0, which is used to program functionality into devices.The developer kit adds support for a wider range of sensors and adds connectivity to IBM's Bluemix cloud service. The kit also has improved programming tools and integration with Google's Brillo and Android.Edison has been used as a developer board to prototype and test devices. The new features provide a springboard to make Edison a viable platform for end products. The board could be used in products such as smart helmets, but it is too big for small electronics and some wearables.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the things that stands out in Verizon's 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report is that “63% of confirmed data breaches involve using weak, default or stolen passwords.”The thing is, many of the breaches could have been prevented had a company been using two-factor authentication (2FA).Authors of the Verizon report wrote:
We are realists here, we know that implementation of multi-factor authentication is not easy. We know that a standard username and password combo may very well be enough to protect your fantasy football league. We also know that implementation of stronger authentication mechanisms is a bar raise, not a panacea. Even with all of that, 63% of confirmed data breaches involved leveraging weak/default/stolen passwords. This statistic drives our recommendation that this is a bar worth raising.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Dell XPS 13 9343-2727SLV 13.3" Full HD Signature Edition Laptop is powerful, feature-packed, and currently discounted over $1,600 on Amazon, making this a very good option for the money if you're considering a new machine for home or school. With the current 69% discount you can order it for just $719 via Amazon.It's 13-inch screen display is virtually borderless, and at 1920 x 1080 resolution it delivers twice as many pixels as standard HD (720p). It's CPU is an Intel Core i5-5200U 2.20GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.70 GHz. For memory you're looking at a generous 4GB DDR3L 1600MHz. And for storage, 128GB solid-state. Battery life is listed at up to 15 hours. The body is made from aluminum and carbon fiber, so it weighs in at only 2.6 lb making it super portable as well. See the dramatically discounted Dell XPS 13 on Amazon to learn more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Among the most important buying criteria for BI tools are scalability and performance, usability and UI, ease of development, and mobile/cloud based customization. An effective BI solution should be able to access any data source and provide capabilities for internal and external users from the same platform, as well as provide better integration with other systems (e.g. CRM, ERP).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Apple yesterday said it sold 4 million Macs in the March quarter, a 12% decline from the same period the year before, and a larger contraction than for the personal computer business as a whole.The year-over-year downturn in Mac sales was the second straight down quarter, and excepting a brutal 22% drop at the end of 2012, the largest since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007.Analysts at IDC and Gartner earlier this month pegged the continued contraction of the PC industry at 11.5% and 9.6%, respectively. Both also missed the actual Mac number for the quarter in their forecasts for Apple, overestimating by 11% to 13%: IDC had tapped shipments at 4.5 million, while Gartner said it was 4.6 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cyberwar against ISIS could bring into play tools and tactics that corporate security pros face every day, only this time they will be used as part of a larger objective than criminal profit.The goals of the offensive are to disrupt communications within ISIS and between the group and potential recruits, according to a story in the New York Times.To meet those goals, U.S. Cyber Command could use such means as DDoS and man-in-the-middle attacks, banking Trojans and even ransomware-type attacks that irreversibly encrypt machines (but skip the ransom), experts say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Open source’s march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey released today by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge.Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey – which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents – said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That’s a 5% increase from the previous year’s survey.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: OpenStack users talk benefits, challenges of open source clouds + IBM lines up all-flash storage to help power cognitive computingTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung will start shipping its eight-core Artik 10 board computer next month, a challenger to the Raspberry Pi 3.The Artik 10 was first announced last year and could be a PC replacement if you don't mind building out your own system. It could also spawn the development of smart appliances, drones, robots and other gadgets. Like the Raspberry Pi, its components are crammed onto a small circuit board.The Artik 10 will be available from online retailer Digi-Key starting in May, Samsung officials said.Pricing wasn't immediately available, but the Artik 10 could end up being more expensive than the US$35 Raspberry Pi 3, and even the $99.99 Artik 5, a smaller Samsung board for wearables and small gadgets that started shipping in February.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Creativity is alive and well at Samsung, which is developing several cool devices in its labs, including a home companion robot called Otto.The multi-talented robot can answer questions and double as a part-time security system when needed. It is expected to be demonstrated at the Samsung Developer Conference this week in San Francisco.Functionally, Otto is similar in some ways to Amazon Echo, featuring an interactive speaker that can answer questions, order products and play music. But the robot also includes a "head" that hosts a high-definition camera and a display.You can ask questions like "What is Hillary Clinton's age?" or seek out news or weather information, and Otto will bark out the answers. The robot is a prototype, and Samsung has no plans to sell the device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung and Microsoft have crossed paths in the smartphone and tablet markets, and will now do battle in the cloud. Samsung on Wednesday announced the Artik Cloud service for businesses, which the company hopes will give it a strong position in the emerging Internet of Things market. In IoT, it will take on cloud services like Microsoft's Azure and IBM's Bluemix.Simply put, the Artik Cloud provides the tools needed for companies to securely collect, store and analyze telemetry data collected from a wide range of sensors.The cloud service also provides software tools and connectors to link IoT data to other cloud services or silos of data that companies may have in server installations or outside sources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’re looking for the reason why Apple just experienced a decline in year-over-year iPhone sales, go ahead and blame it on me. Well, me and millions of other people just like me.Formerly faithful upgrades
For the past six years, I have upgraded my iPhone every 24 months, as soon as my carrier contract was up for renewal. I happily went from an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 5 to an iPhone 6 Plus. Each time I upgraded, I was thrilled to get the new model with its bigger screen, faster performance and other cool bells and whistles.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than a few pundits have been ready to draw a sheet over AMD, as the company has steadily lost money and share of both the CPU and GPU market. Well, don’t call it a comeback just yet, but fortune is starting to favor Silicon Valley’s biggest underdog.
AMD just announced a new joint venture with Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., Ltd (THATIC) to build custom system on chips (SoCs) for the Chinese server market. AMD expects the total value of the deal to be approximately $293 million, with $52 million in revenue earned over the course of this year.
This is not a chip or product deal. CEO Lisa Su said this is a technology licensing deal. It’s a combination of x86 technology along with server fabrics, technology AMD probably acquired when it purchased microserver vendor SeaMicro.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Why Microsoft is your best strategic partner for the futureAvanade CEO Adam Warby details how a $2 billion IT services company is capitalizing on new Microsoft cloud and collaboration capabilities to power digital transformation projects.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google wants to take some of the pain out of scheduling work meetings with a new feature the company launched for its Calendar product on Wednesday.
The new "Find a Time" feature in the Google Calendar Android app helps users pick out a time that works for everyone invited to a meeting without requiring them to spend ages going back and forth over email.
Here's how it works: when a user sets up a meeting and adds people to the event, Find a Time will pick out a list of suggested times, along with who will be able to attend.
Those suggestions will be built not only on the current state of an invitee's calendar, but also their historical scheduling trends. Once the organizer has picked a time, Google Calendar will send out invitations to everyone. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here