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Terminology Tuesday Presents: Blockchain

Think of Blockchain as primarily two things.  1) A peer-to-peer technology 2) A way of keeping a public record.

The technological backing of Blockchain is the ability to have many (many) computers host the same information.  Snippets of code (known as blocks) are duplicated and maintained in so many different places rendering fraud impossible.  The fact that each of these blocks is timestamped and unique makes it increasingly challenging to outsmart.  If you’re interested in learning more about the technological specifics there are a number of great resources online including this presentation by Binh Nguyen, IBM’s Blockchain Fabric Chief Architect.

Today, Blockchain is most commonly thought of in connection to Bitcoin as it describes the technology and process that we’ve all come to know as being so secure.  Bitcoin’s past affiliations with illegalities of all sorts have given a bad name to Blockchain but there are many benefits to secure transactions all with a public record as our purchases and currency become increasingly digital.

Want to learn more?  Check out these sources:

 

Terminology Tuesday is a new blog series.  What would you like Continue reading

Three tips for developing a digital strategy

Paul Whimpenny is Senior Officer for Digital Strategy at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), an agency that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Its goal is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. It has more than 194 member states and works in over 130 countries worldwide.Our organization, like many others has been both inspired and slightly terrified at the same time by the emergence of new digital markets. From AirBnB to Spotify, we see how whole industries can be changed almost in the blink of an eye, sometimes triggering a rapid decline of more traditional industries.To read this article in full, please click here

Three tips for developing a digital strategy

Paul Whimpenny is Senior Officer for Digital Strategy at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), an agency that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Its goal is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. It has more than 194 member states and works in over 130 countries worldwide.Our organization, like many others has been both inspired and slightly terrified at the same time by the emergence of new digital markets. From AirBnB to Spotify, we see how whole industries can be changed almost in the blink of an eye, sometimes triggering a rapid decline of more traditional industries.To read this article in full, please click here

Linux for the Industry 4.0 era: New distro for factory automation

NXP Semiconductors, a world leader in secure connectivity solutions, just announced a Linux distribution that is intended to support factory automation. It's called Open Industrial Linux (OpenIL), and it's promising true industrial-grade security based on trusted computing, hardened software, cryptographic operations and end-to-end security.The fact that factory managers and industrial equipment manufacturers are turning to Linux is not surprising considering its operational stability, professional approach to system security, and its obvious low cost of ownership. The importance of the security and reliability of manufacturing security to the well being of any industrial nation is clear from the focus that DHS places on this sector.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 5 ways to shape Ajit Pai’s proposal to actually benefit broadband users via net neutrality

The FCC’s December 14th vote on repealing net neutrality will have far reaching implications for our future. It is important in that case to not only read articles and watch the videos, but to actually read Ajit Pai’s proposal in its entirety. This Harvard grad and former Verizon lawyer chooses words carefully, leaning on legal terminology rather than technical verbiage to produce a conclusion that does not stem from his premise. It is not clear what the intent of this proposal is, however, it clearly does not benefit broadband users.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Making digitalization work

 What is digitalization? According to Gartner, “digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities. It is the process of moving to a digital business.” This includes evolving existing products more quickly, and being more agile in bringing new products to market.At a greater level of detail, digitalization means that the enterprise implements its critical business processes in software. These include: Marketing to prospective customers Engaging with existing customers Managing the relationships with suppliers Managing the entire production to fulfillment process Managing the relationships with partners Managing the relationships with employees and contractors It is also clear from the Gartner research that CEO’s expect digitalization to drive growth in sales and profits and that they expect their technology management teams (IT) and technology leadership teams (the CIO and his staff) to successfully lead and implement the technology initiatives that will deliver these benefits from digitalization.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Making digitalization work

 What is digitalization? According to Gartner, “digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities. It is the process of moving to a digital business.” This includes evolving existing products more quickly, and being more agile in bringing new products to market.At a greater level of detail, digitalization means that the enterprise implements its critical business processes in software. These include: Marketing to prospective customers Engaging with existing customers Managing the relationships with suppliers Managing the entire production to fulfillment process Managing the relationships with partners Managing the relationships with employees and contractors It is also clear from the Gartner research that CEO’s expect digitalization to drive growth in sales and profits and that they expect their technology management teams (IT) and technology leadership teams (the CIO and his staff) to successfully lead and implement the technology initiatives that will deliver these benefits from digitalization.To read this article in full, please click here

Worth Reading: DNS performance metrics

Most of these benchmarks focus on denial-of-service resistance: What is the maximum query load that can be served? This is indeed a metric that is good to know. Less discussed, however, is performance under normal conditions. Every time a nameserver is slow, a user somewhere is waiting. And not only is a user waiting, some government agencies, one of which is the UK’s OFCOM, take a very strong interest in DNS latencies. In addition, in contractual relations, there is frequently the desire to specify guaranteed performance levels. —Bert Hubert @ APNIC

The Migration of Political Internet Shutdowns

In January 2011, what was arguably the first significant disconnection of an entire country from the Internet took place when routes to Egyptian networks disappeared from the Internet’s global routing table, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers. It was followed in short order by nationwide disruptions in Bahrain, Libya, and Syria. These outages took place during what became known as the Arab Spring, highlighting the role that the Internet had come to play in political protest, and heralding the wider use of national Internet shutdowns as a means of control.

“How hard is it to disconnect a country from the Internet, really?”

After these events, and another significant Internet outage in Syria, this question led a blog post published in November 2012 by former Dyn Chief Scientist Jim Cowie that examined the risk of Internet disconnection for countries around the world, based on the number of Internet connections at their international border. “You can think of this, to [a] first approximation,” Cowie wrote, “as the number of phone calls (or legal writs, or infrastructure attacks) that would have to be performed in order to Continue reading

The Future Is Limitless

In September 2017, the Internet Society celebrated its 25th anniversary in Los Angeles. Here are the stories of some who are using the Internet to shape tomorrow. 

“I made my first computer program at 18 and it felt like I had a new superpower.”

To get to the buzzing banquet hall where Akah Harvey N stands, filled with Internet pioneers, visionaries, and trailblazers, requires navigating the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Athletics Hall of Fame. Glass cases featuring old sequined spirit uniforms and uniforms worn by Jackie Robinson (the first athlete to letter in four sports at the university) line the way to the room where people from around the world are seated at tables, excitedly chatting away.

Harvey N is at the front of the room, speaking into the microphone like he belongs there. And that’s because he does. The 25-year-old from Cameroon is in Los Angeles, California to be recognized as one of the Internet Society’s 25 Under 25 – young people who are using the Internet as a force for good. Harvey N and his team of engineers developed Traveler, an app that can predict and detect motor vehicle accidents. Along with providing Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Warning: security vulnerabilities found in SD-WAN appliances

In a rush to capitalize on the SD-WAN market opportunity, some SD-WAN vendors seem to be playing fast and loose with their appliances.At a recent customer site of ours, Nirvik Nandy, CISO of SD-WAN Experts and CEO of Red Lantern, a security and compliance consultancy, and I collaborated on a security analysis of SD-WAN architectures. We conducted penetration testing of several SD-WAN solutions, looking atthe appliances and cloud architectures. Details of how we tested and vendor results are necessarily confidential. However, I can share with you some of our overall findings about appliances – we’ll get to the cloud at a later date.SD-WAN security: what it really means First, some context: SD-WAN vendors speak about their architectures as being secure and that’s true to an extent. All SD-WAN solutions secure traffic in transit. But there’s more to network security than protecting data against eavesdropping and wiretapping, which is why companies deploy next-generation firewall (NGFW), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and more.  SD-WAN and security vendors have been addressing this need, integrating the functionality of one another into solutions that provide networking and security.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Warning: security vulnerabilities found in SD-WAN appliances

In a rush to capitalize on the SD-WAN market opportunity, some SD-WAN vendors seem to be playing fast and loose with their appliances.At a recent customer site of ours, Nirvik Nandy, CISO of SD-WAN Experts and CEO of Red Lantern, a security and compliance consultancy, and I collaborated on a security analysis of SD-WAN architectures. We conducted penetration testing of several SD-WAN solutions, looking atthe appliances and cloud architectures. Details of how we tested and vendor results are necessarily confidential. However, I can share with you some of our overall findings about appliances – we’ll get to the cloud at a later date.SD-WAN security: what it really means First, some context: SD-WAN vendors speak about their architectures as being secure and that’s true to an extent. All SD-WAN solutions secure traffic in transit. But there’s more to network security than protecting data against eavesdropping and wiretapping, which is why companies deploy next-generation firewall (NGFW), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and more.  SD-WAN and security vendors have been addressing this need, integrating the functionality of one another into solutions that provide networking and security.To read this article in full, please click here

HPE offers a SaaS-based tool for hybrid cloud management

While cloud computing holds out the promise of operational efficiency and cost optimization, most big companies will be operating hybrid computing environments for the foreseeable future. As a result, cloud technology for many companies adds yet another layer on top of an already complex computing infrastructure.Seeing an opportunity to help IT departments work with developers and lines of business to optimize their hybrid computing environments, HPE is offering what it calls the first SaaS-based multicloud management application for on-premises and public clouds. Dubbed OneSphere, the software is being unveiled at the company's Discover Conference in Madrid today.To read this article in full, please click here

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