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Category Archives for "Networking"

Hackers attacked 4 Florida school districts, allegedly hoped to hack voting systems

We’ve heard a lot about Russians attackers attempting to hack the US election, but another hacking group also allegedly wanted to interfere with the election; they attempted to pivot from compromised school districts to state voting systems.The Miami Herald reported that MoRo, a group of hackers based in Morocco, penetrated “at least four Florida school district networks” and purportedly searched for a way “to slip into other sensitive government systems, including state voting systems.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers attacked 4 Florida school districts, allegedly hoped to hack voting systems

We’ve heard a lot about Russians attackers attempting to hack the US election, but another hacking group also allegedly wanted to interfere with the election; they attempted to pivot from compromised school districts to state voting systems.The Miami Herald reported that MoRo, a group of hackers based in Morocco, penetrated “at least four Florida school district networks” and purportedly searched for a way “to slip into other sensitive government systems, including state voting systems.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Serial Pinout for APC

This is just a quick note to remind me how to make serial cables for APC power strips. This cable works between an APC AP8941 and an Opengear terminal server with Cisco-friendly (-X2 in Opengear nomenclature) pinout.


Only pins 3,4 and 6 are populated on the 8P8C end. It probably doesn't matter whether the ground pin (black) lands on pin 4 or 5 because both should be ground on the Opengear end. The yellow wire is unused.

Netcracker 2017 NVF MANO Report Webinar Q&A: Service Automation is the Operational Goal of SDN/NFV

Netcracker NFV MANO Report Webinar Q&A Thanks to all who joined us for the Netcracker 2017 NVF MANO Report Webinar: Service Automation is the Operational Goal of SDN/NFV, where NEC/Netcracker discussed the full scope of functions that are needed to meet the operational goals of SDN/NFV. After the webinar, we took questions from the audience but unfortunately ran out of time before we... Read more →

IT budgets shift away from capital expenses thanks to the cloud

IT organizations are enjoying a slow but steady increase in budgets, but their capital expenses and hiring trends are essentially flat, reflecting the effect of the shift to cloud computing. That’s the takeaway from Computer Economics’ annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study for 2017/2018. The study finds that the greatest effect has been a decrease in the total amount of spending that goes toward the capital budget."Unless you are an IT equipment manufacturer, this is good news," said David Wagner, vice president of research at Computer Economics in a statement. "The cloud transition is far from over, and we're already seeing more efficient IT departments, particularly on a cost-per-user basis, which is at a new low. Business applications and network infrastructure are the top areas of new IT spending, while the data center, for the first time, is at the bottom. We take this as a sign the cloud transformation is continuing in earnest."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT budgets shift away from capital expenses thanks to the cloud

IT organizations are enjoying a slow but steady increase in budgets, but their capital expenses and hiring trends are essentially flat, reflecting the effect of the shift to cloud computing. That’s the takeaway from Computer Economics’ annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study for 2017/2018. The study finds that the greatest effect has been a decrease in the total amount of spending that goes toward the capital budget."Unless you are an IT equipment manufacturer, this is good news," said David Wagner, vice president of research at Computer Economics in a statement. "The cloud transition is far from over, and we're already seeing more efficient IT departments, particularly on a cost-per-user basis, which is at a new low. Business applications and network infrastructure are the top areas of new IT spending, while the data center, for the first time, is at the bottom. We take this as a sign the cloud transformation is continuing in earnest."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Partnerships among many paths to fintech tipping point

Fintech adoption and revenue have grown quickly and consistently enough to inspire some hand-wringing by banks and on their behalf, and to prompt speculation not just about which company will be the next unicorn, but how finance will react, and how the fintech industry as a whole will develop.Media coverage seeking the next dominant power — a fintech version of Amazon — may miss an important trend underlying the fintech industry growth. Fintech companies have tended to succeed through partnership and collaboration, reaching new markets and expanding services by finding mutual benefit with another company.“The fintech industry will only continue to grow, and this will be aided by an influx of collaborations between financial institutions and fintech companies to come,” wrote Alice Chen in a blog post for Due, a digital wallet for payments online.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The First IoT Culling: My Devices are Dying.

 

Cull: to reduce the population of (a wild animal) by selective slaughter

As an early adopter of technology, I sometimes feel like I get to live in the future. Or as William Gibson said “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. There are a lot of benefits to be gained from this, but there are also risks.  One of the biggest risks is 

How long is the product you choose going to be around?

 

I was an early adopter in the first wave of IoT devices, from wearables to home convenience devices, I dipped my toes in the pool early. Most of these platforms were Kickstarter projects and I’ve been generally happy with most of them, at least the ones that were actually delivered. ( That’s a story for another time…).

But in the last six months, the market seems to have decided that there are just too many of these small companies.

The Death Bells are Ringing

In the last year, I’ve noticed that there’s starting to be a trend. Many of the early platforms that I invested in seem to be disappearing. Some have been bought off and killed. Remember the Pebble watches which Continue reading