NTT Communications Rolls Out New Cloud Services

SD-WAN, security, and monitoring are components of SDx+M.

IDG Contributor Network: The gender gap: How to build a pipeline of women IT leaders

Compared to other corporate functions, women are significantly underrepresented in IT leadership positions. According to CEB data, women currently represent 38 percent of all functional leaders in North America. However, they represent just 28 percent of IT leaders.The potential for negative public scrutiny is a primary concern stemming from this gender gap, but there is another often hidden concern: An IT gender gap can create challenges in effectively delivering on customer services. As IT shifts from serving as builders of internal IT products towards builders of customer-facing digital service experiences, it’s critical to have IT leaders reflect the customer base that they serve.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Weaveworks Makes Microservices Platform More Developer-Friendly

The new features are meant to be attractive to larger customers.

Donald Trump using a new iPhone after calling for Apple boycott

About a year ago, Donald Trump publicly called for a boycott of Apple products following Apple's refusal to help the FBI access data from an iPhone 5c that belonged to one of the San Bernardino terrorists. To be fair, Apple was willing to help, but was unwilling to create a custom version of iOS that would have allowed the FBI to circumvent some of iOS' built-in security features.Apple's refusal to cower to the FBI bothered Trump to such an extent that he even referenced it during a stop on his campaign tour last year."First of all, Apple ought to give the security for that phone," Trump said. "What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such time as they give that security number."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

38% off Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim 2TB Portable External Hard Drive – Deal Post

The Backup Plus Ultra Slim Portable Drive is one of Seagate's thinnest and most eye-catching portable hard drives. Available in stunning gold and platinum colors- style meets storage- and easily slips into your backpack along with your other essentials. At 9.6mm thin, capacity is not sacrificed with 1TB and 2TB options-bring your most important files and head out the door. Back up and manage your favorite files from your computer, tablet and mobile devices using the Seagate Dashboard. Run a one-click backup or schedule an automatic backup plan to help protect your files. Convenient tools for local, mobile, cloud and social media backup at the ready. With high-speed USB 3.0 and 2.0 connectivity, you can depend on seamless plug-and-play functionality. And the USB bus-power eliminates the need for an external power supply, letting you access your files while on the move. The Lyve mobile and desktop app gives you the ability to access a single, consolidated and personalized photo and video library. When you purchase a Backup Plus Ultra Slim Portable Drive, you get 200GB of OneDrive cloud storage for 2 years (US$95 value).   The Backup Plus Portable Drive averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Continue reading

Oracle Eliminates Cloud Taxes by Combining Storage and Cloud

Oracle says it’s the first cloud provider to do this.

2017 5G Special Report Available Now

Download now to learn the latest on the current situation with regard to all things 5G.

IDG Contributor Network: NCAA coaches have a lot in common with data center managers

As April brings the best college basketball teams together for the final leg of March Madness, college basketball is in full swing. With all this attention on the top teams and programs in country, there is more than one parallel between data center managers and NCAA basketball coaches.Their management techniques and job descriptions often align: optimizing lineups to ensure they have the best team on the floor in the final seconds of a big game, or stressing teamwork and cooperation during tight deadlines, outages or other time-sensitive situations. Coaches and data center managers play a similar role to ensure their team (or infrastructure) is ready to perform when it matters most.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: NCAA coaches have a lot in common with data center managers

As April brings the best college basketball teams together for the final leg of March Madness, college basketball is in full swing. With all this attention on the top teams and programs in country, there is more than one parallel between data center managers and NCAA basketball coaches.Their management techniques and job descriptions often align: optimizing lineups to ensure they have the best team on the floor in the final seconds of a big game, or stressing teamwork and cooperation during tight deadlines, outages or other time-sensitive situations. Coaches and data center managers play a similar role to ensure their team (or infrastructure) is ready to perform when it matters most.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FIRST LOOK: The Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone

Halt and (don’t) catch fireImage by SamsungThis April 21, you can lay your hands – safely this time – on Samsung’s latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. They’re both unsurprisingly impressive devices, and Samsung’s going to be hoping that they can restore the company’s fortunes in the wake of the Note 7 debacle and legal troubles at home, and in advance of Apple’s anticipated iPhone 8 or iPhone X release later this year. Check it out.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trojan source code leak poised to spur new online banking attacks

The source code for a new Trojan program that targets banking services has been published online, offering an easy way for unskilled cybercriminals to launch potent malware attacks against users.The Trojan is called Nuclear Bot and first appeared for sale on underground cybercrime forums in early December for $2,500. It can steal and inject information from and into websites opened in Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome and can also open a local proxy or hidden remote desktop service.These are all features commonly seen in banking Trojans, as they're used by attackers to bypass the security checks of online bank websites to perform fraud. For example, the proxy and remote desktop functionality allows hackers to initiate rogue transactions through the victims' browsers after they have been tricked into providing the second authentication factor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trojan source code leak poised to spur new online banking attacks

The source code for a new Trojan program that targets banking services has been published online, offering an easy way for unskilled cybercriminals to launch potent malware attacks against users.The Trojan is called Nuclear Bot and first appeared for sale on underground cybercrime forums in early December for $2,500. It can steal and inject information from and into websites opened in Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome and can also open a local proxy or hidden remote desktop service.These are all features commonly seen in banking Trojans, as they're used by attackers to bypass the security checks of online bank websites to perform fraud. For example, the proxy and remote desktop functionality allows hackers to initiate rogue transactions through the victims' browsers after they have been tricked into providing the second authentication factor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kubernetes networking 101 – Pods

Some time ago I wrote a post entitled ‘Kubernetes networking 101‘.  Looking at the published date I see that I wrote that more than 2 years ago!  That being said – I think it deserves a refresher.  The time around, Im going to split the topic into smaller posts in the hopes that I can more easily maintain them as things change.  In today’s post we’re going to cover how networking works for Kubernetes pods.  So let’s dive right in!

In my last post – I described a means in which you can quickly deploy a small Kubernetes cluster using Ansible.  I’ll be using that environment for all of the examples shown in these posts.  To refresh our memory – let’s take another quick look at the topology…

The lab consists of 5 hosts with ubuntu-1 acting as the Kubernetes master and the remaining nodes acting as Kubernetes minions (often called nodes now but I cant break the habit).  At the end of our last post we had what looked like a working Kubernetes cluster and had deployed our first service and pods to it.  Prior to deploying to the cluster we had to add some routing in the form Continue reading

Microsoft’s Surface Book and Surface Studio will ship in more markets

Microsoft has been cautious about making its Surface product line available worldwide. It tests devices in specific markets, sees how they do, and if the response is good, ships them to those areas.The company appears to have have received a strong response, in particular, to its Surface Studio, Surface Book devices and Surface Dial, which will soon be available in many Asian and European countries.The expanded availability of these devices was announced on the same day Microsoft said it would release Windows 10 Creators Update on April 11.The Surface Book with Performance Base, one of the devices that will be more broadly available, is a high-performance laptop that can also be a tablet. The screen pops out from the keyboard base to be a tablet. In a review, PC World concluded the device was powerful and easy to use, but had some design issues and was heavy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What it takes to become an information assurance analyst

After spending 13 years working in systems administration and network and desktop support, Simeon Holloway had reached a crossroads in his career.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

What it takes to become an information assurance analyst

After spending 13 years working in systems administration and network and desktop support, Simeon Holloway had reached a crossroads in his career.“I had capped out on the knowledge” required for the positions, Holloway says. “Salary-wise, I was capping out, too. I wanted to move in a different direction — something challenging and that was in high demand.” Cybersecurity was at the top of his list. In 2014, he set out on a self-guided journey toward a new career. Today, Holloway is an information assurance analyst for the Georgia Lottery in Atlanta. download What it takes to become an information assurance analyst CSO Online Getting serious about security While still a senior systems administrator for the Centers for Disease Control, Holloway kicked into overdrive, spending his evenings and weekends researching cybersecurity online. “I watched YouTube videos, joined webinars, things like that,” Holloway says. He spent four months studying for and earning his CompTIA Security+ certification, and attended a five-day Certified Ethical Hacker Bootcamp course that helped him get his CEH certification six months later. “I also built my own virtual lab — taking some of the free cyber tools available online, like BackTrack and Kali Linux, and practiced pen testing,” Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: How to test SD-WANs

Whenever I speak with companies starting to research SD-WANs, the question about testing invariably comes up. Like probably any enterprise device, SD-WANs are filled with features. And as with any major WAN acquisition, testing those features prior to purchase is incredibly important. SD-WAN vendors have their own nuances and strengths. You need to be sure those strengths align with your environment.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day As an edge device, there’s very little in terms of packet processing that needs to be tested in an SD-WAN node. But that doesn’t mean SD-WAN node testing isn’t important. Here are some tips for what you can look for when running your proof of concept (POC) from my buddy DC Palter, CEO at network testing simulator company Apposite Technologies, and our experiences here at SD-WAN Experts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: How to test SD-WANs

Whenever I speak with companies starting to research SD-WANs, the question about testing invariably comes up. Like probably any enterprise device, SD-WANs are filled with features. And as with any major WAN acquisition, testing those features prior to purchase is incredibly important. SD-WAN vendors have their own nuances and strengths. You need to be sure those strengths align with your environment.RELATED: SD-WAN: What it is and why you will use it one day As an edge device, there’s very little in terms of packet processing that needs to be tested in an SD-WAN node. But that doesn’t mean SD-WAN node testing isn’t important. Here are some tips for what you can look for when running your proof of concept (POC) from my buddy DC Palter, CEO at network testing simulator company Apposite Technologies, and our experiences here at SD-WAN Experts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM on the state of network security: Abysmal

The state of online security is darn dreadful. At least if you look at the results from the IBM Security’s 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index released today which contains myriad depressing nuggets such as: The number of records compromised grew a historic 566% in 2016 from 600 million to more than 4 billion -- more than the combined total from the two previous years. In one case, a single source leaked more than 1.5 billion records [see Yahoo breach]. In the first three months of 2016, the FBI estimated cybercriminals were paid a reported $209 million via ransomware. This would put criminals on pace to make nearly $1 billion from their use of the malware just last year. In 2016, many significant breaches related to unstructured data such as email archives, business documents, intellectual property and source code were also compromised. The most popular types of malcode we observed in 2016 were Android malware, banking Trojans, ransomware offerings and DDoS-as-a-service vendors. Since DDoS tools are mostly sold as a service and not as malware per se, we will focus here on banking Trojans, Android malware and ransomware. In December 2016, a malware developer with an ongoing banking Trojan Continue reading

IBM on the state of network security: Abysmal

The state of online security is darn dreadful. At least if you look at the results from the IBM Security’s 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index released today which contains myriad depressing nuggets such as: The number of records compromised grew a historic 566% in 2016 from 600 million to more than 4 billion -- more than the combined total from the two previous years. In one case, a single source leaked more than 1.5 billion records [see Yahoo breach]. In the first three months of 2016, the FBI estimated cybercriminals were paid a reported $209 million via ransomware. This would put criminals on pace to make nearly $1 billion from their use of the malware just last year. In 2016, many significant breaches related to unstructured data such as email archives, business documents, intellectual property and source code were also compromised. The most popular types of malcode we observed in 2016 were Android malware, banking Trojans, ransomware offerings and DDoS-as-a-service vendors. Since DDoS tools are mostly sold as a service and not as malware per se, we will focus here on banking Trojans, Android malware and ransomware. In December 2016, a malware developer with an ongoing banking Trojan Continue reading