Microsoft vs. Apple: Strategies change but the battle continues

The Microsoft vs. Apple argument is getting old. At this point, it's safe to say there's enough room in the enterprise for both tech giants. Still, it's difficult to ignore when one starts to surpass the other in either enterprise or consumer popularity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

8 great small business productivity and collaboration apps

Small business owners, whether working in a busy office, on the road or from home, can easily get distracted – and overwhelmed. From email (and text) messages bombarding their inboxes and smart phones, to having to stop what they are doing to attend meetings or put out fires, to the temptation to check social media, it can be hard – make that nearly impossible – to stay focused and complete tasks on time.And while many entrepreneurs claim to be excellent multitaskers, research has shown most are not.So what, if anything, can small business owners do to stay focused and on top of things? Following is a list of free or inexpensive tools (listed alphabetically) that can help.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What it takes to become a chief information security officer (CISO)

download Career Tracker: What it takes to be a chief information security officer CSO To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

What it takes to become a chief information security officer (CISO)

download Career Tracker: What it takes to be a chief information security officer CSO Jeff Foltz did not set out to be an information security professional. He arrived at his current role as CISO at Fidelity National Financial by making the most of a series of opportunities and constantly building his skillset. His degree in psychology and philosophy would also prove more useful in his CISO job than one might think.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

10000 percent more expensive SFPs

Cisco genuine SFP for 1000BASE-BX BiDi is 100 times more expensive than a compatible product. Choosing two random sites, Walmart sells Cisco genuine part for $829, Fibrestore sells same component for $7.29.

Proving that Enterprise IT really doesn’t care about price, ROI, or value for money. Thats just management self-justifying their lack of talent and ability to measure risk.

Private Cloud will never compete with public cloud while price distortions like this are commonplace.

Link: 1000BASE-BX SFP 1310nm-TX/1490nm-RX 10km Transceiver | FS.COM – http://www.fs.com/products/29894.html

Link: Cisco 1000BASE-BX10 Downstream SFP Module – 1 x 1000Base-BX – Walmart.com – https://www.walmart.com/ip/Cisco-1000BASE-BX10-Downstream-SFP-Module/40322147

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New guidelines point to an augmented future

Lockheed Martin, Proctor & Gamble and Caterpillar have joined with 62 other organizations to create hardware and software guidelines for using augmented reality (AR) on the manufacturing floor.The guidelines are designed to guide AR technology vendors in developing future products for industrial businesses, both large and small. UI Labs and the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA) announced the guidelines in a document released on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Research: McAfee Labs Threats Report April 2017

Network professionals are the front line in cyber-defence by defining and operating the perimeter. While it is only a first layer of static defense, its well worth understanding the wider threat landscape that you are defending against. Many companies publish regular reports and this one is from McAfee.

McAfee Labs Threats Report – April 2017 – Direct Link

Landing page is https://secure.mcafee.com/us/security-awareness/articles/mcafee-labs-threats-report-mar-2017.aspx

Note: Intel has spun McAfee out to a private VC firm in the last few weeks so its possible that we will see a resurgence of the McAfee brand. I’m doubtful that McAfee can emerge but lets wait and see.

Some points I observed when reading this report:

• McAfee wants to tell you about its cloud-based threat intelligence (which all security vendors have now, table stakes)
• The pitch is pretty much identical to any other cloud threat intelligence.
• The big six security companies have formed the Cyber Threat Alliance ( ….to prevent the startups from competing with them ? ) aka. Check Point, Cisco, Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec
• Big section on Mirai botnet and how it works.
• Good summary of the different network packet attack modes in Mirai. Nicely laid out with Continue reading

It’s time to dump Moore’s Law to advance computing, researcher says

Dumping Moore's Law is perhaps the best thing that could happen to computers, as it'll hasten the move away from an aging computer architecture holding back hardware innovation.That's the view of prominent scientist R. Stanley Williams, a senior fellow in the Hewlett Packard Labs. Williams played a key role in the creation of the memristor by HP in 2008.Moore's Law is an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 that has helped make devices smaller and faster. It predicts that the density of transistors would double every 18 to 24 months, while the cost of making chips goes down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slack apps can now use drop-down menus

Apps that integrate with Slack can now include drop-down menus in the messages that they post to the service, as part of a push to improve the interactivity of third-party integrations.Slack's message menus let apps spawn clickable lists that users can choose from in order to take actions that developers have enabled. For example, using menus would allow users to pick a from a list of customers in a CRM system that integrates with Slack, assuming the developers have built their service to work with the new feature.Developing integrations with the broader universe of enterprise software is key to Slack’s longevity. Deeper integrations with a broad third-party ecosystem can help the service compete against Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts Chat, according to Gartner Research Vice President Mike Gotta.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DNS record will help prevent unauthorized SSL certificates

In a few months, publicly trusted certificate authorities will have to start honoring a special Domain Name System (DNS) record that allows domain owners to specify who is allowed to issue SSL certificates for their domains.The Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS record became a standard in 2013 but didn't have much of a real-world impact because certificate authorities (CAs) were under no obligation to conform to them.The record allows a domain owner to list the CAs that are allowed to issue SSL/TLS certificates for that domain. The reason for this is to limit cases of unauthorized certificate issuance, which can be accidental or intentional, if a CA is compromised or has a rogue employee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DNS record will help prevent unauthorized SSL certificates

In a few months, publicly trusted certificate authorities will have to start honoring a special Domain Name System (DNS) record that allows domain owners to specify who is allowed to issue SSL certificates for their domains.The Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS record became a standard in 2013 but didn't have much of a real-world impact because certificate authorities (CAs) were under no obligation to conform to them.The record allows a domain owner to list the CAs that are allowed to issue SSL/TLS certificates for that domain. The reason for this is to limit cases of unauthorized certificate issuance, which can be accidental or intentional, if a CA is compromised or has a rogue employee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The one thing you need to compete in cloud

New estimates out this week from Synergy Research suggest that in the cloud computing market the big and getting bigger, and that in order to compete in this market, scale is key.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Battle of the clouds: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform + Synergy Research Synergy Research data shows that 68% of the cloud market is served by hyperscale vendors, which means if you don't have scale, it's tough to compete. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 7 steps to avoid getting hooked by phishing scams

High-profile hacking attacks might dominate the headlines, but one of the biggest risks to your security isn’t software vulnerabilities or malware—it’s phishing attacks. There were more than 1.2 million phishing attacks last year alone, up 65 percent over 2015, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).+ Also on Network World: 25% to 30% of users struggle with identifying phishing threats, study says + Phishing attacks usually come in the form of a fake email that appears to be from a legitimate source, such as your bank, employer or a website you use frequently. The idea is to get you to hand over the keys to your accounts by prompting you to type your login details and password into a fake website front. Victims click the link in an email and get taken to a website that looks just like the real thing, but in reality, it has been created to steal information.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 7 steps to avoid getting hooked by phishing scams

High-profile hacking attacks might dominate the headlines, but one of the biggest risks to your security isn’t software vulnerabilities or malware—it’s phishing attacks. There were more than 1.2 million phishing attacks last year alone, up 65 percent over 2015, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).+ Also on Network World: 25% to 30% of users struggle with identifying phishing threats, study says + Phishing attacks usually come in the form of a fake email that appears to be from a legitimate source, such as your bank, employer or a website you use frequently. The idea is to get you to hand over the keys to your accounts by prompting you to type your login details and password into a fake website front. Victims click the link in an email and get taken to a website that looks just like the real thing, but in reality, it has been created to steal information.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Inside the invisible war for the open Internet

But the war for the commanding heights of the internet is far from over. There are many players on this global chess board. Governments. Telecom monopolies. Internet giants like Google and Facebook. NGOs. Startups. Hackers. And — most importantly — you. The war for the open internet is the defining issue of our time. It’s a scramble for control of the very fabric of human communication. And human communication is all that separates us from the utopia that thousands of generations of our ancestors slowly marched us toward — or the Orwellian, Huxleyan, Kafkaesque dystopia that a locked-down internet would make possible. —Free Code Camp

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NFV: The Realization of Virtualization and Avoiding Cloud Turbulence

As NFV hits the road, finance will be the key driver.

Data time: Tracking sleep, tracking my car

Seagate and IDC recently issued a white paper that predicted an explosion of the amount of data that we’ll be dealing with by 2025. As more device makers create Internet of Things devices, these devices will create tons of data for people to analyze.Two devices I recently had a chance to test produce a bunch of data, but in different environments. The HumX system by Verizon tracks and analyzes data from your car, while the Live Sense sleep sensor tracks and monitors your body during sleep. Verizon The HumX by Verizon system includes an OBD reader, Bluetooth speaker (that clips onto a driver's visor) and smartphone app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Instant messaging service Wire open-sources its server code

This is a good time for open-source communication systems.The decentralized, free software, Twitter-esque social network Mastodon seems to be doing rather well. And now Wire, the end-to-end encrypted instant messaging platform, is releasing the source code for its server.The source for the Wire client was already available. But now the company is releasing the server source code, as well—up on GitHub and licensed under the AGPL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

People, process and technology challenges with security operations

These days, it’s tough for any organization to keep up with cybersecurity operations. Why? Well, the bad guys are pretty persistent for starters, launching a blitzkrieg of attacks and new types of exploits all the time. OK, hackers are relentless, but we’ve always know this, and their behavior isn’t likely to change anytime soon. What’s really disturbing, however, is that a lot of problems associated with cybersecurity are based upon our own intransigence. And organizations aren’t struggling with one issue, rather cybersecurity operations challenges tend to be spread across people, processes and technology. When it comes to security operations, it’s kind of a "death by a thousand cuts" situation. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

People, Process, and Technology Challenges with Security Operations

These days, it’s tough for any organization to keep up with cybersecurity operations.  Why?  Well the bad guys are pretty persistent for starters, launching a blitzkrieg of attacks and new types of exploits all the time. Okay, hackers are relentless but we’ve always know this and their behavior isn’t likely to change anytime soon.  What’s really disturbing however is that a lot of problems associated with cybersecurity are based upon our own intransigence.  And organizations aren’t struggling with one issue, rather cybersecurity operations challenges tend to be spread across people, processes and technology.  When it comes to security operations, it’s kind of a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ situation. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here