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Category Archives for "Networking"

How to use Ryzen Master, AMD’s powerful new CPU overclocking tool

The long-awaited Ryzen CPUs are finally here and AMD’s shiny new hardware arrived with helpful new software in tow.Following in the footsteps of the WattMan overclocking tool for Radeon graphics cards, the Ryzen Master overclocking tool is aimed at giving you complete control over your new Ryzen chip, allowing you to push your processor to the bleeding edge of its potential performance. Want to crank voltage higher, fiddle with clock speeds, monitor temperatures, or even completely disable some of your chip’s cores? AMD’s overclocking software enables all that and more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google tries to beat AWS at cloud security

Google knows that if enterprises are going to move their critical services to its cloud, then it has to offer something that AWS doesn’t. At Google Cloud Next, the company’s leadership made the case that Google Cloud was the most secure cloud.At the conference this week, Google unveiled tools that would let IT teams provide granular access to applications, better manage encryption keys, and enforce stronger authentication mechanisms for applications running on Google Cloud. While Google is just playing catch-up to Amazon with the Key Management System for GCP, it is stepping into uncharted territory with Data Leak Prevention API by giving administrators tools that go beyond the infrastructure to protect individual applications. Google is tackling the identity access management challenge differently from Amazon, and it will be up to enterprises to decide which approach they prefer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google tries to beat AWS at cloud security

Google knows that if enterprises are going to move their critical services to its cloud, then it has to offer something that AWS doesn’t. At Google Cloud Next, the company’s leadership made the case that Google Cloud was the most secure cloud.At the conference this week, Google unveiled tools that would let IT teams provide granular access to applications, better manage encryption keys, and enforce stronger authentication mechanisms for applications running on Google Cloud. While Google is just playing catch-up to Amazon with the Key Management System for GCP, it is stepping into uncharted territory with Data Leak Prevention API by giving administrators tools that go beyond the infrastructure to protect individual applications. Google is tackling the identity access management challenge differently from Amazon, and it will be up to enterprises to decide which approach they prefer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Newer car tech opens doors to CIA attacks

The revelation through Wikileaks that the CIA has explored hacking vehicle computer control systems should concern consumers, particularly as more and more cars and trucks roll off assembly lines with autonomous features."I think it's a legitimate concern considering all of the computers being added to cars," said Kit Walsh, a staff attorney with the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "There's no reason the CIA or other intelligence agencies or bad actors couldn't use those vulnerabilities to hurt people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Newer car tech opens doors to CIA attacks

The revelation through Wikileaks that the CIA has explored hacking vehicle computer control systems should concern consumers, particularly as more and more cars and trucks roll off assembly lines with autonomous features."I think it's a legitimate concern considering all of the computers being added to cars," said Kit Walsh, a staff attorney with the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "There's no reason the CIA or other intelligence agencies or bad actors couldn't use those vulnerabilities to hurt people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Danes targeted by malware spread through Dropbox

Earlier this week, Danish-speaking users were hit by malware spread through Dropbox, but the company responded quickly to shut down the attack. According to a research report by AppRiver, the attack hit Denmark, Germany, and several surrounding Scandinavian countries on Wednesday morning. The attack was unusual in that it narrowly targeted a specific audience, said Troy Gill, security analyst at AppRiver. "Somehow, they found this language-based list of email addresses," he said. "I'm not sure where they gathered it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Danes targeted by malware spread through Dropbox

Earlier this week, Danish-speaking users were hit by malware spread through Dropbox, but the company responded quickly to shut down the attack. According to a research report by AppRiver, the attack hit Denmark, Germany, and several surrounding Scandinavian countries on Wednesday morning. The attack was unusual in that it narrowly targeted a specific audience, said Troy Gill, security analyst at AppRiver. "Somehow, they found this language-based list of email addresses," he said. "I'm not sure where they gathered it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Protecting the enterprise against mobile threats

Mobile devices have transformed the digital enterprise allowing employees to access the information they need to be most productive from virtually anywhere. Has that convenience come at a cost to enterprise security, though?  According to Forrester's The State of Enterprise Mobile Security: 2016 to 2017, by Chris Sherman, "Employees are going to continue to purchase and use whatever devices and apps they need to serve customers and be highly productive, whether or not these devices are company-sanctioned."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Protecting the enterprise against mobile threats

Mobile devices have transformed the digital enterprise allowing employees to access the information they need to be most productive from virtually anywhere. Has that convenience come at a cost to enterprise security, though?  According to Forrester's The State of Enterprise Mobile Security: 2016 to 2017, by Chris Sherman, "Employees are going to continue to purchase and use whatever devices and apps they need to serve customers and be highly productive, whether or not these devices are company-sanctioned."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WikiLeaks will share CIA hacking details with companies, but can they use it?

WikiLeaks plans to share details about what it says are CIA hacking tools with the tech companies so that software fixes can be developed.But will software companies want it?The information WikiLeaks plans to share comes from 8,700-plus documents it says were stolen from an internal CIA server. If the data is classified -- and it almost certainly is -- possessing it would be a crime.That was underlined on Thursday by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who advised tech vendors to consider the legal consequences of receiving documents from WikiLeaks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WikiLeaks will share CIA hacking details with companies, but can they use it?

WikiLeaks plans to share details about what it says are CIA hacking tools with the tech companies so that software fixes can be developed.But will software companies want it?The information WikiLeaks plans to share comes from 8,700-plus documents it says were stolen from an internal CIA server. If the data is classified -- and it almost certainly is -- possessing it would be a crime.That was underlined on Thursday by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who advised tech vendors to consider the legal consequences of receiving documents from WikiLeaks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It’s official: Disaggregation is here to stay

When Cumulus Networks was first created, disaggregation was completely disruptive. Organizations of all shapes and sizes were running proprietary hardware and software through every single ounce of their data centers. We went into this industry excited to start something new and make networking faster, smarter, scalable and all-around better. We’re thrilled to report that a lot has changed since then.

This week, Arista announced that their operating system, Arista cEOS™, will support virtual machines, containers and third-party merchant silicon-based switches (ya know, like Cumulus Networks has been doing for quite some time now). This seems like a huge jump for Arista, who has been part of the proprietary school of thought from day one, but we’re honestly not surprised. This is an indicator of just how transformative open networking has been for the industry. It’s taking hold, sinking its teeth into tradition and tearing it apart (both literally and figuratively).

Here are a few other recent signifiers that disaggregation is here to stay:

  • Gartner’s recent data showing 30% growth in white-box switching shipments, driven by the flexibility and significant cost reductions network operators are achieving through software operating systems
  • Gartner reporting that by the year 2020, it is expected that over Continue reading

The CIA should help vendors patch the flaws it was exploiting

The CIA exploits exposed this week reveal that the agency does hacking just like criminals do, including buying exploits from black-hat researchers who sell their wares on the dark web.It’s also a demonstration of bad security on the part of the CIA, which apparently entrusted the entire portfolio to both agency employees and contractors, one of whom turned out not to be trustworthy and passed them on to Wikileaks.A criminal investigation into who that was is underway so the CIA is rightfully busy with that, but it should try to find time to help out the vendors whose gear was exploited patch the flaws quickly. Before the leak, these attacks were not widely known. But now that they are, they have little value to the CIA anymore, so the CIA should help shore up the vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The CIA should help vendors patch the flaws it was exploiting

The CIA exploits exposed this week reveal that the agency does hacking just like criminals do, including buying exploits from black-hat researchers who sell their wares on the dark web.It’s also a demonstration of bad security on the part of the CIA, which apparently entrusted the entire portfolio to both agency employees and contractors, one of whom turned out not to be trustworthy and passed them on to Wikileaks.A criminal investigation into who that was is underway so the CIA is rightfully busy with that, but it should try to find time to help out the vendors whose gear was exploited patch the flaws quickly. Before the leak, these attacks were not widely known. But now that they are, they have little value to the CIA anymore, so the CIA should help shore up the vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s PC chief talks about 5G, changes in chip design

Intel surprised many observers when the company hired outsider Venkata Renduchintala to lead the company's PC, Internet of Things, and Systems Architecture groups.With more than a year under his belt, he's spearheading a cultural change inside the company, getting employees to think beyond PCs and talk about technologies like 5G and IoT.There's been a lot of chatter about changes in the company's chip development strategy, with the recent announcement of the 8th Generation Core processors, an unprecedented fourth chip architecture on the 14-nanometer process. The chip industry veteran sat down with the IDG News Service at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to talk about what spurred the move and also his thoughts on 5G.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s PC chief talks about 5G, changes in chip design

Intel surprised many observers when the company hired outsider Venkata Renduchintala to lead the company's PC, Internet of Things, and Systems Architecture groups.With more than a year under his belt, he's spearheading a cultural change inside the company, getting employees to think beyond PCs and talk about technologies like 5G and IoT.There's been a lot of chatter about changes in the company's chip development strategy, with the recent announcement of the 8th Generation Core processors, an unprecedented fourth chip architecture on the 14-nanometer process. The chip industry veteran sat down with the IDG News Service at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to talk about what spurred the move and also his thoughts on 5G.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to achieve security via whitelisting with Docker containers  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  Docker containers have become an important means for organizations to build and run applications in the cloud. There’s a lot of flexibility with containers, as they can be deployed on top of any bare-metal server, virtual machine, or platform-as-as-service (PaaS) environment. Developers have embraced Docker containers on public clouds because they don’t need help from an IT operations team to spin them up.A software container is simply a thin package of an application and the libraries that support the application, making it easy to move a container from one operating system to another. This makes it possible for a developer to build an application and then take all the source code and supporting files and basically create something like a zip file so the container can be deployed just about anywhere. It contains everything the application needs to run, including code, runtime, system tools and system libraries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here