Review: PocketCHIP—Super cheap Linux terminal that fits in your pocket

Portable, pocket-sized computer. Runs Linux. Has a good battery life. Bonus points for a physical keyboard, and full-size USB port. Double bonus points for being cheap. That’s sort of my ideal “carry with me” device. If I can have a Linux device, with a proper shell that I can work entirely from, I’m a happy camper. Over the past few years I’ve been able to hobble together a few devices to accomplish this Utopian goal—more or less. At one point, I hobbled together a makeshift Raspberry Pi case (with a screen that I powered with an external USB power supply) using a whole lot of electrical tape. That was great except the “case” was just—well—tape. And I couldn’t find a tiny physical keyboard that fit with the size of it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft launches StaffHub to connect deskless workers

Microsoft is taking another step toward serving workers who aren't at computers all day with a new Office 365 service launched Thursday. StaffHub, which is part of the company's enterprise productivity offering, allows managers to set schedules for deskless workers like retail employees and service technicians.The service is designed to let managers set schedules for and distribute company resources to employees through a simple interface. Employees can use the service to swap shifts with one another and chat, too.The new offering is part of Microsoft's push to expand usage of Office 365. While the cloud productivity service has had a strong following among knowledge workers, it has traditionally held less utility for people who aren't editing Word documents and sending emails through Outlook all day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Let’s encrypt with DANE

If you looked at the realm of security, and X.509 certificate-based secure systems, we appear to be in the worst of all worlds: it can be expensive, inherently compromisable and slow to set up and access. So somehow, we’ve managed to achieve “Security: Poor, Slow and Expensive!”. However, this environment is changing, and it may no longer be the case. In this post, I’d like to walk through the process of setting up good, inexpensive and accessible security using several public tools. —APNIC

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Rudy Giuliani to coordinate regular cybersecurity meetings between Trump, tech leaders

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says Donald Trump has tapped him to gather top cybersecurity leaders to meet with the administration regularly to share “all the information available in the private sector” with the goal of improving national cyber defenses “because we’re so far behind.”“The president elect-decided he wanted to bring in on a regular basis the people in the private sector, the corporate leaders in particular and thought leaders in the private sector who are working on security for cyber because we’re so far behind,” Giuliani said on Fox and Friends.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rudy Giuliani to coordinate regular cybersecurity meetings between Trump, tech leaders

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says Donald Trump has tapped him to gather top cybersecurity leaders to meet with the administration regularly to share “all the information available in the private sector” with the goal of improving national cyber defenses “because we’re so far behind.” “The president elect-decided he wanted to bring in on a regular basis the people in the private sector, the corporate leaders in particular and thought leaders in the private sector who are working on security for cyber because we’re so far behind,” Giuliani said on Fox and Friends.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lessons for corporate IT from Geek Squad legal case

The life of the corporate desktop team can turn into a legal nightmare quickly if end users haven’t agreed that it’s OK for techs to search their machines, something that has come to light in a California child pornography case involving Best Buy’s Geek Squad.In that case, Geeks working on a customer laptop found a pornographic picture and turned it over to the FBI, which paid them $500 and prosecuted the owner of the machine.Now the Geeks in question are in hot water because the arrangement with the FBI violates the corporate policies of Best Buy, which runs Geek Squad.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lessons for corporate IT from Geek Squad legal case

The life of the corporate desktop team can turn into a legal nightmare quickly if end users haven’t agreed that it’s OK for techs to search their machines, something that has come to light in a California child pornography case involving Best Buy’s Geek Squad.In that case, Geeks working on a customer laptop found a pornographic picture and turned it over to the FBI, which paid them $500 and prosecuted the owner of the machine.Now the Geeks in question are in hot water because the arrangement with the FBI violates the corporate policies of Best Buy, which runs Geek Squad.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Interview: Understanding Cloud-native Applications Is Key To Better Performance

SDxCentral recently interviewed Mellanox's VP of Software Architecture, Dror Goldenberg, covering topics ranging from infrastructure efficiency, key trends in storage space, and intelligent offload technology. Read the full interview here.

43% off Microsoft Wireless Desktop 900 Keyboard and Mouse Bundle – Deal Alert

The Wireless Desktop 900 keyboard from Microsoft has quiet-touch keys and customizable buttons for access to the Windows features you use most. The full-size ambidextrous mouse provides comfortable, precise navigation. The Wireless Desktop 900 also includes Advanced Encryption Standard to help protect your information by encrypting your keystrokes. Both the keyboard and the mouse have an average battery life of 2-years. The typical list price of $50 has been reduced to $28.28, making this a good deal on Amazon where it averages 4.5 out of 5 stars (read recent reviews) from over 140 reviewers.  See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

43% off Microsoft Wireless Desktop 900 Keyboard and Mouse Bundle – Deal Alert

The Wireless Desktop 900 keyboard from Microsoft has quiet-touch keys and customizable buttons for access to the Windows features you use most. The full-size ambidextrous mouse provides comfortable, precise navigation. The Wireless Desktop 900 also includes Advanced Encryption Standard to help protect your information by encrypting your keystrokes. Both the keyboard and the mouse have an average battery life of 2-years. The typical list price of $50 has been reduced to $28.28, making this a good deal on Amazon where it averages 4.5 out of 5 stars (read recent reviews) from over 140 reviewers.  See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Death to the hybrid WAN

All too often SD-WAN and hybrid WAN are used interchangeably—mistakenly. SD-WANs extend software-defined networking (SDN) technologies to the WAN. As with SDNs, SD-WANs build an “overlay” or a virtual abstraction of the underlying physical network that can then be reconfigured and optimized for the applications traveling across the overlay. It’s this property that allows SD-WANs to give one application a hub-and-spoke WAN configuration, while another application a meshed WAN configuration each with their own IP addressing spaces, traffic policies and more. Hybrid WANs combine a mix of data services to interconnect geographically dispersed locations. A network that combines MPLS and carrier Ethernet services is a hybrid WAN, so too is a WAN that combines 4G and MPLS. When you have some sites connected via MPLS and others via IP VPNs, this too was a hybrid WAN. When you have sites connected to an MPLS backbone with a secondary Internet connection, you also have a hybrid WAN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Death to the hybrid WAN

All too often SD-WAN and hybrid WAN are used interchangeably—mistakenly. SD-WANs extend software-defined networking (SDN) technologies to the WAN. As with SDNs, SD-WANs build an “overlay” or a virtual abstraction of the underlying physical network that can then be reconfigured and optimized for the applications traveling across the overlay. It’s this property that allows SD-WANs to give one application a hub-and-spoke WAN configuration, while another application a meshed WAN configuration each with their own IP addressing spaces, traffic policies and more. Hybrid WANs combine a mix of data services to interconnect geographically dispersed locations. A network that combines MPLS and carrier Ethernet services is a hybrid WAN, so too is a WAN that combines 4G and MPLS. When you have some sites connected via MPLS and others via IP VPNs, this too was a hybrid WAN. When you have sites connected to an MPLS backbone with a secondary Internet connection, you also have a hybrid WAN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rated insecurity: Faux Cat 6 cable sold on Amazon

Many of you are on Wi-Fi, but this is salient to you. Amazon’s enormous sales site is marketing Cat 5 and Cat 6 Ethernet cable with aluminum conductors, as well as “plenum-rated” cable that bears no UL markings and is likely fraudulent. This comes after a run of apparently bogus Apple chargers and cables. Why do you care? Several reasons:  Some of the Ethernet cable sold uses either copper-coated or copper-mixed aluminum. Numerous specs call for the conductors to be solid copper. Why? Copper meets conductivity specs and won’t heat up under load. Organizations using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to power remote Wi-Fi access points (quite common these days) risk having the cable catch fire due to overheating, or just melt and short—especially on long cable runs. Plenum-rated cables are self-extinguishing. This means if you put a nail through one (we hope accidentally), then a jacket surrounding the cable prevents setting something in the surrounding area on fire. If you add the two factors together, cable that heats up and jackets that don’t extinguish a possible flame, then the sprinklers turn on. We hope.  Whilst perusing the listings, I came across numerous enticing examples. Why enticing? Because their cost Continue reading

Rated insecurity: Faux Cat 6 cable sold on Amazon

Many of you are on Wi-Fi, but this is salient to you. Amazon’s enormous sales site is marketing Cat 5 and Cat 6 Ethernet cable with aluminum conductors, as well as “plenum-rated” cable that bears no UL markings and is likely fraudulent. This comes after a run of apparently bogus Apple chargers and cables. Why do you care? Several reasons:  Some of the Ethernet cable sold uses either copper-coated or copper-mixed aluminum. Numerous specs call for the conductors to be solid copper. Why? Copper meets conductivity specs and won’t heat up under load. Organizations using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to power remote Wi-Fi access points (quite common these days) risk having the cable catch fire due to overheating, or just melt and short—especially on long cable runs. Plenum-rated cables are self-extinguishing. This means if you put a nail through one (we hope accidentally), then a jacket surrounding the cable prevents setting something in the surrounding area on fire. If you add the two factors together, cable that heats up and jackets that don’t extinguish a possible flame, then the sprinklers turn on. We hope.  Whilst perusing the listings, I came across numerous enticing examples. Why enticing? Because their cost Continue reading

Rated insecurity: Faux Cat 6 cable sold on Amazon

Many of you are on Wi-Fi, but this is salient to you. Amazon’s enormous sales site is marketing Cat 5 and Cat 6 Ethernet cable with aluminum conductors, as well as “plenum-rated” cable that bears no UL markings and is likely fraudulent. This comes after a run of apparently bogus Apple chargers and cables. Why do you care? Several reasons:  Some of the Ethernet cable sold uses either copper-coated or copper-mixed aluminum. Numerous specs call for the conductors to be solid copper. Why? Copper meets conductivity specs and won’t heat up under load. Organizations using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to power remote Wi-Fi access points (quite common these days) risk having the cable catch fire due to overheating, or just melt and short—especially on long cable runs. Plenum-rated cables are self-extinguishing. This means if you put a nail through one (we hope accidentally), then a jacket surrounding the cable prevents setting something in the surrounding area on fire. If you add the two factors together, cable that heats up and jackets that don’t extinguish a possible flame, then the sprinklers turn on. We hope.  Whilst perusing the listings, I came across numerous enticing examples. Why enticing? Because their cost Continue reading

A techie’s guide for voting on new Monopoly game tokens

Hasbro is giving Monopoly fans a choice of going old school, very old school or new school in an online vote to determine which tokens will come standard with a new version of the game hitting shelves in August.The Monopoly Token Madness Vote, open through Jan. 31, leaves the fate of old faithfuls like the Scottie dog, thimble and wheelbarrow in the hands of voters, who might be tempted by more than 50 new contenders. Monopoly has been around since 1935 and Hasbro says the game is enjoyed by more than 1 billion players around the world.Hasbro has protected itself from voters getting to, uh, creative, by restricting the token choices to a pre-selected pool of designs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Nyotron launches to ‘secure the world.’ Simple, eh?

Nyotron today launched its cybersecurity product in the U.S. Nothing too exciting about that, but the history of the company’s founder might pique your interest.Nir Gaist is the sort of over-achiever that one either worries hugely about or admires greatly (or probably both in equal measure). Nyotron’s CEO and founder, Gaist started programing at the age of six. (Which leads me to ask, what took him so long?) In 2008, he and his brother Ofer Gaist, now COO, started Nyotron as a penetration testing company. Before founding the company, and as a departure from his buddies who were probably playing Candy Crush or something, Nir hacked an Israeli service provider, which was so impressed with his skills it ended up hiring him. From there, he went on to test telephone systems, online banking protocols, ATMs and more for the largest banks in Israel. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Nyotron launches to ‘secure the world.’ Simple, eh?

Nyotron today launched its cybersecurity product in the U.S. Nothing too exciting about that, but the history of the company’s founder might pique your interest.Nir Gaist is the sort of over-achiever that one either worries hugely about or admires greatly (or probably both in equal measure). Nyotron’s CEO and founder, Gaist started programing at the age of six. (Which leads me to ask, what took him so long?) In 2008, he and his brother Ofer Gaist, now COO, started Nyotron as a penetration testing company. Before founding the company, and as a departure from his buddies who were probably playing Candy Crush or something, Nir hacked an Israeli service provider, which was so impressed with his skills it ended up hiring him. From there, he went on to test telephone systems, online banking protocols, ATMs and more for the largest banks in Israel. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

South African bank tells its tale of battling ransom attacks

In November of 2015, First National Bank of South Africa received a ransom email from the Armada Collective, which was quickly followed by a teaser flood attack that the bank proactively mitigated. Sort of a shot across the bow to make sure the bank knew the criminals were serious.Bank officials didn’t flinch. According to a verbatim in Radware’s recently released Global Application & Security survey, the bank detected and mitigated the teaser flood attack before officials discovered the email, which had been sent to an unattended mailbox while the company was closed. With a hybrid DDoS mitigation solution in place, the flood attack had no impact and was immediately diverted to a scrubbing center for cleanup.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

South African bank tells its tale of battling ransom attacks

In November of 2015, First National Bank of South Africa received a ransom email from the Armada Collective, which was quickly followed by a teaser flood attack that the bank proactively mitigated. Sort of a shot across the bow to make sure the bank knew the criminals were serious.Bank officials didn’t flinch. According to a verbatim in Radware’s recently released Global Application & Security survey, the bank detected and mitigated the teaser flood attack before officials discovered the email, which had been sent to an unattended mailbox while the company was closed. With a hybrid DDoS mitigation solution in place, the flood attack had no impact and was immediately diverted to a scrubbing center for cleanup.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here