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IoT gear will need better security to win a Z-Wave badge

Tighter security will soon be mandatory for IoT devices that use the popular Z-Wave wireless protocol.Starting next April, the Z-Wave Alliance will require all products to include its S2 (Security 2) framework before they can be certified as Z-Wave compliant. S2 is designed to prevent hackers from breaking into IoT devices that are on Z-Wave networks.Home IoT has recently proved to be a dangerous vector for internet-based attacks, such as the one that corralled thousands of IP cameras and other devices into the so-called Mirai botnet that disrupted internet service last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT gear will need better security to win a Z-Wave badge

Tighter security will soon be mandatory for IoT devices that use the popular Z-Wave wireless protocol.Starting next April, the Z-Wave Alliance will require all products to include its S2 (Security 2) framework before they can be certified as Z-Wave compliant. S2 is designed to prevent hackers from breaking into IoT devices that are on Z-Wave networks.Home IoT has recently proved to be a dangerous vector for internet-based attacks, such as the one that corralled thousands of IP cameras and other devices into the so-called Mirai botnet that disrupted internet service last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT gear will need better security to win a Z-Wave badge

Tighter security will soon be mandatory for IoT devices that use the popular Z-Wave wireless protocol.Starting next April, the Z-Wave Alliance will require all products to include its S2 (Security 2) framework before they can be certified as Z-Wave compliant. S2 is designed to prevent hackers from breaking into IoT devices that are on Z-Wave networks.Home IoT has recently proved to be a dangerous vector for internet-based attacks, such as the one that corralled thousands of IP cameras and other devices into the so-called Mirai botnet that disrupted internet service last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SAP offers cash for referrals in new cloud channel program

To sell its cloud services, ERP vendor SAP is crowdsourcing its sales team.SAP began offering its 15,000 software partners a share of revenue from cloud services they helped sell back in August, under a program called Cloud Choice Profit. It was a way to reward them for helping businesses migrate from traditional on-premise systems, where partners could capture a larger share of the revenue.At a sales conference in New York on Thursday, it extended the program to offer any businesses, partner or not, referral fees if leads they provide result in a sale of cloud services, an option SAP calls Cloud Choice Referral.The program covers sales of SAP's ERP Cloud and HCM Cloud, among other services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump remains frighteningly behind in cybersecurity

As we move into 2017, cybersecurity concerns continue to escalate. This past few months, we’ve seen some scary incidents, such as the Oct. 21 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the DNS services at Dyn that used IoT devices like home routers and cameras as a botnet. Oh, and the last few months of the U.S. presidential election featured data breaches of the DNC and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s email and the subsequent posting of this information on WikiLeaks.It's pretty alarming, and it doesn’t appear things will get better anytime soon. This begs the question: What type of cybersecurity response can we expect from President Donald Trump’s administration? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump remains frighteningly behind in cybersecurity

As we move into 2017, cybersecurity concerns continue to escalate. This past few months, we’ve seen some scary incidents, such as the Oct. 21 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the DNS services at Dyn that used IoT devices like home routers and cameras as a botnet. Oh, and the last few months of the U.S. presidential election featured data breaches of the DNC and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s email and the subsequent posting of this information on WikiLeaks.It's pretty alarming, and it doesn’t appear things will get better anytime soon. This begs the question: What type of cybersecurity response can we expect from President Donald Trump’s administration? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chinese smartphone vendors show sales gains as Apple, Samsung sales decline in Q3

Third-quarter smartphone sales showed strength by Chinese vendors but declines of 6% for Apple iPhones and 14% for Samsung smartphones over last year.Samsung’s decline is unsurprising, given the furor over the overheated batteries in its Galaxy Note7s that surfaced in late August, leading to a global recall of millions of the devices.“The decision to withdraw the Galaxy Note7 was correct, but the damage to Samsung’s brand will make it harder for the company to increase smartphone sales in the short term,” said Anshul Gupta, research director for Gartner, which released the smartphone third-quarter sales numbers on Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Republicans kill FCC plan to cap prices for business data lines

A U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to cap, and in some cases cut, prices charged for widely used business data lines is probably dead after Republicans in Congress pressured the agency to drop a scheduled vote.For more than a decade, some U.S. businesses and advocacy groups have been pushing the FCC to regulate prices for middle-mile business broadband connections largely owned by AT&T and Verizon. This so-called duopoly has forced customers to pay billions of dollars in inflated prices, critics say.Supporters of price caps were oh-so-close, with the FCC scheduled to vote on a plan from Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday, but the agency abruptly canceled the vote Wednesday afternoon after pressure from congressional Republicans. The proposal remains under consideration by the FCC but appears to be dead, observers said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Republicans kill FCC plan to cap prices for business data lines

A U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to cap, and in some cases cut, prices charged for widely used business data lines is probably dead after Republicans in Congress pressured the agency to drop a scheduled vote.For more than a decade, some U.S. businesses and advocacy groups have been pushing the FCC to regulate prices for middle-mile business broadband connections largely owned by AT&T and Verizon. This so-called duopoly has forced customers to pay billions of dollars in inflated prices, critics say.Supporters of price caps were oh-so-close, with the FCC scheduled to vote on a plan from Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday, but the agency abruptly canceled the vote Wednesday afternoon after pressure from congressional Republicans. The proposal remains under consideration by the FCC but appears to be dead, observers said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On the ‘Net: The Internet Protocol Journal

The latest IPJ has been published—the first in a while. Ole is just putting the publication back on a sound footing; hopefully we’ll start seeing new editions of this excellent resource on a regular basis. Two good articles this month—

Comprehensive Internet E-Mail Security
William Stallings

At its most fundamental level, the Internet mail architecture consists of a user world in the form of Message User Agents (MUA), and the transfer world, in the form of the Message Handling Service (MHS), which is composed of Message Transfer Agents (MTA). The MHS accepts a message from one user and delivers it to one or more other users, creating a virtual MUA-to-MUA exchange environment. This architecture involves three types of interoperability.

Cloudy-Eyed: Complexity and Reality with Software-Defined Networks
Russ White and Shawn Zandi

Software-Defined Networks (SDN) are promoted as a way to eliminate the complexity of distributed control planes, increase network responsiveness to specific applications and business requirements, and reduce operational and equipment cost. If this description sounds like the classic “too good to be true” situation, that’s because it might just be.

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Hottest Black Friday 2016 deals on Apple iPhones, iPads & more

While Apple itself has yet to reveal any Black Holiday 2016 specials, its retail partners have disclosed dozens of deals on iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches. Mac deals? Not so much.Apple traditionally gives retailers little leeway on iPhone, iPad and Mac promotions, even around Black Friday, but retailers do find ways around these restrictions by bundling phones with gift cards and other goodies.MORE: 50-plus eye-popping Black Friday tech deals(Black Friday watchers such as BFads and Best Black Friday have been a big help in keeping tabs on deals.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco sales tick up, CEO Robbins bullish on data center, security, collaboration

Cisco announced Wednesday that it eked out 1% revenue growth in its fiscal first quarter, compared to the same quarter last year, in what CEO Chuck Robbins described as a “challenging global business environment.” Total revenue for the quarter, which ended October 29, was $12.4 billion. Net income was $2.3 billion, off 4% year over year. Switching, which represents about 30% of the company’s sales, was down 7% in the quarter compared to last year. In an earnings call with financial analysts, CFO Kelly Kramer said the softness was in campus switching, which is two-thirds of the total switching business.CISCO NEWS: Cisco CEO Robbins: Wait til you see what’s in our innovation pipeline | Cisco CEO: Spin-in technologies aren’t dead at Cisco | Cisco/Ericsson: Assessing the mega-deal a year later Asked by analysts if this was a byproduct of macroeconomic trends or a product portfolio issue, Kramer chalked it up to the former, saying the company is confident of its portfolio and expects sales to pick up when spending increases.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco sales tick up, CEO Robbins bullish on data center, security, collaboration

Cisco announced Wednesday that it eked out 1% revenue growth in its fiscal first quarter, compared to the same quarter last year, in what CEO Chuck Robbins described as a “challenging global business environment.” Total revenue for the quarter, which ended October 29, was $12.4 billion. Net income was $2.3 billion, off 4% year over year. Switching, which represents about 30% of the company’s sales, was down 7% in the quarter compared to last year. In an earnings call with financial analysts, CFO Kelly Kramer said the softness was in campus switching, which is two-thirds of the total switching business.CISCO NEWS: Cisco CEO Robbins: Wait til you see what’s in our innovation pipeline | Cisco CEO: Spin-in technologies aren’t dead at Cisco | Cisco/Ericsson: Assessing the mega-deal a year later Asked by analysts if this was a byproduct of macroeconomic trends or a product portfolio issue, Kramer chalked it up to the former, saying the company is confident of its portfolio and expects sales to pick up when spending increases.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Almond 3 Wi-Fi router will bring you joy

If you’re a fan of the little guy, one such company to root for is Securifi, which makes a really cool Wi-Fi router known as the Almond. The first version of this router came out in 2012, featuring a touch-screen display long before some other competitors added screens to their routers.The latest version, Almond 3, has entered the wireless mesh arena, offering three Almond routers in a pack to let owners set up a mesh network in their homes as well as new smart home control options (including Amazon Echo integration). The company recently sent me a three-pack and a bunch of sensors to test out.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Get to Know the Docker Datacenter Networking Updates

The latest release of Docker Datacenter (DDC) on Docker Engine 1.12 brings many new networking features that were designed with service discovery and high availability in mind. As organizations continue their journey towards modernizing legacy apps and microservices architectures, these new features were created to address modern day infrastructure demands. DDC builds on and extends the built-in orchestration capabilities including declarative services, scheduling, networking and security features of Engine 1.12. In addition to these new features, we published a new Reference Architecture to help guide you in designing and implementing this for your unique application requirements.

Docker Datacenter Worker Node Diagram

Among the new features in DDC are:

  • DNS for service discovery
  • Automatic internal service load balancing
  • Cluster-wide transport-layer (L4) load balancing
  • Cluster-wide application-layer (L7) load balancing using the new HTTP Routing Mesh (HRM) experimental feature

 

When creating a microservice architecture where services are often decoupled and communicated using APIs, there is an intrinsic need for many of these services to know how to communicate with each other. If a new service is created, how will it know where to find the other services it needs to communicate with? As a service needs to be scaled, what mechanism can be used for Continue reading

PQ Show 100: Engineers At The Bar Round 2

Todays Priority Queue is a candid conversation among engineers about the tech industry, recorded live in bar. They talk about the state of networking as a discipline, prospects for open networking and disaggregation, visibility, and more. The post PQ Show 100: Engineers At The Bar Round 2 appeared first on Packet Pushers.