Software audits: How high tech plays hardball

When the software audit request came from Adobe two years ago, Margaret Smith (not her real name) thought it was business as usual. As a governance risk and compliance specialist for a Fortune 500 company, she was used to getting audited several times each year.“Usually these things start out friendly,” she says. “We get a request for an audit, and there’s some negotiation involved. They want do an on-site audit or request specific employee IDs, and we say no. But this time they came out swinging. Within two weeks they were threatening to bring in the lawyers.”[ To build or to buy IT applications? InfoWorld sheds light on this eternal questions. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ] Smith’s firm, a maker of consumer goods, had licensed at least 55 different Adobe products in offices around the globe. Now the software maker was accusing her firm of using far more software than it had a right to.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Feds seek public input on the future of IoT

The U.S. government believes the Internet of Things (IoT) has enormous economic potential across all industries. Its machine-to-machine technologies can reduce automobile-related injuries, usher in an era of precise weather forecasting and automate all types of processes.But what impact will IoT have on jobs? Will it create more than it destroys? And what happens to all the data devices generate?With those kinds of issues at stake, the U.S. Department of Commerce is now seeking public comment on the "benefits, challenges and potential roles for the government in fostering the advancement of the Internet of Things." There are 28 questions, and multiple sub-parts to some questions. It's a long list.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 tech nightmares keeping IT leaders up at night

Being a CIO isn't an easy job, not when hackers are coming at you from all sides trying to get their hands on that sweet, sweet data. It’s especially nerve-racking because one breach can turn a company from a respectable business to one that looks like it protects its information with a layer of Swiss cheese. Here are four things keeping CIOs up at night – and ways to help them fall back asleep again – or at least into a light doze instead of staring at the ceiling waiting for a hacker to break through.1. Dude, where's my data? Andrew Hay, CISO for DataGravity, says one concern might seem a simple one: "the lack of data awareness that organizations have in terms of where information is stored and what type of sensitive information is accessible by people who shouldn't have it," he says. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Protecting A Cisco Router From Ping Flooding

NFV And SDN: Enabling Agility

Review: Hot cloud-based tools for Wi-Fi hotspot management

Wi-Fi hardware vendors are coming out with new cloud-based solutions, primarily to ease the remote management of wireless networks. However, they typically only support their own hardware. Here we take a look at three cloud-based solutions that support wireless routers and access points from multiple vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

New products of the week 4.25.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Array Networks APV1600Key features: The APV1600, a fifth-generation application delivery controller (ADC) appliance runs Array’s Version 8.6 software to achieve industry-leading Layer-4 (3.7Gbps), Layer-7 (3Gbps) and SSL (2100TPS) benchmarks for throughput and connection speed. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 4.25.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Array Networks APV1600Key features: The APV1600, a fifth-generation application delivery controller (ADC) appliance runs Array’s Version 8.6 software to achieve industry-leading Layer-4 (3.7Gbps), Layer-7 (3Gbps) and SSL (2100TPS) benchmarks for throughput and connection speed. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenStack by the numbers: Who’s using open source clouds and for what?

The latest bi-annual survey data of OpenStack users shows a continuing march of the open source cloud software into mainstream of enterprises, but also the project’s continued challenges related to ease of deployment and management.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Cool products at OpenStack Austin Summit +One thing that’s clear is that interest in OpenStack continues to grow rapidly. The project is made up of 20 million lines of code; more than 585 companies have supported OpenStack in some way, and the OpenStack Foundation counts almost 40,000 people actively engaged in the community.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenStack’s director: Why open source cloud should be the core of your data center

Six years ago over two days engineers from Rackspace and NASA met in Austin, Texas, for the very first OpenStack Summit. Six years later, OpenStack is returning to its roots.As it does so, OpenStack has cemented itself as the dominant open source IaaS platform. But at the same time, more proprietary offerings from vendors like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and VMware still seem to reign in the broader market.+More on Network World: 15 most powerful OpenStack companies | OpenStack by the numbers: Who’s using open source clouds and for what? +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Scalability of OpenFlow Control Plane Network

This article was initially sent to my SDN mailing list. To register for SDN tips, updates, and special offers, click here.

I got an interesting question from one of my readers:

If every device talking to a centralized control plane uses an out-of-band channel to talk to the OpenFlow controller, isn’t this a scaling concern?

A year or so ago I would have said NO (arguing that the $0.02 CPU found in most networking devices is too slow to overload a controller or reasonably-fast control-plane network).

Long Distance vMotion Is A Dumpster Fire

In this screencast, I go on a rant about why long-distance vMotion is a dumpster fire. Seriously, don’t do it.

iPhone 7 Rumor Rollup: Analyst buzzkill; all glass, all the time; cool iOS 10 concept video

A reminder not to put Barclays analyst Mark Moskowitz on your A List if you plan to have an iPhone 7 party – though you might want to put him at the top of the list for the iPhone 8 in 2017.The market watcher has issued a note to investors this week, according to Fortune, in which he says the iPhone 7 smartphone that Apple will reportedly launch later this year will be devoid of “any must-have form factor changes” compared to the iPhone 6s.MORE: Best iPhone 7 Design Concepts of 2016To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IPSpace

I will be presenting as part of a new online class at IPSpace.net. Check here for details.

The post IPSpace appeared first on 'net work.

Personal info of all 94.3 million Mexican voters publicly exposed on Amazon

On April 14, MacKeeper security researcher Chris Vickery discovered another misconfigured MongoDB, but this time the database contained the full names, addresses, birth dates and voter registration numbers for every Mexican voter. The database containing personal information on 93.4 million Mexican voters was hosted on an Amazon cloud server with “no password or any authentication of any sort” to protect it. And it has been publicly accessible since September 2015, according to Salted Hash’s Steve Ragan; although it is unknown how many people besides Vickery accessed the records.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Personal info of all 94.3 million Mexican voters publicly exposed on Amazon

On April 14, MacKeeper security researcher Chris Vickery discovered another misconfigured MongoDB, but this time the database contained the full names, addresses, birth dates and voter registration numbers for every Mexican voter. The database containing personal information on 93.4 million Mexican voters was hosted on an Amazon cloud server with “no password or any authentication of any sort” to protect it. And it has been publicly accessible since September 2015, according to Salted Hash’s Steve Ragan; although it is unknown how many people besides Vickery accessed the records.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Analyzing real WordPress hacking attempts

In my last few posts I’ve pondered the issue of how insecure WordPress installations have become. Here’s an interesting thing to try if you run a Wordpress site; install the 404 to 301 plugin and in its settings check the “Email notifications” option and enter an email address in the “Email address” field. Now, whenever a nonexistent URL is requested, you’ll get notified and, at least for me, it’s been pretty interesting to see how hackers attempt to enter my WordPress installations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Analyzing real WordPress hacking attempts

In my last few posts I’ve pondered the issue of how insecure WordPress installations have become. Here’s an interesting thing to try if you run a Wordpress site; install the 404 to 301 plugin and in its settings check the “Email notifications” option and enter an email address in the “Email address” field. Now, whenever a nonexistent URL is requested, you’ll get notified and, at least for me, it’s been pretty interesting to see how hackers attempt to enter my WordPress installations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Question: How did hackers steal $81 million? Answer: Pretty easily.

One of the peculiar things about computer security is how much the topic is written about and discussed (a huge amount) compared to how much is actually done (always less than you think). But what’s really peculiar is that enterprises, which you’d think would have better security than organizations in, say, the SMB space, often have serious security deficiencies. Case in point: The Bangladesh Central Bank.In February this year, hackers managed to get into the Bangladesh Central Bank’s network and acquired the bank’s SWIFT credentials, codes that authorize interbank transfers. The hackers then used the credentials four times to transfer some $81 million to various accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka via the New York Federal Reserve but on the fifth attempt, the hackers misspelled the receiving account’s name (they spelled “Shalika Foundation” as Shalika “Fandation”)(du’oh). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Question: How did hackers steal $81 million? Answer: Pretty easily.

One of the peculiar things about computer security is how much the topic is written about and discussed (a huge amount) compared to how much is actually done (always less than you think). But what’s really peculiar is that enterprises, which you’d think would have better security than organizations in, say, the SMB space, often have serious security deficiencies. Case in point: The Bangladesh Central Bank.In February this year, hackers managed to get into the Bangladesh Central Bank’s network and acquired the bank’s SWIFT credentials, codes that authorize interbank transfers. The hackers then used the credentials four times to transfer some $81 million to various accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka via the New York Federal Reserve but on the fifth attempt, the hackers misspelled the receiving account’s name (they spelled “Shalika Foundation” as Shalika “Fandation”)(du’oh). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here