Gartner: IT spending to drop due to falling equipment prices

Gartner has updated its forecasts for IT spending this year with a downward projection, but it's not necessarily due to declining sales. It’s because the strengthening U.S. dollar is driving prices down and undercutting previous predictions.Overall spending is expected to increase by 1.1% over 2018, to $3.79 trillion, down from a prediction of 2.8% growth made in January.“Currency headwinds fueled by the strengthening U.S. dollar have caused us to revise our 2019 IT spending forecast down from the previous quarter,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement. “Through the remainder of 2019, the U.S. dollar is expected to trend stronger, while enduring tremendous volatility due to uncertain economic and political environments and trade wars."To read this article in full, please click here

IT spending to drop due to falling equipment prices, Gartner predicts

Gartner has updated its forecasts for IT spending this year with a downward projection, but it's not necessarily due to declining sales. It’s because the strengthening U.S. dollar is driving prices down and undercutting previous predictions.Overall spending is expected to increase by 1.1% over 2018, to $3.79 trillion, down from a prediction of 2.8% growth made in January.“Currency headwinds fueled by the strengthening U.S. dollar have caused us to revise our 2019 IT spending forecast down from the previous quarter,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement. “Through the remainder of 2019, the U.S. dollar is expected to trend stronger, while enduring tremendous volatility due to uncertain economic and political environments and trade wars."To read this article in full, please click here

The Internet of Things: Why ‘Trust By Design’ Matters

Kids holding hands on fields

As we have seen vividly in recent years, inadequate security and privacy protections in the Internet of Things (IoT) can have devastating impacts – on Internet users and core infrastructure. The high profile Mirai botnet distributed denial of service (DDoD) attack in 2016 was a dramatic example of the effects of poor security in IoT devices, and CloudPets connected teddy bears were withdrawn from sale by most retailers after it was revealed that millions of voice recordings between parents and their children were exposed. But the threats from these insecure devices don’t vanish when they are updated or recalled, since there is often a large number of them still in service, and still vulnerable.

Because of this, the Internet Society is particularly focused on improving the security and privacy of consumer IoT. As a rapidly growing area, it is especially vulnerable and has been exploited by malicious actors.

That’s why we’re encouraging manufacturers to adopt Trust by Design.

“Trust by Design” – an umbrella term that includes Privacy by Design and Security by Design – is an essential component of a healthy IoT ecosystem. It has significant implications beyond IoT for the health of the Internet as a whole, and Continue reading

IaC – unit tests with jSNAPy and Ansible

JSNAPY is an open source tool released by Juniper Networks circa 2015 that is the Python version of the Juniper Snapshot Administrator. This tool in the most simplest sense gives us the ability to have unit-tests when working with Junos, much in the same way a developer would write tests against their code. JSNAPy creates snapshots of a device’s operational or configurational state, the content of which depends on tests. JSNAPy then can diff and check these snapshots, which when combined with your test logic, means you can detect when things change or don’t change as per your desire. It’s a simple but effective tool when working with Junos. In fact, if you have another system to take the snapshot, JSNAPy is really an XML snippet checking tool and thus, it can be used for multi-vendored environments!!!

JSNAPy is a great tool for not only dealing with operational changes, but also also for steady state change operations too through the use of both 

pre
and 
post
tests and the logical operators JSNAPy supports. It’s worth mentioning you can call the snaps and tests anything you want. Bob and Alice are both valid examples of a snap name, but the advice Continue reading

No, drone delivery still isn’t ready for prime time

April has a been a big month for drone delivery. First, Alphabet’s Wing Aviation drones got approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), for public deliveries in the country, and this week Wing earned Air Carrier Certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. These two regulatory wins got lot of people got very excited. Finally, the conventional wisdom exulted, drone delivery is actually becoming a reality.To read this article in full, please click here

Heavy Networking 444: Silver Peak And Zscaler Team Up On SD-WAN Security (Sponsored)

On today's Heavy Networking, we explore with sponsor Silver Peak the combination of SD-WAN and security; namely, how Silver Peak has partnered with Zscaler for cloud-based security scanning. We talk with a Silver Peak customer for an on-the-ground perspective, then drill into the tech details of the partnership, including encryption, policy enforcement, and operational impacts.

The post Heavy Networking 444: Silver Peak And Zscaler Team Up On SD-WAN Security (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The first video ever uploaded to YouTube

Today is the anniversary of the first video being uploaded to YouTube.On February 14, 2005, Chad Hurly, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim purchased a domain name that would forever change the way media is disseminated and consumed. That's when the aforementioned individuals got together and purchased the YouTube.com domain.YouTube was famously founded by the trifecta of Hurly, Chen, and Karim, three early employees of PayPal. On May 19, 2005, the first preview of the site was made available to the public. So seeing how today is YouTube's birthday, of sorts, I thought it might be fun to go back and look at the first YouTube video ever uploaded to the site.To read this article in full, please click here

The Internet Society’s African Chapters Join the African Union and Other Partners to Discuss IoT Security, Privacy, and Digital ID in Africa

In collaboration with the Africa Union Commission (AUC), the Africa Telecommunication Union (ATU), and Omidyar Network, from 8-11 April 2019 the Africa Regional Bureau successfully gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 103 participants comprising Internet Society Chapter leaders, African Regional economic bodies, privacy experts, regulators, and data protection agencies to a two-day workshop on IoT Security, Privacy, and Digital ID followed by the 2019 African Chapters Advocacy Meeting.

The first day of the workshop focused on IoT opportunities and security considerations. It explored the IoT landscape in Africa and shared active deployments and chapter-led projects. The day also discussed IoT security and privacy considerations with emphasis on frameworks that could be implemented to ensure the security and safety of IoT devices. A dedicated session on aligning policy and IoT security needs shared the experience of the Senegal multistakeholder IoT security process and motivated member states to initiate a similar process in their countries.

The second day focused on localizing the AUC and Internet Society Personal Data Protection Guidelines. Our partners AUC, Omidyar Network, Mozilla Foundation, and UNECA unpacked issues related to digital identity, personal data protection and privacy in the region. The meeting explored the nature of policies in place to Continue reading

Girls in ICT Day: Attend the Global Marathon in Digital Skills Development

There’s a lack of gender diversity at all levels in the technology sector. This is partly because the number of female students in mathematics, engineering, computer science, and science is disproportionately low around the world. So how do we close this gap?

Support for the education of women and girls in the ICT sector is consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – in particular SDG 5, aimed at achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls through, among other things, information and communication technologies.

The Women’s Special Interest Group (Women SIG) of the Internet Society is committed to promoting the participation of women in the Internet ecosystem, especially considering the importance to increase the participation of girls and adolescents in Information Technology and Communication.

This April 25, International Day of Girls in ICT, promoted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), aims to reduce the digital gender gap and to encourage and motivate girls to participate in technology careers. With the support of the Internet Society Chapters and local civil society organizations, we’re planning to celebrate the day with a global marathon of training in digital skills development. We want to motivate girls and teenagers to study and Continue reading

The Climate and Cloudflare

The Climate and Cloudflare
The Climate and Cloudflare

Power is the precursor to all modern technology. James Watt’s steam engine energized the factory, Edison and Tesla’s inventions powered street lamps, and now both fossil fuels and renewable resources power the trillions of transistors in computers and phones. In the words of anthropologist Leslie White: “Other things being equal, the degree of cultural development varies directly as the amount of energy per capita per year harnessed and put to work.”

Unfortunately, most of the traditional ways to generate power are simply not sustainable. Burning coal or natural gas releases carbon dioxide which directly leads to global warming, and threatens the habitats of global ecosystems, and by extension humans. If we can’t minimize the impact, our world will be dangerously destabilized -- mass extinctions will grow more likely, and mass famines, draughts, migration, and conflict will only be possible to triage rather than avoid.

Is the Internet the primary source of this grave threat? No: all data centers globally accounted for 2-3% of total global power use in recent years, and power consumption isn’t the only contributor to human carbon emissions. Transportation (mostly oil use in cars, trucks, ships, trains, and airplanes) and industrial processing (steel, chemicals, heavy manufacturing, Continue reading

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