GE rolls out its industrial IoT platform Predix out into separate company

GE has spun off its industrial internet of things platform into a separate company while making other changes including selling off its interest in field-service software  ServiceMax.These moves shake up of the company’s GE Digital division and also include parting ways with the group’s CEO, Bill Ruh.Predix is GE's ingestion and processing platform for industrial operations data, developed with the idea of providing a standardized way for companies to utilize the information coming from their sensor-equipped industrial gear. One business might use the software, which is delivered in a PaaS format, as a way to automate reliability and maintenance for production line equipment, another might use it to track whether a generator is in danger of breaking down.To read this article in full, please click here

Tools: Dark Mode Chrome Extension

“Eye Care” Add dark mode to Chrome via extension. Source seems to check out.  Source Web Site:  Dark Reader – https://darkreader.org/ Also has extension for Firefox and Safari.  Link: Dark Reader – Chrome Web Store – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh/related Side Note: All those years of brightest possible monitors declaiming about number of NITS a screen and now […]

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Notes on Build Hardening

I thought I'd comment on a paper about "build safety" in consumer products, describing how software is built to harden it against hackers trying to exploit bugs.

What is build safety?

Modern languages (Java, C#, Go, Rust, JavaScript, Python, etc.) are inherently "safe", meaning they don't have "buffer-overflows" or related problems.

However, C/C++ is "unsafe", and is the most popular language for building stuff that interacts with the network. In other cases, while the language itself may be safe, it'll use underlying infrastructure ("libraries") written in C/C++. When we are talking about hardening builds, making them safe or security, we are talking about C/C++.

In the last two decades, we've improved both hardware and operating-systems around C/C++ in order to impose safety on it from the outside. We do this with  options when the software is built (compiled and linked), and then when the software is run.

That's what the paper above looks at: how consumer devices are built using these options, and thereby, measuring the security of these devices.

In particular, we are talking about the Linux operating system here and the GNU compiler gcc. Consumer products almost always use Linux these Continue reading

Enhance Security with NSX Cloud and Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure

While virtual desktops have successfully helped address security and operational challenges, IT organizations still have concerns about a growing threat landscape and an expanded security perimeter that they need to protect, especially in public cloud environments. Malware, phishing, and other emerging advanced threats can be used to compromise a virtual desktop to serve as jumping off point for an attacker to move laterally into the rest of the network.  Until now, customers could secure their VMware Horizon deployments in on-premises data centers with VMware NSX. We are happy to announce that NSX can now also secure virtual workloads deployed by VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, providing a more robust security posture in cloud-hosted virtual desktop environments in Microsoft Azure.

It’s been a great year for Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. This service offering allows customers to easily pair their own Microsoft Azure capacity with the intuitive Horizon Cloud control to quickly deliver virtual desktops and apps to end-users in a matter of hours. There is a lot of momentum from customers as they adopt Horizon Cloud to deliver virtual desktops and application from their own Microsoft Azure infrastructure to any device, anywhere.

One of the key features of the Continue reading

Some Random Thoughts From Security Field Day

I’m spending the week in some great company at Security Field Day with awesome people. They’re really making me think about security in some different ways. Between our conversations going to the presentations and the discussions we’re having after hours, I’m starting to see some things that I didn’t notice before.

  • Security is a hard thing to get into because it’s so different everywhere. Where everyone just sees one big security community, it is in fact a large collection of small communities. Thinking that there is just one security community would be much more like thinking enterprise networking, wireless networking, and service provider networking are the same space. They may all deal with packets flying across the wires but they are very different under the hood. Security is a lot of various communities with the name in common.
  • Security isn’t about tools. It’s not about software or hardware or a product you can buy. It’s about thinking differently. It’s about looking at the world through a different lens. How to protect something. How to attack something. How to figure all of that out. That’s not something you learn from a book or a course. It’s a way of adjusting your Continue reading

Reading Between the MLPerf Lines

Every important benchmark needs to start somewhere.

The first round of MLperf results are in and while they might not deliver on what we would have expected in terms of processor diversity and a complete view into scalability and performance, they do shed light on some developments that go beyond sheer hardware when it comes to deep learning training.

Reading Between the MLPerf Lines was written by Nicole Hemsoth at .

VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX-T SDDC – Connectivity, Security, and Port Mirroring Demo

AWS with NSX-T

VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX-T SDDC – Connectivity, Security, and Port Mirroring Demo

 

VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX-T SDDC – Networking and Security

Watch the embedded demo below or view on the NSX YouTube channel here to see several cool NSX-T networking and security capabilities within VMware Cloud on AWS. The demo shows connectivity from VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC to on-prem via AWS Direct Connect Private VIF. Access to native AWS services from VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC is also shown. Additionally, Edge security policies, distributed firewall/micro-segmentation, and port mirroring are demonstrated. Continue reading

What to expect from SD-WANs in 2019

In network circles, there may be no hotter topic right now than software-defined WAN (SD-WAN). Given WAN technology stood still for the better part of three decades, this makes sense, as most companies have a WAN that’s long overdue for a refresh and architectural update — and SD-WANs make this a reality.SD-WANs are definitely moving out of the early-adopter phase and into mainstream adoption. And anytime a technology does this, the market changes. Below are the primary ways SD-WANs will change in 2019.[ Check out: 10 hot SD-WAN startups to watch | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] Less focus on cost savings The initial wave of SD-WANs was sold with the promise of slashing network costs by replacing MPLS with broadband. If a business is willing to ditch all of its MPLS, and that’s a big if, and replace it wholly with broadband, it will save money on transport. However, it will likely need to add some optimization technologies to account for the unpredictability of broadband.To read this article in full, please click here