California’s bad IoT law

California has passed an IoT security bill, awaiting the governor's signature/veto. It’s a typically bad bill based on a superficial understanding of cybersecurity/hacking that will do little improve security, while doing a lot to impose costs and harm innovation.


It’s based on the misconception of adding security features. It’s like dieting, where people insist you should eat more kale, which does little to address the problem you are pigging out on potato chips. The key to dieting is not eating more but eating less. The same is true of cybersecurity, where the point is not to add “security features” but to remove “insecure features”. For IoT devices, that means removing listening ports and cross-site/injection issues in web management. Adding features is typical “magic pill” or “silver bullet” thinking that we spend much of our time in infosec fighting against.

We don’t want arbitrary features like firewall and anti-virus added to these products. It’ll just increase the attack surface making things worse. The one possible exception to this is “patchability”: some IoT devices can’t be patched, and that is a problem. But even here, it’s complicated. Even if IoT devices are patchable in theory there is no guarantee vendors will Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Migrating to the cloud Is a good start, but what you do next is critical

Today, it seems like every business is migrating to the cloud. And it’s true – nearly three in four businesses are using cloud solutions to augment traditional networking practices, with no signs of slowing down. The cloud’s potential has captured the attention of business leaders across nearly every industry, thanks to its promise of speed, scale and control. In fact, nine out of ten companies rely on the cloud to accelerate digital transformation and drive business growth.To read this article in full, please click here

Think Like an Engineer, not a Cheerleader

When you see a chart like this—

—you probably think if I were staking my career on technologies, I would want to jump from the older technology to the new just at the point where that adoption curve starts to really drive upward.

Over at ACM Queue, Peter J. Denning has an article up on just this topic. He argues that if you understand the cost curve and tipping point of any technology, you can predict—with some level of accuracy—the point at which the adoption s-curve is going to begin its exponential growth phase.

Going back many years, I recognize this s-curve. It was used for FDDI, ATM, Banyan Vines, Novell Netware, and just about every new technology that has ever entered the market.

TL;DR
  • There are technology jump points where an entire market will move from one technology to another
  • From a career perspective, it is sometimes wise to jump to a new technology when at the early stages of such a jump
  • However, there are risks invovled, such as hidden costs that prevent the jump from occurring
  • Hence, you need to be cautious and thoughtful when considering jumping to a new technology

 

The problem with this curve, Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: IoT alphabet soup: when should an enterprise use MQTT versus LWM2M?

There is tremendous interest from industrial enterprises to understand the nuances of the two most debated IoT data communications protocols: MQTT and LWM2M. MQTT and LWM2M are protocols that create a standard way to get device data to systems, platforms, applications, and other devices.Let’s talk a little about each protocol and when it’s best used in an enterprise IoT deployment.MQTT and when to use it Message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) is an ISO standard which describes a publish/subscribe (pub/sub) messaging protocol. Nearly all IoT platforms support MQTT communication, making it the de facto standard for device-to-platform IoT communication.To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: Ethernet Adventures: Learning to Thrive in a New World

Ciena Chris Sweetapple, Consultant, Managed Service Providers In our final post in this 3-part series covering one hero’s journey on the road to streamlined enterprise networking operations, Ciena’s Chris Sweetapple describes how Our Hero embraces business Ethernet to shed complexity and simplify operations, creating a network that grows with the business.To read this article in full, please click here

Public Cloud Postcentralization is the Thin Edge of the Wedge into the Enterprise

 

Like an amoeba the public cloud is extending fingerlike projections to the edge in a new kind of architecture that creates a world spanning distributed infrastructure under one centralized management, billing, and security domain.

This issue—the deep nature of centralization—came up as a comment on my article What Do You Believe Now That You Didn't Five Years Ago? Centralized Wins. Decentralized Loses.

Centralization can refer to the locus of computation, but it also refers to a boundary, to a domain of control.

Facebook, Netflix, and Google are all distributed across much of the world, but they are still centralized services because control is centralized. You know this because in a browser, no matter where you are in the world, you navigate to facebook.com, netflix.com, or google.com, you never enter the URL for independent shards, yet all your data and services magically follow you around like a hyperactive puppy. 

That's the world we've come to expect. That's how services built on a cloud work.

In an unexpected development, the public cloud is expanding control out to the edge. As I wrote in Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For July 27th, 2018:

Our Docker Certified Associate Training Series Is Here!

In this course, you’ll learn the technologies behind Docker, while following the requirements for the Docker Certified Associate exam. This Course is taught by Andrew Crouthamel and is 3hours and 17 minutes long.



In this training series, you will learn how Docker works, and how it compares to existing virtualization technologies. You will learn how to install and configure Docker, retrieve and create containers, as well as their required pieces, such as virtual networks, data volumes, and repositories. Lastly, you will learn how to orchestrate numerous dockers in clusters, and create your own container registries.

Interested in watching? You can view this course by logging into your members account. You can also purchase this course for download at ine.com.

The Week in Internet News: ‘Five Eyes’ Demand Access to Encrypted Information

Prying eyes: The so-called Five Eyes – the surveillance alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. – pledged not to weaken encryption, at the same time as the countries are pushing tech companies to give them access to encrypted evidence, notes SearchSecurity. Representatives of the five countries released a new “Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption,” after a recent meeting in Australia. Encryption can help “child sex offenders, terrorists and organized crime groups … frustrate investigations and avoid detection and prosecution,” the statement suggests. More at ZDNet.

AI as public enemy No. 1? Artificial Intelligence is a bigger concern than climate change or terrorism, says the incoming president of the British Science Association, The Telegraph says. Really? AI progress is “happening too fast” without enough scrutiny or regulation, according to physics professor Jim Al-Khalili. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time technology has outpaced regulation.

AI vs. democracy: Meanwhile, AI is transforming social media, with major implications for democracy, worries Clint Watts, a distinguished research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in an opinion piece at the Washington Post. “Over the long term, AI-driven campaigns may well be the undoing Continue reading

EU Copyright Vote: A Critical Juncture for the Open Internet

Back in June, we blogged about the draft EU copyright proposal which is currently making its way through the legislative process in Brussels.  We outlined how under one of the more controversial provisions within the draft Directive, Article 13, certain Internet platforms could be held legally responsible for any copyright content that their users upload and would effectively have to turn to automated filtering solutions to remove infringing content at the point of user upload. Moreover, in order to avoid potential legal liability, it is widely expected that content sharing providers would err on the side of caution and remove excessive amounts of content, resulting in a form of online censorship.

Since that blogpost, the European Parliament Plenary narrowly voted on 5th July to reject the proposal tabled by the Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee and a mandate to negotiate, and now the proposed Directive will undergo a full discussion and rescheduled vote in the next Plenary meeting on 12th September. This was a fantastic outcome, thanks in large part to a groundswell of support from those who value the fundamental right of freedom of expression online. It has presented a window of opportunity to correct the deeply flawed approach to Continue reading

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