Most insurance carriers not ready to use IoT data

You might think that the Internet of Things (IoT) was custom made for the insurance industry. After all, what could be more useful to all those actuarial tables than detailed, real-world information from billions of IoT sensors in a wide variety of devices? In fact, we’re already seeing the beginnings of insurance uses of IoT, including auto insurance companies that give discounts for drivers willing to have their vehicles—and their driving habits—tracked.But according to a new IoT and the State of the Insurance Industry Study from LexisNexis, the message hasn’t penetrated very far into the famously conservative field. Top-line results from the survey reveal a clear disconnect between what insurance companies think about IoT and what they’re actually doing about it.To read this article in full, please click here

Infoblox Integration in Ansible 2.5

The Ansible 2.5 open source project release includes the following Infoblox Network Identity Operating System (NIOS) enablement:

  • Five modules
  • A lookup plugin (for querying Infoblox NIOS objects)
  • A dynamic inventory script

For network professionals, this means that existing networking Ansible Playbooks can utilize existing Infoblox infrastructure for IP Address Management (IPAM), using Infoblox for tracking inventory and more. For more information on Infoblox terminology, documentation and examples, refer to the Infoblox website

Let’s elaborate on each of these Ansible 2.5 additions. All of the following examples (and many more) are provided in the network automation community project, under the infoblox_ansible Github repo. The integrations for Ansible require that the control node (where Ansible is being executed from) have the infoblox-client installed. It can be found here and installed with pip issuing the pip install infoblox-client command.

Ansible Infoblox Modules

There are five new modules included with Ansible 2.5. They can be currently found in the development branch of the documentation:

Here is an example playbook on configuring a IPv4 network using the Continue reading

Google And Its Hyperscale Peers Add Power To The Server Fleet

Six years ago, when Google decided to get involved with the OpenPower consortium being put together by IBM as its third attempt to bolster the use of Power processors in the datacenter, the online services giant had three applications that had over 1 billion users: Gmail, YouTube, and the eponymous search engine that has become the verb for search.

Now, after years of working with Rackspace Hosting on a Power9 server design, Google is putting systems based on IBM’s Power9 processor into production, and not just because it wants pricing leverage with Intel and other chip suppliers. Google now has

Google And Its Hyperscale Peers Add Power To The Server Fleet was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

The Week in Internet News: Good Time to Be in IoT Security

Good time to be in IoT security: Spending on Internet of Things security products and services will rise to $1.5 billion in 2018, up 28 percent from 2017, estimates Gartner. IoT security spending will skyrocket to $3 billion a year in 2021, according to a story in DarkReading.

Facebook breached? It was hard to avoid the recent news involving Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm used by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The company acquired data on about 50 million Facebook users – getting the data from a researcher – in an effort to build voting profiles for those people. Facebook has called the unauthorized use of its user data a “breach of trust,” while some critics have suggested it’s a plain old data breach, according to a story on Time.com. Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told CNN he’s happy to comply with congressional requests to testify “if it’s the right thing to do.”

Blockchain takes over the world: Google is planning to roll out a Blockchain feature for its cloud-computing service, The Verge reports. The company could potentially license its Blockchain service for other firms to run on their servers. Meanwhile, Chinese telecom and networking vendor Huawei Continue reading

Working with calendars on Linux

Linux systems can provide more help with your schedule than just reminding you what day today is. You have a lot of options for displaying calendars — some that are likely to prove helpful and others that just might boggle your mind.date To begin, you probably know that you can show the current date with the date command.$ date Mon Mar 26 08:01:41 EDT 2018 cal and ncal You can show the entire month with the cal command. With no arguments, cal displays the current month and, by default, highlights the current day by reversing the foreground and background colors.$ cal March 2018 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Also read: 5 top Linux server distros for enterprises | Sign up: Receive daily Network World updates If you want to display the current month in a “sideways” format, you can use the ncal command.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Are you ready for the GDPR in May?

[Note: The author of this article is not a lawyer and this article should not be considered legal advice. Please consult a privacy specialist.]The basic news The GDPR covers all personal data your company stores on data subjects in the EU – whether or not your company has nexus in the EU. Personal data is defined as data that can be used to identify a person.  It’s similar to the concept of personally identifiable information (PII) that we have in the US, but it is broader. PII typically includes actual identifying elements like your name, social security number, and birthday, focusing mainly on the data required to fake your identity with a lender. Personal data includes what the US calls PII, plus any data that can be used to identify you in any way, which includes things as basic as an email address, online personality (e.g. twitter handle), or even the IP address where you transmitted a message from.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Are you ready for the GDPR in May?

[Note: The author of this article is not a lawyer and this article should not be considered legal advice. Please consult a privacy specialist.]The basic news The GDPR covers all personal data your company stores on data subjects in the EU – whether or not your company has nexus in the EU. Personal data is defined as data that can be used to identify a person.  It’s similar to the concept of personally identifiable information (PII) that we have in the US, but it is broader. PII typically includes actual identifying elements like your name, social security number, and birthday, focusing mainly on the data required to fake your identity with a lender. Personal data includes what the US calls PII, plus any data that can be used to identify you in any way, which includes things as basic as an email address, online personality (e.g. twitter handle), or even the IP address where you transmitted a message from.To read this article in full, please click here

Network Break 177: Dell Launches New Branch CPE; Sonic In The Spotlight

Take a Network Break! In this week’s show, Dell EMC rolls out new branch hardware to run VNFs, the Sonic switch OS gets its turn in the open networking spotlight, and Innovium announces sampling of its Teralynx programmable ASIC.

The IEEE ratifies a standard for 25Gbps over single-mode fiber, Dropbox embraces security researchers, and Micro Focus suffers a massive drop in value.

Cryptojacking roars onto the threat scene, and Orbitz reports that attackers may have breached a legacy site, exposing up to 880,000 customers.

Get links to all these stories after our sponsor message.

Sponsor: ThousandEyes

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Show Links:

Dell EMC Takes on Cisco, Launches Open uCPE for SD-WAN – SDX Central

Dell EMC Takes Open Networking to the Edge for Next-Generation Access – Dell EMC

Innovium announces OCP SAI and open-source SONiC solution to accelerate TERALYNX market adoption – Innovium

Apstra Demonstrates Open Networking SONiC over Mellanox at OCP Summit Continue reading

Time to Evolve

I first started getting into VMware around 2003, possibly earlier (I can’t recall exactly when it was). I remember thinking that VMware’s impact on the industry was going to be significant, and I wanted to be part of this industry change. I was right—virtualization like what VMware offers has fundamentally changed the industry. However, just as technology evolves, technology careers must evolve as well. Specifically, my technology career must change and grow. It’s time to evolve.

This need to evolve has been building for a couple years. You’ve probably observed that the amount of VMware-centric content produced here on the site has slowly been replaced by topics like Linux, Docker, Vagrant, Terraform, AWS, Azure, and others. These topics represent where I think my next period of growth and change resides, and after a couple years of slow growth in these areas it’s now time to “put the pedal to the metal” and accelerate things.

As of this coming Friday, March 30, 2018, I will be leaving VMware after a little over 5 years with the company. My time with VMware (as an employee) has been an amazing adventure. I’m thankful to Brad Hedlund for his Continue reading

Penn State secures building automation, IoT traffic with microsegmentation

It was time to get a handle on BACnet traffic at Penn State.BACnet is a communications protocol for building automation and control (BAC) systems such as heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, access control and fire detection. Penn State standardized on BACnet because of its openness.[ For more on IoT see tips for securing IoT on your network, our list of the most powerful internet of things companies and learn about the industrial internet of things. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] “Any device, any manufacturer – as long as they talk BACnet, we can integrate them,” says Tom Walker, system design specialist in the facility automation services group at Penn State. “It’s a really neat protocol, but you have to know the quirks that come with deploying it, especially at scale.”To read this article in full, please click here

Penn State secures building automation, IoT traffic with microsegmentation

It was time to get a handle on BACnet traffic at Penn State.BACnet is a communications protocol for building automation and control (BAC) systems such as heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, access control and fire detection. Penn State standardized on BACnet because of its openness.[ For more on IoT see tips for securing IoT on your network, our list of the most powerful internet of things companies and learn about the industrial internet of things. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] “Any device, any manufacturer – as long as they talk BACnet, we can integrate them,” says Tom Walker, system design specialist in the facility automation services group at Penn State. “It’s a really neat protocol, but you have to know the quirks that come with deploying it, especially at scale.”To read this article in full, please click here

Penn State secures building automation, IoT traffic with microsegmentation

It was time to get a handle on BACnet traffic at Penn State.BACnet is a communications protocol for building automation and control (BAC) systems such as heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, access control and fire detection. Penn State standardized on BACnet because of its openness.[ For more on IoT see tips for securing IoT on your network, our list of the most powerful internet of things companies and learn about the industrial internet of things. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] “Any device, any manufacturer – as long as they talk BACnet, we can integrate them,” says Tom Walker, system design specialist in the facility automation services group at Penn State. “It’s a really neat protocol, but you have to know the quirks that come with deploying it, especially at scale.”To read this article in full, please click here

Penn State secures building automation, IoT traffic with microsegmentation

It was time to get a handle on BACnet traffic at Penn State.BACnet is a communications protocol for building automation and control (BAC) systems such as heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, access control and fire detection. Penn State standardized on BACnet because of its openness.[ For more on IoT see tips for securing IoT on your network, our list of the most powerful internet of things companies and learn about the industrial internet of things. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] “Any device, any manufacturer – as long as they talk BACnet, we can integrate them,” says Tom Walker, system design specialist in the facility automation services group at Penn State. “It’s a really neat protocol, but you have to know the quirks that come with deploying it, especially at scale.”To read this article in full, please click here

Stateful vs Stateless firewalls: Which one to use when?

Firewalls provide traffic filtering and protects the trusted environment for the untrusted. A firewall can be stateful or stateless A stateful firewall is capable of tracking connection states, it is better equipped to allow or deny traffic based on such knowledge.  A TCP connection for example goes through the handshake (SYN-SYN+ACK-SYN), to EASTABLISHED state, and … Continue reading Stateful vs Stateless firewalls: Which one to use when?

OpenPower At The Inflection Point

When IBM launched the OpenPower initiative publicly five years ago, to many it seemed like a classic case of too little, too late. But hope springs eternal, particularly with a datacenter sector that is eagerly and actively seeking an alternative to the Xeon processor to curtail the hegemony that Intel has in the glass house.

Perhaps the third time will be the charm. Back in 1991, Apple and IBM and Motorola teamed up to create the AIM Alliance, which sought to create a single unified computing architecture that was suitable for embedded and desktop applications, replacing the Motorola 68000 processors

OpenPower At The Inflection Point was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

London & Barcelona developers, we want to meet you this week

London & Barcelona developers, we want to meet you this week

London & Barcelona developers, we want to meet you this week

Are you based in London or Barcelona? Drop by the Cloudflare London office to meet Kenton Varda, lead architect of Cloudflare Workers, front end developers Marta Bondyra and David Sancho from Typeform, or drop by the Typeform office in Barcelona to hear from Jason Harmon, Typeform’s Chief Platform Officer. My Developer Relations teammates and I are visiting these cities over the next two weeks. We’d love to meet you and invite you to the three events we’re hosting.

Our first stop is the Cloudflare London office. Developers from our Cloudflare Apps partner, Typeform, are leading a talk on Tuesday, March 27th. The lead architect of Cloudflare Workers, Kenton Varda, is going to lead a follow-up talk about edge computing on Wednesday, March 28th.

Event #1: Building for a tech audience: Great dev lessons for adventurous makers

London & Barcelona developers, we want to meet you this week

Tuesday, March 27th: 18:00-20:00

Location: Cloudflare London - 25 Lavington St, Second floor | SE1 0NZ London

Creating software from scratch, although fun, can be time consuming and expensive. Marta and David, both developers at Typeform, will tell you why their teams built tools to make the lives of developers a little easier and what they learned along the way.

Continue reading