The Future of Online Privacy and Personal Data Protection in Africa

African experts are gathered for two days (19-20 February 2018) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to contribute to the development of the African Privacy and Personal Data Protection Guidelines. The meeting, facilitated by the African Union Commission (AUC) and supported by Internet Society, explored the future of privacy and data protection and provided some practical suggestions that African states can consider in implementing the Malabo convention provisions related to online privacy. The guidelines are aimed at empowering citizens, as well as establishing legal certainty for stakeholders through clear and uniform personal data protection rules for the region.

The expert meeting comes amidst growing concern across the world on the need to prepare for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will be enforced on 25 May 2018. The expert meeting is rather focused on creating general principles for African member states in developing good practices now and in the future. The project, a partnership of the AUC and the Internet Society, comes as a follow up to the recommendations of the Africa Infrastructure Security Guidelines, developed in 2017 to assist speed up their adoption and subsequent ratification of the Malabo Convention.

Both the Heads of States Summit in January Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Data center migration in 7 steps

When it comes to cloud migration, what kind of adopter are you? Did you jump on the cloud bandwagon early? Are you lagging behind, without having tried to virtualize anything yet? Or are you in the mainstream, with a mix of clouds and some systems on premises?In our cloud migration practice, we have found that each of these groups faces its own challenges. Early adopters are often unable to support their ambitious deployments, having discovered the limits of first-generation cloud systems. Laggards may realize the need to transform, but find themselves blocked by costs, resources and time. Most enterprises are in the mainstream. They have cobbled together a hybrid IT environment, but struggle with managing it all and moving forward.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Data center migration in 7 steps

When it comes to cloud migration, what kind of adopter are you? Did you jump on the cloud bandwagon early? Are you lagging behind, without having tried to virtualize anything yet? Or are you in the mainstream, with a mix of clouds and some systems on premises?In our cloud migration practice, we have found that each of these groups faces its own challenges. Early adopters are often unable to support their ambitious deployments, having discovered the limits of first-generation cloud systems. Laggards may realize the need to transform, but find themselves blocked by costs, resources and time. Most enterprises are in the mainstream. They have cobbled together a hybrid IT environment, but struggle with managing it all and moving forward.To read this article in full, please click here

Linux command history: Choosing what to remember and how

Linux history — the record of commands that you’ve used on the command line — can simplify repeating commands and provide some very useful information when you’re trying to track down how recent system or account changes might have come about.Two things you need to understand before you begin your sleuthing, however, are that the shell’s command memory can be selective and that dates and times for when commands were run are optional.Basic Linux history Let’s first look at how dates and times are recorded when commands are entered on the command line. By default, they are not. The history command simply provides a list of previously used commands. That’s all that is saved in the history file. For bash users, this information all gets stuffed into the .bash_history file; for other shells, it might be just .history.To read this article in full, please click here

Juniper Networks expands multi-cloud connectivity portfolio

Juniper Networks has announced an expanded portfolio of products for companies to become “multi-cloud ready,” unifying both the public cloud and on-premises computing resources.The new offerings don’t just connect the data center to the cloud; they also cover campus and branch offices, the latter of which can often be overlooked or forgotten due to being remote.Also on Network World: Cloud strategy: hybrid and multi cloud are not the same Companies are moving more workloads to the cloud to keep up for a variety of reasons, but a recent study from consulting giant PwC and commissioned by Juniper found that while a majority of enterprise workloads are going to move to the cloud in the next three years, the workload on premises will not diminish. If anything, it will need to keep up with the cloud.To read this article in full, please click here

Juniper Networks expands multi-cloud connectivity portfolio

Juniper Networks has announced an expanded portfolio of products for companies to become “multi-cloud ready,” unifying both the public cloud and on-premises computing resources.The new offerings don’t just connect the data center to the cloud; they also cover campus and branch offices, the latter of which can often be overlooked or forgotten due to being remote.Also on Network World: Cloud strategy: hybrid and multi cloud are not the same Companies are moving more workloads to the cloud to keep up for a variety of reasons, but a recent study from consulting giant PwC and commissioned by Juniper found that while a majority of enterprise workloads are going to move to the cloud in the next three years, the workload on premises will not diminish. If anything, it will need to keep up with the cloud.To read this article in full, please click here

Get a 299-Piece All-Purpose First Aid Kit For $12 Today

This full-fledged, easy-to-tote first aid softpack is designed to save time and frustration in the midst of an emergency. It's compact and portable, but contains 299 physician-recommended supplies.  Among the items neatly organized inside the zippered kit is a first aid guide, vinyl gloves, bandages, cold compress, gauze pads, trauma pad, cotton-tipped applicators, first aid tape roll, antiseptics and all three common OTC pain medications. The kit is currently a #1 best seller on Amazon, averages 4.6 out of 5 stars from over 2,230 customers, and its typical list price of has been reduced to just a hair over $12. Click over to Amazon to see this deal.To read this article in full, please click here

Report: Distributed IoT Security and Standards Workshop at NDSS 2018

Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS) Symposium is in full swing for its 25th anniversary year. As usual the NDSS program includes a really impressive array of great content on a wide range of topics. Prior to the main event there were four one-day workshops on themes related to the topic of NDSS: Binary Analysis Research, DNS Privacy, Usable Security, and the workshop I’d like to delve into here, Distributed IoT Security and Standards (DISS).

The DISS workshop received 29 submissions and accepted 12 papers. In an interesting twist on the usual scientific workshop format, the presented papers were all still in draft form and will now be revised based on the Q&A and offline discussions that took place as a result of the workshop. Revised papers will be published by the Internet Society in due course.

Introducing proceedings, co-chair Dirk Kutscher explained that it has become evident that the success of the Internet of Things (IoT) depends on sound and usable security and privacy. Device constraints, intermittent network connectivity, the scale of deployments, economic issues all combine to create an interesting and challenging environment for the research community to address.

A decentralised approach to IoT security Continue reading

$29 For Two Etekcity Smart Plugs With Alexa Compatibility – Deal Alert

With this smart plug from Etekcity, you can turn your appliances on/off remotely from your mobile device, or with your voice via Alexa. Or automate the on/off cycle with a schedule. The plug also monitors and helps control energy usage, and the slow drain that occurs even when devices are powered down. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 2,200 people on Amazon, the 2-pack of smart plugs has been discounted to just $28.99, or $14.50 per plug. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full, please click here

$27 For Two Etekcity Smart Plugs With Alexa Compatibility – Deal Alert

With this smart plug from Etekcity, you can turn your appliances on/off remotely from your mobile device, or with your voice via Alexa. Or automate the on/off cycle with a schedule. The plug also monitors and helps control energy usage, and the slow drain that occurs even when devices are powered down. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 2,200 people on Amazon, the 2-pack of smart plugs has been discounted to just $26.99, or $13.50 per plug. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full, please click here

WiFi Design: Practical Shortcuts

We Do Magic Crypto with No Impact and No Performance Loss

Not surprisingly, every now and then I get a comment from a pushy $vendor rep who fails to mention that he works for a vendor, or that he happens to be their VP of Marketing. Here’s a gem I got late last year (no, I did not allow that comment to be published):

5G Discussions at MWC 2018 Will Focus on the Cs: Cloud, Core, and Network Control

The key message from the industry is that 5G is about more than just the 5G New Radio (NR).

Why Nutanix Would Win in a Dell Technologies-VMware Merger

Nutanix is already gunning for VMware's customers.

Quantum Computing Performance By the Glass

On today’s episode of “The Interview” with The Next Platform, we talk about quantum computing performance and functionality with Rigetti Computing quantum hardware engineer, Matt Raegor.

We talked with Rigetti not long ago about the challenges of having an end-to-end quantum computing startup (developing the full stack—from hardware to software to the fabs that make the quantum processing units). This conversation takes that one step further by looking at how performance can be considered via an analogy of wine glasses and their various resonances. Before we get to that, however, we talk more generally about Reagor’s early work …

Quantum Computing Performance By the Glass was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Your Container Volumes Served By oVirt

Note: < 5 minutes read

When running a virtualization workload on oVirt, a VM disk is 'natively' a disk somewhere on your network-storage.
Entering containers world, on Kubernetes(k8s) or OpenShift, there are many options specifically because the workload can be totally stateless, i.e they are stored on a host supplied disk and can be removed when the container is terminated. The more interesting case is stateful workloads i.e apps that persist data (think DBs, web servers/services, etc). k8s/OpenShift designed an API to dynamically provision the container storage (volume in k8s terminology).

See the resources section for more details.

In this post I want to cover how oVirt can provide volumes for containers running on k8s/OpenShift cluster.

Overview

Consider this: you want to deploy wikimedia as a container, with all its content served from /opt. For that you will create a persistent volume for the container - when we have state to keep and server creating a volume makes sense. It is persistent, it exists regardless the container state, and you can choose which directory exactly you serve that volume, and that is the most important part, k8s/OpenShift gives you an API to determine who will provide the volume Continue reading

Your Container Volumes Served By oVirt

Note: < 5 minutes read

When running a virtualization workload on oVirt, a VM disk is 'natively' a disk somewhere on your network-storage.
Entering containers world, on Kubernetes(k8s) or OpenShift, there are many options specifically because the workload can be totally stateless, i.e they are stored on a host supplied disk and can be removed when the container is terminated. The more interesting case is stateful workloads i.e apps that persist data (think DBs, web servers/services, etc). k8s/OpenShift designed an API to dynamically provision the container storage (volume in k8s terminology).

See the resources section for more details.

In this post I want to cover how oVirt can provide volumes for containers running on k8s/OpenShift cluster.

Overview

Consider this: you want to deploy wikimedia as a container, with all its content served from /opt. For that you will create a persistent volume for the container - when we have state to keep and server creating a volume makes sense. It is persistent, it exists regardless the container state, and you can choose which directory exactly you serve that volume, and that is the most important part, k8s/OpenShift gives you an API to determine who will provide the volume Continue reading

Busy Week for MANRS, Routing Security, and More at APRICOT 2018

APRICOT 2018 is underway in in Kathmandu, Nepal, and as usual the Internet Society is an active participant in many areas of Asia Pacific’s largest international Internet conference. The workshops are taking place this week, with the conference happening next week. Here are some of the conference activities where we’ll be.

Routing Security BoF

On Sunday, 25 February, from 18:00 to 19:00 (UTC +05:45), Aftab Siddiqui and Andrei Robachevsky will moderate a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session on routing security. From the abstract, the session will provide a space where “…operators can share their approach in securing their own infrastructure and keeping the internet routing table clean as well. Also, this will provide a platform to review and highlight various BCOP documents to address routing security.” The Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) initiative is a key piece of the routing security puzzle.

Tech Girls Social

On Monday, 26 February, from 13:00 to 14:00 (UTC +05:45), Salam Yamout will be speaking at the Tech Girls Social. This session provides a space for APRICOT participants to talk and network in an open, friendly environment. The event is open to ANYONE who is interested and is not restricted to Continue reading

Pushed To The Edge

Computing, which always includes storage and networking, evolves. Just like everything else on Earth. Anything with a benefit in efficiency will always find its niche, and it will change to plug into new niches as they arise and make use of ever-cheaper technologies as they advance from the edges.

It is with this in mind that we ponder the datacenter. As in the center of data, which has been expanding and thinning for a very long time now, and which is pushing itself – and us – to the edge. What, we wonder, is a datacenter that doesn’t have …

Pushed To The Edge was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Understanding IPv6: A Sniffer Full Of 3s (Part 3 of 7)

“What the heck?” Yup, that pretty much summed up my confusion the first time I saw it. A sniffer trace full of threes.

The first thing it reminded me of was my days with Token Ring and locally administered addresses (LAAs). This was for two reasons:

1. I could only see these MAC addresses being used as destination MACs, not as source MACs. This was the same with my experience with LAAs in token ring
2. The MAC addresses seemed so pretty and clean, like the Token Ring LAA typically used for a 3745 IBM front-end process — 4000.3745.0001. Just look at them. Four threes, followed by a bunch of zeros, and then just one little number.

Help from Wireshark

I hope you are familiar with Wireshark; I use it all the time. It shows “reality” on the wire, which is crucial if you are a network detective trying to solve a whodunit.

If you are familiar with Wireshark then you might know that I can configure how the MAC addresses are displayed in the columns via the Wireshark preferences. As you can see below, I have set the preferences to not resolve the MAC addresses for me, Continue reading