AMD busts Ryzen performance myths, clearing Windows 10 from blame

Ryzen performance is the mystery that has launched a thousand conspiracy theories, performing like a champ in productivity and content creation tasks but occasionally delivering fewer frames than you'd expect in games. AMD debunked most of those conspiracy theories in a blog post Monday night. For starters, the company said Windows 10’s scheduler isn’t guilty. Internet hardware detectives had started to focus their blame on Windows 10 scheduler, the part of the operating system that doles out work to each individual core or thread in a chip. Many believe Windows 10 scheduler is throwing out work to the wrong cores or threads, hobbling performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 tips for developing a powerful data disaster plan

Data disasterImage by ThinkstockThe massive amount of data enterprises deal with today has resulted in them facing many difficult challenges. Among these challenges are not only various types of data disasters themselves, but the difficulties associated with developing a strong plan to deal with and recover from such disasters. These plans need to be able to both recover growing amounts of data from an increasingly larger set of applications, and do so in alignment with service level agreements that meet the needs of their business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Continuous authentication: Why it’s getting attention and what you need to know

User authentication is one of the basic components of any cyber security program. Identifying an individual based on a username, password or other means helps companies ensure that the person is who he or she claims to be when accessing a system, application or network.But in some cases traditional authentication processes are not enough to provide strong security throughout a user work session. That’s where continuous authentication comes in. The concept is still relatively new, and experts say few products yet exist in the market. But it’s gaining more attention as companies look for ways to prevent unauthorized access to their critical business data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Continuous authentication: Why it’s getting attention and what you need to know

User authentication is one of the basic components of any cyber security program. Identifying an individual based on a username, password or other means helps companies ensure that the person is who he or she claims to be when accessing a system, application or network.But in some cases traditional authentication processes are not enough to provide strong security throughout a user work session. That’s where continuous authentication comes in. The concept is still relatively new, and experts say few products yet exist in the market. But it’s gaining more attention as companies look for ways to prevent unauthorized access to their critical business data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows Vista has just 30 days to live

In a month’s time, Microsoft will put Windows Vista to rest once and for all. If you’re one of the few people still using it, you have just a few weeks to find another option before time runs out.After April 11, 2017, Microsoft will no longer support Windows Vista: no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates, Microsoft says. (Mainstream Vista support expired in 2012.) Like it did for Windows XP, Microsoft has moved on to better things after a decade of supporting Vista.As Microsoft notes, however, running an older operating system means taking risks—and those risks will become far worse after the deadline. Vista’s Internet Explorer 9 has long since expired, and the lack of any further updates means that any existing vulnerabilities will never be patched—ever. Even if you have Microsoft’s Security Essentials installed—Vista’s own antivirus program—you’ll only receive new signatures for a limited time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: NGINX ups the web app performance ante

NGINX isn’t what I’d call a sexy company. Its products are, by definition, solid and steady—and they need to be.NGINX offers an application delivery platform that powers a massive proportion of the world’s websites. Some 300 million sites rely on NGINX for its load balancing, web and mobile acceleration, security controls, application monitoring, and management needs. More than half of the internet’s busiest websites rely on NGINX, including Airbnb, Box, Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest, SoundCloud and Zappos.But NGINX, while undeniably having a huge footprint, isn’t alone in the space and needs to keep innovating to gain and retain market share. And so it does with the announcement of its latest release, NGINX Plus Release 12. R12 looks to upgrade NGINX’s load balancer, content cache and web server offerings to increase reliability, security and scale for its customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to get diversity initiatives right

Despite the increased attention paid to diversity in tech, problem persists, according to new research from job search site Indeed, and that's negatively impacting companies' bottom lines. Addressing the issue requires a focus not only on diversity, but on inclusion to create a welcoming environment where talent can truly thrive.Indeed polled 1,002 U.S. technology workers in December 2016, and found that 24 percent of respondents felt they had been personally discriminated against at their current company. In addition, almost half (45 percent) of women said they witnessed non-inclusionary behavior, with 34 percent reporting they have been made personally uncomfortable. Over half (64 percent) of non-white respondents have felt personally uncomfortable, compared to 24 percent of respondents who identify as white.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 cities with the happiest CIOs

(Insider Story)

MapR unveils platform for IoT analytics at the edge

At Strata + Hadoop World in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday, MapR Technologies took the wraps off a new small footprint edition of its Converged Data Platform geared for capturing, processing and analyzing data from internet of things (IoT) devices at the edge.MapR Edge, designed to work in conjunction with the core MapR Converged Enterprise Edition, provides local processing, aggregation of insights at the core and the ability to then push intelligence back to the edge.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MapR unveils platform for IoT analytics at the edge

At Strata + Hadoop World in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday, MapR Technologies took the wraps off a new small footprint edition of its Converged Data Platform geared for capturing, processing and analyzing data from internet of things (IoT) devices at the edge.MapR Edge, designed to work in conjunction with the core MapR Converged Enterprise Edition, provides local processing, aggregation of insights at the core and the ability to then push intelligence back to the edge.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 ways Google improved its cloud at NEXT

Google cloud is seen by analysts as an up and comer. Company executives will even admit that the past few years Google has not had everything it needs to compete for enterprise customers in the IaaS public cloud market against Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and even IBM.But they will also tell you that Google is ready now.+MORE FROM NETWORK WORLD: Google Cloud President of Customers talks courting enterprises, competing with Amazon and Microsoft +Last week Google held NEXT, its user conference where the company introduces new cloud features and users get to learn about the cloud platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Navisite Deploys Cisco’s ACI to Increase Network Performance

Navisite is building on an existing partnership with Cisco.

It’s time to turn on HTTPS: the benefits are well worth the effort

After Edward Snowden revealed that online communications were being collected en masse by some of the world's most powerful intelligence agencies, security experts called for encryption of the entire web. Four years later, it looks like we've passed the tipping point. The number of websites supporting HTTPS -- HTTP over encrypted SSL/TLS connections -- has skyrocketed over the past year. There are many benefits to turning on encryption, so if your website not yet support the technology it's time to make the move. Recent telemetry data from Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox shows that over 50 percent of web traffic is now encrypted, both on computers and mobile devices. Most of that traffic goes to a few large websites, but even so, it's a jump of over 10 percentage points since a year ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 Ways To Ease Network Bottlenecks

Network World Pi Day Challenge: How many digits of pi can you recite?

Happy Pi Day! Here at Network World we take the holiday seriously. In years past we have provided tips of how to celebrate the 14th day on the third month of each year. (Pi is 3.14, so 3/14 is Pi Day, if you’re not in the know).Well, this year we decided to do something a little different: The first ever Network World Pi Day Challenge. The premise is simple: Recite the most digits of Pi. Winner gets to pie the loser in the face. Multimedia editor Keith Shaw and I have been training for weeks, memorizing digits five at a time.The competition was intense, but we acted rationally and recited our digits. But who knows more?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Guest Blog: In the Inline Technologies Lab with Big Cloud Fabric

SDN Use Cases: Featured Webinar in March 2017

The featured webinar in March 2017 is the SDN Use Cases webinar describing over a dozen different real-life SDN use cases. The featured videos cover four of them: a data center fabric by Plexxi, microsegmentation (including VMware NSX), SDN-based Internet edge router built by David Barroso, and Fibbing - an OSPF-based traffic engineering developed at University of Louvain.

To view the videos, log into my.ipspace.net, select the webinar from the first page, and watch the videos marked with star.

Mirai is the hydra of IoT security: too many heads to cut off

Efforts to stop Mirai, a malware found infecting thousands of IoT devices, have become a game of whack-a-mole, with differing opinions over whether hackers or the security community are making any headway.The malicious code became publicly available in late September. Since then, it’s been blamed for enslaving IoT devices such as DVRs and internet cameras to launch massive distributed denial-of-service attacks, one of which disrupted internet access across the U.S. in October.The good news: Last month, police arrested one suspected hacker who may have been behind several Mirai-related DDoS attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mirai is the hydra of IoT security: too many heads to cut off

Efforts to stop Mirai, a malware found infecting thousands of IoT devices, have become a game of whack-a-mole, with differing opinions over whether hackers or the security community are making any headway.The malicious code became publicly available in late September. Since then, it’s been blamed for enslaving IoT devices such as DVRs and internet cameras to launch massive distributed denial-of-service attacks, one of which disrupted internet access across the U.S. in October.The good news: Last month, police arrested one suspected hacker who may have been behind several Mirai-related DDoS attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware Struts its NFV Infrastructure Stuff for Telcos

The NFVI layer is the foundation for telco virtualization.