Cybersecurity Skills Shortage Holding Steady

The cybersecurity skills shortage is nothing new – I’ve been writing about it for years as have other analysts and researchers.  I’ve also done countless presentations on this topic.  Here’s a video where I’m interviewed on the cybersecurity skills shortage at the RSA Conference a few years ago.  I also presented on this topic at the RSA Conference that same year. I keep writing about the cybersecurity skills shortage for one consistent and troubling reason – it ain’t getting any better.  Here’s a few data points to back up this claim (note: I am an ESG employee):  As part of ESG’s annual IT spending intentions research, we asked respondents (i.e. about 600 IT and cybersecurity professionals in North America, EMEA, and the Asia Pacific region) to identify the different IT areas where their organization has a “problematic shortage” of skills.  Cybersecurity has been identified as the #1 “problematic shortage” area across all of IT for the past 6 years in a row. In 2017, 45% of organizations say they have a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills.  This is right in line with 2016 (46%), but these last two years represented a big Continue reading

BBC warns Facebook about child porn posts, Facebook reports BBC to cops

The BBC found itself in the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished category thanks to Facebook. Granted, the BBC was investigating for an article to see if Facebook had improved its system for removing child porn from the site after such images are reported. But trying to help “clean up” Facebook should not be rewarded by the social network reporting you to the police.Using Facebook’s “report button,” BBC journalists reported 100 images that should not be allowed on the platform according to Facebook’s guidelines that claim “nudity or other sexually suggestive content” is not permitted on the site. The images included a still from a child porn video, under-16s in sexual poses and others along the same vein. Of those, only 18 were initially removed. The other 82, Facebook said, did not violate “community standards.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BBC warns Facebook about child porn posts, Facebook reports BBC to cops

The BBC found itself in the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished category thanks to Facebook. Granted, the BBC was investigating for an article to see if Facebook had improved its system for removing child porn from the site after such images are reported. But trying to help “clean up” Facebook should not be rewarded by the social network reporting you to the police.Using Facebook’s “report button,” BBC journalists reported 100 images that should not be allowed on the platform according to Facebook’s guidelines that claim “nudity or other sexually suggestive content” is not permitted on the site. The images included a still from a child porn video, under-16s in sexual poses and others along the same vein. Of those, only 18 were initially removed. The other 82, Facebook said, did not violate “community standards.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDN Lesson #2 – Introducing Faucet as an OpenFlow Controller

Welcome back to a new article about SDN - this time introducing an OpenFlow controller called Faucet, developed as a RYU application by New Zeeland's Research and Education (REANNZ). In this article, I am not going to write about Faucet's architecture and features since you can read about it on its github page or here or here>. Instead, I will describe the setup used for a demo presented at the Irish Network Operators Group 11th meetup (iNOG::B).

AMD hopes to break Intel server dominance with new 32-core Naples chip

The outspoken Forrest Norrod has never shied away from challenges. Previously, as a server chief at Dell, he helped the company's data-center hardware business flourish, and he loved experimenting with new types of servers.He has a new challenge as AMD's server chief: to bring back the glory days of chipmaker's server business, which is now in tatters. A mega-chip called Naples, which has 32 cores and is based on the Zen architecture, will be the first test of AMD's return to the server market.The Naples chip will ship to server makers in the second quarter of this year. The benchmarks of Naples are competitive with Intel's chips in head-to-head comparisons, said Norrod, senior vice president and general manager of AMD's Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom Business Group.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump’s revised travel ban may still hurt tech

President Donald Trump's revised travel ban, released Monday, ensures that H-1B visa workers from banned countries won't have problems as long as they stay in the U.S. But if they take a trip abroad, they could have trouble returning.The changes unveiled today are technical, and immigration attorneys will be waiting for the U.S. State Department to clarify the rules. In the meantime, what may be a greater issue is how the move by Trump affects immigration and travel.[ Discuss this story. Join our H-1B/Outsourcing group on Facebook. ] "The real impact will be global in terms of how people perceive the U.S.," said William Stock, an immigration attorney and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Think twice before you hire a chief AI officer

SAN FRANCISCO -- Artificial intelligence (AI) will become so instrumental to corporate revenue growth that businesses should hire a chief artificial intelligence officer to spearhead AI initiatives, says Andrew Ng, who drives global AI strategy at Chinese search giant Baidu. Not so fast, says Neil Jacobstein, chair of artificial intelligence and robotics at Singularity University, who isn't a fan of companies centralizing leadership for AI functions.The two clashed on the topic here last week at the WSJ's CIO Network, where Ng and Jacobstein spoke on a panel. Although they disagreed on the organizational approaches to AI, Ng and Jacobstein both said that the technology is a potentially game-changing way to harness the vast amounts of information corporations collect.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware picks off broader targets with greater severity

If you thought it was bad when the FBI reported last year that ransomware was on the rise, you should read the forecasts for this year. According to SonicWall’s most recent Annual Threat Report, “ransomware attacks grew 167 times since 2015, from 3.8 million in 2015 to 638 million in 2016.”This year, TrendMicro sees a 25-percent growth in the number of new ransomware families available for use in breaches. Reports of the encroachment of ransomware on government, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, and health and safety are already climbing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware picks off broader targets with greater severity

If you thought it was bad when the FBI reported last year that ransomware was on the rise, you should read the forecasts for this year. According to SonicWall’s most recent Annual Threat Report, “ransomware attacks grew 167 times since 2015, from 3.8 million in 2015 to 638 million in 2016.”This year, TrendMicro sees a 25-percent growth in the number of new ransomware families available for use in breaches. Reports of the encroachment of ransomware on government, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, and health and safety are already climbing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 tips to strengthen online security

Seeing the lightImage by PexelsA lightbulb. We can connect a lightbulb in our house to the internet in case we need to turn the lights on or off while we’re away – or if we’re too lazy to walk to the light switch. The more lightbulbs, devices, apps and online services we use and connect with on a daily basis, the more we expose ourselves to security risks. This is the nature of how our digital lives have evolved and it requires more active participation as individuals to protect ourselves and minimize exposure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 tips to strengthen online security

Seeing the lightImage by PexelsA lightbulb. We can connect a lightbulb in our house to the internet in case we need to turn the lights on or off while we’re away – or if we’re too lazy to walk to the light switch. The more lightbulbs, devices, apps and online services we use and connect with on a daily basis, the more we expose ourselves to security risks. This is the nature of how our digital lives have evolved and it requires more active participation as individuals to protect ourselves and minimize exposure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to reduce your smartphone use without missing out

Even if you haven’t walked into a pole or driven your car into a pond because you were staring at your smartphone, there’s a chance you’ve wondered if it’s time to cut back.If you enjoy Android phone as much as I do, there’s little doubt it’s your most personal device and hardly leaves your side. You’re not alone. A Pew study from 2015 pointed to how much the smartphone is central to most people’s lives in important ways, like looking up a medical condition, real estate listings, or a job search.All those messaging apps and handy tools from Google make your phone the ideal companion. And as trendy and cool as going on a “digital detox” may be, it’s just not practical. The right path is to go for the middle road. There are smart ways to curtail your use that won’t mean disconnecting from the people and events that are important in your life. Here are some tips to get you started.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Catalyst for Cloud Networking with Containerization

Today’s applications are connected both to users and other applications, increasing traffic and profoundly affecting performance. Recently, there has been much discussion around the Application Performance Management (APM) category. This got me thinking about new cloud migration versus legacy application tools. Is the industry being myopic and dealing with silos? Wouldn’t it be amazing if...
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My ITIL Experience In An Org Chart

Some time back, someone challenged me to explain how ITIL impacted my workflow.

ITIL Blows

The diagram is largely inspired by my time working for a Top 5 IT Consultancy which was utterly convinced that more managers and project managers would improve the efficiency of the work performed because we could improve the process. In the end there were twelve project managers plus three manager-managers to schedule the work for just three engineers.

I pointed out that hiring another another engineer would improve work output by 33% but none of the ITIL project managers could understand this. It wasn’t about productivity, the customer, or address the need, the only focus was about hitting the deadlines, planned work hours and budgets.

ITIL is a disease. Kill it with fire.

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