Technology Short Take #77

Welcome to Technology Short Take #77. I’ve got a new collection of links and articles from around the Web on various data center-focused technologies.

Networking

iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: Paying a price for cool & an Apple-of-your-eye camera design

While we've all been busy watching for the newest iPhone 8 leaks, Apple has apparently been selling iPhone 7 and 7 Plus smartphones like crazy. With all the buzz about Apple's record-breaking iPhone sales in Q1 of 2017, iPhone 8 rumors had to take a back seat.But enough about the iPhone 7...Even More Expensive iPhones At $650 or $770 for an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus, respectively, Apple's smartphones certainly aren't cheap. But Apple might be asking patrons to pay even a bit more for the iPhone 8, if the latest reports can be believed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AWS quarterly revenue continues to rise, but growth slows

The rocketship of cloud growth continued at the end of 2016 for Amazon Web Services. The public cloud provider announced Thursday that it brought in a little more than $3.5 billion during the fourth quarter of last year, up 47 percent from the same period in 2015. Quarterly operating income rose 60 percent to $926 million, compared to $580 million during the prior year quarter. That's nothing to sneeze at, but AWS's revenue growth was the lowest it has been in the past two years. There are a number of potential explanations for that, including seasonal changes in cloud migrations, and increasing difficulties on Amazon didn't provide an explanation for that, but it likely has to do with AWS's growing revenue base overall.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IRS warns on ever-changing “dangerous W-2 phishing scam”

Just as tax season gets underway in earnest, the Internal Revenue Service put out a warning about what it called dangerous, evolving W-2 scams that are targeting corporations, school districts and other public and private concerns.“This is one of the most dangerous email phishing scams we’ve seen in a long time. It can result in the large-scale theft of sensitive data that criminals can use to commit various crimes, including filing fraudulent tax returns. We need everyone’s help to turn the tide against this scheme,’’ said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in a statement. “Taxpayers should avoid opening surprise emails or clicking on web links claiming to be from the IRS. Don’t be fooled by unexpected emails about big refunds, tax bills or requesting personal information. That’s not how the IRS communicates with taxpayers.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IRS warns on ever-changing “dangerous W-2 phishing scam”

Just as tax season gets underway in earnest, the Internal Revenue Service put out a warning about what it called dangerous, evolving W-2 scams that are targeting corporations, school districts and other public and private concerns.“This is one of the most dangerous email phishing scams we’ve seen in a long time. It can result in the large-scale theft of sensitive data that criminals can use to commit various crimes, including filing fraudulent tax returns. We need everyone’s help to turn the tide against this scheme,’’ said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in a statement. “Taxpayers should avoid opening surprise emails or clicking on web links claiming to be from the IRS. Don’t be fooled by unexpected emails about big refunds, tax bills or requesting personal information. That’s not how the IRS communicates with taxpayers.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Obama-led sanction accidentally hampered U.S. tech firms in Russia

Sanctions imposed by former President Obama on Russia for hacking during the U.S. election had an unintended side effect: they essentially barred U.S. tech firms from selling new IT products in the country.Part of last month's sanction order was designed to block U.S. companies from doing business with Russia’s Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, because of its suspected role in influencing last year’s election.But the FSB isn’t just an intelligence agency. It’s also a crucial regulator in Russia that clears new IT products, including smartphones and tablets, for sale in the country.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Obama-led sanction accidentally hampered U.S. tech firms in Russia

Sanctions imposed by former President Obama on Russia for hacking during the U.S. election had an unintended side effect: they essentially barred U.S. tech firms from selling new IT products in the country.Part of last month's sanction order was designed to block U.S. companies from doing business with Russia’s Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, because of its suspected role in influencing last year’s election.But the FSB isn’t just an intelligence agency. It’s also a crucial regulator in Russia that clears new IT products, including smartphones and tablets, for sale in the country.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

100G & 25G Plugfests: What we learned

Howdy.

Happy Chinese New Year Y’all!!!

I wanted to take the time and talk about the 25/100G trend we find ourselves in. With more and more platforms being added (Cumulus Linux supports 9 of these platforms with the 3.2 release and we have plans to add more over the next few months), and more customers making the switch to 25/100G as a way to future-proof their networks given the economics of 25/100G open networking switches being on par with their 10/40G counterparts, it’s clear that the 25/100G trend is picking up speed. It was a long journey to get to this point, and we learned a lot on the way. I’d like to take this opportunity to take a look back, analyze the situation and highlight a few things we learned as an industry.

Setting the stage: A short history of the 25G and 100G rush

I don’t know if y’all remember the 100G race between vendors in 2015 to deliver the first 100G switch based on the new 28 GHz standard; everyone had to be first in the market. We even had a handful of 100G switch submissions to OCP by mid 2015. Plus, for the first time Continue reading

Microsoft asks Trump administration for travel ban exceptions

Microsoft today asked the U.S. government to create a mechanism for granting exemptions to last week's executive order on immigration that would meet "the pressing needs of real people," including scores of company employees and their families.In the letter to the heads of the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security, Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal officer, asked for exemptions that would apply to people with non-immigrant work visas, student visas or family members. The exceptions would let them come to and go from the U.S. for business trips and family emergencies, those trips not to exceed two weeks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: SSL or IPsec: Which is best for IoT network security?

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are soon expected to outnumber end-user devices by as much as four to one. These applications can be found everywhere—from manufacturing floors and building management to video surveillance and lighting systems.However, security threats pose serious obstacles to IoT adoption in enterprises or even home environments for sensitive applications such as remote healthcare monitoring. IoT security can be divided into the following three distinct components: Application service End device Transport Although all three are critical for systemwide security, this post will address only transport security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: SSL or IPsec: Which is best for IoT network security?

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are soon expected to outnumber end-user devices by as much as four to one. These applications can be found everywhere—from manufacturing floors and building management to video surveillance and lighting systems.However, security threats pose serious obstacles to IoT adoption in enterprises or even home environments for sensitive applications such as remote healthcare monitoring. IoT security can be divided into the following three distinct components: Application service End device Transport Although all three are critical for systemwide security, this post will address only transport security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: SSL or IPsec: Which is best for IoT network security?

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are soon expected to outnumber end-user devices by as much as four to one. These applications can be found everywhere—from manufacturing floors and building management to video surveillance and lighting systems.However, security threats pose serious obstacles to IoT adoption in enterprises or even home environments for sensitive applications such as remote healthcare monitoring. IoT security can be divided into the following three distinct components: Application service End device Transport Although all three are critical for systemwide security, this post will address only transport security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

RSA 2017: Anticipating network security chatter

Earlier this week, I  wrote about my expectations for endpoint security at the upcoming RSA Conference. Similarly, here’s what I anticipate hearing about regarding network security:1. DDoS protection. While data breaches get front page, above-the-fold headlines, DDoS attacks remain relatively invisible by comparison. This is puzzling because DDoS attacks happen almost daily. A quick review of the news shows that the Trump hotel website, Sonic (ISP in CA), Emsisoft and Lloyd’s Bank have all been hit with DDoS attacks over the past few weeks. These are relatively pedestrian attacks compared to the now infamous Mirai botnet DDoS attack on Dyn back in October and the subsequent attack on French hosting provider OVH a week later. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

RSA 2017: Anticipating network security chatter

Earlier this week, I posted a blog about my expectations for endpoint security at the upcoming RSA Conference.  Similarly, here’s what I anticipate hearing about network security: 1.      DDoS protection.  While data breaches get front page, above the fold headlines, DDoS attacks remain relatively invisible by comparison.  This is puzzling since DDoS attacks happen almost daily.  A quick review of the news shows that the Trump hotel website, Sonic (ISP in CA), Emsisoft, and Lloyd’s Bank have all been hit with DDoS attacks over the past few weeks.  These are relatively pedestrian attacks compared to the now infamous Mirai botnet DDoS attack on Dyn back in October and the subsequent attack on French hosting provider OVH a week later.  These particular DDoS attacks generated between 60mbps and 1tbps worth of traffic!  It’s also worth noting that we are also seeing a rise in stealthy application-layer DDoS attacks as well as blended threats of DDoS and ransomware together.  DDoS attacks are still a tad on the geeky side to play a starring role at RSA, but I do expect a lot more DDoS chatter.  Good thing because a lot of security Continue reading

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