Review: Amped Wireless ALLY Plus

The latest “whole home coverage” system to cross paths with the Cool Tools testing team is from Amped Wireless. The ALLY Plus system includes a router and extender unit that looks a bit like a wireless mesh system (since both units have somewhat the same design), but in fact is more in line with a traditional router/extender offering. However, like those wireless mesh systems, the ALLY Plus is installed via mobile app that makes setup go quicker for those non-techie types. In addition, features such as in-depth parental controls and a security partnership with AVG means device protection for all clients connecting through the router.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tap DANZing for Visible Cloud Networking

Networking is running blind. It is akin to driving a car in the fog at night without street lights, signs or a navigation system. Simply put, it’s a scary visibility problem, and it impacts the security and availability of the network. When coupled with massive shifts to virtualization, containerization, cloud-native applications and unstructured data, the insatiable telemetry demand is exponential. Every architect is looking for modern analytical methods of networking to gain visibility for millions of devices, data or events efficiently and consistently.

IDG Contributor Network: Avi Networks shows you don’t need special hardware to load balance

A trend that has grown over the past decade or so to become pretty much the default view of infrastructure is to “software-ize” functionality that was formerly the domain of specialist hardware.It all started (arguably) with the idea of virtualization. Instead of needing a physical server for every task, software would allow numerous virtual servers to run on a piece of physical kit. The upshot of virtualization of servers was that far greater efficiencies could be generated, and utilization rates went from being dismal to almost absolute. All good outcomes if you’re worried about the economics of technology.+ Also on Network World: Is infrastructure relevant in a software-defined world? + But it wasn’t just compute that got this dose of software goodness. Next came storage, then networking. And seemingly the sky is the limit as to what parts of infrastructure can be made virtual. (And in the next realm of innovation, we have serverless computing where, in effect, stuff happens without even having to think about servers—physical or virtual. But that’s another story.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Connecting SMBs The Easy Way With Aerohive Connect

Wireless is hard. When you’re putting together large deployments of access points in challenging environments with tons of security on top of it all you realize the difficulty. That’s why most major wireless deployments require a lot of time, planning, and documentation to pull off correctly. But what if things are on the small side?

A Small World Without Wires

The average small business (SMB) is stuck in a wireless limbo. They have requirements that far exceed the performance profile of standard consumer wireless devices. Most SMBs have more than three or four devices connecting at a time. They have reliability issues that need to be dealt with. And they need it all in a package that doesn’t need constant minding to work appropriately.

When you look at the market for consumer wireless today, the real push is to get rid of any configuration at all. Even the old Apple Airport, which was simplistic in its day, is too “complicate” for modern users. Solutions like Google Wifi aim to be the kind of solution that just requires a cable plugged in. No additional configuration beyond that. Which works wonders if you’re a consumer at home that needs to enable some Continue reading

Apple missed deadline to pay €13 billion in Irish back taxes

Apple is behind with its taxes, but the tax inspector doesn't mind.Last August, the European Commission closed a three-year investigation of Apple's tax affairs with an order to the Irish government that it should recover about €13 billion (US$14.5 billion) in taxes that it believed Apple had underpaid over the last decade.Ireland has missed the deadline for recovering the billions, but Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who gave the Irish government four months to collect the taxes, is proving very understanding about the delay.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple’s Q1: iPhone 7 slays in a record-setting $78.4 billion quarter

One year ago, in the first quarter of 2016, Apple reported a record-breaking profit: $18.4 billion on $75.9 billion in revenue. That was great news, but setting the bar so high was a mixed blessing—Apple’s huge uptick in growth ended there, with declining iPhone sales and profits in the three quarters since.But the company turned that around with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in Apple’s Q1 earnings report on Tuesday. The company broke its own record with $78.4 billion in revenue for the quarter ending December 31—and $54.3 billion of that came from iPhones, of which Apple sold 78.3 million. That’s another record, in case you were wondering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 of the most anticipated tablets of 2017

Tablet might be struggling to find a place amongst hybrids, but there are still plenty of devices to get excited about in the coming year. These five tablets are slated to be some of the most exciting devices of 2017, and each offers a traditional tablet experience. iPad Air 3 Apple Apple typically announced iPads in the fall, but last spring it surprised everyone by announcing the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. But come fall, Apple was mum on a third generation iPad Air. That has some speculating that Apple will ditch the Air lineup, instead offering a third, entry-level iPad Pro. However, NeuroGadget reports it's likely Apple will release a 16GB iPad Air 3, with a thinner, water-resistant design, for $600. Either way, sources are confident that Apple plans to announce three tablets - a 9.7, 10.5 and 12.9-inch model - in Spring of this year. NeuroGadget also reports that, to compete with the Microsoft Surface, the iPad Air 3 is expected to ship with the Apple Pencil. Galaxy Tab S3 Samsung The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 took a strong swing at the Apple iPad Air 2, offering a similar design and level of performance. It became Continue reading

10 IT skills that employers need in 2017

(Insider Story)

Tested: The truth behind the MacBook Pro’s ‘terrible’ battery life

Read professional reviews of Apple’s new MacBook Pro lineup, and you’ll come away thinking the new laptops have great battery life.Dive into a customer forum, though, and the upshot will be exactly the opposite: The new MacBook Pros have “piss poor” battery life.That characterization came from user yillbs on MacRumors.com. “I don’t think anyone can convince me that this thing isn’t just flat out the worst battery life ever on a MacBook,” yillbs wrote, clearly frustrated. “I’ve been defending it like mad, but at this point... how can you? 4.42 hours is just bad.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Are Apple-specific threats on the rise?

Macs are really no more secure than a PC, but for many years there just weren’t as many out there because of the expense of the hardware and other issues. They've historically been a much less popular choice among both consumers, enterprises, and hackers alike.The PC attack surface is much wider; therefore, criminals develop malware that works on PCs because the payout is much higher. James Plouffe, lead solutions architect at mobile-security company MobileIron, said there are, however, a couple of oft-overlooked things that also protect Macs.First, Plouffe said, "MacOS is actually BSD Unix derivative. Granted, it's heavily customized but this meant that, unlike Windows (which had a long tail of viruses reaching back to the days of MS-DOS), bad actors had a lot more heavy lifting to do to be able to attack macOS."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Are Apple-specific threats on the rise?

Macs are really no more secure than a PC, but for many years there just weren’t as many out there because of the expense of the hardware and other issues. They've historically been a much less popular choice among both consumers, enterprises, and hackers alike.The PC attack surface is much wider; therefore, criminals develop malware that works on PCs because the payout is much higher. James Plouffe, lead solutions architect at mobile-security company MobileIron, said there are, however, a couple of oft-overlooked things that also protect Macs.First, Plouffe said, "MacOS is actually BSD Unix derivative. Granted, it's heavily customized but this meant that, unlike Windows (which had a long tail of viruses reaching back to the days of MS-DOS), bad actors had a lot more heavy lifting to do to be able to attack macOS."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What IT security pros are earning in 2017

(Insider Story)

What IT security pros are earning in 2017

Continued high demand following a record year of breachesImage by ThinkstockLast year was a record one for data breaches, with some 1,093 breaches reported. That represented a 40 percent increase over the prior year, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. It is no wonder that information security remains one of the most top-of-mind issues for CIOs, CISOs, and CEOs. The result is continued high demand for IT security pros. “The market for IT security professionals is poised for another strong year,” notes CompTIA Senior Vice President Tim Herbert. “The security job category was one of the faster growing IT occupations during 2016. During the last 90 days, U.S. employers posted nearly 25,000 job openings for security positions.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Sniff out and kick out Windows malware for free

No single antimalware engine can keep up with all the malware out there. But how about 57 of 'em?[ 18 surprising tips for security pros. | Discover how to secure your systems with InfoWorld's Security Report newsletter. ] In this video, you'll learn how to download and run Windows Sysinternals Process Explorer to test all currently running executables on your Windows system against VirusTotal's 57 antivirus engines, which together offer the best accuracy you can ever get (with a small percentage of false positives that are pretty easy to spot).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sniff out and kick out Windows malware for free

No single antimalware engine can keep up with all the malware out there. But how about 57 of 'em?[ 18 surprising tips for security pros. | Discover how to secure your systems with InfoWorld's Security Report newsletter. ] In this video, you'll learn how to download and run Windows Sysinternals Process Explorer to test all currently running executables on your Windows system against VirusTotal's 57 antivirus engines, which together offer the best accuracy you can ever get (with a small percentage of false positives that are pretty easy to spot).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 tech battles facing Trump

President Donald Trump may face protests from scientists and technologists like no other president before him.It's not just the tech industry that may battle Trump. New forces are arising, some grassroots, such as Neveragain.tech and a planned massive "March for Science," in Washington and elsewhere. The tech industry protest over the seven-country immigration ban is just a preview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google open-sources Chrome browser for iOS

Google is open-sourcing its Chrome browser on the Apple iOS platform, after making changes enabling the code to be part of Google’s Chromium browser project.The code will be moved to the open source Chromium repository, which lets developers build their own Chrome-like browsers. It had been kept separate from Chromium because of Apple's requirement that all iOS browsers be built on the Apple-controlled WebKit rendering engine.[ Safeguard your browsers; InfoWorld's experts tell you how in the "Web Browser Security Deep Dive" PDF guide. | Cut to the key news in technology trends and IT breakthroughs with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter, our summary of the top tech happenings. ] But after years of refactoring to cleanly separate WebKit from the Chrome for iOS code, the Chrome for iOS code is rejoining Chromium, Google said in a bulletin. (Chrome on other operating systems uses Google's own Blink browser engine.) Developers can compile the iOS version of Chromium like they can for other Chromium versions. Google said it had spent a lot of time during the past several years making changes required to move the code for Chrome for iOS into Chromium.To read this article Continue reading

Review: The best frameworks for machine learning and deep learning

Over the past year I've reviewed half a dozen open source machine learning and/or deep learning frameworks: Caffe, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (aka CNTK 2), MXNet, Scikit-learn, Spark MLlib, and TensorFlow. If I had cast my net even wider, I might well have covered a few other popular frameworks, including Theano (a 10-year-old Python deep learning and machine learning framework), Keras (a deep learning front end for Theano and TensorFlow), and DeepLearning4j (deep learning software for Java and Scala on Hadoop and Spark). If you’re interested in working with machine learning and neural networks, you’ve never had a richer array of options.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

5 things DevOps needs to do to secure containers

Can’t we all get alongImage by PixabayDo deepening adoption and broader deployment of container technologies (from the likes of Docker, CoreOS and others) threaten to escalate into the latest skirmish between operations, developers and information security? Certainly, the potential exists to widen the rift, but in fact there is far more common ground than would initially suggest. Containerization introduces new infrastructure that operates dynamically and is open in nature, with more potential for cross-container activity. Containerization presents an almost unprecedented opportunity to embed security into the software delivery pipeline – rather than graft on security checks, container monitoring and policy for access controls as an afterthought.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 things DevOps needs to do to secure containers

Can’t we all get alongImage by PixabayDo deepening adoption and broader deployment of container technologies (from the likes of Docker, CoreOS and others) threaten to escalate into the latest skirmish between operations, developers and information security? Certainly, the potential exists to widen the rift, but in fact there is far more common ground than would initially suggest. Containerization introduces new infrastructure that operates dynamically and is open in nature, with more potential for cross-container activity. Containerization presents an almost unprecedented opportunity to embed security into the software delivery pipeline – rather than graft on security checks, container monitoring and policy for access controls as an afterthought.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here