Blockchain adoption in banks coming, but slower than expected

Recent headlines suggest that blockchain technology is revolutionizing financial services. JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Commonwealth Bank, Wells Fargo and several other leading banks are using the digital ledger technology to conduct equity swaps, cross-border trades, and other transactions.You might think that blockchain has gone mainstream. Not so fast, says former UBS CIO Oliver Bussmann, who claims it may take banks two years to run blockchain in production due to regulatory hurdles, a lack of standards and other stumbling blocks. “This is real, this will come but in a very regulated environment. We will go through a lot of validation,” says Bussmann, who jumpstarted blockchain efforts when he was leading IT at the Swiss bank last year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 10 fastest supercomputers in the world

Fast and powerfulThe twice-annual Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world (adjudged by their performance on the Linpack benchmark) is out this morning, and there are a pair of newcomers on the list. Check it out.TrinityImage by Los Alamos National LaboratoryTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 10 fastest supercomputers in the world

Fast and powerfulThe twice-annual Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world (adjudged by their performance on the Linpack benchmark) is out this morning, and there are a pair of newcomers on the list. Check it out.TrinityImage by Los Alamos National LaboratoryTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DoS technique lets a single laptop take down an enterprise firewall

At a time when the size of distributed denial-of-service attacks has reached unprecedented levels, researchers have found a new attack technique in the wild that allows a single laptop to take down high-bandwidth enterprise firewalls.The attack, dubbed BlackNurse, involves sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets of a particular type and code. ICMP is commonly used for the ping network diagnostic utility, and attacks that try to overload a system with ping messages -- known as ping floods -- use ICMP Type 8 Code 0 packets.BlackNurse uses ICMP Type 3 (Destination Unreachable) Code 3 (Port Unreachable) packets instead and some firewalls consume a lot of CPU resources when processing them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DoS technique lets a single laptop take down an enterprise firewall

At a time when the size of distributed denial-of-service attacks has reached unprecedented levels, researchers have found a new attack technique in the wild that allows a single laptop to take down high-bandwidth enterprise firewalls.The attack, dubbed BlackNurse, involves sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets of a particular type and code. ICMP is commonly used for the ping network diagnostic utility, and attacks that try to overload a system with ping messages -- known as ping floods -- use ICMP Type 8 Code 0 packets.BlackNurse uses ICMP Type 3 (Destination Unreachable) Code 3 (Port Unreachable) packets instead and some firewalls consume a lot of CPU resources when processing them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DoS technique lets a single laptop take down an enterprise firewall

At a time when the size of distributed denial-of-service attacks has reached unprecedented levels, researchers have found a new attack technique in the wild that allows a single laptop to take down high-bandwidth enterprise firewalls.The attack, dubbed BlackNurse, involves sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets of a particular type and code. ICMP is commonly used for the ping network diagnostic utility, and attacks that try to overload a system with ping messages -- known as ping floods -- use ICMP Type 8 Code 0 packets.BlackNurse uses ICMP Type 3 (Destination Unreachable) Code 3 (Port Unreachable) packets instead and some firewalls consume a lot of CPU resources when processing them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: ITSM evolution on display at FUSION

Trends in enterprise IT are an interesting thing. Can you think of any other industry where hype has its own lifecycle?Whether it is because of the large budgets at stake or that enterprise IT professionals are uniquely susceptible to them, it seems the enterprise IT market is always awash in “hot new trends.” And as fast as they arise, most fizzle out.At least from that perspective, the IT service management (ITSM) space has had a pretty good run. It’s been over 20 years since the British government first introduced Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), creating the ITSM market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inside Six of the Newest Top 20 Supercomputers

The latest listing of the Top 500 rankings of the world’s most powerful supercomputers has just been released. While there were no big surprises at the top of the list, there have been some notable additions to the top tier, all of which feature various elements of supercomputers yet to come as national labs and research centers prepare for their pre-exascale and eventual exascale systems.

We will be providing a deep dive on the list results this morning, but for now, what is most interesting about the list is what it is just beginning to contain at the top–and what

Inside Six of the Newest Top 20 Supercomputers was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

6 ways to add cybersecurity protections to outsourcing deals

As cybersecurity has become one of the most important strategic imperatives for the enterprise, concerns about how third-party IT services providers are protecting corporate data have grown. As a result, negotiation of cybersecurity and data privacy issues has become one of the most challenging areas in IT outsourcing contract negotiations, says Rebecca Eisner, partner in the Chicago office of law firm Mayer Brown.“Suppliers are understandably concerned about not paying damages that are disproportionate to the revenue received, and therefore seek to limit or disclaim their liability,” says Eisner. “Customers are equally concerned, particularly where suppliers do not have the same incentives to protect customer data as the customer, and because the negative impacts of a security incident are generally far more significant to the customer than to the supplier.” What’s more, the cybersecurity regulatory environment is rapidly evolving, making it difficult for both sides to access the risks. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Get started with TensorFlow

Machine learning couldn’t be hotter, with several heavy hitters offering platforms aimed at seasoned data scientists and newcomers interested in working with neural networks. Among the more popular options is TensorFlow, a machine learning library that Google open-sourced a year ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Trump’s election sets stage for H-1B reform

President-elect Donald Trump gave laid-off IT workers something his rival, Hillary Clinton, did not during the campaign: Attention and a promise to reform the H-1B visa program.The IT workers that Trump wanted to appeal to don't work for startups, Google, Facebook or Microsoft. They run IT systems at insurance firms, banks, utilities and retailers. They live in Rust Belt cities and in New York City, but are too spread out for pollsters to measure.Trump recognized that IT workers are aggrieved and so did Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who worked with the president-elect on this issue. Sessions, after being appointed in early 2015 as the chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee, set out to become "the voice of the American IT workers who are being replaced with guest workers."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Employees feel pressure to use personal smartphones at work

Eren says that businesses typically approach BYOD from the perspective of hardware security. But instead of worrying about security on devices and peripherals, Eren says businesses should focus on securing the corporate data that resides on the devices and creating policies around what can and cannot live on a personal device.Eren says it's not hardware and devices that are the security threat, it's the apps that host corporate data, which is what hackers are after. Your BYOD strategy doesn't need to be overly complex, he says, but it does need to work within the parameters of your business and be something that can grow and adapt as technology evolves.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 11.14.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.NetCrunch 9.3Key features: Version 9.3 of the NetCrunch network monitoring system introduces an overhauled GUI, live up/down traffic on physical segments, new views for smaller networks, and integration with JIRA, ConnectWise and more. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 11.14.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.NetCrunch 9.3Key features: Version 9.3 of the NetCrunch network monitoring system introduces an overhauled GUI, live up/down traffic on physical segments, new views for smaller networks, and integration with JIRA, ConnectWise and more. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 11.14.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.NetCrunch 9.3Key features: Version 9.3 of the NetCrunch network monitoring system introduces an overhauled GUI, live up/down traffic on physical segments, new views for smaller networks, and integration with JIRA, ConnectWise and more. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung boosts audio, connected car businesses with $8B Harman buy

Samsung Electronics wants to buy its way into the connected car market, with a plan to acquire Harman for US$8 billion.It's the latest in a line of acquisitions by Samsung, as it seeks to diversify its business beyond the slowing smartphone market. Other recently announced deals include last month's buy of artificial intelligence startup Viv Labs, which has developed a virtual personal assistant Samsung hopes to put in its consumer electronics products, and the June purchase of Joyent, a supplier of cloud services for the internet of things.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here