IDG Contributor Network: Why monitoring needs to be reinvented

Why do we monitor things (user experience, transactions, applications, virtual servers, physical servers, datastores, etc.)? Because we want them to work well all of the time.Does everything in your environment work well as you expect it to all of the time?Well, of course not. What if we reinvent monitoring so that we can help make that happen?Consider the following analogy: An airplane can fly itself from its origination to its destination and land itself without human intervention. If we flew commercial airliners the way we run enterprise IT, planes would be dropping out of the sky left and right—and only be 30 percent full (maybe this would be a good thing).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why monitoring needs to be reinvented

Why do we monitor things (user experience, transactions, applications, virtual servers, physical servers, datastores, etc.)? Because we want them to work well all of the time.Does everything in your environment work well as you expect it to all of the time?Well, of course not. What if we reinvent monitoring so that we can help make that happen?Consider the following analogy: An airplane can fly itself from its origination to its destination and land itself without human intervention. If we flew commercial airliners the way we run enterprise IT, planes would be dropping out of the sky left and right—and only be 30 percent full (maybe this would be a good thing).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Despite big data, Alibaba’s Taobao back in US blacklist

Alibaba’s Taobao.com marketplace is in the eye of a storm after the U.S. Trade Representative included the vastly popular online Chinese marketplace in the list of ‘Notorious Markets’ for 2016, after a long break.The list identifies markets that are allegedly "engaging in and facilitating substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting.” The listing carries no penalties but will likely be an embarrassment for Alibaba, which has been trying to burnish its image in international markets.The move by the USTR comes even as the company claims to have used “big data” technologies to zero in, for example, on 13 factories and shops that were selling knockoff RAM modules under Kingston and Samsung brands, according to Alibaba's news hub Alizila.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How artificial intelligence can eliminate bias in hiring

Diversity (or lack of it) is still a major challenge for tech companies. Poised to revolutionize the world of work in general, some organizations are leveraging technology to root out bias, better identify and screen candidates and help close the diversity gap.That starts with understanding the nature of bias, and acknowledging that unconscious bias is a major problem, says Kevin Mulcahy, an analyst with Future Workplace and co-author of The Future Workplace Experience: 10 Rules for Managing Disruption in Recruiting and Engaging Employees. AI and machine learning can be an objective observer to screen for bias patterns, Mulcahy says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump threatens electronic rights, EFF warns

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is keenly worried that President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress will step up surveillance activities and pass laws to curtail electronic rights.As a result, the EFF is advising the tech sector to use end-to-end encryption for every transaction by default, and to scrub logs. "You cannot be made to surrender data you do not have," the EFF said.[To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page.]"We need to start securing our systems now," said Rainey Reitman, director of the EFF's activism team, in an interview. "If we wait until he [Trump] starts putting overbroad government demands on tech companies, they won't have the time to clean up their logs and encrypt data."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Virtual reality, one year out: What went right, what didn’t

After years of teases, tantalizing promises, and Kickstarter campaigns, virtual reality finally became actual reality in 2016, with VR’s mere existence thrusting the entire PC industry into glorious, wonderful turmoil. Despite being around for just a handful of months, virtual reality has already inspired totally new genres of computers, wormed its way deep into Windows, and sent the price of graphics cards plummeting.Not too shabby for VR’s first real year on the streets, though the implementations could still use some fine-tuning. Let’s look back at how this wild new frontier blossomed in 2016.The birth of consumer virtual reality From the very start of 2016 it was clear that the dawn of proper PC-powered VR had arrived. You could see evidence of this fact all over CES 2016 in January, where EVGA introduced a specialized graphics card designed to fit VR headset ergonomics; Nvidia rolled out a VR certification program; and seemingly every booth boasted some sort of virtual-reality hook, from VR treadmills to VR porn and VR Everest climbs (the latter two being mind-blowing in their own ways).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What the infosec jobs sector will look like in 2017

Shortage still?Image by EthanMany reports touted the fact that there are not enough workers with the proper cybersecurity skills necessary to fill all the vacant jobs. Forrester suggests looking to external expertise and automation for a quarter of the work. The complexity curve facing enterprises hasn’t reached its peak yet, which leaves security stuck solving problems of capacity and capability with limited resources already burdened with too many technologies, too many alerts, and too much to do. This combined spending will include security outsourcing, managed security services, security consultants and integrators, and security automation technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Free security tools to support cyber security efforts

There are more free information security tools out there than you can highlight with a fist full of whiteboard pointers. While many are trial ware-based enticements designed to lure decision makers to purchase the pricey premium counterparts of these freebies, many are full-blown utilities. A few important categories include threat intelligence tools, tools to build security in during the development stage, penetration testers, and forensics tools.Threat intelligence tools include AlienVault’s Open Threat Exchange, which collects and shares online threat intelligence as well as the Hailataxii and Cymon.io threat exchanges. There are a variety of SAST (Static Application Security Testing) tools for security testing software applications that developers write using different languages whether C/C++, Ruby on Rails, or Python. For penetration testing, we present the Nmap Security Scanner and the broadly useful Wireshark network protocol analyzer. Specific forensics products include the GRR remote forensic framework, and Autopsy and SleuthKit, which analyze hard drives and smartphones, and the Volatility Foundation’s open source framework for memory analysis/forensics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Free security tools to support cyber security efforts

There are more free information security tools out there than you can highlight with a fist full of whiteboard pointers. While many are trial ware-based enticements designed to lure decision makers to purchase the pricey premium counterparts of these freebies, many are full-blown utilities. A few important categories include threat intelligence tools, tools to build security in during the development stage, penetration testers, and forensics tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Experts split on how soon quantum computing is coming, but say we should start preparing now

Whether quantum computing is 10 years away -- or is already here -- it promises to make current encryption methods obsolete, so enterprises need to start laying the groundwork for new encryption methods.A quantum computer uses qubits instead of bits. A bit can be a zero or a one, but a qubit can be both simultaneously, which is weird and hard to program but once folks get it working, it has the potential to be significantly more powerful than any of today's computers.And it will make many of today's public key algorithms obsolete, said Kevin Curran, IEEE senior member and a professor at the University of Ulster, where he heads up the Ambient Intelligence Research Group.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Experts split on how soon quantum computing is coming, but say we should start preparing now

Whether quantum computing is 10 years away -- or is already here -- it promises to make current encryption methods obsolete, so enterprises need to start laying the groundwork for new encryption methods.A quantum computer uses qubits instead of bits. A bit can be a zero or a one, but a qubit can be both simultaneously, which is weird and hard to program but once folks get it working, it has the potential to be significantly more powerful than any of today's computers.And it will make many of today's public key algorithms obsolete, said Kevin Curran, IEEE senior member and a professor at the University of Ulster, where he heads up the Ambient Intelligence Research Group.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top 5 VPN services for personal privacy and security

Virtual private networks (VPNs) encrypt internet connections between two points, to secure them from casual snoopers and hackers. These VPN services are particularly useful when accessing the internet from an untrusted location, such as a hotel, café or coworking space.A plethora of modern VPN services, with dedicated connectivity apps, have put an end to the maddening manual configuration VPNs once required. No two VPN offerings are alike, however, and it can be a challenge to find the right VPN. Here's a look at some of the top VPNs for privacy and security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top 5 VPN services for personal privacy and security

Virtual private networks (VPNs) encrypt internet connections between two points, to secure them from casual snoopers and hackers. These VPN services are particularly useful when accessing the internet from an untrusted location, such as a hotel, café or coworking space.A plethora of modern VPN services, with dedicated connectivity apps, have put an end to the maddening manual configuration VPNs once required. No two VPN offerings are alike, however, and it can be a challenge to find the right VPN. Here's a look at some of the top VPNs for privacy and security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top 5 VPN services for personal privacy and security

Virtual private networks (VPNs) encrypt internet connections between two points, to secure them from casual snoopers and hackers. These VPN services are particularly useful when accessing the internet from an untrusted location, such as a hotel, café or coworking space.A plethora of modern VPN services, with dedicated connectivity apps, have put an end to the maddening manual configuration VPNs once required. No two VPN offerings are alike, however, and it can be a challenge to find the right VPN. Here's a look at some of the top VPNs for privacy and security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Don’t make risk and compliance the enemy of financial services innovation and reinvention

The financial services industry lives with a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it is at the heart of everything from economic health and growth to the daily reality of how consumers pay for housing, transportation or even a coffee on the go to start their day.Because our world is powered by transactions, both consumers and businesses alike look to the financial services industry to constantly innovate. That’s the good part of the mixed blessing: the opportunity to improve and reinvent. + Also on Network World: Financial services firm adopts agile for digital development + On the other hand, there is a constant challenge around juggling changes. In an era when financial institutions are more highly regulated than ever before, risk and compliance mandates add an entirely new level of complexity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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