Docker acquires Infinit: a new data layer for distributed applications

The short version: Docker acquired a fantastic company called Infinit. Using their technology, we will provide secure distributed storage out of the box, making it much easier to deploy stateful services and legacy enterprise applications on Docker. This will be delivered in a very open and modular design, so operators can easily integrate their existing storage systems, tune advanced settings, or simply disable the feature altogether. Oh, and we’re going to open-source the whole thing.

The slightly longer version:

At Docker we believe that tools should adapt to the people using them, not the other way around. So we spend a lot of time searching for the most exciting and powerful software technology out there, then integrating it into simple and powerful tools. That is how we discovered a small team of distributed systems engineers based out of Paris, who were working on a next-generation distributed filesystem called Infinit. From the very first demo two things were immediately clear. First, Infinit is an incredible piece of technology with the potential to change how applications consume and produce data; Second, the Infinit and Docker teams were almost comically similar: same obsession with decentralized systems; same empathy for the needs of both Continue reading

Cisco Meraki sees the hotel of the future in its new Wi-Fi gear

The days when hotel Wi-Fi just connected travelers to the Internet are going away. Now it can be part of a system that helps give guests more personalized service – if they don’t mind the hotel tracking their location on the property.The new MR30H access point from Cisco’s Meraki division will work with Bluetooth beacons - small wireless location devices that stores and other businesses are starting to use so they can tell where people are.The benefits, as long as guests are willing to opt in, could include things like having an attendant walk up and offer a drink or a towel as you go out to the pool, thanks to your frequent-guest status, said Pablo Estrada, Meraki’s director of marketing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Meraki sees the hotel of the future in its new Wi-Fi gear

The days when hotel Wi-Fi just connected travelers to the Internet are going away. Now it can be part of a system that helps give guests more personalized service – if they don’t mind the hotel tracking their location on the property.The new MR30H access point from Cisco’s Meraki division will work with Bluetooth beacons - small wireless location devices that stores and other businesses are starting to use so they can tell where people are.The benefits, as long as guests are willing to opt in, could include things like having an attendant walk up and offer a drink or a towel as you go out to the pool, thanks to your frequent-guest status, said Pablo Estrada, Meraki’s director of marketing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Up close with Google Wifi’s setup process

Google Wifi jumps into the wireless mesh spaceImage by GoogleGoogle's new Google Wifi system combines wireless access nodes called "points" with a mobile app that lets you manage your mesh system. A mesh is created when you add two or more points to the existing system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

First look: Google jumps into crowded wireless mesh market

Google made a bunch of new hardware announcements earlier this year, which included new smartphones (the Pixel) and a virtual assistant (Google Home), but they also announced Google Wifi (love how they drop the hyphen and lowercase the F, causing whatever copy editors are left on the planet to wring their hands in anger), a wireless mesh platform to go up against the likes of other startups like eero, Almond, Luma, Amplifi, to name a few. Google Wifi is the update to its OnHub Wi-Fi platform - Google says that it's now on its third generation of products (the first one didn't make it to market, and the second one was OnHub). Google sent me a three-pack of the new system, which goes on sale to the general public today ($485 via Amazon, but also available from Best Buy, Walmart or directly from Google).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: CloudVelox offers automated cloud network customizations

CloudVelox offers migration and disaster recovery (DR) tools for cloud computing environments. That’s a simple enough task, right? Well, kind of.The company's software automates the migration of applications to public clouds, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. But its aim to reduce the time, complexity, and hassle around this process is hampered somewhat by the fact that in the trio of functions that applications rely upon—storage, compute and networking—it is the last, networking, that dictates the availability or otherwise of an application. If the networks behind an application fail, the application essentially fails to exist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Expedia IT tech made $330K by secretly accessing execs’ files for insider trading

Lots of IT techs have access to network credentials to access company files and emails, but it wouldn’t cross the minds of most to abuse that knowledge for a “get-rich-scheme” in the flavor of insider trading. Yet that doesn’t apply to everyone, since a 28-year-old admitted to exploiting his position in order to gain insider knowledge and illegally trade and profit from those secrets.Jonathan Ly, a former IT tech for Expedia, pleaded guilty to securities fraud – something FBI Special Agent in Charge Jay S. Tabb, Jr. called, “Particularly egregious because Mr. Ly abused his special access privileges as an IT administrator. On top of violating the trust of the public and his company, he violated the privacy of fellow employees by surreptitiously accessing their files.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Expedia IT tech made $330K by secretly accessing execs’ files for insider trading

Lots of IT techs have access to network credentials to access company files and emails, but it wouldn’t cross the minds of most to abuse that knowledge for a “get-rich-scheme” in the flavor of insider trading. Yet that doesn’t apply to everyone, since a 28-year-old admitted to exploiting his position in order to gain insider knowledge and illegally trade and profit from those secrets.Jonathan Ly, a former IT tech for Expedia, pleaded guilty to securities fraud – something FBI Special Agent in Charge Jay S. Tabb, Jr. called, “Particularly egregious because Mr. Ly abused his special access privileges as an IT administrator. On top of violating the trust of the public and his company, he violated the privacy of fellow employees by surreptitiously accessing their files.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM amps-up Watson cybersecurity experiences

Watson has gone through school and ready for first internship. IBM today said its Watson cognitive computing system continues its path to become part of a full-fledged cybersecurity service by announcing 40 customers have begun beta testing the technology as an enterprise protection tool.+More on Network World: IBM Watson/ XPrize open $5 million AI competition for world-changing applications+Watson has recruited enterprises from auto, banking and insurance realms -- including Sun Life Financial, University of Rochester Medical Center, SCANA Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, California Polytechnic State University, University of New Brunswick, Avnet and Smarttech – to help research and develop new security applications that will use the systems natural language and machine learning techniques.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM amps-up Watson cybersecurity experiences

Watson has gone through school and ready for first internship. IBM today said its Watson cognitive computing system continues its path to become part of a full-fledged cybersecurity service by announcing 40 customers have begun beta testing the technology as an enterprise protection tool.+More on Network World: IBM Watson/ XPrize open $5 million AI competition for world-changing applications+Watson has recruited enterprises from auto, banking and insurance realms -- including Sun Life Financial, University of Rochester Medical Center, SCANA Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, California Polytechnic State University, University of New Brunswick, Avnet and Smarttech – to help research and develop new security applications that will use the systems natural language and machine learning techniques.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 top disaster recovery packages compared

Whether the disaster is a flood, a power outage or human error, IT departments have the critical role of getting business systems working again. And that requires reliable disaster-recovery software.Four of the top disaster-recovery (DR) software suites are Veeam Backup, Altaro VM Backup, Zerto Virtual Replication and VMware’s Site Recovery Manager (SRM), according to reviews written by users in the IT Central Station community.[ Also on CSO: Lessons from high-profile IT failures ] But what do enterprise users really think about these tools? Here, users give a shout-out for some of their favorite features, but also give the vendors a little tough love.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

4 top disaster recovery packages compared

Whether the disaster is a flood, a power outage or human error, IT departments have the critical role of getting business systems working again. And that requires reliable disaster-recovery software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

AT&T means business with a 5G trial at Intel

5G and its multi-gigabit cellular speeds probably won’t hit the market until 2020, but one corporate customer of AT&T is about to taste what it may be like.AT&T is launching its first customer trial of 5G technologies – the first 5G trial for any business user in the U.S., the carrier believes. But this is no average customer that happened to draw a golden ticket. The trial will take place at an Intel facility in Austin, Texas. It will last about a month, use just one cell site, and cover an area with a radius of approximately 300 meters, AT&T said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Integrating Threat Intelligence Into Your Network Security Strategy

Companies increasingly looking for hackers to attack their networks

The U.S. Army ventured into unfamiliar territory last week, the first day of its “Hack the Army” bug bounty program that challenges dozens of invited hackers to infiltrate its computer networks and find vulnerabilities in select, public-facing Army websites."We're not agile enough to keep up with a number of things that are happening in the tech world and in other places outside the Department of Defense," explained Army Secretary Eric Fanning in announcing the plan in mid-November. "We're looking for new ways of doing business," which includes a break from the past when government avoided working with the hacker community.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Companies increasingly looking for hackers to attack their networks

The U.S. Army ventured into unfamiliar territory last week, the first day of its “Hack the Army” bug bounty program that challenges dozens of invited hackers to infiltrate its computer networks and find vulnerabilities in select, public-facing Army websites."We're not agile enough to keep up with a number of things that are happening in the tech world and in other places outside the Department of Defense," explained Army Secretary Eric Fanning in announcing the plan in mid-November. "We're looking for new ways of doing business," which includes a break from the past when government avoided working with the hacker community.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tell-tale toys open bedroom door to strangers, consumer groups warn

Internet-connected toys subject children to hidden marketing messages and allow strangers to converse with them from a distance, consumer rights groups say.The groups highlighted breaches of security and basic consumer rights in two toys in particular, the i-Que robot and the My Friend Cayla doll.The toys connect via Bluetooth to smartphone apps that record children speaking and transmit the recordings to a voice recognition service provider in the U.S., Nuance Communications, allowing the toys to appear to converse with the children.But, the consumer groups say, there is no authentication or pairing of the Bluetooth connections, allowing strangers within radio range of the toys to detect them and connect with them to carry on a conversation with the children directly. Furthermore, they say, voice recordings that could contain personal information are transmitted to Nuance without explicit consent, and the toys inject messages into their conversations repeatedly endorsing Disney products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tell-tale toys open bedroom door to strangers, consumer groups warn

Internet-connected toys subject children to hidden marketing messages and allow strangers to converse with them from a distance, consumer rights groups say.The groups highlighted breaches of security and basic consumer rights in two toys in particular, the i-Que robot and the My Friend Cayla doll.The toys connect via Bluetooth to smartphone apps that record children speaking and transmit the recordings to a voice recognition service provider in the U.S., Nuance Communications, allowing the toys to appear to converse with the children.But, the consumer groups say, there is no authentication or pairing of the Bluetooth connections, allowing strangers within radio range of the toys to detect them and connect with them to carry on a conversation with the children directly. Furthermore, they say, voice recordings that could contain personal information are transmitted to Nuance without explicit consent, and the toys inject messages into their conversations repeatedly endorsing Disney products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Common security mistakes in collaboration tools

Working togetherImage by Rebecca SiegelCollaboration tools have become widely used across organizations today, as people come to rely on these handy tools to work more efficiently. They reduce reliance on email, increase conversation between teams and provide an easy way to share information with colleagues. However, with many workplace applications today, there are so many gaps where security settings can fail, and corporate IT is beginning to take notice. Mike McCamon, president at SpiderOak, recommends staying away from these common security and privacy mistakes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Common security mistakes in collaboration tools

Working togetherImage by Rebecca SiegelCollaboration tools have become widely used across organizations today, as people come to rely on these handy tools to work more efficiently. They reduce reliance on email, increase conversation between teams and provide an easy way to share information with colleagues. However, with many workplace applications today, there are so many gaps where security settings can fail, and corporate IT is beginning to take notice. Mike McCamon, president at SpiderOak, recommends staying away from these common security and privacy mistakes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here