Verizon sells its data centers to Equinix for $3.6B

Telecommunications giants Verizon and CenturyLink have each now sold off their data center assets, with Verizon being the most recent to offload its infrastructure operations to Equinix in a $3.6 billion deal.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Amazon's biggest re:Invent cloud announcements +Equinix operates data centers around the world for its colocation and interconnection business and is purchasing 24 sites that have a total of 29 data centers in 15 metropolitan areas. The acquisition brings Equinix’s total data center footprint to 175 in 43 metro areas. Verizon is keeping its data centers in 27 sites across Europe, Asia and Canada.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple admits that it’s working on self-driving car technologies

If there's one thing that Apple values more than most other tech companies, it's product secrecy. Whereas other big name tech companies like Google and Microsoft enjoy showing users what type of crazy new technologies they've been working on, Apple in contrast prefers to keep everything under wraps until it has a shipping product to show off.That said, a recent letter that Apple sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) finally gives us some concrete proof that the company has a strong and ongoing interest in self-driving car technology. Sure, it was no secret that Apple was working on a car initiative of some sort given its hiring spree of engineers with deep experience across the entirety of the car design and manufacturing process. Still, it was never entirely clear if Apple was initially looking into building a car of its own or, perhaps, focusing on ancillary software technologies instead.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dropbox boosts mobile productivity with offline folder support

Users who need to make sure they can get access to files stored in Dropbox while they're on the go and away from the web have a new feature to help with that. The company announced Tuesday that users of its mobile apps will soon be able to save files locally for use offline.It's a move by the cloud storage company to better compete with the other players in the cloud storage space,  and provide users with functionality that will help them be more productive when they're on planes, out in low-connectivity areas or just want to save their cellular data quota for other purposes. Here's how it works: users select a file or folder in the Dropbox app, tap "Make Available Offline," then wait for the app to download the requested files. After that, those files will be available for viewing, even if the phone or tablet storing them is without a connection to the web. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s how the Windows 10 Creators Update helps enterprises

A few weeks ago, Microsoft unveiled its Windows 10 Creators Update with a focus on the software’s benefits for end users when it launches next year. On Tuesday, the company showed a different side of the next major patch for its new operating system, showing off features that will help IT professionals.Next year, IT folks will get new features focused on security, device management, and upgrade improvements. For one, Microsoft’s advanced security suite for Windows 10 is gaining additional remediation, detection and threat intelligence tools. Administrators will also get new analytics to see how their organization is using the new operating system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sponsored Post: Loupe, New York Times, ScaleArc, Aerospike, Scalyr, Gusto, VividCortex, MemSQL, InMemory.Net, Zohocorp

Who's Hiring?

  • The New York Times is looking for a Software Engineer for its Delivery/Site Reliability Engineering team. You will also be a part of a team responsible for building the tools that ensure that the various systems at The New York Times continue to operate in a reliable and efficient manner. Some of the tech we use: Go, Ruby, Bash, AWS, GCP, Terraform, Packer, Docker, Kubernetes, Vault, Consul, Jenkins, Drone. Please send resumes to: [email protected]

  • IT Security Engineering. At Gusto we are on a mission to create a world where work empowers a better life. As Gusto's IT Security Engineer you'll shape the future of IT security and compliance. We're looking for a strong IT technical lead to manage security audits and write and implement controls. You'll also focus on our employee, network, and endpoint posture. As Gusto's first IT Security Engineer, you will be able to build the security organization with direct impact to protecting PII and ePHI. Read more and apply here.

Fun and Informative Events

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Cool Products and Services

  • A note for .NET developers: You know the pain of troubleshooting errors with limited time, limited information, and limited tools. Log management, exception tracking, Continue reading

Supreme Court kills $399M patent award against Samsung in Apple case

The U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated a US$399 million infringement award against Samsung Electronics in a long-running design patent dispute with Apple.The court, in an 8-0 decision, kicked back the patent award to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, saying the lower court calculated the patent award based on the whole iPhone, while the design patents may cover only pieces of the device.The Federal Circuit's failure to consider a smaller damage award based on pieces of the iPhone "cannot be squared" with patent law, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the Supreme Court. The lower court, in its ruling, said it could not separate out the infringing pieces of the smartphones because they were not available for sale to the public, she noted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Mirantis moves deeper into the container world, launches certification

Mirantis is well known as a pure play OpenStack vendor. The company is (was) entirely focused on offering organizations help leveraging the OpenStack open-source cloud computing platform.As we’ve seen over recent years, the OpenStack initiative, while popular in some areas (science and telco, for example) hasn’t seen the sort of service provider revenues that justify the massive valuations of venture-backed companies.So, while other vendors have gone to the wall and had to sell themselves off to the highest bidder, Mirantis seems to be making a determined effort to pivot into adjacent areas. No longer is this a pure-play OpenStack company; Mirantis now pitches itself as an organization that “helps top enterprises build and manage private cloud infrastructure using OpenStack and related open-source technologies.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Kraken

How do you know how well your systems can perform under stress? How can you identify resource utilization bottlenecks? And how do you know your tests match the condititions experienced with live production traffic? You could try load modeling (simulation), but it’s not really feasible to model systems undergoing constantly evolving workloads, frequent software release cycles, and complex dependencies. —the morning paper

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App developers not ready for iOS transport security requirements

A month before Apple is expected to enforce stricter security requirements for app communications in iOS, enterprise developers don't seem ready to embrace them, a new study shows.The study was performed by security firm Appthority on the most common 200 apps installed on iOS devices in enterprise environments. The researchers looked at how well these apps conform to Apple's App Transport Security (ATS) requirements.ATS was first introduced and was enabled by default in iOS 9. It forces all apps to communicate with Internet servers using encrypted HTTPS (HTTP over SSL/TLS) connections and ensures that only industry-standard encryption protocols and ciphers without known weaknesses are used. For example, SSL version 3 is not allowed and neither is the RC4 stream cipher, due to known vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

App developers not ready for iOS transport security requirements

A month before Apple is expected to enforce stricter security requirements for app communications in iOS, enterprise developers don't seem ready to embrace them, a new study shows.The study was performed by security firm Appthority on the most common 200 apps installed on iOS devices in enterprise environments. The researchers looked at how well these apps conform to Apple's App Transport Security (ATS) requirements.ATS was first introduced and was enabled by default in iOS 9. It forces all apps to communicate with Internet servers using encrypted HTTPS (HTTP over SSL/TLS) connections and ensures that only industry-standard encryption protocols and ciphers without known weaknesses are used. For example, SSL version 3 is not allowed and neither is the RC4 stream cipher, due to known vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Security is Hard. Why Not Automate It?


 

Security automation doesn't get a lot of time in the spotlight, but it's something that deserves more thought and attention. The almost constant stream of headlines about the latest data breach or large scale hack make these seem like inevitable events that can't be prevented. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, most data breaches are easily prevented by applying basic security standards and fixing known vulnerabilities in a timely manner. Covering the basics frees information security teams to monitor, detect, and stop more advanced attacks. Hardened systems also make life difficult for attackers, which is always a good thing.

But where does Ansible fit into all this? Ansible is great for configuration management, continuous integration and delivery, orchestration, application deployment and even infrastructure provision. But “I solved a security problem with Ansible” might not be what you’re accustomed to hearing at the water cooler from your average information security or operations person.

To understand how Ansible fits into to the security picture, it’s worth stepping back a little to understand exactly what is information security.

Information security is a multifaceted problem

Keeping information secure isn’t easy. We all know what needs to be Continue reading

21% off Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 – Deal Alert

The Seagate expansion desktop drive provides extra storage for your ever-growing collection of files. Instantly add space for more files, consolidate all of your files to a single location, or free up space on your computer's internal drive to help improve performance. Setup is straightforward; simply plug in the included power supply and USB cable, and you are ready to go. It is automatically recognized by the Windows operating system, so there is no software to install and nothing to configure. Saving files is easy too-just drag-and-drop. Take advantage of the fast data transfer speeds with the USB 3.0 interface by connecting to a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port.  This drive receives 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon, where its typical list price of $70 has been reduced 21% to $55. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to Setup HA for RHV-M pt2

Hi folks, I’m finally getting around to the high availability for RHV-M (hosted engine) walk through demo that I promised. The truth is that due to unforeseen circumstances, I had to go to “plan b”. The end result is still the same, and the workflows are almost identical, but the “in betweens” are just a bit different.

Allow me to illuminate..

So when I last left off, I was explaining the virtues of both the lightweight virtualization host (RHVH) as well as the hosted engine configuration for use as a means of providing high availability for RHV-M, the management piece for RHV. Hosted engine can support either (not both at the same time) RHVH or RHEL hosts as the hypervisor nodes.. While I really wanted to show you how get things up and running with RHVH first, I’m going to show you the “RHEL way” first. I’ll come back around the RHVH, I promise.

The workflow for getting things up and ready is very similar when comparing RHVH and RHEL – hosts, networks, and storage all get setup. DNS (forward and reverse, FQDN for hosts and RHV-M) is configured. Subscriptions are set and hosts are updated. The biggest differences are Continue reading

Trump cybersecurity dos and don’ts (Part 2)

Given recent cybersecurity incidents such as the Google Android data breach, the DDoS attack on Dyn and the data breach of the DNC, President-elect Donald Trump will find cybersecurity policy a top priority when he takes office in January.What should Mr. Trump do and what should he avoid? In my last blog, I presented some recommendations for the “do” column. Alternatively, here is a list of things President Trump should eschew in his administration’s cybersecurity agenda: Don’t obsess over cybersecurity intelligence sharing path. Public/private partnerships for cybersecurity cooperation have roots that go back to the Clinton administration’s original PDD-63 for critical infrastructure protection. In more recent times, Congress struggled with CISPA then CISA as stand-alone bills before sneaking CISA into a federal spending bill in late 2015. Intelligence sharing is a good step but it’s been beaten to death and most large organizations have figured this out on their own.  What’s needed is a concerted effort on best practices and sharing threat intelligence with small businesses. Yes, these things should happen, but the feds should do so as part of CISA and not spin up another distracting effort. Remember that threat intelligence sharing is a means Continue reading

Trump Cybersecurity Do’s and Don’ts (Part 2)

Given recent cybersecurity incidents like the Google Android data breach, the DDoS attack on Dyn and the data breach of the DNC, President-elect Donald Trump will find cybersecurity policy a top priority when he takes office in January.What should Mr. Trump do and what should he avoid?  In my last blog, I presented some recommendations for the “do” column.  Alternatively, here is a list of things President Trump should eschew in his administration’s cybersecurity agenda.  The “don’t” column includes the following: Don’t obsess over cybersecurity intelligence sharing path.  Public/private partnerships for cybersecurity cooperation have roots that go back to the Clinton administration’s original PDD-63 for critical infrastructure protection.  In more recent times, congress struggled with CISPA then CISA as stand-alone bills before sneaking CISA into a federal spending bill in late 2015.  Intelligence sharing is a good step but it’s been beaten to death and most large organizations have figured this out on their own.  What’s needed is a concerted effort on best practices and sharing threat intelligence with small businesses.  Yes, these things should happen but the feds should do so as part of CISA and not spin up Continue reading

Trump Cybersecurity Do’s and Don’ts (Part 2)

Given recent cybersecurity incidents like the Google Android data breach, the DDoS attack on Dyn and the data breach of the DNC, President-elect Donald Trump will find cybersecurity policy a top priority when he takes office in January.What should Mr. Trump do and what should he avoid?  In my last blog, I presented some recommendations for the “do” column.  Alternatively, here is a list of things President Trump should eschew in his administration’s cybersecurity agenda.  The “don’t” column includes the following: Don’t obsess over cybersecurity intelligence sharing path.  Public/private partnerships for cybersecurity cooperation have roots that go back to the Clinton administration’s original PDD-63 for critical infrastructure protection.  In more recent times, congress struggled with CISPA then CISA as stand-alone bills before sneaking CISA into a federal spending bill in late 2015.  Intelligence sharing is a good step but it’s been beaten to death and most large organizations have figured this out on their own.  What’s needed is a concerted effort on best practices and sharing threat intelligence with small businesses.  Yes, these things should happen but the feds should do so as part of CISA and not spin up Continue reading

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