NASA: Asteroid mission starts with a marriage of rocks, styrofoam and plywood

Robotically grabbing hunks of asteroid in deep space is no trivial task so it would be nice to practice the mission beforehand.That’s the goal with a mock-up asteroid NASA and the University of West Virginia recently built from rock, styrofoam, plywood and an aluminum endoskeleton. The mock-up is in preparation for NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) which will send a spacecraft to rendezvous with a target asteroid, land a robotic spacecraft on the surface, grab a 4 meter or so sized boulder and begin a six-year journey to redirect the boulder into orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts.+More on network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction; Quick look: NASA’s ambitious asteroid grabbing mission+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA: Asteroid mission starts with a marriage of rocks, styrofoam and plywood

Robotically grabbing hunks of asteroid in deep space is no trivial task so it would be nice to practice the mission beforehand.That’s the goal with a mock-up asteroid NASA and the University of West Virginia recently built from rock, styrofoam, plywood and an aluminum endoskeleton. The mock-up is in preparation for NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) which will send a spacecraft to rendezvous with a target asteroid, land a robotic spacecraft on the surface, grab a 4 meter or so sized boulder and begin a six-year journey to redirect the boulder into orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts.+More on network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction; Quick look: NASA’s ambitious asteroid grabbing mission+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Getting Agile And Staying That Way

Let’s be honest. Although the old saying “slow and steady wins the race” may be a lesson that helps us get through school, it isn’t a realistic credo for the unrelenting demands of today’s fast-paced businesses. Faster may be better, but only if quality doesn’t suffer – and this puts immense strain on agile organizations that must continually deliver new features and software to their customers.

Meeting these needs, and doing so with efficiency, requires rethinking how we view application development and operations. For organizations embracing and addressing these challenges, the pursuit of DevOps is the new normal, but it …

Getting Agile And Staying That Way was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: Using rowhammer to root Android

Researchers have devised an attack that gains unfettered “root” access to a large number of Android phones, exploiting a relatively new type of bug that allows adversaries to manipulate data stored in memory chips. The breakthrough has the potential to make millions of Android phones vulnerable, at least until a security fix is available, to a new form of attack that seizes control of core parts of the operating system and neuters key security defenses. —ARS Technica

The post Worth Reading: Using rowhammer to root Android appeared first on 'net work.

Do smartphone trade-ins threaten corporate security?

As the holiday season approaches (OK, it may already be here), workers in your company will likely be acquiring new smartphones. In fact, a recent survey by Blancco Technology Group says a whopping 68 percent of mobile users plan to purchase a new smartphone for the holidays. That number seems high to me, but come January, you can be pretty sure there will be a lot of shiny new iPhones, Galaxies and Pixels connecting to your corporate network. But that’s not what this post is about. No, this post is about what happens to all those no-longer-shiny BYOD smartphones that used to connect to your corporate network and work with your corporate data, but have now been replaced with something new. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Do smartphone trade-ins threaten corporate security?

As the holiday season approaches (OK, it may already be here), workers in your company will likely be acquiring new smartphones. In fact, a recent survey by Blancco Technology Group says a whopping 68 percent of mobile users plan to purchase a new smartphone for the holidays. That number seems high to me, but come January, you can be pretty sure there will be a lot of shiny new iPhones, Galaxies and Pixels connecting to your corporate network. But that’s not what this post is about. No, this post is about what happens to all those no-longer-shiny BYOD smartphones that used to connect to your corporate network and work with your corporate data, but have now been replaced with something new. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Setting Sail on Secret Seas with Trireme

Container networking is a tough challenge to solve. The evolving needs of creating virtual networks to allow inter-container communications is difficult. But ensuring security at the same time is enough to make you pull your hair out. Lots of companies are taking a crack at it as has been demonstrated recently by microsegmentation offerings from Cisco, VMware NSX, and many others. But a new development on this front set sail today. And the captain is an old friend.

Sailing the Security Sea

Dimitri Stiladis did some great things in his time at Nuage Networks. He created a great overlay network solution that not only worked well for software defined systems but also extended into the container world as more and more people started investigating containers as the new way to provide application services. He saw many people rushing into this area with their existing solutions as well as building new solutions. However, those solutions were all based on existing technology and methods that didn’t work well in the container world. If you ever heard someone say, “Oh, containers are just lightweight VMs…” you know what kind of thinking I’m talking about.

Late last year, Dimitri got together with some of Continue reading

6 trends that will shape cloud computing in 2017

Cloud computing has helped many enterprises transform themselves over the last five years, but experts agree that the market is entering something of a second wave, both for public cloud and private cloud services built and hosted in corporate data centers. The cloud market will accelerate faster in 2017 as enterprises seek to gain efficiencies as they scale their compute resources to better serve customers, says Forrester Research in a new report.“The No. 1 trend is here come the enterprises,” says Forrester analyst Dave Bartoletti, primary author of the research. “Enterprises with big budgets, data centers and complex applications are now looking at cloud as a viable place to run core business applications.” Forrester says the first wave of cloud computing was created by Amazon Web Services, which launched with a few simple compute and storage services in 2006. A decade later, AWS is operating at an $11 billion run rate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CEO’s message a jolt to IT workers facing layoffs

IT workers in the infrastructure team at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) were notified recently of their layoff. They expect to be training replacements from India-based contractor HCL. The layoff affects more than 500 IT workers, according to the insurance firm.This familiar IT story began a little differently. A few days before employees were notified in mid-October of their layoff, HCSC CEO Paula Steiner talked about future goals in an internal, company-wide video.Steiner's comments weren't IT-department-specific, but the takeaway quote by one IT employee was this: "As full-time retiring baby boomers move on to their next chapter, the makeup of our organization will consist more of young and non-traditional workers, such as part-time workers or contractors," said Steiner in the video.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New open source project Trireme aims to secure containers

A team made of former Cisco and Nuage Networks veterans has developed an open source project it released this week named Trireme that takes an application-centric approach to securing code written in containers.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Peek inside Microsoft Azure's open source rack and server designs + Aporeto Trireme was developed by a startup named Aporeto, whose co-founders include the former co-founder and CTO of software-defined networking company Nuage Networks Dimitri Stiliadis; former distinguished engineer at Cisco’s Insieme Business Unit Satyam Sinha; and Amir Sharif, who previously worked at VMware. The first launch of the company is the free release of its Trireme open source code.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump and Clinton should answer these 10 cybersecurity questions

Cybersecurity getting little attentionImage by REUTERS/Jim YoungThis election has been more about style than substance, more about the candidates’ pasts than their plans, more personal attacks than policy proposals. Even the debates, where the moderators attempt to discuss issues in need of decisions and actions, have been more notable for the ferocity of attacks than the shrewdness of the strategies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump and Clinton should answer these 10 cybersecurity questions

Cybersecurity getting little attentionImage by REUTERS/Jim YoungThis election has been more about style than substance, more about the candidates’ pasts than their plans, more personal attacks than policy proposals. Even the debates, where the moderators attempt to discuss issues in need of decisions and actions, have been more notable for the ferocity of attacks than the shrewdness of the strategies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fixing the communications issues between IT security and the board and c-suite

In the months before an unexpected crisis, IT security requests specific tools, training, and additional staff to keep enterprise data safe, but does not substantiate the need in terms the business can understand. The c-suite denies the requests, pointing to the investments they have already made in security technologies. Suddenly, hackers strike with a massive cyber attack.Suffering financial losses and brand damage, the c-suite asks IT security what happened. Security responds that they need specific tools, training, and staff to mitigate these concerns. But again, security does not make a business case in language the c-suite can appreciate. The leadership turns to existing vendors, who sell them their latest security products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Fixing the communications issues between IT security and the board and c-suite

In the months before an unexpected crisis, IT security requests specific tools, training, and additional staff to keep enterprise data safe, but does not substantiate the need in terms the business can understand. The c-suite denies the requests, pointing to the investments they have already made in security technologies. Suddenly, hackers strike with a massive cyber attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

How to find the best Wi-Fi router for a home office

Does your home office Wi-Fi router's lackluster performance hamper your productivity? Do you constantly deal with wireless connectivity issues that drive you crazy? And do the problems get worse as you add more wireless devices to the network? If you answered yes to any of these questions, an upgrade of your aging, overloaded Wi-Fi router may be the only guaranteed solution.Before you buy that bargain basement router or even splurge on the most expensive model, it's wise to make sure you understand the technologies behind your in-home wireless so you can pick the best router for your workspace or small office.Making sense of Wi-Fi standards and technologies Mobile devices that support Wi-Fi today conform to the 802.11 family of protocols for wireless communication. That family includes the trusted 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g standards, and newer Wi-Fi devices support the much faster 802.11n and 802.11ac, as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to find the best Wi-Fi router for a home office

Does your home office Wi-Fi router's lackluster performance hamper your productivity? Do you constantly deal with wireless connectivity issues that drive you crazy? And do the problems get worse as you add more wireless devices to the network? If you answered yes to any of these questions, an upgrade of your aging, overloaded Wi-Fi router may be the only guaranteed solution.Before you buy that bargain basement router or even splurge on the most expensive model, it's wise to make sure you understand the technologies behind your in-home wireless so you can pick the best router for your workspace or small office.Making sense of Wi-Fi standards and technologies Mobile devices that support Wi-Fi today conform to the 802.11 family of protocols for wireless communication. That family includes the trusted 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g standards, and newer Wi-Fi devices support the much faster 802.11n and 802.11ac, as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inside a hyperscale data center (how different is it?)

A hyperscale cloud data center looks different from an enterprise data center, or even a large hosting provider. The problems they face are different from the problems you face. And your approach to everything from how you choose a site to how you manage power to how long you keep servers is not their approach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Inside a hyperscale data center (how different is it?)

A hyperscale cloud data center looks different from an enterprise data center, or even a large hosting provider. The problems they face are different from the problems you face. And your approach to everything from how you choose a site to how you manage power to how long you keep servers is not their approach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Microsoft: Windows 0-day exposed by Google is being exploited by Russian DNC hackers

Microsoft issued a warning about the APT group most commonly known as “Fancy Bear,” or APT 28, and how it is exploiting the zero-day disclosed by Google on Halloween.Microsoft agreed that the zero-day is being actively exploited and pointed a finger of blame at a hacking group that is believed to be tied to the Russian government; the same group is believed to be responsible for hacks that resulted in data breaches at the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.Microsoft does not call the APT group “Fancy Bear” as its codename for the threat group is STRONTIUM. Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, wrote:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft: Windows 0-day exposed by Google is being exploited by Russian DNC hackers

Microsoft issued a warning about the APT group most commonly known as “Fancy Bear,” or APT 28, and how it is exploiting the zero-day disclosed by Google on Halloween.Microsoft agreed that the zero-day is being actively exploited and pointed a finger of blame at a hacking group that is believed to be tied to the Russian government; the same group is believed to be responsible for hacks which resulted in data breaches at the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.Microsoft does not call the APT group “Fancy Bear” as its codename for the threat group is STRONTIUM. Terry Myerson, executive VP of Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, wrote:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here