Where to find the world’s best programmers

Donald Knuth, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Grace Hopper: The United States has produced some of the greatest software engineers who have ever lived.But outside the United States computer technology and education have become far more accessible over the last 20 years or so, and that means that in China and many other less developed countries there are now plenty of young minds that have been trained to become skilled programmers.So which countries produce the best coders is an interesting question to ask. Perhaps more importantly why do some countries lead the way? [ Also on CIO.com: The 13 developer skills you need to master now ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Who is most likely to buy Avaya’s networking business?

Earlier this year Forbes posted an article speculating that Avaya’s private equity firm, Silver Lake was exploring a sale of the company or at least parts of it. Private equity companies typically hold its portfolio companies for three to five years and then divest themselves of it through an IPO or a sale to another organization. The Avaya situation is somewhat of a rarity because it’s coming up on 10 years since Silver Lake took ownership of it.Avaya is a strong company with good products that has been trying to transform itself into more of a software and services company, but it is saddled with debt. A sale of its contact center and/or networking business could help offset that debt and put the rest of Avaya in a much better position.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SnapChat, Skype among worst messaging apps for not respecting users’ right to privacy

Amnesty International set out to determine which technology companies met “their human rights responsibilities in the way they use encryption to protect users’ online security.” The research resulted in ranking messaging apps of 11 tech companies based on the use of encryption to protect users’ privacy.According to the detailed list of Message Privacy Rankings (pdf), Facebook did the best, scoring 73 out of 100 for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Both Apple for iMessage and FaceTime and Telegram for the Telegram Messenger scored 67. Google came in with a score of 53 for Allo, Duo and Hangouts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SnapChat, Skype among worst messaging apps for not respecting users’ right to privacy

Amnesty International set out to determine which technology companies met “their human rights responsibilities in the way they use encryption to protect users’ online security.” The research resulted in ranking messaging apps of 11 tech companies based on the use of encryption to protect users’ privacy.According to the detailed list of Message Privacy Rankings (pdf), Facebook did the best, scoring 73 out of 100 for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Both Apple for iMessage and FaceTime and Telegram for the Telegram Messenger scored 67. Google came in with a score of 53 for Allo, Duo and Hangouts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Does Southwest’s new ‘password’ commercial need to get away?

If you watched any football yesterday, chances are you saw the latest in Southwest Airlines’ “Wanna get away?” commercial series, this one featuring a military general and his comical willingness to surrender his network access password.While funny on its face, the commercial is not exactly a lesson in proper password management. Watch or read the transcript that follows: Transcript:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Does Southwest’s new ‘password’ commercial need to get away?

If you watched any football yesterday, chances are you saw the latest in Southwest Airlines’ “Wanna get away?” commercial series, this one featuring a military general and his comical willingness to surrender his network access password.While funny on its face, the commercial is not exactly a lesson in proper password management. Watch or read the transcript that follows: Transcript:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Does Southwest’s new ‘password’ commercial need to get away?

If you watched any football yesterday, chances are you saw the latest in Southwest Airlines’ “Wanna get away?” commercial series, this one featuring a military general and his comical willingness to surrender his network access password.While funny on its face, the commercial is not exactly a lesson in proper password management. Watch or read the transcript that follows: Transcript:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity, business and IT relationships

As the old adage states: People are the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain. This is a problem because strong cybersecurity depends upon both individual skills and organizational collaboration between cybersecurity, business and IT groups. To use another analogy, cybersecurity is a team sport. If the cybersecurity team doesn’t communicate and collaborate well with other groups within an organization, it will be difficult—if not impossible—to stay current with what’s needed for security incident prevention, detection and response.Unfortunately, this is the situation too often today. According to a new research report from ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA)—The State of Cybersecurity Professional Careers—20 percent of cybersecurity professionals claim that the relationship between cybersecurity and IT teams is “fair or poor” today, while 27 percent rate the relationship between cybersecurity and business team as “fair or poor."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity, Business, and IT Relationships

As the old adage states:  People are the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain.  This is a problem because strong cybersecurity depends upon both individual skills and organizational collaboration between cybersecurity, business, and IT groups. To use another analogy, cybersecurity is a team sport.  If the cybersecurity team doesn’t communicate and collaborate well with other groups within an organization, it will be difficult if not impossible to stay current with what’s needed for security incident prevention, detection, and response.Unfortunately, this is the situation too often today.  According to a new research report from ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), 20% of cybersecurity professionals claim that the relationship between cybersecurity and IT teams is “fair or poor” today, while 27% rate the relationship between cybersecurity and business team as “fair or poor” (Note: I am an ESG employee).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity, Business, and IT Relationships

As the old adage states:  People are the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain.  This is a problem because strong cybersecurity depends upon both individual skills and organizational collaboration between cybersecurity, business, and IT groups. To use another analogy, cybersecurity is a team sport.  If the cybersecurity team doesn’t communicate and collaborate well with other groups within an organization, it will be difficult if not impossible to stay current with what’s needed for security incident prevention, detection, and response.Unfortunately, this is the situation too often today.  According to a new research report from ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), 20% of cybersecurity professionals claim that the relationship between cybersecurity and IT teams is “fair or poor” today, while 27% rate the relationship between cybersecurity and business team as “fair or poor” (Note: I am an ESG employee).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

20% off Micca Speck G2 1080p Full-HD Ultra Portable Digital Media Player – Deal Alert

The Micca Speck G2 provides convenient playback of all popular photo, music, and video formats up to 1080p Full-HD resolution on any TV or HDTV. It has a 1080p HD output for sending sharp and clear video and audio in pure digital format to HDTVs, as well as composite AV output for use with analog TVs. The Speck G2 reads media from USB Drives, USB Hard Drives, SD/SDHC Flash Memory Cards, MBR FAT32 and NTFS file systems, up to 2TB. File formats supported are:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 strategies to reboot your IT career

Technology changes faster than many of us can keep up with it. New paradigms like software-defined networks and the cloud emerge, and the old ones continue to hang around.But while the hotshot programmers and big data geeks get to play with the shiny new toys, you're busy waiting for the robots to come and take away your job.[ Find out how to get ahead with our career development guide for developers. | The art of programming is changing rapidly. We help you navigate what's hot in programming and what's going cold. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] It doesn't have to be that way. Whether you cut your teeth on Unix and AIX or you tire of doing the necessary but thankless tasks that come with keeping the lights on and the datacenter humming, there's still time to reinvent yourself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bots may be trumping online polls

Politicians are fond of saying that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.That may be especially true this year, especially when it comes to online polls that, like anything in the digital, connected world, are vulnerable to mischief.The mischief is enabled by bots – hundreds to many thousands of computers under the control of an attacker that are more typically used to send out spam, create Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and commit various kinds of fraud – but in this case are used to skew poll results. They can make it look like public opinion views one candidate as the winner of a debate when the real vote would show the other candidate did.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bots may be trumping online polls

Politicians are fond of saying that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.That may be especially true this year, especially when it comes to online polls that, like anything in the digital, connected world, are vulnerable to mischief.The mischief is enabled by bots – hundreds to many thousands of computers under the control of an attacker that are more typically used to send out spam, create Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and commit various kinds of fraud – but in this case are used to skew poll results. They can make it look like public opinion views one candidate as the winner of a debate when the real vote would show the other candidate did.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Are microservices killing the API conversation?

In a couple of weeks, I will be attending the API Strategy and Practice conference in Boston. As program chair of the 2015 edition (held in Austin last October), I am excited to see this year’s schedule, led by 2016 program chair (and senior product manager at Capital One DevExchange) Lorinda Brandon. When I attend, and as I talk with participants across the two and a half days, there is one question I will be asking speakers and participants alike: Are microservices killing the API conversation?Let’s look back quickly at what has happened in the last two years:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Better safe than sorry: 5 apps for encrypting and shredding files

While safeguarding personal and business data has always been important, the necessity for maintaining digital privacy has become even more vital as more of our records are digitized.People are starting to realize that passwords alone aren't enough. Even with password protection, anything on your computer can potentially be viewed by an enterprising hacker. And if your computer is lost or stolen, its hard drive can be removed and connected to a new computer, revealing its secrets. To be safer, encryption is the way to go. These days, the accepted standard for encryption is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm with a 256-bit key.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Better safe than sorry: 5 apps for encrypting and shredding files

While safeguarding personal and business data has always been important, the necessity for maintaining digital privacy has become even more vital as more of our records are digitized.People are starting to realize that passwords alone aren't enough. Even with password protection, anything on your computer can potentially be viewed by an enterprising hacker. And if your computer is lost or stolen, its hard drive can be removed and connected to a new computer, revealing its secrets. To be safer, encryption is the way to go. These days, the accepted standard for encryption is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm with a 256-bit key.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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