Dropbox changed passwords after 68M account records were compromised

Dropbox’s move last week to ask users who had signed up before mid-2012 to change their account passwords followed the discovery of a large dump of email addresses and passwords related to these accounts. The online storage company confirmed late Tuesday reports that 68 million user email addresses and hashed and salted passwords from an incident in 2012 had been compromised. Dropbox said that the password reset the company completed last week covered all of the affected users so that the Dropbox accounts are protected. Last week, the company asked users who signed up before mid-2012 to change their passwords if they haven’t done so since then, describing it as a preventive measure and not because there was any indication that their accounts were improperly accessed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Planning for Migration into the Cloud?

One of my readers sent me this question:

Have you written something about assessment and planning for migration of traditional in-premise data center network to private or public cloud? There would be hundreds of things to check during assessment and then plan accordingly.

Academically, that’s a wrong way of approaching the problem.

Read more ...

Inside VMware Before It Dons The Dell Invisibility Cloak

Where do you go when you are an infrastructure software provider that already has 500,000 enterprise customers? That is about as good and as big as it gets, particularly when the biggest spenders in IT infrastructure, the hyperscalers and the largest cloud builders, create their own hardware and infrastructure software and inspire legions of companies to follow their lead, often with open source projects they found.

So VMware, which has grown into a nearly $7 billion software powerhouse, has done so in the only way that any company can that has reached such a saturation point in the market. Having

Inside VMware Before It Dons The Dell Invisibility Cloak was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Okta’s API access product targets the trend toward services

Okta has changed key parts of its product portfolio to attract new users to its corporate identity management and access control platforms. The startup is launching a new API access management product and revamping its provisioning service to make it easier to change employees' permissions within a company.The changes, announced at the company's Oktane conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, were designed to give Okta more ammunition against a growing field of identity-management rivals, including Microsoft and OneLogin.Okta API Access Management builds on Okta's existing tools for developers who manage application logins. It lets administrators control how users of those apps access business systems that are surfaced through APIs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Okta’s API access product targets the trend toward services

Okta has changed key parts of its product portfolio to attract new users to its corporate identity management and access control platforms. The startup is launching a new API access management product and revamping its provisioning service to make it easier to change employees' permissions within a company.The changes, announced at the company's Oktane conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, were designed to give Okta more ammunition against a growing field of identity-management rivals, including Microsoft and OneLogin.Okta API Access Management builds on Okta's existing tools for developers who manage application logins. It lets administrators control how users of those apps access business systems that are surfaced through APIs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 unveiling now set for September 7

In case you missed it, Apple yesterday sent out invitations for a special media event slated to take place on Wednesday, September 7 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Per usual, the event will kick off at 10 AM Pacific time and will be live-streamed via Apple’s website.Apple’s upcoming media event will, naturally, primarily center on the iPhone 7. The iPhone 7 likely won’t deliver any breakthrough technological features but users can expect to see substantial camera improvements and enhanced internals. Of particular interest will be how Apple addresses the rumored removal of the traditional 3.5mm headphone jack. While some have speculated that the removal was simply done to make the iPhone 7 thinner, others believe that Apple may introduce a superior Bluetooth alternative in its place. Another item to keep an eye on will be if battery life has been improved or if it will remain largely in line with what we've seen from past iPhone models.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

25% off 150-pack iCloth Screen Cleaning Wipes for Electronics – Deal Alert

These screen cleaning cloths from iCloth currently average 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 700 people (read reviews) and its list price is currently discounted 25% to $28.12 for a pack of 150, individually packaged. The aerospace-grade soft fabric wipes are made from high quality and extremely low-linting Dupont Sontara fabric, and are premoistened with a purified water-based formula containing a isopropyl alcohol (not harmful ethyl alcohol) and proprietary ingredients that are safe on all sensitive optics and specialty coatings. So they are ideal for tablets, smartphones and laptops, but will work equally well on your sensitive eyewear. iCloth wipes are made in America, and come with a money-back-guarantee if you're not satisfied. See the discounted 150-pack now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How VMware’s cross-cloud NSX will work

VMware this week announced plans to extend NSX, its software defined networking product, to public IaaS cloud computing platforms, allowing customers to manage multiple cloud environments with a single network management portal.About 1,700 customers have already deployed NSX as an on-premises network virtualization platform. At some point in the future (VMware executives will not say when) the company will allow customers to deploy NSX across multiple different cloud providers. The idea is customers can centrally manage their on premises and public cloud resources within NSX. How exactly will this work?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMworld 2016: Clouds are commodities

VMware is poised to take you to the cloud, and it wants to prove its worth to be your cloud broker.During yesterday’s keynote address at VMworld in Las Vegas, CEO Pat Gelsinger talked about a new layer between the cloud and a data center. For purposes of discussion, I’ll call it the hybrid cloud control plane. It’s not quite an operating system and not quite compute as a service, but it’s close to both of these. It’s an intelligent brokerage system, designed to keep you loving VMware.+ Also on Network World: Hot products from VMworld 2016 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Say hello to old friend Dell Technologies on Sept. 7

Dell will complete its acquisition of EMC on Sept. 7, ending nearly a year of approvals and decades of history for the two companies that will combine to become Dell Technologies.The mammoth deal was announced last October with an estimated value of US$67 billion. The companies recently crossed their last regulatory hurdle when China’s Ministry of Commerce signed off on the deal.Buying EMC and its federation of related companies will make Dell a stronger player in key areas that include software-defined data center, converged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, and security, Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU outlines stiff new net neutrality rules

An EU regulatory group Tuesday imposed tough new rules on European ISPs, in a move that advocates for net neutrality are hailing as a great victory.The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications published a 45-page report that essentially bans paid prioritization of network traffic, and imposes strict requirements on any specialized services that ISPs want to offer.MORE: Net Neutrality may be unenforceable – here’s whyISPs, the new rules say, “should treat all traffic equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender or receiver, content, application or service, or terminal equipment.” Quality of service measures are allowed, according to the EU, but those measures have to be “transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate,” as well as being targeted strictly towards technical service quality, and not commercial gain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU outlines stiff new net neutrality rules

An EU regulatory group Tuesday imposed tough new rules on European ISPs, in a move that advocates for net neutrality are hailing as a great victory.The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications published a 45-page report that essentially bans paid prioritization of network traffic, and imposes strict requirements on any specialized services that ISPs want to offer.MORE: Net Neutrality may be unenforceable – here’s whyISPs, the new rules say, “should treat all traffic equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender or receiver, content, application or service, or terminal equipment.” Quality of service measures are allowed, according to the EU, but those measures have to be “transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate,” as well as being targeted strictly towards technical service quality, and not commercial gain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BitTorrent client is found distributing Mac-based malware

A popular BitTorrent client called Transmission has again been found distributing Mac-based malware, months after it was used to spread a strand of ransomware.Researchers at security firm ESET have been following a malware called OSX/Keydnap, which can steal passwords, and noticed that it was spreading through Transmission’s official site.Somehow, a version of the BitTorrent client containing the malware had been recently made available on the site, ESET said in a blog post on Tuesday.Transmission has already removed the download, according to ESET. But users who downloaded the client between this past Sunday and Monday should check for signs that their Mac has been comprised.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Get started in data science: 5 steps you can take online for free

Making a career change is never easy, but few things are more motivating than the prospect of a good salary and a dearth of competition. That's a fair summary of the data science world today, as at least one well-publicized study has made clear, so why not investigate a little further?There's been a flurry of free resources popping up online to help those who are intrigued learn more. Here's a small sampling for each step of the way.1. Understand what it is Microsoft's website might not automatically spring to mind as a likely place to look, but sure enough, a few months ago the software giant published a really nice series of five short videos entitled "Data Science for Beginners." Each video focuses on a specific aspect, such as "The 5 questions data science answers" and "Is your data ready for data science?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here