Free data visualization with Microsoft Power BI: Your step-by-step guide

Microsoft has jumped into the free, self-service data analysis space with Power BI. Power BI offers basic data wrangling capabilities similar to Excel's Power Query. It also lets you create interactive visualizations, reports and dashboards with a few clicks or drag-and-drops; type natural-language questions about your data on a dashboard; and handle files that are too large for Excel. It can work with dozens of data types -- not only Excel, Access and CSV files, but also Salesforce, Google Analytics, MailChimp, GitHub, QuickBooks Online and dozens of others. And, it will run R scripts -- meaning that any data you can pull in and massage via R you can import into Power BI.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why you shouldn’t pay the ransomware fee

While most of the decision makers would likely prefer to hear a simple yes or no when asking if they should pay, nothing in security is simple. By and large, the position of many leaders in the industry is that the ideal situation is not to pay.Security experts across the industry would like to see all enterprises, large and small, be prepared for a hit so that they can recover their data without paying a ransomware fee. The question of whether to pay the ransomware fee is tricky, though, as sometimes organizations are left with no other options.MORE: How to respond to ransomware threats When asked whether companies should ever pay a ransomware fee, Ryan Manship, security practice director at RedTeam Security said, “The first thing about ransomware is that it’s in many ways like terrorism. The US has a policy not to negotiate with terrorists. Where does that come from? Why does it exist? The reality is, you can’t trust the bad guys. You can’t trust them to do what they say they are going to do, which is to give back access to your data.”To read this article in full or to leave a Continue reading

Happy anniversary, Windows 10: Here’s what coming in the latest update

Happy AnniversaryMicrosoft’s latest update to Windows 10, dubbed the Anniversary Update, is slated to officially drop on Aug. 2, a year after the initial release of Windows 10 last July 29. Windows 10 has been installed on more than 350 million devices, making it Microsoft’s most successful OS launch. However, there’s always room for improvement and this update introduces several changes, customization options, and new ways to interact with Windows 10. Here are the highlights:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 7.11.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.ONLYOFFICE Сommunity EditionKey features - A free and open source office and productivity suite that offers a feature-rich online editors integrated with Mail, CRM, Project and Document Management systems, Calendar. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 7.11.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.ONLYOFFICE Сommunity EditionKey features - A free and open source office and productivity suite that offers a feature-rich online editors integrated with Mail, CRM, Project and Document Management systems, Calendar. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 7.11.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.ONLYOFFICE Сommunity EditionKey features - A free and open source office and productivity suite that offers a feature-rich online editors integrated with Mail, CRM, Project and Document Management systems, Calendar. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Achieves Reliable, Secure, High-Performance Cloud Services with VMware NSX

King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology’s (KACST) Internet Services Unit (ISU) needed to build a reliable, secure, scalable Public Cloud service that is automated and on demand. It also needed to provide seamless operations for their customers, which includes all of the academic institutions and government organizations in Saudi Arabia. ISU was able to satisfy this requirement by deploying VMware NSX for network and security virtualization and VMware vRealize Automation to automate the service creation and delivery of personalized infrastructure and applications to its customers.

Khaleel K. Al-Jadaan, the Deputy Director and Network Operations Manager of KACST’s Internet Services Unit, says, “A complete and secure cloud service was the top priority. VMware has proved to be the trusted partner, time and time again, to provide compelling and reliable solutions.”

Now KACST’s customers can request new services and manage their existing workloads by accessing the datacenter directly and securely through an automated portal. They can self-provision computational and storage resources, with built-in network and security facilities. And when multi-tier applications are provisioned automatically, all the underlying networking and security are provisioned too. With VMware’s software infrastructure platform in place, ISU is positioned to develop new services rapidly, and start Continue reading

Firepower Access Control Policies

The Firepower ecosystem is a powerful NGIPS/NGFW solution. At that heart of the configuration construct is what is known as the Access Control Policy. Comparing this to something familiar is possible by thinking about the much simpler filtering feature in the ASA. For comparison, an ASA’s access-list (ACL) has multiple access-control entries (ACE’s). Each of these entries can refer to object-groups, networks, and protocols and can apply a permit or deny action.

The Access Control Policy in Firepower is a similar concept, but there are many additional facets that are pulled together to provide a more comprehensive policy application mechanism. This article only covers the major areas of this policy control construct. There are items which are beyond the scope including variable sets and manipulating the behavior of http response pages.

Specific to the policy application, there are two main areas of the the Access Control Policy. The first area is what is known as Security Intelligence. In the policy, this is found on the second tab from the left and provides a framework for blacklisting. There are many feeds provided directly from Cisco’s Talos organization and are ready for consumption by the security policy.

The action for each feed that is Continue reading

Special Pre-Prime Discount on Jaybird X2 Sport Wireless Bluetooth Headphones – Deal Alert

With a regular list price of $149.99, the current discount makes the Jaybird X2 Sport is now available with a 45% discount for this pre-Prime Day deal. Features include: Premium Bluetooth Audio For Skip-Free Music Outdoors 8 Hours of Music + Calls With Complete Remote Controls Secure Over/Under-Ear Fit Options Lifetime Sweat proof Warranty Includes Comply Premium Sport Memory Foam Ear Tips, Patented Secure-Fit Ear Fins, Friction-Fit Silicone Sport Carrying Case, Silicone Ear Tips, Charging Cable & Cord Management Clips. Jump to Amazon now for additional details, and to explore buying options.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

$30 off Lumo Lift Posture Coach, Today Only – Deal Alert

If your posture needs to be improved, this deal may be worth your consideration. With Lumo Lift, get gentle vibrational reminders for your posture whenever you slouch. Track your posture hours, steps taken, distance travelled and calories burned through the companion iOS, Android or Windows Desktop Lumo Lift app. For today only, Amazon is discounting the Lumo Lift posture coach by $30, making it available for just $50. It currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 1,900 customers (read reviews). Take advantage of today's deal on Amazon right now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Omni Hotels was hit by point-of-sale malware

Omni Hotels & Resorts has reported that point-of-sale systems at some of its properties were hit by malware targeting payment card information.The attack on the systems of the luxury hotel chain follows similar breaches of point-of-sale systems at various hotels and retailers like Hyatt Hotels, Target, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Hilton Worldwide Holdings.Omni in Dallas, Texas, said in a statement Friday that on May 30 this year, it discovered it was hit by malware attacks on its network, affecting specific POS systems on-site at some of its properties. “The malware was designed to collect certain payment card information, including cardholder name, credit/debit card number, security code and expiration date,” Omni said. There isn’t evidence that other customer information, such as contact information, Social Security numbers or PINs, was compromised, it added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Omni Hotels was hit by point-of-sale malware

Omni Hotels & Resorts has reported that point-of-sale systems at some of its properties were hit by malware targeting payment card information.The attack on the systems of the luxury hotel chain follows similar breaches of point-of-sale systems at various hotels and retailers like Hyatt Hotels, Target, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Hilton Worldwide Holdings.Omni in Dallas, Texas, said in a statement Friday that on May 30 this year, it discovered it was hit by malware attacks on its network, affecting specific POS systems on-site at some of its properties. “The malware was designed to collect certain payment card information, including cardholder name, credit/debit card number, security code and expiration date,” Omni said. There isn’t evidence that other customer information, such as contact information, Social Security numbers or PINs, was compromised, it added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Houston, we have code!

Did you know that the computer that coordinated the Apollo 11 mission that landed on the moon, the Apollo Guidance Computer, had about 0.08 percent of the processing power of an iPhone 5s? That it had just 2K of RAM and ran at 1.024MHz and its external signaling ran at 512Khz ? That it had only four 16-bit registers and 32KB of storage? Despite having so little power, the AGC guided the Apollo 11 mission across more than 221,000 miles of space to land on the moon then brought them back again. Amazing. And check out the AGC's user interface:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

​I hunted Pokemon by two of the world’s most famous landmarks and all I caught was a lousy Zubat

If you’ve not seen it, the new Pokemon Go mobile game lets you walk around town interacting with local landmarks via your phone’s screen. You’ll likely find plaques, artworks and other local facts about where you live and work that you never knew existed. And then, every once in a while, a wild Pokemon will appear on the ground next to you (it’s invisible but you can see it on your phone’s screen) and you’ve gotta catch it by flicking Pokeballs at it. There are some exotic Pokemon and many boring ones. Perhaps I was hoping for too much when I stood beneath Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge, looking out across the water to the enormously-famous Sydney Opera House only to be notified that the wild Pokemon that had appeared was this.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Performance Review of Overlay Tunnels with Open vSwitch

In my previous article I presented various encapsulation techniques used to extend Layer 2 reachability across separate networks using tunnels created with Open vSwitch. Although the initial intention was to include some iperf test results, I decided to leave these for a separate post (this one!) because I hit few problems.

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